SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA - October 1, 2001 - The Pacific Northwest Gigapop has expanded and renamed its regional peering service, formerly called Seattle-Network-to-Network Access Point, or SNNAP. The expanded peering services will now be offered under the name Pacific Wave. Pacific Wave will continue to include peering services for entities within the Pacific Northwest, but has expanded its offering to include research and education networks from throughout the Pacific Rim and beyond.

"The Pacific Northwest Gigapop was established in part to support state of the art networking infrastructure that would unite researchers and educators in the Internet2 effort. The Pacific Wave service extends this mission to entities beyond the United States by providing a convenient, cost-effective peering service," said Ron Johnson, Vice President and Vice Provost of the University of Washington. (The University of Washington is the founder of the Pacific Northwest Gigapop.)

"When looking at the Pacific Wave service, AARNet (Australian Academic & Research Network) recognized a desirable congruence of an easily accessible carrier-class facility near the western U.S. coast, high bandwidth peering access to the Internet2 Abilene network, as well as access to several U.S. Federal networks and the Canadian research and education network, CANet*3. In addition, the peering infrastructure will support our multicast needs and enable us to more efficiently stream media between Australia and our peering partners," said George McLaughlin Executive Director of AARNET.

"We are pleased that Pacific Wave is offering an effective option for research and education networks around the Pacific Rim to connect to members of the Internet2 community in the United States and beyond," said Heather Boyles, director of international relations for Internet2. "Pacific Wave is yet another example of how Internet2 member institutions are making important contributions to the rest of the Internet2 membership by facilitating high performance international connectivity with research and education institutions around the world."

Pacific Wave looks forward to the addition of two more Pacific Rim research and education networks in the next few weeks.

In addition to those already mentioned, other peering partners of Pacific Wave include Energy Sciences Network (ESNet), Defense and Research Engineering Network (DREN), CANet*3, Microsoft Corporation, and AT&T; @Home.

About Pacific Wave
Pacific Wave is a peering service of the Pacific Northwest Gigapop. Located in an internationally-recognized carrier facility in downtown Seattle, Washington, USA, Pacific Wave supports peering among international and national networks as well as among organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Participants connect to the Pacific Wave peering switches at either dual gigabit ethernet or dual fast ethernet. At this time, the redundant Pacific Wave switches have a switching capacity of 128Gbps. While each Pacific Wave participant will peer with the Pacific Northwest Gigapop and its affiliated networks, all other bilateral peerings through Pacific Wave are self-selected and implemented by the peering participants directly.

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)
Pacific Northwest Gigapop is the Northwest's Next Generation Internet, Internet2/Abilene applications cooperative, testbed, and point of presence. PNWGP connects together high-performance international and federal research networks with universities, research organizations, and leading-edge R&D; and new-media enterprises throughout Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Canada, and Australia.

About the University of Washington
The University of Washington is one of the world's top research universities. Perennially among the top three American institutions in peer-reviewed research activities and related competitive contracts and grants, and with numerous top-ranked programs, the UW is a university which truly embodies the ideals of "Learning @ the Leading Edge". (For more information see www.washington.edu.)

About AARNet
AARNet Pty Ltd is a not-for-profit company that operates the AARNet2 network, providing Internet services to 37 Australian universities, CSIRO Australia and their research and education partners. AARNet provides an incubator for development of advanced network infrastructure and applications. It has a national and international focus with access to the global research and education networks through the Pacific Northwest Gigapop. AARNet is also a member of the GrangeNet consortium that will build a multi-Gigabit backbone in Australia and develop advanced network and grid services to support advanced and innovative applications.

About Internet2
Led by over 180 US universities, working with industry and government, Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships of academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy.

Contact info:

Pacific Northwest Gigapop and Pacific Wave
Jan Eveleth, Manager
4545 15th Ave. NE
Seattle, WA 98105
Tel: 206-934-5588
Email: info@pnw-gigapop.net
Web: www.pnw-gigapop.net

AARNet
George McLaughlin, Executive Director
AARNet Pty Ltd (ACN 084 540 518)
GPO Box 1142, Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
Tel: 61-2-6276-6900
Email: inquiries@aarnet.edu.au
Web: www.aarnet.edu.au

Internet2
Greg Wood,
Tel: 202-331-5360
Email: ghwood@internet2.edu
Web: www.internet2.edu