A Dedicated Advanced Science and Engineering Enterprise Network: The National Backbone Component

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The project is a renovation of the optical infrastructure of the National LambdaRail (NLR). It will deploy advanced dense wave-division multiplexing infrastructure to create a nationwide 40 Gigabit per second light-wave network over existing NLR fiber paths. National LambdaRail is one of two national optical network backbones established by the academic research and education community. It provides and operates 12,000 miles of optical transport that connects over 20 regional optical networks across the United States. It supports many of the world's most demanding scientific and network research projects. Its nationwide footprint provides the foundation for collaboration between researchers and groups of researchers at over 280 research universities, a number of U.S. government laboratories, and other universities across the globe. The NLR optical network is basic infrastructure for research that is used by a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from biology, cosmology, and high-energy physics to computer science research on networks themselves. In addition to providing infrastructure for research, the renovated network will have an indirect impact on the integration of research and education. Many of the people using this type of network for research are graduate students and post-doctoral researchers so the project will facilitate research training for many individuals. Basic research on the configuration, deployment, and management of optical networks may lead to results that can be applied to enhance the capability, security and resiliency of the national commercial network infrastructure. One of the research projects likely to use the renovated infrastructure consists of computer science research aimed at improving the delivery of health services through the use of advanced networking technologies.