BIG DATA

UAS-RON, via Southern Light Rail, will provide Alabama universities cost savings and links to National LambdaRail and Internet2: ADVA Optical Networking announced deployment of the ADVA Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 3000RE in the new University of Alabama System Regional Optical Network (UAS-RON). The network provides the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Research & Engineering Network (NREN) and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, AL, with 10Gbit/s connectivity to NASA’s other facilities nationally, via UAS-RON and Southern Light Rail (SLR) links to the National LambdaRail (NLR) backbone. UAS-RON will also provide The University of Alabama System with more affordable commodity Internet connectivity, as well as access to NLR and Internet2 via SLR’s Southern Crossroads (SoX) initiative. The success of UAS-RON is the result of time and investment by multiple organizations:

• The University of Alabama System has built an optical-fiber network that links the campuses in Birmingham and Huntsville, AL, to National LambdaRail point-ofpresence (POP) in Atlanta, GA. The network also links the UAS campuses to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) POP in Nashville, TN. UAS-RON will also eventually include a link from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, AL. “UAS-RON will enhance the ability of researchers at any University of Alabama System campus to participate in the larger scientific community,” said John Watters, director of Enterprise Technology, University of Alabama. “Plus, the network will eventually support high-quality, digital-video applications for telemedicine services and distance learning.”
• NASA Research & Engineering Network provides its own fiber connection to UAS-RON in Huntsville, as well as capital and operational support for the network. “The network gives us a dedicated 10Gbit/s link to other NASA facilities across the United States,” said Kevin Jones, NREN engineering group lead, NASA Ames. “This affords us unprecedented information-sharing and collaboration capabilities.”
• National LambdaRail has an agreement to link all NASA facilities nationally. “We were exploring options of how to connect NASA MSFC to National LambdaRail when we learned of The University of Alabama System’s work with Southern Light Rail,” said Tom West, president, National LambdaRail. “We decided it was best to all work together to achieve everyone’s goals.”
• Southern Light Rail, which provides universities and other research organizations in the South with access to National LambdaRail, designed the UASRON network, acquired the ADVA Optical Networking equipment and provided project management and operational support. “The research-and-education community has very demanding network performance and flexibility needs, as well as tight requirements in terms of operational expenditures,” said Ron Hutchins, Southern Light Rail’s interim executive director and Georgia Tech’s associate vice provost for technology and chief technology officer. “We found that ADVA Optical Networking had established an excellent reputation in this arena, and our experience with the FSP 3000RE in UAS-RON underscores the strength of their offering.”

ADVA FSP 3000RE platforms are deployed in Atlanta, Birmingham, Huntsville and Nashville. Multiple channels of data, voice, video or storage application traffic can be transported along the same fiber strand via Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM), and additional bandwidth and services can be deployed without physical expansion of UAS-RON. “UAS-RON is part of a global rollout of optical networks that have provided the researchand-education community with many powerful new services including grid computing, shared virtual reality, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, digital video and much more,” said Brian P. McCann, chief marketing and strategy officer with ADVA Optical Networking. “To support new services, the organizations involved in this project require the latest optical-networking innovations. We are pleased to be working with this group of organizations to provide them our newest product features.” The ADVA Optical Networking FSP 3000RE is a cost-effective, dynamic optical transport platform that provides a multitude of service interfaces for central offices, customer premises, co-location and carrier hotel applications. Using Raman amplification, the FSP 3000RE can also support regional networks, where reach requirements can be up to 2,000km and spans can reach 160km. The FSP 3000RE provides a versatile, costeffective and compact platform for access, metro and regional applications. Customer premises and small office services can be equipped with minimal startup cost in ring and linear topologies. Wavelengths can be selectively configured at any node, with ROADM or with fixed OADM filters, delivering an assortment of transparent, protocol-independent or aggregated services.