The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), and Internet2 are planning a long-term collaboration to deploy 100-Gbps networking capabilities across the entire West Coast of the United States. The plans also call for sharing of a common optical networking infrastructure and working together on many network-based initiatives.
This shared infrastructure will combine fiber-optic cable from PNWGP and CENIC with Internet2’s new optical transport system from Ciena (see “Ciena, Internet2 partner on new national 100G network”). Initially, the shared infrastructure will support the West Coast portion of Internet2’s new nationwide backbone network and the advanced research and education (R&E) peering and exchange services provided by CENIC and PNWGP.
This long-term collaboration also includes the Pacific Wave international distributed exchange, whose major exchange and access points in Seattle and Los Angeles are being interconnected with 100-Gbps capabilities. Twenty-seven networks representing more than 40 countries throughout the Pacific Rim, the Americas, and the Middle East connect to one another via Pacific Wave.
“These 100-Gbps network interconnection and transit capabilities will enable our US and international research partners to achieve the performance and service capabilities required by next-generation research initiatives,” noted Louis Fox, president and CEO of CENIC.
Internet2, CENIC, and PNWGP also will provide advanced broadband network capabilities, services, content, and applications to expand the U.S. Unified Community Anchor Network’s (U.S. UCAN) western community and to existing participants in all three organizations’ collective R&E networks.
Ron Johnson, chair, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and Stephen Wolff, chief technology officer, Internet2, both of whose involvements in the Internet date back to the early days of ARPAnet and NSFnet, praised this new partnership and technical platform. Johnson noted that this “establishes the evolved relationship between our organizations as well as the directly shared technical platform that we have all been seeking. This will enable the R&E communities we serve both to pursue the next generation of innovations enabled by our networks, apps, and content, and to extend them for even broader impact to other key constituencies.”
Wolff echoed these views, saying “thanks to this partnership, there will be many new opportunities for collaboration in the service of our communities and in the advancement of technology.”
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