News for and about the Internet2 community

[Todd Sedmak <>]

Connecting Researchers to Resources - NOAA Partners with the Pacific 
Northwest Gigapop

Sand Point, Seattle, Washington – March 5, 2012 – The Pacific Northwest 
Gigapop (PNWGP), one of several regional data transfer centers around the 
country that efficiently moves large volumes of data between regional, 
national, and other networks, announced today their partnership with the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in supporting a major 
milestone for the ongoing growth and development of the NOAA N-Wave Research 
Network. This partnership significantly enhances the current capabilities of 
N-Wave and the ability to interconnect NOAA researchers to NOAA’s national 
research resources.

“We’ve created for the very first time, a network platform for NOAA 
researchers that underpins much of the high-performance computing, data 
storage, archival, and data retrieval that is necessary for scientific 
research,” said Jerry Janssen, who works in the NOAA Earth System Research 
Laboratory and manages NOAA’s N-Wave Research Network.

PNWGP will provide the necessary collocation and connectivity requirements to 
establish N-Wave’s fifth network backbone Core site expanding N-Wave to NOAA 
research offices in Seattle, Washington. Furthermore, the new Seattle Core 
Site will be the gateway connection point for other NOAA sites in the Pacific 
region with the first being the NOAA Pacific Regional Center in Hawaii.

Janssen stated, “This expanded and renewed partnership between NOAA and PNWGP 
is crucial to the ongoing success of NOAA’s science and environmental 
stewardship mission on the West Coast of the US, and in the greater Pacific 
region.”

The N-Wave network is built on a 10-Gigabit per second dedicated wave 
backbone via the national research and education network Internet2.  The 
network waves will be used to provide dedicated, high-speed, and 
high-capacity connection between climate and weather researchers and NOAA’s 
key-high performance computing sites across the nation.

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)
The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) 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, visit http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/

About NOAA
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s 
environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and 
conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources. For more information, 
visit http://www.noaa.gov/

Contacts:
PNWGP
Amy Philipson
(206)310-0097



Todd Sedmak
Internet2
PR and Media Relations Manager
202-331-5373 (w), 804-497-0282 (c) or 


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