News for and about the Internet2 community

[Lauren Rotman <>]

NLR and Internet2 to Develop Unified Cisco TelePresence Service for  
Research and Education

Successful Proof of Concept Demo Held Between Harvard University and  
University of Peking, China

Cypress, CA and Ann Arbor, MI - February 8, 2010 -- Internet2 and NLR  
have announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding  
(MoU) agreeing to collaborate on developing and deploying a unified  
Cisco TelePresence service offering for the research and education  
community.  Recognizing the powerful benefits of TelePresence for  
enabling new levels of collaboration and for breaking down geographic  
barriers among researchers and educators – nationally and  
internationally – the two organizations will be combining their  
respective expertise and reach.

NLR operates a Cisco TelePresence Exchange, located in Kansas City,  
Missouri.  Over 70 Cisco TelePresence systems in institutions in 12  
U.S. states and 3 other countries are already or will soon be linked  
in to this Exchange and will now be able to use the joint service to  
have conferences between Internet2 and NLR members.  Internet2 and NLR  
plan to work together to further develop this exchange to expand its  
capabilities.

“By working together, NLR and Internet2 are able to make this  
transformational, collaboration platform more widely accessible to a  
broader segment of researchers and educators,” said Grover Browning,  
NLR Director of Engineering and Operations.  “And as more people and  
institutions are on the TelePresence network, the more valuable it  
becomes for all members of the community.”

“The research and education community that Internet2 and NLR serve  
place a high value on bringing people together through remote  
collaboration technologies that are increasingly required as  
researchers move rapidly from working in local laboratories to  
participating in worldwide projects,” said Rob Vietzke, Internet2  
Executive Director of Network Services. “By collaborating with NLR we  
can help to catalyze the adoption of this important enabling  
technology.”

NLR and Internet2 have already successfully collaborated to enable a  
TelePresence session over their respective networks.   NLR’s  
TelePresence Exchange connected four Cisco TelePresence units at the  
Guanghua School of Management at the University of Peking, China to  
the NLR network and professors from Internet2-member Harvard  
University were able to interact with counterparts in China.  Two of  
the TelePresence units are deployed on the University of Peking’s main  
campus in Beijing, one on the Shanghai campus and another will arrive  
soon at the Shenzhen location.

“With TelePresence, our objective is to overcome geographic boundaries  
and distance to collaborate face-to-face with educators and  
researchers in the U.S. and other countries,” according to Mr. Yaowei,  
Administration, Guanghua School of Management, University of Peking.   
“We were very pleased at the joint efforts and support of NLR and  
Internet2 to initiate the first demonstration of this capability over  
TelePresence, a joint session with Harvard University."

“Harvard University is looking at TelePresence to foster a broad range  
of academic, research and business programs.  The joint collaboration  
between Internet2 and NLR and the exchange allow us to leverage our  
existing external connectivity to reach out to other institutions in  
the US and abroad. Our joint effort to enable TelePresence between the  
University of Peking and Harvard University exceeded our  
expectations,” said Leo Donnelly, Senior Network Architect, Harvard  
University.

Last week at the ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs Conference hosted by the  
University of Utah, Internet2 and NLR provided a presentation on the  
new, joint offering, what TelePresence offers the research and  
education community and how institutions can begin to take advantage  
of TelePresence.

More information on the new, NLR and Internet2 Cisco TelePresence  
service, including how current Internet2 and NLR members can access  
it, will be made available shortly at  
www.internet2.eduandwww.nlr.net.  Information on previous work on  
incorporating Telepresence in higher education can be found at www.nlr.net/telepresence-faq.php 
.


# # #

About Internet2
Internet2 is an advanced networking consortium led by the research and  
education community. An exceptional partnership spanning U.S. and  
international institutions who are leaders in the worlds of research,  
academia, industry and government, Internet2 is developing  
breakthrough cyberinfrastructure technologies that support the most  
exacting applications of today—and spark the most essential  
innovations of tomorrow. Led by its members and focused on their  
current and future networking needs since 1996, Internet2 blends its  
human, IP and optical networks to develop and deploy revolutionary  
Internet technologies. Activating the same partnerships that produced  
today’s Internet, our community is forging the Internet of the future.  
For more information, see http://www.internet2.edu.

About National LambdaRail (NLR)
Owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community and  
dedicated to serving the needs of researchers and educators, NLR is  
the innovation platform for some of the world’s most demanding  
research projects and a wide range of public-private partnerships.   
NLR’s coast-to-coast, high-performance network infrastructure offers  
unrestricted usage and bandwidth, a choice of cutting-edge network  
services and applications, and customized support for individual  
researchers and projects.  For more information, please visit www.nlr.net 
.

Media Contacts
Kristina Scott, NLR, 650.678.9034, 

Lauren Rotman, Internet2, 202.331.5345,