Quilt Member News

Using MREN, Tukey enables scientists to share their big datasets with researchers around the country and the world

Chicago, Illinois (PRWEB) April 04, 2012

Today, the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) announced the availability of Tukey, which is an innovative integrated set of cloud services designed specifically to enable scientific researchers to manage, analyze and make discoveries with big data.

Several public cloud service providers provide resources for individual scientists and small research groups, and large research groups can build their own dedicated infrastructure for big data. However, currently, there is no cloud service provider that is focused on providing services to projects that must work with big data, but are not large enough to build their own dedicated clouds.

Tukey is the first set of integrated cloud services to fill this niche.

Four Regional R&E Networks Providers Open Bids for Operational Management Tools

March 14, 2012 – MCNC, the private, not-for-profit operator of the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), announced today that it is leading a Request for Proposals (RFP) process on behalf of three additional state/regional research and education networks for identifying appropriate vendor(s) whom can provide carrier-class operational management tools and services. The four participants who co-developed this RFP include: BCNET, MCNC, OneNet, and WiscNet.

Connecting Researchers to Resources - NOAA Partners with the Pacific Northwest Gigapop

Sand Point, Seattle, Washington – March 5, 2012 – The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), one of several regional data transfer centers around the country that efficiently moves large volumes of data between regional, national, and other networks, announced today their partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in supporting a major milestone for the ongoing growth and development of the NOAA N-Wave Research Network. This partnership significantly enhances the current capabilities of N-Wave and the ability to interconnect NOAA researchers to NOAA’s national research resources.

“We’ve created for the very first time, a network platform for NOAA researchers that underpins much of the high-performance computing, data storage, archival, and data retrieval that is necessary for scientific research,” said Jerry Janssen, who works in the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and manages NOAA’s N-Wave Research Network.

KanREN Cloud Storage: “The StormCellar”

KanREN is now pleased to offer a cloud-based storage service. KanREN’s StormCellar storage service is designed and deployed to meet the needs of small to medium sized universities, colleges, schools and libraries.

Service Pricing

StormCellar storage costs just 10¢/GB/mo. Members may purchase increments of 200GB at a time. For example, at the minimum buy-in of 200GB a member will pay only $240/ year for a 24x7 service. For larger needs 1TB costs only $1,200/year. That’s a great buy - competitive with the bargain basement storage providers, but featuring the safety, security and support of a 100% KanREN solution!

How It Works

KanREN’s StormCellar storage service is co-located at one of our backbone node locations. KanREN provisions StormCellar storage for members based on a monthly fee. Members may stream data on and off of the storage system using any of the supported protocols. KanREN StormCellar storage is intended for institution level deployment; we cannot provision for individual students, faculty or staff. We do not charge for or limit the access to the service, but we expect the consortium to respect I/O resources are limited and work together to minimize contentions.

Great Plains Network Launches Professional Development Program for Research & Education Community

Beginning in September, 2011, the Great Plains Network (GPN) will be launching a web-based Professional Development Program for faculty and staff at member institutions and GPN Network Participants. Planned topics are in areas of advanced networking, high performance computing, data life cycle management, and other aspects of advanced technology, critical to advancing the missions of the higher education community. Each program will be brief--60 to 90 minutes--and will be interactive.

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StarWave: A Multi-100 Gbps Communications Exchange Facility in Chicago Showcased at SC11

SEATTLE -- November 15, 2011 -- Today at the 24th annual SC Conference (SC11), the foremost international high-performance computing conference, the U.S. Midwest’s Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN) announced the implementation of StarWave, a multi 100 Gbps exchange facility located at the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility in Chicago. 

At SC11, StarWave is being used to support multiple national 100 Gbps demonstrations that show how high-performance, high-capacity networks can significantly improve the way scientific research is conducted worldwide. With major funding provided by the National Science Foundation, the StarWave facility was designed by the MREN and StarLight consortia to exclusively support large-scale data-intensive scientific research. 

MOREnet Excited to Announce the Missouri Future of Learning Forum

Prototype @ the MOREnet Missouri Future of Learning Forum was an intensive, hands-on design camp immersing passionate and creative students in a collaborative environment to re-imagine the future of learning. The Forum shaped up to be an exciting event that brought together high school students, designers, pre-service teachers, education leaders, technology experts and vendors for an interactive discussion and workshop. Led by Prototype architect and designer, Jeff Sharpe, students learned how design and design-thinking can unlock real world challenges and worked with acclaimed designers and educators to craft new classroom and learning models.

Spanning three days in October, the Forum brought together 37 students from 20 Missouri high schools; large and small, rural and urban. As design participants, students were fully-immersed in a creative setting, presented with a challenge, collaborate as a team and talk with innovative designers and educationalists from around the country as they designed their prototype solutions. Student teams  presented their creative ideas to the entire MOREnet Instructional Technology Conference audience during an interactive closing session on Tuesday, Oct. 11.

For more information see www.more.net/futurelearning or send e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .