ACADEMIA

Groups to Deploy 100G Networking Capabilities across West Coast, Share Infrastructure, and Work on Network Initiatives 

CENIC, the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, (PNWGP) and Internet2 have announced plans for a major, long-term collaboration to deploy 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) networking capabilities across the entire West Coast of the United States, to share a common optical networking infrastructure, and to work on many network based initiatives. 

This shared infrastructure, using PNWGP and CENIC fiber-optic cable and Internet2’s new Ciena optical system, will initially support the West Coast portion of Internet2’s new nationwide backbone network and the advanced Research & Education (R&E) peering and exchange services provided by CENIC and PNWGP. This long-term collaboration includes the Pacific Wave international distributed exchange, whose major exchange and access points in Seattle and Los Angeles are being interconnected with 100 Gbps capacity to support interconnections and transport at 100 Gbps speeds. 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 U.S. 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. 

“This is an extraordinary step forward in cooperation and mutual commitment between Internet2 and two R&E technology leaders, PNWGP and CENIC,” said Dave Lambert, CEO of Internet2. “We will work together to best and most cost-effectively serve our overall R&E community with next generation capabilities and services.” 

“By partnering on this infrastructure, we are able to share our resources and expertise and further leverage our long-term reliance upon Internet2 and also the proven Internet2 network operations center to achieve reliable, ultra-high-performance networking which is affordable for our members and partners,” said Amy Philipson, Executive Director of PNWGP. 

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 network fabric. 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.”