1. 1 Optical Research Networks WGISS 18: Beijing China September 2004 David Hartzell NASA Ames / CSC dhartzell@arc.nasa.gov

2. 2 Agenda Background Motivation Applications

3. 3 Background In the continental U.S., there is a surplus of optical fiber deployed in the ground. New optical and electronics technology even further extends this “glut” of fiber to amazing bandwidths.

4. 4 Fiber In the late ‘90s there was a rush to deploy as much fiber as possible, due to increasing bandwidth demands. After the dot-com crash, many companies went bankrupt, and fiber was available for pennies on the dollar.

5. 5 WDM Also, there were significant advances in Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM). fiber Before WDM

6. 6 With WDM Now, many wavelengths (or colors or Lambdas) can be easily ‘mixed’ down one fiber, increasing capacity. fiber

7. 7 Dense WDM (DWDM) With DWDM, we now have up to 40 wavelengths per fiber. Our routing and switching technology current maxes out at 40 gigabits/s (160 lambdas per fiber on the way). 40 gig/s x 40 colors = 1600 gigabit/s/fiber!!

8. 8 Motivation With all the cheap fiber in the ground, it seemed like a good idea to buy some (while it is still cheap) and light it up on your own. But, even though the fiber is cheap (relatively speaking) it is still expensive.

9. 9 The NLR Enter, the National Lambda Rail (NLR). NLR is a U.S. consortium of education institutions and research entities that partnered to build a nation-wide fiber network for research activities. –NLR offers wavelengths to members and/or Ethernet transport services. –NLR is buying a 20-year right-to-use.

10. 10 NLR Progress NLR currently has the $80- to $100-million investment to build the entire network. –Using latest optical technologies from Cisco. Northern tier of network is complete, southern by summer ‘05.

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12. 12 Denver Seattle LA San Diego Chicago Pitts Wash DC Raleigh Jacksonville Atlanta KC Portland Clev Boise Ogden /Salt Lake NLR Layer 1 NLR Route NLR – Optical Infrastructure - Phase 1

13. 13 Seattle Denver Los Angeles Cleveland Pitts Raleigh Wash DC Kansas Ogden Portland StarLight Chicago Atlanta Boise 15808 LH System 15808 ELH System 15454 Metro System Jacksonville Sunnyvale San Diego 15808 Terminal 15808 Regen (or Terminal) 15808 OADM 15454 Terminal CENIC 15808 LH System NLR Phase 1 - Installation Schedule Will Complete Aug 2004 Complete In Place August Complete July

14. 14 Current NLR Members CENIC Pacific Northwest GigaPOP Pittsburgh Supercomp. Center Duke (coalition of NC universities) Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership Cisco Systems Internet2 Florida LambdaRail Georgia Institute of Technology Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Texas / LEARN Cornell Louisiana Board of Regents University of New Mexico Oklahoma State Regents UCAR/FRGP Plus Agreements with: SURA (AT&T fiber donation) Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL)

15. 15 Applications Pure optical wavelength research Transport of Research and Education Traffic (like Internet2/Abilene today) Private Transport of member traffic Experience working operating and managing an optical network –Development of new technologies (GMPLS) to integrate optical networks into existing legacy networks

16. 16 The Future Concepts like the NLR provide wavelengths for members, and wavelengths for pure research. It is probable that the next-generation Internet2 will ride on the NLR. NLR provides an AUP-free transport for members.

17. 17 NASA’s Columbia System NASA Ames has embarked on a $130- million Linux Super Computer. –Twenty 512 processor IA-64 SGI Altix nodes –NREN-NG: an Optical support WAN NLR will be the optical transport for this network, delivering high-bandwidth to other NASA centers.

18. 18 ARC/NGIX-West JPL GSFC NGIX-East NREN Sites Peering Points 10 GigE NREN-NG Target NLR Sunnyvale NLR Los Angeles MATP NLR Houston NLR Cleveland NLR Chicago StarLight JSC GRC Approach MSFC NLR MSFC LRC Implementation Plan

19. 19 Thanks. David Hartzell dhartzell@arc.nasa.gov