News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren Rotman" <>]

First Segment of New Internet2 Network Goes Live, NYSERNet Becomes First
Connector

New Network Demos Uncompressed High-Definition Videoconference and 100
Gigabit Ethernet Technology at Internet2 Fall Member Meeting

CHICAGO, Ill.  - December 5, 2006 - Today at its annual Fall Member Meeting
and 10-year anniversary celebration, Internet2 unveiled the first major
segment of its new nationwide advanced network. The consortium also
announced that NYSERNet, the research and education network consortium
serving New York State, has become the first regional network to connect to
the new Internet2 Network infrastructure. The new segment, with an initial
100 Gigabit per second capacity between New York, Washington, D.C. and
Chicago, marks the first milestone of an ambitious plan to increase the
capacity and flexibility of nationwide advanced networking to serve the
growing needs of the research and education community. 

"The Internet2 community today celebrates both its 10-year history and an
important moment in our future," said Douglas Van Houweling, Internet2
president and CEO. "The advanced network our community is creating through
collaboration and partnership will serve as a new and even greater platform
for discovery, learning and understanding."

During the conference's first general session, Tim Lance, president and CEO
of NYSERNet in New York, demonstrated the first application over the new
network by providing a presentation to and answering questions from the
Internet2 meeting via uncompressed high-definition videoconferencing
technology developed by the University of Washington and the
ResearchChannel. The videoconference provided the meeting participants in
Chicago a detailed tour of the NYSERNet collocation facility and the MAN LAN
exchange point in New York City and the network equipment that supports the
new Internet2 network. 

"NYSERNet is pleased to be the first connector to Internet2's new network",
said Dr. Lance. "In the next few months we will also be enabling a dynamic
provisioning capability that our DWDM optical infrastructure supports,
bringing the full flexibility and power of these resources to all of our
members."

In June 2006, in a joint release with Level 3 Communications, Internet2
announced its plan to deploy its new advanced nationwide research network.
Level 3 is deploying Infinera's Digital Optical Networking equipment across
the infrastructure to enable dynamic optical circuit provisioning. Internet2
has also partnered with Ciena Corporation to deploy the CoreDirector
Multiservice Switch for switching and sub-wavelength grooming services.
Additionally, Internet2 will deploy its current Juniper T640 routers to
provide IP capabilities on the new network. The network, on schedule for
full deployment by mid-2007, will support a full range of production IP
services as well as new on-demand, dedicated circuits and sub-wavelength
services for the most demanding network applications and experimentation. 

For instance, the new network provides the capacity for researchers to
reliably exchange terabyte-scale data sets in seconds, or the flexibility to
allocate smaller bandwidth for network research. The dynamic capabilities
and carrier-class reliability of the new network were influential factors in
the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Sciences Network's (ESnet) decision
to use the new Internet2 infrastructure for its next-generation ESnet4
network in support of energy science physicists and researchers around the
country. 

Bill Johnston, head of ESnet at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said,
"Researchers around the country that collaborate using the ESnet facilities
are demanding networks that provide high reliability, in addition to very
high bandwidth to support their critical work in scientific discovery. The
Internet2 infrastructure will provide these capabilities now and with its
leading-edge technology can easily scale to meet the energy science
community's future needs as well." 

As a part of the Fall Member Meeting, the new Internet2 network will also
support a first-ever 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) transmission demonstration
across a national research network. The demonstration, created by a team
lead by Infinera in collaboration with Finisar, Level 3 and the University
of California at Santa Cruz highlights the flexibility and reconfigurability
of the new Internet2 infrastructure. The demo also underscores how the
network can be used as a testbed for new network paradigms, protocols, and
architectures to push the envelope of networking technology 

Steve Cotter, Internet2 director of network services added, "With the latest
advances in semiconductor devices like field-programmable gate arrays, we
might see supercomputers connected at 100 GbE using 10 parallel 10 Gbps
circuits in the not-so-distant future. The community control, reliability
and flexibility of the new Internet2 network makes it ideal for testing and
developing these kinds of new networking technologies."

About Internet2(R)
Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the
research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions
of its members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and
unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development,
deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies. Internet2 brings
the U.S. research and academic community together with technology leaders
from industry, government and the international community to undertake
collaborative efforts that have a fundamental impact on tomorrow's Internet.
For more information: http://www.internet2.edu

About NYSERNet
NYSERNet is a private not-for-profit corporation founded in 1985 by a
consortium of visionary public and private New York State institutions to
provide high-speed network connectivity to advance research and educational
initiatives in the Empire State. In 2003, NYSERNet began an ongoing project
of deployment of dark fiber cost-effective access to institutions in New
York City, followed in April, 2005 by the launch of the statewide DWDM
optical network. Both projects reflect NYSERNet's continuing commitment to
providing technically advanced communications facilities to its member
institutions at a sustainable cost. NYSERNet's latest project - a data
center dedicated to supporting its members business continuity strategies -
comes online in 2007. For more information: http://www.nysernet.org 
 
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