The University of New Mexico

NEWS RELEASE

 


Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu

January 27, 2006

UNM to Host ESCC / Internet2 Joint Techs Workshop

The 17th Annual Joint Techs Workshop will take place at the University of New Mexico in the Student Union Building Feb. 5-8, 2006. A national workshop involving the Department of Energy, Joint Techs is a meeting of network engineers and researchers from universities nationwide, national laboratories, regional and state networks, international backbone networks and other members of the research and education networking community.

The workshop will feature presentations, panel discussions, formal and informal working group meetings, and demonstrations of state-of-the-art, high-performance networking technologies. Agendas and presentations from past Joint Techs meetings are at: http://jointtechs.es.net/.

Terry Yates, vice president for Research and Economic Development, will welcome the consortium on Monday, Feb. 6, 2006.

“The University of New Mexico's ability to host this very significant series of workshops is indicative of our growing stature in the national high speed networking community,” said CIRT's Chief Information Officer Bill Adkins.

Each Joint Techs meeting is organized around two or three main topics. The main topics at this meeting will be optical networking, network performance measurement, and security for high-performance networks. There will also be updates on the status of various research and education networks, and discussions of advanced network applications.

In addition to the main program, the meeting will be preceded by three hands-on network-engineering workshops. In these workshops, network engineers learn to deploy, configure, and make use of advanced network technologies; instructors and equipment are provided by the Internet2 community. More details, including a workshop program and hands-on workshops are available at: http://jointtechs.es.net/newmexico2006/.

One area of interest at UNM involves the Global Lambda Integrated Facility or GLIF, which is a world-scale Lambda-based Laboratory for application and middleware development on emerging Lambda Grids, where applications rely on dynamically configured networks based on optical wavelengths .

Several workshops involving this initiative will be held during the conference. UNM became a partner in the National LambdaRail (NLR) initiative in 2004 and is seeking $4 million in funding from the New Mexico State Legislature this year as one of its legislative priorities for its National LambdaRail subscription.

NLR is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies designed to provide a national infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. Its aim is to catalyze innovative research and development into next generation network technologies, protocols, services and applications.

“The sessions in the workshop include various areas of networking,” said CIRT's Manager for Advanced Communication Technologies Art St. George, one of the event's organizers. “Most attendees are researchers and engineers who come to learn about recent networking developments and research. These are the people who make it work.”

ESCC and Internet2 sponsor the Joint Techs series. The ESnet Site Coordinating Committee (ESCC) provides a forum for the consideration of a broad range of technical issues faced by the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and by individual ESnet sites. ESnet is a high-speed network serving thousands of Department of Energy scientists and collaborators worldwide.

A pioneer in providing high-bandwidth, reliable connections, ESnet enables researchers at national laboratories, universities and other institutions to communicate with each other using the collaborative capabilities needed to address some of the world's most important scientific challenges.

Internet2 is a research consortium led by more than 200 U.S. universities, including UNM, working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 and LambdaRail are discussing a merger and a session will be held on its progress and how the merger will affect the infrastructure.

“It's tied to economic development including the digital film industry and the NLR infrastructure,” said St. George. “The technical conference sessions form the foundations that support these economic initiatives.”

 


The University of New Mexico is the state's largest university, serving more than 32,000 students. UNM is home to the state's only schools of law, medicine, pharmacy and architecture and operates New Mexico's only academic health center. UNM is noted for comprehensive undergraduate programs and research that benefits the state and the nation.

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