The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) announced today that it, along with the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) as a sub awardee and coauthor of the proposal, has been awarded a grant of nearly $3.5M from the National Science Foundation’s International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program. The grant will allow the expansion of Pacific Wave and further enable U.S.-Asia scientific research collaborations through both increases in capacity and the development of the Pacific Wave Software Defined Exchange (SDX) over a five-year period.

The Pacific Wave SDX, which will be deployed in Seattle, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, is an integral component of the international effort to interconnect research and education networks using Software Defined Networking (SDN). The Pacific Wave SDX joins several other IRNC awardees to support research, development and experimental deployment of multi-domain SDXs and will serve as an innovation platform for next generation networking, including enhancing connectivity to campus and wide-area “Science DMZ” infrastructures like the Pacific Research Platform (PRP), which enables researchers to move data between labs and scientific instruments to collaborators’ sites, supercomputer centers, and data-repositories without performance degradation.

“California’s research universities, along with more than 200 other research institutions across the U.S., will benefit from these enhanced capacities, enabling them to access scientific instruments and exchange data with their research collaborators in the Asia-Pacific Region,” said CENIC President & CEO Louis Fox, who is also principal investigator on this IRNC grant. “We look forward to working with other IRNC awardees, the NSF, and our Asia-Pacific colleagues as we continue to develop this critical infrastructure for international scientific research.”

The Pacific Wave SDX will be deployed on a parallel infrastructure to enable research and education networks to peer with each other independent of their connection point to Pacific Wave. The use of a separate but integrated set of facilities improves the overall resilience and flexibility of the exchange while continuing to provide the production quality Pacific Wave is known for.

The Pacific Wave infrastructure now incorporates the Western Region Network (WRN) and now has Points of Presence (POPs) in Denver, Albuquerque, and El Paso. The inclusion of WRN now gives Pacific Wave a resilient 100 Gbps ring incorporating key network nodes across the western United States and provides upgraded connectivity with the Starlight exchange in Chicago.

Pacific Wave, a joint project of CENIC and PNWGP, is a state of the art international Internet exchange facility that interconnects the research and education community of the Pacific Rim. The Western Region Network is a collaboration of CENIC, PNWGP, Front Range GigaPop (FRGP), Albuquerque GigaPoP (ABQGP) and the University of Hawaii.

About CENIC • www.cenic.org

CENIC connects California to the world—advancing education and research statewide by providing the world-class network essential for innovation, collaboration, and economic growth. This nonprofit organization operates the California Research & Education Network (CalREN), a high-capacity network designed to meet the unique requirements of over 20 million users, including the vast majority of K-20 students together with educators, researchers, and other vital public-serving institutions. CENIC’s Charter Associates are part of the world’s largest education system; they include the California K-12 system, California Community Colleges, the California State University system, California’s Public Libraries, the University of California system, Stanford, Caltech, and USC. CENIC also provides connectivity to leading-edge institutions and industry research organizations around the world, serving the public as a catalyst for a vibrant California.

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop • www.pnwgp.net

Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) is a long-standing multi-state R&E networking not-for-profit organization that serves the greater Northwest. PNWGP’s roots go back to helping create the original Internet, including ARPAnet and NSFnet, and today encompasses a wide range of R&E, R&D, statewide K20, state and local government, and healthcare networks, as well as support for network research efforts and provisioning of advanced network capabilities for research endeavors such as the new NSF Ocean Observatory Infrastructure. PNWGP has a long history of close collaboration with CENIC including co-creation of Pacific Wave, TransitRail/CPS, and other pioneering efforts.