TransitRail on the Move: National Peering Program Footprint Expands With Turn-Up of Chicago Node
Cypress, CA — June 28, 2007 — The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) today announced the expansion of the TransitRail commodity peering program’s national footprint with the activation of a connection point in Chicago, IL.
With the Chicago node now active and the national footprint in place, TransitRail members have more TransitRail connection points to choose from, allowing groups to engineer both service redundancy and improvement of network performance through reduced transit times.
TransitRail’s US footprint is connected by 10Gbps waves provided by National LambdaRail (NLR). Each TransitRail node will be connected to, and accessible at, NLR points of presence throughout the United States, enabling NLR participants to leverage their membership in that organization even further through participation a national-level peering program.
In addition, the completion of the new node solidifies TransitRail’s role within the widely-respected community of Tier-1 national and international peering networks.
TransitRail’s positive reputation as a professional, engineering, and policy member within this community will foster new peering relationships among large Tier-1 networks and add to the effectiveness of the program for its participants, which can anticipate major savings with most cost-effective network peering.
A Case Study: Significant Cost Savings for Education Networks of America
For an R&E group concerned about the costs of their Internet connectivity, participating in TransitRail can spell significant savings over the higher-cost commodity Internet. Education Networks of America (ENA) is one such organization.
According to Bob Collie, ENA’s Senior Vice President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer, “TransitRail has proven to be an invaluable resource for us to meet the rapidly expanding bandwidth needs of the 4,500 K-12 schools and libraries ENA serves.” Adds Collie, “CENIC, PNWGP, and ENA are working together to leverage ENA’s successful commodity peering program (and co-location facilities at major Internet facilities in Chicago and Ashburn) with CENIC and PNWGP’s strong relationship with NLR and extensive peering along the west coast to create TransitRail’s national presence.”
Collie was also pleased to report that, “ENA’s school and library network members are already seeing the benefit of TransitRail’s national scope as over 51% of our peak commodity Internet demand is served via our peering links.”
ENA’s experience mirrors that of other TransitRail participants including Oklahoma’s ONENet, Utah Education Network, Mid Atlantic Terascale Partnership, North Carolina Research & Education Network, MERIT Network, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, California’s CENIC, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and more.
Both peers and participants are expected to grow significantly as TransitRail continues to expand its operations.
For more information about TransitRail, please contact info@transitrail.net.
About TransitRail
TransitRail is a national-level AUP-free commodity peering program jointly implemented and operated by CENIC and PNWGP in a consortia-type arrangement with TransitRail members.
The full TransitRail national footprint is comprised of five nodes in Seattle, Sunnyvale, Los Angeles, Ashburn, and Chicago, enabling research and education institutions to take advantage of low-cost network peering on a national scale.
TransitRail peers with major ISPs, and its current participant base represents a substantial segment of the research and education community within the United States. TransitRail is available to any interested R&E network groups.
Joint operations of a peering facility are not new to PNWGP and CENIC. Together, they have a combined track record of nearly 20 years of commodity peering activity, and since 2004, they have successfully and jointly operated the extended R&E Pacific Wave peering facilities (Seattle, Sunnyvale and Los Angeles). Their working relationship is already well cemented with communications and processes that can be leveraged in support of TransitRail.
CENIC and PNWGP staff are experienced in all facets of peering: peering solicitations, contracts, policies, infrastructure, monitoring, reporting, routing, troubleshooting, NOC-related functions and participant support.
CENIC and PNWGP already have over 80 established peering relationships with major regional and national entities. A majority of CENIC’s and PNWGP’s existing commodity peers will all be available for participation in TransitRail.
More information about TransitRail can be found at http://www.transitrail.net/.
More information about CENIC can be found at http://www.cenic.org/.
More information about Pacific Northwest Gigapop can be found at http://www.pnwgp.net/.
More information about National LambdaRail can be found at http://www.nlr.net/.
More information about ENA can be found at http://www.ena.com/.