CALIFORNIA RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
NETWORK ESTABLISHES FIRST
10 GIGABIT CONNECTION TO
INTERNET2 BACKBONE NETWORK
CalREN is first to match
nationwide Internet2 Abilene network capacity upgrade
Los Alamitos,
California--June 25, 2003--Internet2 and the Corporation for Education Network
Initiatives in California (CENIC) today announced that CalREN, California's
high-performance research and education network, has established the first 10
gigabit per second connection to the Internet2 Abilene backbone network. In
addition to providing greater bandwidth, this new connection will allow
millions of researchers, faculty, and students at thousands of institutions
connected to CalREN to take advantage of advanced networking capabilities such
as line-speed native IPv6 and scalable multicasting. The connection was first
established to support the Internet2 Member Meeting held in Los Angeles during October 2002.
CalREN is a high-speed,
advanced services network that connects California research and education
institutions at unprecedented speeds of over 1000 times faster than the
commodity Internet. The CalREN Optical Network Infrastructure (ONI) is
multi-tiered and supplies the high-level network services needed to
successfully conduct high-performance research activities. It also provides
network researchers in California with the infrastructure
needed to conduct critical investigations into optical networking technology.
High-performance networking
supports the development of revolutionary network uses in fields such as
astronomy, high energy physics, tele-medicine and distance education. CalREN is
a project of CENIC, which was founded in 1997 by California's major research and
academic universities.
Harvey Newman, a professor
of physics at Caltech, noted that "[t]his 10 Gigabit link between CalREN’s
optical network infrastructure and the Abilene network is on the critical
path for data-intensive Grid systems that are enabling a new generation of
experiments and projects in particle physics.
It is exactly this type of next generation network capacity that will
provide the foundation for future high performance collaborative
infrastructures, enabling physicists all over the world to contribute
effectively to the data analysis and the physics results."
Tom West, CENIC’s president
and CEO, said that "[t]his is an essential upgrade for both the CENIC and
Internet2 research communities. In California alone there are many of the
nation’s premier research institutions with very large-scale applications using
the CalREN-HPR infrastructure, an IP-based, 10 gigabit Ethernet wide area
network. Just to name a few, there's the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the
University of California Institutes for Science and Innovation, the Center for
Advanced Computing Research at Caltech and its Jet Propulsion Lab, the
University of Southern California and its Information Sciences Institute,
Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, as well as the
national laboratories. All of these
institutions are taking advantage of this network enhancement."
Abilene, an Internet2 backbone
network, enables nationwide testing of applications such as uncompressed
high-definition television quality video; remote control of scientific
instruments such as mountaintop telescopes and electron microscopes;
collaboration using immersive virtual reality; and grid computing. In addition
to providing scientists, teachers and students at the more than 225 Internet2
member universities and research centers access to advanced networking
capabilities, the nationwide upgrade currently underway will enable expanded
network measurement capabilities and an enhanced capacity to support
experiments by the computer science research community.
"We're extremely
pleased that the CENIC community will be the first to take advantage of the new
capabilities the Abilene upgrade provides,"
said Steve Corbató, director of Backbone Network Infrastructure for Internet2.
"We expect Abilene will continue to be a
catalyst for innovation, providing the research and education community a
unique, large-scale leading-edge network environment."
About Internet2(R)
Led by over 200 U.S. universities, working with
industry and government, Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network
applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating
the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among
academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its
infancy. For more information about Internet2, see: http://www.internet2.edu/
About CENIC
CENIC is a not-for-profit
corporation serving the California Institute of Technology, California State University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Southern California, California Community Colleges and the
statewide K-12 school system. CENIC’s mission is to facilitate and coordinate
the development, deployment and operation of a set of robust multi-tiered
advanced network services for this research and education community. More
information about CENIC can be found at www.cenic.org.
Contacts
CENIC
Julie M. Van Fleet
julie@cenic.org
619-276-0090
Internet2
Michelle Pollak
mpollak@internet2.edu
(202) 331-5345
---------------------------------------------------------------i2-news-+
For list utilities,
archives, subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. please visit the ListProc web interface
at
http://archives.internet2.edu/
---------------------------------------------------------------i2-news--