News for and about the Internet2 community

[Greg Wood <>]

NATIONAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORKING CONSORTIUM SELECTS LEVEL 3 
AND QWEST TO PROVIDE NETWORK SERVICES

Selections close the first round of the The Quilt's Commodity Internet 
Services project

Pittsburgh, PA--August 21, 2002--The Quilt, a coalition of leading 
regional research and education networking organizations across the 
United States, today announced that Level 3 Communications and Qwest 
Communications have been selected as authorized national providers of 
Internet services for its Participants. The Quilt is a coalition of 17 
regional networking organizations dedicated to providing advanced 
networking services to the research and education communities.

Level 3 and Qwest were selected from a dozen proposals based on their 
ability to collaboratively and strategically provide high-performance 
nationwide network services to some of the nation's most sophisticated 
regional, metropolitan, and campus networks. Collectively, participants 
in The Quilt currently use over 4.5 gigabits per second of commodity 
Internet capacity today, and expect this use to reach over 8 gigabits 
per second by the end of next year.

"We are extremely pleased to be working with Level 3 and Qwest to meet 
the collective technical requirements and cumulative capacity needs of 
participants in The Quilt," said Gwendolyn Huntoon, executive director 
of The Quilt. "We expect this collaboration to continue the well-defined 
track record of success for partnerships between companies and the 
leading-edge Internet community The Quilt represents."

"Level 3 is committed to helping The Quilt further extend the deployment 
of advanced networking for the research and education communities it 
serves," said Jack Waters, CTO for Level 3. "Collaborating with research 
and education organizations like The Quilt is a key focus at Level 3. We 
believe that our network provides the unique performance capabilities 
and scalable interconnection capacity to other IP backbones necessary to 
help The Quilt reach its goals."

"Qwest is pleased that its broadband network will contribute to the 
future of cutting-edge research and communication," said Cliff Holtz, 
executive vice president, Qwest Business Markets. "By expanding 
available Internet-access options, this new program broadens the 
resources available to the always-vital research community, an important 
customer group for Qwest."

Membership in The Quilt includes the Corporation for Education Network 
Initiatives in California (CENIC), EDUCAUSE, the Front Range Gigapop 
(FRGP), the Great Plains Network (GPN), the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads 
(MAX), Merit Networks, the Metropolitan Research and Education Network 
(MREN), Net.Work.Virginia, the North Carolina GigaPoP, Northern Lights, 
the Northern Crossroads (NoX), NYSERNet, the Oregon GigaPoP, OARnet, the 
Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), the Pittsburgh GigaPoP, the Southern 
Crossroads (SoX), Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) 
and the Texas GigaPoP.

The selection closed the first round of The Quilt's Commodity Internet 
Services Project. Progress is already underway for a second round of the 
project. For more information, see:
http://www.thequilt.net/proj-cis/

About The Quilt(tm)
The Quilt gathers over seventeen leading research and education 
networking organizations in the United States to promote consistent, 
reliable, interoperable, and efficient advanced networking services that 
extend to the broadest possible community; and to represent common 
interests in the development and delivery of advanced network services. 
Participants in The Quilt provide network service for over 150 Internet2 
universities and thousands of other educational institutions. The 
University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), a 
university-led research and development consortium, provides 
organizational support for The Quilt.
For more information, see: http://www.thequilt.net/

###

Contacts:
Media
Greg Wood, Internet2
+1-202-331-5360


Technical
Gwendolyn Huntoon, The Quilt
+1-412-268-4960


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