National LambdaRail completes nationwide network infrastructure deployment

February 21, 2006 Cypress, CA -- National LambdaRail (NLR), a consortium of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, announced that it has completed its deployment of a nationwide optical, Ethernet, and IP networking network infrastructure on more than 15,000 miles of fiber-optic cable across the United States.

NLR says it provides researchers with unprecedented control over the nationwide network infrastructure, with up to 40 individual lightpaths, each of which can transmit data at 10 Gbit/sec and be used to deploy dedicated side-by-side, but physically and operationally separate, production and experimental networks. The infrastructure is the result of over three years of work and nearly $100 million in funding by NLR's members.

"The fully operational National LambdaRail infrastructure marks an unprecedented milestone for the U.S. research community," comments Tracy Futhey, NLR board chair. "For the first time, a nationwide networking infrastructure is owned and operated by the research and education community, giving scientists flexible access to advanced networking capabilities and enabling experiments and collaborations across geographic barriers."

NLR says its WaveNet, FrameNet, and PacketNet services are in use by more than a dozen research projects, including the National Science Foundation-supported Extensible Terascale Facility and OptIPuter projects; the U.S. Department of Energy's UltraScience Net project; CENIC and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop's Pacific Wave project; the CAMERA project led by CalIT2, the Venter Institute and UCSD's CEOA; the University of Virginia-led CHEETAH project; as well as Internet2's Hybrid Optical Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) project.