The University of New Mexico announced it has joined the National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR), a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies deploying a nationwide networking infrastructure to support research in science, engineering, health care and education, as well as the research and development of new Internet technologies, protocols, applications and services.
By joining this consortium, UNM will participate in the deployment of a national networking infrastructure that provides scientists and networking researchers with unprecedented control over a wide range of facilities, capabilities, and services that support application-level and networking-level experiments.
The NLR infrastructure will initially provide four separate 10 gigabit per second wavelengths with provision to add another 28 to 36 wavelengths as needed to support members’ research collaborations. NLR is an $80 million to $100 million initiative with each member contributing at least $5 million over the next five years.
“LambdaRail’s potential impact on New Mexico is enormous,” stated UNM President Louis Caldera. “It will foster high performance computing and research in our colleges and universities and enable sophisticated health care imaging and diagnostic services in our communities. LambdaRail will dramatically enhance the state’s ability to grow and recruit technology-based companies, as well as position us to be the gateway to the rapidly developing information technology networks in Mexico, Central and Latin America.”
In addition to supporting cutting-edge uses of optical networking capabilities in research and education, a primary goal of NLR is to bring together networking research communities to solve complex challenges of network architecture, end-to-end performance and scaling.
“We are extremely pleased to welcome UNM to National LambdaRail,” said Tracy Futhey, NLR Board Chair. “Through NLR, members will not only benefit their own researchers and faculty, but also the national research and educational communities by helping to ensure the widespread availability and use of the unique NLR infrastructure. The expanded membership will allow us to quickly complete the entire NLR infrastructure with full implementation by early spring 2005.”
Other new NLR members announced today include Cornell University, the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), the Oklahoma State Board of Regents, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The new members will enable NLR to expand its nationwide infrastructure to over 10,000 miles, reaching new points of presence in New York City, Baton Rouge, Houston, Tulsa, Albuquerque and Phoenix.
Founding NLR members include the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC); the Pacific Northwest GigaPop (PNWGP); the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; Duke University, representing a coalition of North Carolina universities; the Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership (MATP) and the Virginia Tech Foundation; Cisco Systems; Internet2; Florida LamdaRail; Georgia Institute of Technology; and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).
For more information about NLR, please visit: www.nlr.net
Contact: Susan McKinsey, (505) 277-1989
Posted by scarr at June 3, 2004 10:46 AM