National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 1 National LambdaRail Overview/Review 3 May 2005 Internet2 Spring Members Meeting Layers 2 & 3 User’s BOF

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 2 What is National LambdaRail? NLR is a membership-driven set of internetworking facilities, capabilities, and services for the Research and Education community. NLR is planned to be capable of supporting both production and experimental networks. –Not a single network or a single testbed but facilities to build multiple networks and multiple testbeds at all of layers 1-3 including optical, switched, and routed. –Goal is to have both persistent and flexible infrastructure(s).

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 3 What is NLR for? Supporting experimental and production networks Fostering networking research Promoting next-generation applications Facilitating interconnectivity among high-performance research and education networks

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 4 Why are we doing all this? To facilitate research collaboration To provide control by ownership (IRUs and gear) Ensure connectivity—end to end Provide quick response to researchers Build a flexible environment for future network development without worrying about infringing on production services Ensure cost containment

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 5 National LambdaRail Mission statement Putting the Promise of Experimental Network Infrastructure into the Hands of Our Nation's Scientists and Researchers. National LambdaRail (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR aims to catalyze innovative research and development into next generation network technologies, protocols, services and applications.

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 6 National LambdaRail The goal is to be as flexible as possible to allow the widest range of experiments possible, and create a dynamic research environment where new capabilities and services are added to the infrastructure baseline. 50% of infrastructure resources are allocated for networking research (in NLR bylaws and contractually obligated). AUP-free so there will not be an artificial barrier to collaboration between researchers in universities, government labs or industrial labs.

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 7 National LambdaRail Membership organization –Members are research & education organization and consortia of universities –Plus corporate members -- Cisco Systems (all hardware), also Level(3) and WilTel. NLR, Inc – is national 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. NLR Board of Directors made up of representatives from members (or appointed by members). web site:

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 8 Current NLR Participants CENIC Pacific Northwest GigaPOP Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Duke University (representing coalition of NC universities) Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership Cisco Systems Internet2 Florida LambdaRail Georgia Institute of Technology Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Cornell University Louisiana Board of Regents UCAR (representing Front Range GigaPOP/Intermountain GigaPOP) Oklahoma State Board of Regents Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) University of New Mexico representing the state of NM SURA Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) Case Western Reserve University

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 9 NLR Organization Tom West – CEO of NLR, Inc Development & Operations –led by Dave Reese/CENIC (Layer1) and Dave Jent/IU (L 2/3) –NLR implementation/facilities planning – Grover Browning –NLR Engineering Committees – Dave Reese, Chair Technical Support Services –(next slide) Network Research Council (NRC) –Provides direction for NLR research agenda –David Farber – Chief Scientist and NRC Chair

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 10 NLR Technical Support Services NLR NOC (Service Desk) – Indiana University NLR Layer 1 NOC – CENIC Layer 2/3 Support Center – L2/3 engineering lead by Indiana University Experiments Support Services – lead by MCNC in conjunction with the NLR Network Research Council

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 11 The NLR Infrastructures (plural) Owned Fiber: 20-yr IRUs with Level 3, Wiltel Layer 1 Optics: Cisco 15808s and 15454s supporting up to Gbps lambdas (LANPHY) Layer 2: Cisco 6509 switches for Gigabit Ethernet Layer 3: Cisco CRS-1 routers for IP (v4/v6) Wavelengths available for experimental or production networks Dark Fiber possible, for experimental Layer 1 research

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 12 National LambdaRail NLR WaveNet PoP NLR WaveNet & FrameNet PoP NLR WaveNet, FrameNet & PacketNet PoP NLR owned fiber

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 13 How will we as a community use NLR? Different types of users (ESS will talk more on this): Some users want to do research OVER NLR (facility) –Whole 10G lambdas –Point to point VLANs (perhaps bandwidth guaranteed) –Production routed IP traffic? Some may want to do research ON NLR (network, control, signaling, protocols) –GMPLS? OBS? ? –Layer 2? –Layer 3? Some may want to do a combination –Interaction between experimental and production? –Interaction between layers?

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 14 What about Collaboration? Yes, interaction and collaboration with regional networking efforts. Yes, continue collaborations with international partners in advanced networking at all layers. What about collaboration with other corporate organizations? Details of how these will happen are being worked out. We currently have few drivers at layers 2 and 3.

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 15 NLR Development Status NLR Layer 1 (layers 2 and 3 next...) –Cisco Optical Network System (ONS) and chassis. –Level3 and WilTel: fiber, co-location and hands & eyes. Also some sites like PacWave provide similar services. –Phase 1: California-Seattle-Denver; Chicago- Pittsburgh-DC-Atlanta-Jacksonville FL completed in –Phase 2: In progress, happening over the summer and into early fall. Wash DC – New York – Cleveland build, spur to Salt Lake City (15454s from Ogden, UT), southern route build - uses Cisco 15454s (instead of 15808s).

National LambdaRail, Inc – Confidential & Proprietary 16 NLR User Resources What else do we need to have eventually? User list? Anything else?