Wellington, New Zealand- March 28, 2007 – New Zealand’s super high speed research and education network, KAREN, attracted high level attention in Seattle last week when Prime Minister Helen Clark visited the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab UW) and linked by video conference to the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury.

At the University of Washington Lab, Ms Clark and the president of the University of Washington, Mark Emmert, were able to talk with HIT Lab NZ director Dr Mark Billinghurst and Lab international director Professor Tom Furness who were sitting in the HIT Lab NZ in Christchurch. The near broadcast quality high definition link is possible using video conferencing equipment supplied by LifeSize and run over KAREN.

“Communication of this type is critical for New Zealand to stand on the international stage and contribute to important international research collaborations,” says Mark Billinghurst director of the HIT Lab NZ. The HIT Lab NZ has several ongoing research collaborations with the Seattle-based lab where KAREN will now enable the delivery of this work.

Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network’s (KAREN) launch last year included a live link between the University of Auckland and the HIT Lab NZ demonstrating the quality of real time collaboration. KAREN can carry huge amounts of data at 10 gigabits a second, 200,000 times faster than dial-up internet and 10,000 times faster than a household broadband connection. It is an important tool for collaborative research, communication and sharing large data sets.

To view the full video footage of the linkup pleaseselectone of the following links:

• Medium Quality - 256kbps (15MB)
• Good Quality - 384kbps (23MB)

Contact:
Deb Parker
Communications Consultant
HIT Lab NZ
03 3642349
021 477 359
deb.parker@hitlabnz.org

About KAREN – www.karen.net.nz
KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network) facilitates high capacity, ultra high-speed connectivity between New Zealand’s tertiary institutions, research organisations, libraries, schools and museums, and the rest of the world.
Contact:
Julie Watson
Communities Manager
REANNZ
04 913 1095
021 674 954
julie.watson@reannz.co.nz

Visit the HIT Lab NZ website to view the media release and a full video of the link up.

KIWI ADVANCED RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORK REANNZ

Cypress, CA - March 26, 2007 - The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) today announced the expansion of the TransitRail national commodity peering program with the activation of a connection point in Ashburn, VA. The first TransitRail node to be activated east of the Mississippi, the Ashburn node has been put into service ahead of schedule and will soon be joined by a fifth node in Chicago, IL.

Together with the current nodes in Seattle, Sunnyvale, and Los Angeles, these two new connection points will give the TransitRail peering program a national footprint and enable research and education institutions to take advantage of low-cost network peering on a national scale. Already, the addition of the Ashburn node has enhanced the significant benefits available through participation in TransitRail.

The University of Utah and the Utah System of Higher Education is one of many particiants that has seen significant benefits from TransitRail. "We are pleased that TransitRail now carries up to 50 percent of the commodity Internet traffic for Utah education. It is cost-effective and provides excellent performance. A high-demand connection that required 25 hops can now be made in just six. This collaboration with the Utah Education Network, Front Range GigaPop and other higher education partners provides economy and a high level of service to our stakeholders," said Steve Hess, CIO for the University of Utah and the Utah System of Higher Education.

To an institution concerned about the costs of their Internet connectivity, participating in TransitRail can spell significant savings over the higher-cost commodity Internet. Oklahoma's OneNet, a high-performance network dedicated to education and government, has been a participant in the TransitRail program since December 2006 and has seen cost savings and usage far beyond what they anticipated. They and other networks participate in TransitRail via their National LambdaRail (NLR) connection, leveraging NLR's cutting-edge national infrastructure.

TransitRail's U.S. 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.

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.

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: www.transitrail.net
About OneNet: www.onenet.net
About NLR,Inc.: www.nlr.net
About CENIC:  www.cenic.org
About Pacific Northwest Gigapop: www.pnw-gigapop.net

Can You Hear Us Now? A White Paper Connecting Minority-Serving Institutions in the West to US Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (PDF)

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON and CYPRESS, CALIFORNIA, USA- December 5, 2006 - What does a major regional research & education network do when it must continue to affordably meet the burgeoning demand for commodity Internet bandwidth?  In the case of OneNet--Oklahoma's telecommunications and information network for education and government--the answer was to connect to TransitRail, a reliable, extensive commodity peering initiative designed to support the research and education networking community. 

Rather than continuing to buy additional, expensive commodity circuits, OneNet easily connected to TransitRail through its National LambdaRail’s (NLR) point of presence in Tulsa, thereby leveraging an existing infrastructure with extraordinary capacity and capabilities.  In less than a week, roughly 60% of the traffic on that segment transferred immediately to TransitRail thereby relieving potential contention on their commodity circuits.

James Deaton, OneNet's Chief Technology Officer stated “We expected to see maybe 100-200Mbps of traffic migrate to TransitRail. Instead, we were especially pleased to see roughly 500Mbps of traffic take the TransitRail path. Frankly, without this affordable TransitRail option, our end-users would have continued to utilize greater amounts of high cost backup commodity Internet connections while new services were negotiated with a commercial vendor. As it is, TransitRail put us in far better shape than we hoped."

"TransitRail was a logical solution to enable us to stay one step ahead of increasing demand," said Kurt Snodgrass, Vice Chancellor for IT and Telecommunications for the Oklahoma State Regents.  "Based on the favorable TransitRail experience of R&E groups such as CENIC, Pacfic Northwest Gigapop, Front Range Gigapop, and Pittsburg Supercomputing Center, we were confident that we would see a substantial amount of our commodity traffic move to TransitRail. The actual results, however, far exceeded our expectations."

TransitRail is an AUP-free national commodity peering program for research and education networks. TransitRail is operated by CENIC and Pacific Northwest Gigapop. Current nodes are located in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Sunnyvale. Additional nodes in Chicago, Illinois and Ashburn, Virginia are under construction with planned activation during the first part of 2007.

TransitRail's broad U.S. footprint to Chicago and Ashburn will be 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.

TransitRail peers with major Tier1 ISPs and Internet content providers.

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.

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: www.transitrail.net
About OneNet: www.onenet.net
About NLR,Inc.: www.nlr.net
About CENIC:  www.cenic.org
About Pacific Northwest Gigapop: www.pnw-gigapop.net

Main Map of the Network Extension

Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) was a key sponsor of the Lariat Summit Workshop titled "Shaping the Future of the West: Technology, Geography, and Technology Connecting Minority-Serving Institutions to US Advanced Cyberinfrastructure", which took place August 14 - 15, 2006 at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT. The diverse participants outlined an action plan to

• Engage and educate academic leaders in minority-serving and under-participating institutions about the critical importance of cyberinfrastructure for the future of education and research among all higher education institutions, not just research universities.

• Insure that minority-serving and under-participating institutions in the West will be among the "connected" institutions in the United States.

• Assist these institutions to develop and participate in local, regional and national activities that will infuse the culture and practice of e-science and cyberinfrastructure down to the faculty and student level in departments, colleges and institutes throughout the West.

The Summit participants will develop a white paper outlining this action plan, which will be shared with state and federal legislators, federal funding agencies, and private foundations. Follow these links to view the

• Agenda for the Summit
• Brochure announcement of the Summit, which includes an overview of the event and a full list of sponsors and participants
• Maps that depict the extension of the network to Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Hispanic-Serving, and Tribal Colleges and Universities within Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

About Lariat - Lariat is a consortium creating a community of biomedical researchers and educators by connecting them to next-generation national and international cyber-infrastructure, e-science opportunities and resources. Please follow the link to view more information.

SINGAPORE — As of June 30, 2006, TransLight/Pacific Wave and TransLight/Starlight are now directly connected through a 10Gigabit Ethernet lightpath connection. The connection, donated by Cisco Systems in support of the TransLight project, is deployed by National LambdaRail. TransLight/StarLight and TransLight/Pacific Wave are projects funded by the National Science Foundation under the International Research Network Connections (IRNC) Program of the Office of CyberInfrastructure.

This new network fabric between the two TransLight entities creates a way for participating networks to easily configure direct connections whenever they are needed. In a demonstration of this new capability, engineers at SURFnet in Amsterdam and T-LEX (operated by WIDE) in Tokyo easily established a direct path between their two routed networks using the new Pacific Wave to StarLight network fabric and without using any routed third party network facilities.

“T-LEX and WIDE are pleased to showcase the ease with which we are now able to interconnect directly with our European partners at SURFnet using this new facility. We believe that this new capability will help to productively reshape research and collaborative efforts by removing some of the network complexity,” said Professor Jun Murai, Vice President, Keio University, Director, WIDE Project, and IEEAF Board Vice Chair.

“This new connection between SURFnet and our T-LEX/WIDE partners in Japan, made possible by the TransLight interconnect, illustrates the possibilities now available to research and education networks connected at these facilities. By supporting direct, easy-to-configure lightpath connections, research and education collaborations that require substantial bandwidth can now be set-up with minimal engineering intervention,” said Kees Neggers, Managing Director, SURFnet Organization.

The extensible switch fabric model was first put into production when Pacific Wave’s node in Seattle and Pacific Wave’s node in Los Angeles implemented a 10GE circuit the length of the U.S. West Coast. This extension allowed R&E networks connected at those two locations to exchange their traffic through direct mutual bilateral agreement, as if they were connected to the same physical device. This extended fabric now includes the TransLight/StarLight Chicago facility.

“When the Pacific Wave peering fabric was successfully deployed two years ago, we saw immense possibilities. By effectively removing geography and large distances between routed network nodes and collapsing them into a single transparent exchange node, we felt that we could take this well beyond the Pacific coast of the U.S., and reach a much broader—even global—research community. The ease with which the SURFnet and T-LEX connection was established confirms this,” said John Silvester, Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California, Chair of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), and principal
investigator of the TransLight/Pacific Wave NSF-IRNC award to the University of Southern California. “We see this as another significant step toward direct lightpath or GLIF (Global Lambda Integrated Facility)-like network services,” he added.

“Researchers have never before been able to build their own multi-national networks if it involved traversing the U.S. due to lack of available transport. Cisco’s support and NLR’s capabilities have helped us resolve this Europe-to-Asia transport problem by unifying the TransLight IRNC projects, extending Pacific Wave to StarLight, and creating a 3,000-mile-long GigaPoP (Los Angeles to Seattle to Chicago). This extension nicely complements the services already provided by CANARIE’s CA*net 4 across Canada, adding resiliency and stability to the North American segment of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF),” said Tom DeFanti, principal investigator of the TransLight/StarLight NSF-IRNC award to the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Pacific Wave has nodes in Seattle, Sunnyvale, and Los Angeles and serves R&E networks throughout the Pacific Rim, including North America, South America, Australasia, Asia and the Middle East. The StarLight R&E exchange facility, an early leader and innovator in global networking, continues its networking leadership today with participating R&E organizations from Europe, North America and Asia.

“The next generation of researchers using our global R&E networks — whether it’s the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, the NEPTUNE undersea laboratory of the Pacific Northwest coast of U.S. and Canada, CineGrid (the Digital Cinema Initiative), or the eVLBI spread across the globe — will be better positioned to transparently take advantage of existing large transoceanic and transcontinental circuits. Initiatives such as TransLight will reduce the number of network engineers and third parties needed to accomplish their data exchanges,” said Professor Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Calit2], a partnership of the University of California at San Diego and UC Irvine, and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded OptIPuter.

 “Milestones such as these are achieved only through the cooperation and dedication of many like-minded organizations. In addition to the groups already mentioned, this noteworthy achievement was made possible with contributions from the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, WIDE, CENIC, and the IEEAF. The research community is enriched by these efforts,” said Prof. Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington.

About T-LEX/WIDE
WIDE, a research consortium working on practical research and development of Internet-related technologies, was launched in 1988. The Project has made a significant contribution to development of the Internet by collaborating with many other bodies – including 133 companies and 11 universities to carry out research in a wide range of fields, and by operating M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, one of the DNS root servers, since 1997. WIDE Project also operates T-LEX (www.T-LEX.net/) as an effort of stewardship for the IEEAF Pacific link in Tokyo. Contact: (press@wide.ad.jp)

About SURFnet
SURFnet operates and innovates the National Research & Education Network
(NREN) in The Netherlands, connecting approximately 180 institutions with a
state-of-the-art hybrid network. SURFnet is one of the leading NREN
operators in the world. SURFnet is a founder and active participant in the
Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). SURFnet's NetherLight facility, a
GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange, or GOLE, located in Amsterdam, has been in
operation since 2002 and now interconnects over 100 Gbps of international
lightpaths. SURFnet contributes several 10Gbps lambdas to GLIF's emerging
global LambdaGrid, including one 10Gbps lambda to MAN LAN in New York and
one 10Gbps lambda to StarLight in Chicago. SURFnet is the European partner
of the NSF IRNC TransLight and CANARIE links to Europe, and serves as a
steward for the transatlantic IEEAF link. More information can be found at:
www.surfnet.nl/info/en/

About Pacific Wave and TransLight/Pacific Wave
Pacific Wave is a joint project between the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), and is operated in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. Pacific Wave enhances research and education network capabilities by increasing network efficiency, reducing latency, increasing throughput, and reducing costs. The USA National Science Foundation provides support for PacificWave and research connectivity from the US West Coast to Australia through Hawaii in the “Translight/PacifcWave” award to the University of Southern California. Visit http://www.pacificwave.net and http://www.pacificwave.net/participants/irnc for more information.

About TransLight/StarLight
The USA National Science foundation’s International Research network connections (IRNC) “TransLight/StarLight” award to University of Illinois at Chicago provides two connections between the USA and Europe for production science: a routed connection that connects the pan-European GEANT2 to the USA Abilene and ESnet networks, and a switched connection that connects layer2 networks at StarLight in Chicago to similar networks at NetherLight in Amsterdam. TransLight/StarLight is part of the LambdaGrid fabric being created by participants of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF).

About GLIF
The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) is an international cooperative initiative to establish and coordinate a global-scale optical network to support scientific research. The GLIF network is based around a number of lambdas (dedicated high-capacity circuits based on optical wavelengths), contributed by the GLIF participants who own or lease them, and interconnected through a series of exchange points. These exchange points, known as GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges or GOLEs, are usually also operated by GLIF participants, and are comprised of equipment that is capable of terminating transparent lambdas and performing light path switching. This way, different lambdas can be connected together, and end-to-end lightpaths established over them. More information is available on the GLIF website at http://www.glif.is/

National LambdaRail
National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications.  NLR puts the control, the power and the promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation’s scientists and researchers.  Visit http://www.nlr.net for more information.

About IEEAF
The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to obtain donations of telecommunications capacity and equipment and make them available for use by the global research and education community. The IEEAF TransPacific Link provided by VSNL International connects Seattle and Tokyo at 10 Gbps transoceanic link; the IEEAF TransAtlantic Link, also provided by VSNL International, connects New York City and Groningen, The Netherlands. IEEAF donations currently span 17 time zones. http://www.ieeaf.org/

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – April 26, 2006 - Internet2 today announced that an international team set a new Internet2 Land Speed Records (I2-LSR) in the IPv4 and IPv6 single and multi-stream categories. As an open and ongoing competition for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks, Internet2 LSR awards represent the fastest rate at which data is transferred multiplied by the distance traveled.

For the IPv4 record, a team from the University of Tokyo, the WIDE Project, Chelsio Communications, JGN2 network, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, NTT Communications,
APAN, Fujitsu Computer Technologies, IEEAF, CANARIE, StarLight, SURFnet, SARA, and the University of Amsterdam collaborated to create a network path over 30,000 kilometers in distance crossing eight international networks and exchange points. In doing so, the team successfully transferred data at a rate of 8.80 Gbps which is equal to 264,147 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s).

Dr. Kei Hiraki, professor at the University of Tokyo and LSR team leader said, "While previous IPv4 record setting attempts were limited by the PC's internal bus, this latest record setting attempt demonstrates that the bottleneck has moved out of the PC and back into the network infrastructure. In doing so, this record may be the last I2-LSR IPv4 record that uses 10Gbps networks because any other attempt would require at least a 10% increase over the previous record which would exceed the maximum capacity of the networks."

For the IPv6 record, the team created a path over 30,000 kilometers in distance crossing five international networks. The team transferred data at a rate of 6.96 Gbps. Achieving a mark of 208,800 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s).

Hiraki added, "As we continue to learn more about IPv6, we have been able to leverage new networking technology called 'receiving side pacing' to increase the stability of network. These new techniques enabled us to increase the record by 10% and will hold enormous promise to help ensure increased performance for IPv6 networks for the future."

The record setting team was presented with official awards for the Land Speed Records at the annual Internet2 Spring Member Meeting held this week in Arlington, VA.

For more information about these record-setting attempts, see:
IPv4 - http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-20060219/
IPv6 - http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-20051114/

Details of past winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines, and additional details are available at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/

About Internet2(R)
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities working with industry and government, Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy. For more information, visit: www.internet2.edu.

Media Contact:
Lauren Rotman
Internet2
lauren@internet2.edu
 

CYPRESS, Calif. - April 20, 2006 - National LambdaRail (NLR), a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, today announced that it has inaugurated a project to provision an intelligently managed nationwide peering and transit program. The initial participants include NLR members: the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP), Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership (MATP), Pacific Northwest Gigapop
(PNWGP) and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

Called National TransitRail, the project aims to use commodity and peering traffic to improve network performance and reduce the overall cost of Internet services to NLR members. In keeping with NLR's distributive management philosophy, Pacific Wave is managing this project on behalf of NLR. Pacific Wave will utilize expertise developed in its state-of-the-art West Coast distributed peering exchange facility that also provides US-based exchange services for Pacific Rim research and education networks.

Utilizing NLR's nationwide network fiber and optronics infrastructure at layer 2 and layer 3, the initial NLR participants are working to efficiently direct traffic as quickly as possible to the target network/organization, reducing the number of 'hops' required for the data to get to its destination. The team is also investigating the balance
between peering sessions and transit routes at geographically dispersed locations.

NLR's national footprint and large traffic flows will help drive many larger-scale peering relationships over time," said Tom West, NLR President. "We believe that it is time for the research and education community to further exploit the reliability and redundancy that a national peering and transit infrastructure affords. This is the first
step in that direction."

"CENIC and PNWGP have been engaged in providing peering services to their respective organizations through our Pacific Wave partnership," noted Jim Dolgonas, President and Chief Operating Officer of CENIC. NLR's National TransitRail makes it possible to expand this success on a national scale."

"This project offers our FRGP NLR members a new way to increase network
performance while, at the same time, lowering costs over time," said Marla Meehl, Manager of the FRGP and networking at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). "Services like National TransitRail make our investment in NLR further benefit the FRGP members and their thousands of users in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming."

The first phase of the project is expected to run for 9 months. Then, NLR plans to broaden participation to include all interested NLR members.

About National LambdaRail
National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, the power and the promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation's scientists and researchers. Visit http://www.nlr.net for more
information.

About Pacific Wave
Pacific Wave is a joint project between the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), and is operated in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. Pacific Wave enhances research and education network capabilities by increasing network efficiency, reducing latency, increasing throughput, and reducing costs. Visit http://www.pacificwave.net for more information.


Contact
Concordia Chen
Concordia@aldea.com
760-510-8406 ext. 5

Moscow, Idaho - April 3, 2006 – The University of Idaho’s reputation for leadership in information technology just got a huge boost. Today, the university announced that, effective immediately, it has a direct on-ramp to the world's information highway with a new high-speed, fiber-optic, 2.4 gigabits-per-second network connection. The university previously had only 45 megabits-per-second of bandwidth.

“We are tremendously excited to have this powerful new capability. It opens a number of doors for the entire university community, and beyond,” said University of Idaho President Timothy P. White. “The University of Idaho now has an information technology system that has more bandwidth than many entire state university systems.”

The new bandwidth and network connection is provided by the Pacific Northwest Gigapop. PNWGP is a not-for-profit organization that provides robust, highest-speed access to current national and international state-of-the-art Internet, next-generation Internet services and technology and exclusive research and development testbeds. The partnership will enable University of Idaho faculty to share instantly their own research with others around the globe, collaborate interactively on projects or use supercomputers remotely for specialized research.

“The University of Idaho information technology system is a resource that could be shared with the state,” said White. “Our system has the capacity to serve other Idaho higher education institutions, state agencies and K-12 school districts. It’s critical that the state refine its Statewide Initiative to address the investment necessary to utilize fully this resource.”

The power of this expanded Internet link, and the campus network that backs it up, is one of the largest and best in the Northwest. Great care was taken when designing the network to ensure it can be scalable upwards to accommodate even more advanced computing needs as they develop in the future, said Harvey Hughett, executive director of UI’s information technology services.

“This new link will facilitate the implementation of reliable high-definition video, voice communications, remote instrument control, grid research, joint research initiatives with the world’s best researchers and labs and myriad other applications that are becoming increasingly an important part of the global research network,” he said.

One of six grant beneficiaries to receive network upgrades, UI’s new network connection was made possible by a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health, awarded to Professor Gwen Jacobs of Montana State University and Professor Ron Johnson of the University of Washington. The grant supports enhanced network access for biomedical researchers throughout the western U.S.; collectively these network connections are referred to as the Lariat Network. UI’s information technology services provided an additional $700,000 to make improvements to its Internet infrastructure to support the large bandwidth, including a new core and border router.

As a beneficiary of the NIH grant, UI can now expand its biomedical research conducted by students and faculty. With the new bandwidth, program faculty and students can work with other researchers and instructors around the world in real time, watching medical procedures with impeccable high-definition capabilities and capturing minute details.

"This connection is essential to Idaho's scientists so that they can conduct truly collaborative research projects with colleagues across the country and around the world, and can share access to the sophisticated instrumentation and high-bandwidth science applications vital to conducting medical research in this era," said Sidney McNairy, director of research infrastructure at NCRR.

Additional Insights from Collaborating Partners
"The Lariat Network will bring new research, clinical, education, and economic development opportunities to the region. The skillful leadership of Professors Jacobs (MSU) and Johnson (UW) in making this opportunity available to UI is complemented by the implementation savvy of UI Professor Mike Laskowski and UI CIO Harvey Hughett. This network will serve UI's research community now and in the future."
Louis Fox
Vice Provost and Professor, University of Washington

“In order to remain competitive in cutting-edge research, University of Idaho researchers need to establish and maintain collaborations worldwide. This includes using major supercomputer facilities that exist only at the largest universities. The new wideband connection will enable the university to attract and retain the best students and researchers. Moreover, it will enable UI faculty and students to remain competitive in obtaining research grants.”
Mike Laskowski
Director of NIH Idaho INBRE Program
Professor of Biological Science, University of Idaho

"The Lariat Networking Project, funded through the National Center for Research Resources (National Institutes of Health) is an unprecedented opportunity to improve the information technology infrastructure for a group of institutions in the rural west who would otherwise remain isolated from national cyberinfrastructure efforts. I am very pleased to see another piece of the Lariat Network put in place today. This successful completion of this project would not have been possible without the collaborative efforts of Dr. Mike Laskowski and his colleagues at the University of Idaho and Dr. Ron Johnson, University of Washington, and the network engineers at the Pacific Northwest Gigapop. I am very impressed with the plans in Idaho to leverage this initial investment into a statewide cyberinfrastructure initiative. These combined efforts will enable Idaho to use this network to enhance research, education and economic development. I congratulate all those individuals whose hard work has made this possible."
Gwen Jacobs
Principal Investigator, Lariat Network
Chair and Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Montana State University

"The University of Idaho has long been a valuable partner of the UW, with a long and rich history of collaboration through such programs as the WWAMI medical education program and, more recently, the WWAMI Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research. The Lariat Network, led by Dr. Gwen Jacobs will enable researchers at UI – via a broadband connection to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in Seattle and hence to all the research institutions of not just the region, but the world – to become a full partner in the global 'grid' of researchers. This is a critical first step towards establishing a regional research network of connectivity in Idaho among significant research partners, including the Idaho National Labs and other institutions.”
Ron Johnson
Co-Principal Investigator, Lariat Network
Vice President, Computing and Communications, University of Washington

About the University of Idaho
Founded in 1889, the University of Idaho is the state’s flagship higher-education institution and its principal graduate education and research university. The Carnegie Foundation ranks the University of Idaho a “research university with high research activity,” the only institution in the state to achieve this elite status. UI’s distinctive scholarship expands intellectual boundaries to bring insight and innovation to the state, the nation and the world, attracting more than 12,000 students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries. UI’s diverse student population includes first-generation college students, ethnically diverse scholars and high academic performers – including 34 National Merit Scholars and a freshman class with an average high school grade point average of 3.42 in 2005-06. The University of Idaho combines the strengths of a large university, offering 106 degree options in nine colleges, with the intimacy of small learning communities. By attracting more than $100 million in research grants and contracts each year, the University of Idaho is ensuring its cutting-edge academic programs and research benefit the world for years to come. For more information, visit www.uidaho.edu.

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop
The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNW Gigapop) is a not-for-profit organization that serves leading edge organizations and research and education networks throughout the Pacific Rim. It provides robust, highest-speed access to current state of the art Internet; next generation Internet services and technology; and the exclusive research and development testbeds where tomorrow’s Internet technologies are being developed. The PNW Gigapop is built to be the highest caliber research and education networking services hub in the world. For more information, visit www.pnw-gigapop.net.

About The Lariat Project
The Lariat Project is the first phase of IDeANet, funded by the National Center for Research Resources at NIH. IDeANet will eventually enhance internet connectivity for all participating states. Lariat will develop and implement a plan to provide a high-speed telecommunications network for biomedical researchers that will enable scientists and educators in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming to take advantage of the wealth of remote research resources and expertise available to scientists in other areas of the country. For more information, visit

Contact: Joni Kirk, UI Communications, (208) 885-7725, joni@uidaho.edu

Connection Enables K20 Students Across the State to Participate in Leading-Edge Internet-Based Educational Opportunities

ANN ARBOR, Mich. and FAIRBANKS, Alaska – March 23, 2006 – Children across the state of Alaska will soon have access to one of the fastest networks in the world.

Representatives from Internet2 and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) today announced that Alaska’s statewide education network, AK20, will become the 35th state education network to connect directly to Internet2’s nationwide high performance network. Leveraging this connection, AK20 will participate in the Internet2 K20 Initiative which will give Alaska’s students access to cutting-edge, Internet-based educational opportunities not available today on the commercial Internet.

The announcement was made during a special ceremony held at UAF’s Internet2 Day. Participants included, Douglas Van Houweling, Internet2’s president and CEO; Louis Fox, Internet2’s director of the K20 Initiative; Steve Smith, UAF’s CIO; and Scott Christian, executive director of the Alaska Distance Education Consortium.

“Internet2 has worked diligently in partnership with University of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop to bring these leading-edge Internet capabilities to the Alaskan K20 community,” said Dr. Louis Fox, director, Internet2 K20 Initiative and vice provost, University of Washington. “Through this program, not only will thousands of Alaskan students and teachers be able to take part in the latest networking technology to collaborate and learn in new ways but in turn, they will help enrich their peers in the broader education community by sharing the rich traditions, diverse cultures and institutions that make up this unique region."

Through this connection, made possible through the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, teachers and students across Alaska will be able to participate in programs like Megaconference Jr., a project that uses advanced videoconferencing technology to bring together thousands of students in elementary and secondary schools from around the world for an all-day learning conference. Students can also receive live undersea exploration demonstrations from remote locations with famed oceanographer Bob Ballard, take master music classes from world-renowned instructors or use remote-controlled instruments to dissect a biology specimen from 1,000 miles away.

“UAF has a long tradition of providing our campus with the most advanced resources available and has served as the state’s hub for cutting-edge technology development,” said Steve Smith, UAF’s chief information officer. “By sponsoring the state’s K20 Initiative, we are extending next-generation capabilities to a community which would not otherwise have access to these valuable educational resources.”

AK20 connects hundreds of Alaska schools, libraries, community colleges and museums. Schools within urban areas such as Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau will connect via a fiber-optic network, while outlying rural areas will use satellite and digital microwave connections. While not all schools have sufficient bandwidth to take full advantage of Internet2’s network capabilities, AK20 is working with Alaska’s carriers to provide the highest bandwidth possible to these schools.

About Internet2
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and government, Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy. For more information about Internet2, visit: http://www.internet2.edu/.

About the Internet2 Sponsored Educational Group Participant (SEGP) Program
The SEGP program is intended to allow expanded access to the Internet2 Abilene network for state and regional education networks, through sponsorship by Internet2 university members. State and regional networks may include nonprofit and for-profit K20 educational institutions, museums, libraries, art galleries, or hospitals that require routine collaboration on instructional, clinical and/or research projects, services and content with Internet2 members or with other sponsored participants. The program began in early 2001 and has since connected 35 state K20 networks.

About the University of Alaska Fairbanks
UAF is a Land, Sea and Space Grant institution with an enrollment of more than 9,000 students. Located 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle, UAF is the only doctoral degree granting institution in the state. Since it was founded in 1917, UAF has been internationally recognized for research relating to the Arctic and sub-arctic, in areas such as biology, geophysics, engineering, natural resources and global climate change. http://www.uaf.edu/

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop
The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNW Gigapop) is a not-for-profit serving leading edge organizations and Research and Education networks throughout the Pacific Rim. PNW Gigapop provides robust, highest-speed access to current state of the art Internet; Next Generation Internet services and technology; and the exclusive R&D testbeds where tomorrow’s Internet technologies are being developed. The PNW Gigapop is built to be the highest caliber Research and Education networking services hub in the world. http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/

CONTACT: 
Lauren Rotman
Internet2
lauren@internet2.edu
202.331.5345

Carla Browning
UAF
carla.browning@uaf.edu
(907) 474-7778

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - March 8, 2006 - Internet2 today announced that an
international team set a new Internet2 Land Speed Records (I2-LSR) in both the IPv6 and IPv4 single and multi-stream categories. This record marks the
fourth time a University of Tokyo-lead team has achieved an Internet2 Land
Speed record. As an open and ongoing competition for the highest-bandwidth,
end-to-end networks, Internet2 LSR awards represent the fastest rate at which data is transferred multiplied by the distance traveled.

For the IPv4 record, a team from the University of Tokyo, WIDE Project, Microsoft Corp., Pacific Northwest Gigapop, JGN2 and other institutions collaborated to create a network path over 30,000 kilometers in distance
crossing eight international networks. In doing so, the team successfully
transferred data at a rate of 7.99 Gbps which is equal to 239,820 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s).

For the IPv6 record, a team from the University of Tokyo, WIDE Project, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, JGN2, Chelsio Communications and other
institutions created a path over 30,000 kilometers in distance crossing five
international networks. The team transferred data at a rate of 6.18 Gbps.
Achieving a mark of 185,400 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s) - 10.75% more than the previous record.

Dr. Kei Hiraki, professor at the University of Tokyo and LSR team leader said, "Through these trials, we are now demonstrating that the performance of IPv6 is almost on par with IPv4. For researchers and scientists around the world, this is a positive indication that IPv6 is now ready to be used in prime time for their high-performance applications."

For more information about this record-setting attempt, see:
For the IPv4 record: http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-20051110/
For the IPv6 record: http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-20051112/

Details of past winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines, and
additional details are available at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/

About Internet2(R)
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities working with industry and government,
Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network applications and
technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of
tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia,
industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy.
For more information, visit: www.internet2.edu.

Media Contact:
Lauren Rotman
Internet2
lauren@internet2.edu

November 17, 2005--Seattle, Washington USA. For the first time ever in a real-world environment, Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) and its strategic partners have brought together more than one-half terabit per second (i.e., 500 gigabits per second) of bandwidth in deploying SCinet, the very high performance network built to support Supercomputing 2005 (SC¦05) in Seattle. The network is provisioned through multiple dark fiber strands brought by the University of Washington from the convention center to major telecommunications facilities in the city.

DWDM gear from Ciena, Cisco and Nortel were used to provision more than 50 10Gbps circuits and a native 40Gbps circuit. These circuits were then interconnected to numerous high-bandwidth national backbones, including National LambdaRail, CANARIE, Internet2s Abilene Network and UltraScience Net. International networks worked with these various North American facilities to reach the Seattle venue. In particular, Pacific Rim networks in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia were able to utilize the Pacific Wave distributed peering exchange facility, a joint project between PNWGP and CENIC.

As a direct result of many strategic investments by the University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, Seattle is one of the few places in the world where SC¦05 could benefit from an abundance of first-rate networking resources including metropolitan fiber, carrier-grade telecommunications facilities, a world-class engineering team, and an ever growing concentration of national and international networks, said Steve Corbato, director of network initiatives for Internet2.

This staggering amount of bandwidth, he continued, was deployed seamlessly and provides a truly impressive demonstration of the rapidly evolving suite of network capabilities in support of leading-edge computational science.

Among the many events relying on this bandwidth were massive storage- and data-retrieval tools, the Internet2 Land Speed Record attempts (IPv4 and IPv6), data grids, multipoint real-time, high-definition video from points around the world, super high-definition video, and massive 3D imaging.

Professor Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Calit2], a partnership of the University of California at San Diego and UC Irvine, and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded OptIPuter project offered this observation: The Terabit Era has arrived! This unprecedented achievement of PNWGP and SC¦05 demonstrates that the United States needs to broaden its strategic technology leadership agenda from a focus on faster individual supercomputers to supernetwork-connected resources on a global scale.

Contact:
Jan Eveleth
Managing Director, Pacific Northwest Gigapop
(206) 221 2300
eveleth@pnw-gigapop.net

Time delay control made possible collaboration with musicians on the other side of the globe

September 21, 2005
WIDE Project
Representative: Jun Murai

WIDE Project, on September 21 succeeded in an experiment to perform a remote jazz jam session between Japan and Europe linking an event site at EXPO 2005 Aichi and SARA in Amsterdam, the Netherlands using uncompressed HDTV video imagery. The jazz session incorporated one of the research themes of the next generation Internet, Light Path, and was conducted with the cooperation of numerous global research and development networks including IEEAF, PNW Gigapop, CA*net4, MANLAN and SURFnet. Provisioned Light Paths were established between Japan and Europe and were used to transmit the uncompressed HDTV video streams. These extremely high-quality video images were used to present the live performance of jazz musicians at the EXPO Dome and the Netherlands.
Experiments have been conducted in the past to link musicians in different locations over the Internet however such experiments have clearly illustrated the effect that time delays have on the performance. This experiment, initiated by WIDE Project incorporated i-Visto, uncompressed HDTV transmission technologies developed by the NTT Research Laboratory. These technologies enable the transmission of extremely high-quality video streams however we cannot ignore the delay when considering transmission on a global scale and across time zones.

This state of art experiment utilized time delay control equipment to add to the delay of 10Gbps class transmissions, adding time delays of several 1000ms from several ms in order to create an environment in which it is possible to regulate the time delays existing between the musicians.
The use of this framework and the Internet Metronome, principle technology in overcoming time delays, proved the possibility of musical collaboration between musicians in a far distant locations by controlling the timing that comes into play in a single beat or bar of music.

This experiment was conducted in affiliation with the IPv6 Information Appliance Research and Development Project of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT)

The optical light path used in the Japan-Europe connection was made possible through the joint support of the following organizations.

EXPO 2005 Aichi, Japan - Kita-ku, Osaka NTT Communications (1Gbps x 2)
Kita-ku, Osaka - Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo WIDE Project/NTT Com (10Gbps)
Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo - Seattle IEEAF (STS-48 over OC-192)
Seattle - Amsterdam CA*net4 (STS-48 over OC-192)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The project was also conducted through the cooperation of the following organizations.

Pacific Northwest Gigapop (http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/)
CA*net4 (http://www.canarie.ca/)
MAN LAN (http://networks.internet2.edu/manlan/)
SURFnet (http://www.surfnet.nl/)
SARA (http://www.sara.nl/)
Japan Association for the 2005 World Exposition (http://www.expo2005.or.jp/jp/)
NTT Communications (http://www.ntt.com/index-j.html)
NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION (http://www.ntt.co.jp/)
NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE WEST CORPORATION (http://www.ntt-west.co.jp/)
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (http://panasonic.co.jp/)
Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.asahi.co.jp/)
Cisco Systems Inc. (http://www.cisco.com/jp/)
Powerplay Inc. (http://www.powerplay.jp/)
The University of Tokyo (http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/)
Keio University (http://www.keio.ac.jp/)
For more information regarding the event

WIDE Project PR Division : Kimiko Ishikawa
E-mail : press@wide.ad.jp

May 25, 2005 - The Pacific Northwest Gigapop is now enabled for native IPv6 traffic. IPv6 traffic will be supported for all our layer3 services. PNWGP participants may learn more about how to take advantage of this capability. In addition, Pacific Wave continues to support native v6 peering as before.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA - May 4, 2005 - Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) is pleased to announce its membership in the Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA).

In a message from PRAGMA's Steering Committee Chair Peter Arzberger, Jacqueline Brown, PNWGP's Executive Director for International Partnerships, learned that the committee unanimously approved PNWGP's application for institutional membership on May 4, 2005 at the PRAGMA 8 Workshop in Singapore. Brown and Jim DeRoest, Director of Streaming Media Technologies for the University of Washington and the ResearchChannel, attended the PRAGMA 8 Workshop.

"It is extremely gratifying to me both as University of Washington Vice President and as a PNWGP board member to have PNWGP join PRAGMA, the primary Asia Pacific grid organization," said Ron Johnson. "I view this new partnership as strategically and tactically vital to the evolution of the gigapop and to the support of research at the UW."

PNWGP looks forward to collaborating with PRAGMA members to advance the use of grid technologies in support of research applications with leading institutions in the region and around the Pacific Rim.

University of Tokyo Team Set New Performance Threshold for Long-Distance Data Transfer Using IPv4; Caltech and CERN Team Set New Mark Using Next Generation Internet Protocol

Arlington, VA -- May 4, 2005 -- Internet2 today announced that two separate international teams have each set new Internet2 Land Speed Records (I2-LSR) in both the IPv4 and IPv6 categories. As an open and ongoing competition for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks, Internet2 LSR marks represent the rate at which data is transferred multiplied by the distance traveled.

IPv4 Single and Multi-Stream Record

A team from University of Tokyo, the Japanese WIDE Project, Chelsio Communications, Fujitsu Computer Technologies, LTD, NTT Communications, APAN, JGN2, SURFnet, CANARIE, IEEAF, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, StarLight and Universiteit van Amsterdam has set a new record in the Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) competition in the IPv4 category.

The new records in the IPv4 Single-Stream and Multi-Stream categories were set by transferring 7.21 gigabits of data per second (Gbps) across a network path spanning a distance nearly three-quarters the circumference of the Earth - 30,000 kilometers long. The data traversed the WIDE, APAN, JGN2, IEEAF, CANARIE, SURFnet, and Abilene networks. Achieving a mark of 216,300 terabit-meters per second (Tb-m/s), the team surpassed the existing Single-Stream record by over 66,000 Tb-m/s and the previous Multi-Stream record by over 30,000 TB-m/s.

The team utilized an "Inter-layer coordinating optimization" technology developed by the Data Reservoir project at the University of Tokyo and used 10 Gbps Ethernet adapters with TCP offloading capabilities by Chelsio Communications.

For more information about the IPv4 record-setting attempt, see: http://data-reservoir.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lsr-20041225/

IPv6 Single and Multi-Stream Record

Using the next generation Internet protocol IPv6, a team from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and CERN set a new mark in the I2-LSR's IPv6 Single and Multi-Stream categories. The team set the record by transferring 5.11 gigabits of data per second (Gbps) across a network path of more than 14,000 kilometers. The mark of 72,225 Tb-m/s nearly doubled the previous IPv6 mark. The record was set with the support of the National Center for Data Mining (NCDM), Cisco Systems, and Neterion.

For more information about the IPv6 record-setting attempt, see: http://emartell.home.cern.ch/emartell/done/cern/ipv6_lsr_jan05/lsr6jan05.html

Both record-setting teams received awards at a special ceremony held during the Internet2 Spring 2005 Member Meeting - May 2-4, 2005 in Arlington, Virginia. Details of past winning entries, complete rules, submission guidelines, and additional details are available at: http://lsr.internet2.edu/

About Internet2(R)
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities working with industry and government, Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy.

For more information, visit: www.internet2.edu

Media Contact:
Lauren Kallens
Internet2
lkallens @ internet2.edu
ph. +1-202-331-5345

Japans JGN2 Symposium 2005 Features Keynote Speaker Larry Smarr of UCSD Broadcast Live from Seattle over Advanced Optical Networks

January 18, 2005 -- Dignitaries and researchers attending the JGN2 Symposium 2005 in Osaka, Japan today listened and watched as Internet visionary Larry Smarr gave the keynote presentation on a large screen above the podium. Unlike traditional keynote talks, however, Smarr was 5,000 miles away in Seattle, Washington. And unlike traditional in-person talks, the quality, size, and resolution was so great that the audience noted that they could see every hair on the speaker's head.

Advances in transmitting live, uncompressed high-definition television (HDTV) signals over optical networks are enabling true tele-presence, in which participants feel they are together in the same room. The Internet HDTV broadcast system used for this event was developed by the University of Washington for the ResearchChannel. A server in Seattle transmitted high-definition digital video and digital audio at very high quality and very low latency to a client system in Osaka. Professor Smarrs presentation originated on the University of Washington campus and was transmitted at 1.5 Gbps to the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), then across a 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) transpacific link from Seattle to Tokyo, and then via the JGN2 to Osaka. The transpacific link was provided by the Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF), which is managed by the PNGWG in Seattle and the WIDE project in Japan.

Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Cal-(IT)²] and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded OptIPuter project, talked about the emergence of a new cyberinfrastructure based on network parallelism, in which distributed clusters and instruments are tightly coupled using multiple wavelengths of light, or lambdas, on single optical fibers. The ability to stream several gigabits of data in parallel, like in this HDTV transmission, is enabling new modes of communication and communication. The clear crisp images and sounds that HDTV affords make for better dialogue and interaction with colleagues over distances, said Smarr, who is also a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering. The goal is to make these sorts of communication technologies persistent, so that far-away colleagues appear to be just beyond the Looking Glass.

In his talk, Smarr noted that Cal-(IT)² is incorporating advanced video-over-fiber networking technologies into its two new buildings at UCSD and UC Irvine. Facilities are slated to include a digital cinema and HDTV production facility, as well as dedicated meeting and public spaces with large-format displays to support tele-presence and collaboration. Said Smarr: Every type of research will benefit if we can tear down walls and let scientists and engineers talk and work together in real time as if they were in the same room -- even if theyre thousands of miles away.

Tomonori Aoyama, a professor of Information and Communication Engineering at the University of Tokyo, chair of the JGN2 management committee, and chair of the Symposiums keynote session, expressed his sincere gratitude to all who contributed to its success. The goal of the Symposium was to present the research and development activities taking place using Japans JGN2, operated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT), said Aoyama. I am very pleased that we used JGN2 and IEEAF broadband network technologies during the featured remote presentation by Dr. Smarr to explain the needs and applications for these technologies.

JGN2, an advanced network testbed for research and development, is both a national and international testbed. It supports high-speed networking technologies and application advancements. Nationally, JGN2 is a 20 Gbps backbone network that has access points in all Japanese prefectures. Internationally, JGN2 connects Tokyo via a 10 Gbps link to the StarLight facility in Chicago, where it peers with the USAs National LambdaRail, Abilene and other advanced international, national, and regional research and education networks.

This is a milestone both in the use of technology and the establishment of a new high-water mark in extraordinarily close international collaborations, explained Ron Johnson, Vice President for Computing & Communications at University of Washington. We are collectively managing dedicated lightpaths to carry uncompressed HDTV while at the same time supporting scientific research such as the Huygens Titan probe with a lambda-based network infrastructure that links Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Colleagues at JGN2, WIDE, IEEAF, PNWGP, StarLight, the University of Washington, the ResearchChannel, and other like-minded entities worldwide are working together to create deterministic networks using multiple lambdas over optical fibers to guarantee the bandwidth speeds and latency in order to do things like real-time HDTV transmission and remote steering of scientific instruments. We will continue to pursue this, to make high-quality HDTV transmission both persistent and ubiquitous.

About ResearchChannel

ResearchChannel is a non-profit consortium of leading research universities and labs dedicated to creating a voice for research through both traditional broadcast, satellite, and cable TV carriage, as well as via advanced on-demand video and Internet "channels", while exploring new technologies for communication. http://www.researchchannel.org and http://www.researchchannel.org/jgn2/

About JGN2

JGN2 is a new Japanese ultra-high-speed open testbed network for R&D collaboration between industry, academia, and government, operated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT) of Japan. JGN2 was established in April 2004 with the aim of promoting a broad spectrum of research and development projects, ranging from fundamental core research and development to advanced experimental testing, in areas including the advancement of next generation technologies for networking and diverse network-based applications. JGN2 provides nationwide Japanese IP networks, optical wavelength networks, and R&D environments for optical testbeds. JGN2 was extended internationally in August 2004 with the addition of a 10 Gbps transpacific link between Japan (Tokyo) and the USA (Chicago). http://www.jgn.nict.go.jp/e/

About Cal-(IT)²

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Cal-(IT)²] is one of four institutes funded through the California Institutes for Science and Innovation initiative to ensure that the state maintain its leadership in cutting-edge technologies. Cal-(IT)² is a collaboration between UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Its mission is to extend the reach of the current information infrastructure throughout the physical world -- enabling anywhere/anytime access to the Internet. More than 200 faculty members from the two campuses are collaborating on interdisciplinary projects, with support from more than 130 industry partners. http://www.calit2.net

About the University of Washington

Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is a public research university with over 41,000 students on campuses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell, Washington. http://www.washington.edu

About Pacific Northwest Gigapop

The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) is a not-for-profit corporation serving leading edge organizations and Research and Education networks throughout the Pacific Rim. PNWGP provides robust, highest-speed access to current state of the art Internet; Next Generation Internet services and technology; and the exclusive R&D testbeds where tomorrows Internet technologies are being developed. PNWGP is built to be the highest caliber Research and Education networking services hub in the world and is the operator of the Pacific Wave distributed west coast international peering and exchange point with integrated pops in Seattle and Los Angeles. The Pacific Northwest Gigapop also is the steward for the Seattle end of the IEEAF Pacific links. http://www.pnw-gigapop.net

About IEEAF

The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to obtain donations of telecommunications capacity and equipment and make them available for use by the global research and education community. The IEEAF TransPacific Link is the second 10 Gbps transoceanic link provided by IEEAF through a five-year IRU donated by Tyco Telecom; the first, the IEEAF TransAtlantic Link, connects New York and Groningen, The Netherlands, and has been operational since 2002. IEEAF donations currently span 17 time zones. http://www.ieeaf.org/

About WIDE

WIDE, a research consortium working on practical research and development of Internet-related technologies, was launched in 1988. The project has made a significant contribution to development of the Internet by collaborating with many other bodies -- including 133 companies and 11 universities to carry out research in a wide range of fields, and by operating M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, one of the DNS root servers, since 1997. WIDE Project also operates T-LEX (www.t-lex.net/) as an effort of stewardship for the IEEAF TransPacific Link in Tokyo. http://www.wide.ad.jp/

Participating Organizations

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT)
NiCT/JGN II, NiCT/APAN
KDDI
NTT Group
WIDE Project
University of California San Diego/Calit2
University of Washington
Pacific Northwest Gigapop
Pacific Wave
ResearchChannel
Pacific Interface, Inc.
StarLight
(Argonne National Lab, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Indiana University
Intel

Circuits

JGN II, WIDE, KDDI, NTT Group
IEEAF, NLR (National Lambda Rail)

Note to Editors

1) A high-resolution photo of UCSD professor Larry Smarr can be downloaded from: http://www.calit2.net/gallery/lsmarr/images/highres/Smarr-06.jpg

2) A diagram of the HD-over-IP" network can be downloaded from:
http://pnwgp.net/s/jgn2_hd_demo.pdf

AARNet News - 18 January 2005 - Nine organisations from four countries, with AARNet, Australia's Academic & Research Network, providing a coordinating role, were involved in the successful electronic transfer to the Netherlands of data collected by Australian telescopes from the Huygens space probe as it plunged through the clouds of Titan on 14 January 2005.

Titan is the largest of Saturn's 33 moons and the second-largest moon in our Solar System, with a diameter about one-and-a-half times that of our Moon. The surface of Titan is unlike anything encountered before. It has a thick atmosphere, and is thought to harbour organic compounds that may offer clues about the beginning of life on Earth.

The main objective of the Huygens mission was to drop the probe into Titan, to measure various properties of Titan's atmosphere and surface. A global international network of radio telescopes was also taking part in direct tracking of the transmission from the Huygens probe. Those involved included the Australian radio telescopes of CSIRO, based near Narrabri, Coonabarabran and Parkes in NSW; those of University of Tasmania, based in Hobart and Ceduna, South Australia, and 12 others based in China, Japan, and the United States.

Using a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), this network of 17 radio telescopes collected data to pinpoint the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its descent through Titan's atmosphere. The data from two Australian telescopes, Parkes and Mopra, were the first to be received for processing by the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) in the Netherlands and used for quick end-to-end
diagnostics of the Huygens VLBI tracking performance prior to the data from all the telescopes being processed to determine the position of the probe to within a kilometre.

Data from the CSIRO telescopes were flown to the Australia Telescope National Facility (www.atnf.csiro.au). This data was then transferred to AARNet (www.aarnet.edu.au) in Sydney across a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet path on the CeNTIE network (www.centie.net) set up for this purpose. From there the data was sent to the Pacific North West GigaPoP's Pacific Wave facility in Seattle (http://www.pacificwave.net)
across the northern 10Gbps leg of SX TransPORT, a joint initiative between Southern Cross Cable Network and AARNet (www.aarnet.edu.au/news/sxtransport.html).

AARNet's router in Seattle was then connected to an optical switch of CANARIE, Canada's advanced Internet development organisation (www.canarie.ca) and a User Controlled LightPath (UCLP) was built from Seattle to JIVE using CANARIE's infrastructure to the MANLAN facility in New York; the Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation's trans-Atlantic capacity (www.ieeaf.org) to SURFnet in Amsterdam
(www.surfnet.nl); and a SURFnet Gigabit Ethernet path to JIVE at Dwingeloo (www.jive.nl).

In the first transfer, two 13 minute scans from Mopra (Coonabarabran) and "the Dish" (Parkes) were transferred at a data rate of about 450Mbps (equivalent to recording a full CD every 12 seconds) to JIVE where they were reformatted and 'correlated' to show perfect 'fringes' meaning that the observations had been successful. This news was applauded at the major European Space Agency press conference at the Mission Control Center on 15 January 2005, the day after the touch-down on Titan.

AARNet is working with members of the Astronomy community in Australia to provide gigabit capacity directly to the telescopes, which of necessity need to be in remote locations. AARNet is also working with the University of Hawaii, Southern Cross Cable Network, and other members of the international astronomy community to connect the
telescope complex at Mauna Kea in Hawaii to form the basis of a global astronomy initiative.

AARNet News - 18 January 2005 - from David Lassner, CIO, University of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii has demonstrated Hawaii's first 10Gbps (billions of bit per second) connection outside the State. The new link, which connects Hawaii to Australia and the U.S. mainland, is part of the SX TransPORT project, a partnership between the Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN) and AARNet, Australia's Academic and Research Network. 

On January 10 the University of Hawaii first used the new connection for a remote microscopy demonstration between the Lariat project meeting in Honolulu and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California at San Diego. Between January 17 and 19, the link is being demonstrated for a variety of applications at the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) meeting at the Hilton Hawaii Village in Waikiki. 

David Lassner, University of Hawaii Chief Information Officer and Chair of the PTC 2005 conference thanked the many partners who helped bring this multi-year initiative to fruition. "Through SX TransPORT, our colleagues at AARNet and Southern Cross have provided the foundation for Hawaii to begin to participate in the continuing transformation of research and education through advanced broadband connectivity. Our collaborators in the Pacific Northwest and California are making it
possible for Hawaii and Australia to leverage this capability by assisting in acquiring the additional resources and support to connect SX TransPORT to US-based advanced networks and exchange points that reach the rest of the world. 

Lariat is the physical networking project being conducted by the Pacific NorthWest Gigapop as part of a $10m NIH award to Montana State University to enhance the capability for biomedical research in Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Hawaii. The remote microscopy demonstration on January 10 permitted participants at the Lariat meeting at the East-West Center on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus to view in real-time the images from a multi-million dollar laser scanning electron microscope at the NCMIR in San Diego. This demonstration used over 500Mbps (millions of bits per second) to send the uncompressed data from San Diego to Honolulu. The Lariat meeting also included remote video participants from Canberra, Australia and NIH in Maryland.

The new link is also being shown at PTC 2005, the 27th annual PTC conference which is the longest-running annual telecommunications meeting for the Pacific hemisphere. PTC attracted over 900 delegates from more than 40 countries as well as several thousand additional " networkers" who do business alongside the PTC meeting. Advanced applications of broadband are being highlighted in a series of
demonstrations in the Broadband Playground and Exhibit Hall. 

The Communications Research Centre (CRC) of Industry Canada, which coordinated the entire Broadband Playground at PTC 2005, has arranged a number of innovative demonstrations of broadband technology in E-Learning using Canada's advanced CA*net 4 network which interconnects with SX TransPORT via Pacific Wave in Seattle. These demonstrations include a real-time demonstration of remote piano control, high-quality real-time audio and video for coaching music students, multiparty
collaborative virtual reality, and a sharing of indigenous culture and educational performance events.

The ResearchChannel, based at the University of Washington, is showing interactive High Definition Television (HDTV) over the Internet at speeds of 270Mbps per stream. One of the HDTV programs being shown is PBS Hawaii's "First Light" documentary about Mauna Kea, which has been digitized for playback in Honolulu from a server in Seattle.

Videoconferencing with AARNet in Canberra is being shown using uncompressed and inexpensive but high-quality consumer-grade DV-Cam technology and desktop PCs. 

Another HDTV-over-IP technology is being shown by the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), which operates the Japan's JGN2 advanced network. In addition to transmitting HDTV among Alaska, Honolulu and Osaka, NICT also brought their popular wireless Internet-based car racing technology that permits drivers in Alaska, Japan and Hawaii to compete against each other in real-time using a physical race-track at PTC in Honolulu. 

Internet2 is showing the new "DVGuide," which shows the digital video programming available on global research and education networks from around the world. 

In addition to the 10Gbps trans-pacific fiber optic lightwave provided for SX TransPORT by SCCN to AARNet, a number of other components have been required to realize this level of advanced broadband technology. The Lariat project provided support for the high-speed connection from the SCCN landing in Oregon to the Pacific Wave optical
exchange point in Seattle. 

A new NSF award for international networking to the University of Southern California will assist in extending SX TransPORT from Australia to the Big Island and on to California using a second 10Gbps SX TransPORT lightwave on the southern route of SCCN.

Pacific LightNet Incorporated (PLNI) provided the University of Hawaii with the 10Gbps lightwaves on Oahu to connect between the SCCN landing point at Kahe Point and the UH-Manoa campus. Pacific Wireless Corporation and fSONA provided the free space optics link to connect between UH Manoa and the Hilton Hawaiian Village for the PTC
demonstrations.

The SX TransPORT network is currently in "pre-production" for these and other demonstrations. Work is planned on the production configuration to support education and research after the conclusion of PTC.

See the following links for additional information:

University of Hawaii - http://www.hawaii.edu
SX TransPORT - www.aarnet.edu.au/news/sxtransport.pdf
AARNet - http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
Southern Cross Cable Network - http://www.southerncrosscables.com/
Lariat - http://lariat-west.org/
PTC 2005 - http://www.ptc.org/ptc05
Pacific Wave - http://www.pacificwave.net/
NCMIR - http://ncmir.ucsd.edu/
CRC - http://www.crc.ca/en/html/crc/home/home
CA*net 4 -http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/
ResearchChannel - http://www.researchchannel.org
NICT - http://www.nict.go.jp/overview/index.html
JGN2 -http://www.jgn.nict.go.jp/e/02-about/02-1/
Internet2 - http://www.internet2.edu
PLNI - http://www.plni.net/
PWC - http://www.pwchi.com/
fSONA - http://www.pwchi.com/

Working photos available at:
http://laphroaig.uhnet.net/~whinery/PTC2005/PTC2005-001/

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, USA, November 8, 2004 and CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA, November 9 2004 - AARNet (Australia's Academic and Research Network) and ResearchChannel today demonstrated the first high definition uncompressed interactive video interaction across the Pacific at 1.4 gigabits per second in each direction.

The demonstration took advantage of recent massive increases in bandwidth capabilities from Australia to the continental United States on network capacity provided by Southern Cross Cable Networks, to deliver truly remarkable quality video interaction between AARNet's head office in Canberra and the exhibition floor of the Supercomputing Conference SC2004 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

The partnership between ResearchChannel, AARNet, and the University of Washington provided applications that spurred the development of high speed networks and enabled data transfers previously unavailable between the two continents.

The unprecedented high-quality, low-latency interactive video is the first use of the Southern Cross Trans-Pacific Optical Research Testbed (or SXTransPORT), a dual 10Gbps trans-Pacific initiative of Southern Cross Cable Networks and AARNet and acquired with assistance from the Australian Government. The network path also involved the Pacific Northwest Gigapop and the US National LambdaRail (NLR) 10 gigabit network fabric. The network path also makes use of US National Institutes of Health-funded networks through the University of Hawaii. Future expansion of the network is planned to offer these and additional resources to other continents, and bring scientists and researchers together by exploiting new Internet technologies.

Using two Intel PCI-Xpress computers and AJA Video Systems' Xena-HD HDSDI capture cards, the demonstration is the first to show High Definition interactive systems over Windows XP platforms, providing researchers, medical practitioners and scientists worldwide with new interactive video capabilities.

"This demonstration is the first highly visual culmination of the recent initiatives between AARNet's international developments arm and Southern Cross at the infrastructure level and with our colleagues at the University of Washington at the infrastructure, technology and applications levels," said AARNet's CEO, Chris Hancock.

Dr Mike Sargent, who chairs the Australian Research and Education Network initiative, participated for part of the opening session and engaged with Professor John O'Callaghan, CEO of the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing, and other participants in Pittsburg for the Supercomputing Global 2004 conference.

"This is a great demonstrator of the benefit of strategic investment of Australian Government funds in helping put the network infrastructure in place to support these innovative applications" said Dr Sargent.

"The video quality presented at the exhibition floor of the SC2004 conference in Pittsburg from Australia is exceptional" said Professor O'Callaghan.

Demonstrations will continue through the rest of this week, though in Australian time these sessions are from 2am to 10am of the mornings of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and from 2am until 8am on Friday.

------------------------------------------------------------

Background information

About AARNet
Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet) provides high capacity, leading edge Internet services for the tertiary education and research sector communities, and their research partners. For more information about AARNet, please visit http://www.aarnet.edu.au.

About Research Channel
ResearchChannel is a non-profit organisation dedicated to creating a voice for research through video and Internet channels. For more information about ResearchChannel, please visit the web site at www.researchchannel.org.

About Southern Cross Cable Network
The Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, to the heart of the Internet in the United States. For more information about SCCN, please visit their web site at http://www.southerncrosscables.com/.

About SXTransPORT
The Southern Cross Trans-Pacific Optical Research Testbed is an initiative of Southern Cross Cable Networks and AARNet, supported by the Australian Government, that provides dual 10Gbps circuits between Australia, Hawaii and the US west coast. For more information about SXTransPORT, please visit http://www.aarnet.edu.au/news/sxtransport.pdf

About the University of Washington
Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is a public research university with over 41,000 students on campuses in Seattle, Tacoma and Bothell, Wash. For more information about the University of Washington, please visit the web site at http://www.washington.edu.

About Intel
Intel Corporation is an industry leader in supplying the computing and communications industries with the "ingredients" of computers, servers and networking and communications products. For more information about Intel Corporation, please visit their web site at http://www.intel.com.

About AJA Video
AJA Video is a leading manufacturer of digital video solutions for the professional broadcast and post-production markets. For more information about AJA, please visit their web site at http://www.aja.com.

About National LambdaRail
National LambdaRail, Inc.'s (NLR) fundamental mission is to provide a network infrastructure for new forms and methods for research in science, engineering, health care and education, as well as for research and development of new Internet technologies, protocols, applications and services. For more information about NLR, please visit their web site at http://www.nlr.net.

About Northwest Gigapop
Pacific Northwest Gigapop is a state-of-the-art, advanced high-speed Internet service provider based in Seattle, Wash., and a next-generation network interconnector for Pacific Rim research, education and development networks. For more information visit
http://www.pnw-gigapop.net.