News

Pacific Wave and Northern Wave High-Speed Peering To Connect Researchers in Asia and Europe November 13, 2012

Today Pacific Wave and Northern Wave announced an agreement that will allow their participants to peer with each other. Northern Wave will now connect Pacific Wave (www.pacificwave.net) in Seattle to the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility (www.startap.net/starlight) in Chicago. This relationship provides new opportunities for international research and education networks and university participants to exchange networking traffic at multi-Gigabit rates between the Pacific Rim, the US, and Europe. In addition, researchers and educators at any connecting institution along the Northern Wave path in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington will have access to participants on the Pacific Wave exchange.

Pacific Wave is state-of-the-art peering exchange facility that, for over 10 years, has connected research, scientific, and education institutions and networks throughout the Pacific Rim and the world, increasing network efficiency and throughput while reducing latency and costs. Pacific Wave is a joint project of the Corporation for Education and Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP) and is designed to enhance the efficiency of research and education network traffic across the west coast of the US and with partners around the Pacific Rim.

Northern Wave is a similar facility recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) via North Dakota State University (NDSU) and PNWGP to provide a new shared 10Gbps optical network connection between Seattle and Chicago for research and education institutions. The grant, part of NSF’s Academic Research Infrastructure program, funded optical equipment to build the network along a fiber path provided by PNWGP and the BOREAS network (a collaboration among the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin-Madison, and Iowa State University (www.boreas.net). “Northern Wave brings a significant new capacity to research and education networks through improved international communication facilities as well as the easy exchange of data for initiating collaborations with other institutions. This is especially important for the establishment of large competitive research centers. It will also provide connectivity to large computational and visualization platforms at remote locations,” says Kalpana Katti, North Dakota State University Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and NSF CAREER Award grantee.

“Connecting Northern Wave and Pacific Wave puts into place a new piece of the cyberinfrastructure necessary for complex interdisciplinary work on the cutting edge of science and technology,” said Amy Philipson, Executive Director, PNWGP. “Together with the other advances that Pacific Wave offers its participants, such as 100G networking along the US west coast, dynamic circuits, support for Science DMZ-model research networks, and software-defined networking, we’re delighted help facilitate the arrival of true 21st century networking.

” Northern Wave is supported by the National Science Foundation ARRA ARI Award No. 0963559.

Pacific Wave is supported by the National Science Foundation IRNC Award No. OCI-0962931.

StarLight receives support from the National Science Foundation, IRNC Award No. OCI-0962997 and ARRA ARI Award No. 0963095.


*About CENIC* California’s education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state’s K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC’s Associate researchers and educators are engaged. For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

*About North Dakota State University (NDSU)* North Dakota State University is a student-focused, land-grant, research university — an economic engine that educates students, conducts primary research, creates new knowledge and advances technology. The university provides affordable access to an excellent education at a top-ranked research institution that combines teaching and research in a rich learning environment, educating future leaders who will create solutions to national and global challenges that will shape a better world. For more information, please visit http://www.ndsu.edu/.

*About Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)* The Pacific Northwest Gigapop is a nonprofit corporation serving research and education organizations throughout the Pacific Rim. They provide cost-effective, robust, reliable, high-bandwidth, and high-capacity networking to support the missions of these organizations and the needs of researchers, faculty, students, and staff. PNWGP designs, implements, and manages a multi-state high-bandwidth and high-capacity network specifically designed to meet unique requirements of research and education communities. For more information, please visit http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/.

*About StarLight* StarLight is the world’s most advanced national and international communications exchange facility. StarLight provides advanced networking services and technologies that are optimized for high-performance, large-scale metro, regional, national and global applications. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), StarLight was designed and developed by researchers, for researchers. StarLight is managed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and Calit2 at University of California, San Diego, in partnership with Canada’s CANARIE national networking organization and The Netherlands’ SURFnet. (www.startap.net/starlight)

Read More...
The Southeast Network Access Point (SNAP) is Open for Business November 12, 2012

SNAP was formed to meet industry demand for next-generation Internet Exchange (IX) and Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Atlanta, November 5, 2012 – SNAP, a leading provider of next-generation Internet Exchange (IX) solutions, announces today the availability of the Southeast Network Access Point (SNAP). This exchange point will offer neutral Internet exchange services for all categories of Internet Service Providers, Content Service Providers, Cloud Service Providers, Academic Networks, Government Networks, or Enterprise Networks desiring a neutral peering point serving the Southeastern United States.
Located in Colo Atl’s Atlanta, Georgia facility, SNAP will initially offer 100 Mbps ~ 10Gbps access ports, and both IPv4 and IPv6 peering. Route servers will allow networks to simplify their peering operations, while SNAP will permit other traditional peering models utilizing either user-managed peering or VLANs as needed to meet member objectives. SNAP will operate to meet both the vision and operational objectives of the global Internet community.

“SNAP was established to provide a stable platform for global and IP network peering and cutting edge Internet Exchange services,” comments Tim Kiser, Owner and Founder of Colo Atl. “Our charter members have a mission to meet the demands and advance the vision and operational objectives of the global Internet community.”
SNAP will also provide an exchange for Software Defined Networks (SDN), initially peering with the regional research and education networks, and ultimately into the commercial networking space. SDN peering on the SNAP benefits from the technical expertise of the Georgia Institute of Technology, US Ignite and transformative research provided through the National Science Foundation’s Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), all of which are Charter Members.

Members joining SNAP during the first year will enjoy financial incentives and charter membership status. SNAP will be available to all networks later this year.

To learn more about SNAP please visit www.southeastnap.com or email info@southeastnap.com

For more information about Colo Atl, visit www.coloatl.com or email info@coloatl.com

About Southeast Network Access Point (SNAP)

SNAP is a next-generation Internet Exchange (IX) supporting IPv4, IPv6 as well as OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking (SDN). Its mission is to not only support global peering, but also the collaborative development of an entirely new structure for Internet Protocol network peering. SNAP, located within the Georgia Technology Center, is a public IX built on Brocade equipment and the support of its Founding Members, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), US Ignite, Southern Light Rail and PeachNet. For more information about the SNAP or to schedule a briefing, contact us at info@SoutheastNAP.com. Follow SNAP on Twitter @SoutheastNAP

About Colo Atl

Located in the global telecom hub of Atlanta, Georgia, Colo Atl, a JT Communications Company, provides colocation, data center & interconnection services, at an affordable rate. Colo Atl is a neutral-colocation facility that allows tenants and carriers to securely and conveniently cross-connect within a SSAE16 certified facility. Colo Atl has no monthly recurring cross connect fees between tenants and provides exceptional customer service. Visit Colo Atl online at: www.coloatl.comand follow us on Twitter @ColoAtl

Read More...
NSF-Supported Research Data Alliance/U.S. Collaborates with International Partners to Accelerate Data Sharing November 12, 2012

11/08/2012 04:52 PM EST

The National Science Foundation today awarded a $2.5-million grant to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to enable its participation in a new international organization that will accelerate research data sharing among scientists around the globe.

The grant will be used to develop a Research Data Alliance (RDA) that will allow researchers the world over to collaboratively use scientific data to speed up innovation.

To date, more than 120 U.S. and international participants are helping conceptualize the organization and populate its first efforts. Along with scientific and data leaders from the United States, members from Australia and the European Union are part of the new alliance’s organizational steering committee. U.S. participation will be led by Rensselaer Computer Science Professor Francine Berman.

“The Research Data Alliance addresses a world-wide need for efforts that accelerate data-driven innovation,” Berman said. “The National Science Foundation, with U.S. and international partners, is expanding the global conversation on data-driven research. Community development of the RDA will contribute to the global infrastructure needed for new discovery and insights.”

The international launch and first plenary of the RDA will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, in March of 2013.

As an example of gains that can be expected from the RDA, Berman explained that researchers sharing open-access data sets about a particular disease would increase the pool of information, and therefore, the potential for insights that can only be gained at large scale.

She added that the coordination of economic data sets, geographic data sets and census data to create urban data sets can be used to make strategic predictions about programs and initiatives that can improve the quality of life in cities. “All of us use digital information every day to augment our lives in innovative ways,” Berman said. “The goal of the Research Data Alliance is to help researchers work with a world of useful digital information more innovatively and at scale.”

“RDA today is a timely, ambitious and practical advance in data sharing that is key to scientific collaboration, enabling discoveries to address needs of our global society,” said Robert Chadduck, NSF program director for data and cyberinfrastructure, which funded the grant. “We are proud to join our global colleagues in supporting this initiative.”

More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126010&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

Read More...