INDUSTRY

Services from Level 3 Communications are helping a consortium of nine public and private Florida universities create a statewide high-performance network to facilitate collaborative research and education in a full spectrum of disciplines, including hurricane-related studies. Members of the consortium -- embodied as Florida LambdaRail, LLC (FLR, LLC) -- include Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), Florida International University (FIU), Florida State University (FSU), Nova Southeastern University (NSU), University of Central Florida (UCF), University of Florida (UF), University of Miami (UM), and University of West Florida (UWF). One of the overriding drivers behind the new network -- called the Florida LambdaRail (FLR) -- is to provide networking infrastructure that will improve all aspects of network connectivity for participating institutions, thus allowing them to access resources and collaborate in ways that currently are not possible or affordable. The objective is to facilitate academic, clinical, and scientific research, as well as technology development and education, by enabling high-speed communications among the nine member universities and with other state, national, and international research entities. The new network is expected to provide a 100-fold increase in data transfer capability. Level 3 is providing (3)Link(R) Dark Fiber and (3)Center(R) Colocation services under a multi-year, multi-million-dollar IRU agreement with the FLR, LLC, as well as providing (3)CrossRoads(R) high-speed Internet access service. Level 3 is the preferred provider of dark fiber and colocation services for the National LambdaRail (NLR) network, with which the regional FLR network will connect. "Enabled by Level 3's robust, reliable network, colocation and high-speed Internet access services, the new high-performance FLR network will virtually eliminate the issue of 'place' for participating institutions' faculty, research partners, students, and staff," said Larry Conrad, chairman, FLR, LLC. "Together with the NLR, the FLR network will fundamentally redefine the ability of Florida universities and their public and private research partners to collaborate, cooperate, and compete plus create new economic development opportunities in Florida. It will do so by helping establish the next-generation network infrastructure that will enable people to work together in ways we cannot even imagine today." FLR member institutions anticipate lowering costs through aggregation of Internet and Internet2 connectivity, wholesale purchase of bandwidth, combined network capabilities, and future cost avoidance of network-related expenses -- cost offsets anticipated in part by leveraging the Level 3 services. The FLR networking infrastructure will foster development of further creative initiatives such as the Atlantic Wave proposal (similar to the Pacific Wave initiative on the west coast) currently under consideration for providing high speed peering exchange points with federal agencies and international networks. "We're proud that the FLR organization has chosen Level 3 as its preferred provider to support its vital research and education initiatives," said Jerry Hogge, senior vice president of Government, Research and Academic Markets for Level 3. "As a recognized pioneer and leader in providing next-generation telecommunications networks, Level 3 is well-prepared to help the research and academic communities create the next-generation network infrastructure that will allow them to achieve their most demanding collaborative research goals." In addition to recognized work in the full spectrum of traditional and emerging disciplines, consortium members' efforts include hurricane-related studies requiring the capability to reliably transfer very large data files at high speeds on a daily basis. These include: * The meteorology departments at FSU, UF and other member institutions, which support the work of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in its ongoing efforts to develop instruments and computer models to more accurately track and predict hurricanes. * The Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, with facilities at FAU, FSU, and NSU. * The FIU International Hurricane Center, which is the nation's only university-based research facility dedicated to mitigating the damage of tropical storms to people, the economy and the environment. * The FIT Wind and Hurricane Impacts Research Laboratory (WHIRL). "All of WHIRL's various Internet traffic will flow over the one new network backbone," said Jean-Paul Pinelli, Ph.D., P.E., Associate Professor, FIT Civil Engineering Department, and Director of the FIT Wind and Hurricane Impact Research Laboratory. "In particular, we're deploying instrumentation during hurricane landfall, where we record the time histories of wind speeds, pressures and temperatures, resulting in extremely large data files, which we anticipate the new network will allow us to transmit quickly and reliably in real-time. Our latest such deployments were for hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne." Benefits of the FLR Network According to FLR, some of the anticipated opportunities for Florida researchers and educators through the Level 3-enabled FLR network include: * Virtual "collaboratories" where researchers and work teams in multiple locations can share work and interact in real-time through video, audio, shared whiteboards, and shared laboratory notebooks available online. * Interactive distributed simulations linking high-powered computational resources with remote users and other computers. * Processing and visualization of large data sets utilizing distributed computation. * Distance learning, by enabling delivery of courses and programs over the Internet, extending the reach of education to wider geographic areas and demographic populations. * Access to digitized databases, enabling researchers to access supercomputing resources across the country without leaving their local offices. * Video teleconferencing, enabling geographically dispersed work teams to bridge time and place by utilizing video transmission over high-speed connections. Level 3's (3)Link Dark Fiber (3)Link Dark Fiber provides the academic and research communities with the infrastructure and services required to operate and maintain an advanced fiber-optic network that will serve highly specialized, bandwidth-intensive needs now and into the future. (3)Link Dark Fiber services include optical fiber cable, fiber-based network extensions, colocation and running line facility space, power, and operation and maintenance of the network. Level 3's intercity dark fiber services feature approximately 16,000 intercity route miles in the United States connecting more than 150 cities, and an approximately 3,600-mile pan-European network. Level 3's network employs high fiber counts, the latest generation of optical fiber, and carrier-neutral colocation facilities.