ACADEMIA

National LambdaRail (NLR) and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) announced today that they have completed the transfer of NLR's Network Operations Center (NOC) to CENIC. CENIC has a long history of providing NOC services at the optical layer to NLR since its inception in 2003. In addition to optical layer services, CENIC will now be responsible for switch, router and engineering support desk NOC services and, in a recently expanded agreement, CENIC will deliver network design engineering capabilities for NLR.

National LambdaRail also announced that technical support for its TelePresence services would now be supported by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. NLR provides the research and education community with access to the largest available TelePresence network, reaching over 250 end points and 14 countries. It also provides interconnection to commercial carrier networks to enable the R&E community to connect to industry.

NLR Chairman and CEO Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong welcomed the agreements with both CENIC and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. "NLR now has very robust support for our NOC, engineering and TelePresence services and we look forward to excellent enhanced partnerships with both CENIC and UW-Whitewater," he said. "We currently have the right infrastructure in place now to meet our objectives to support the growing 'big data' demands of scientific research, in particular the massive new data demands that genomic medicine will need as it transforms healthcare in the country."

"As a founding member of NLR, CENIC is pleased not only to be providing all of NLR's Network Operations Center, but also to be supporting NLR's engineering requirements," said CENIC Chief Executive Officer Louis Fox. "This reinforces our combined mission to serve the research community, not only throughout California but also across the United States."