The National LambdaRail (NLR) project is linking universities across the United States in an all-optical network consisting of thousands of miles of fiber; it's the first such network of its kind. NLR's research focus -- and potential future impact on the commercial market -- are leading some networking experts to make comparisons between the project and the early investments that led to the Internet itself.
Last month, NLR completed the first full East-West phase of deployment, which included links between Denver and Chicago, Atlanta and Jacksonville, and Seattle and Denver. Phase two, which is expected to be complete by May or June 2005, will cover the southern region of the United States. This part of the project will link universities from Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Salt Lake City and New York.
"The National LambdaRail is the next step in the natural evolution of research and education in data communications," said Tom West, chief executive of the National LambdaRail. "For the first time, researchers will actually own underlying infrastructure, something that is crucial in developing advanced science applications and network research."
Forget Internet2 and its 10-gigabit-per-second network, called Abilene. Experts say NLR is the most ambitious networking initiative since the US Department of Defense commissioned the ARPAnet in 1969 and the National Science Foundation worked on NSFnet in the late 1980s -- two efforts considered crucial to the development and commercialisation of the Internet.
The problem that has faced the research community since the commercialisation of the Internet is that they have become beholden to commercial carriers that own the fiber and basic infrastructure of the communications networks. They are often forced to sign multiyear contracts that exceed their research needs. And because researchers don't own the access to the fundamental building blocks of the network, they can't conduct cutting-edge experiments on the network itself.
Now, for the first time in years, experts say, researchers once again have full access to a research network, providing unmatched opportunities to push networking technology forward.
"LambdaRail is creating the ARPAnet all over again," said Scot Colburn, a network engineer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which plans to hook into LambdaRail next year. "People in the academic community will now be able to play with the protocols and the basic infrastructure in a way they can't do now."
Help for optical networking?
The biggest likely beneficiary of NLR is the optical networking industry.
During the boom years, carriers such as WorldCom were predicting unprecedented growth on their networks, and new optical networking seemed like just the technology to feed the need. Carriers racked up debt as they spent billions of dollars in digging trenches and laying fiber. Billions of dollars also were pumped into equipment start-ups to make devices that could efficiently use this fiber to transmit massive amounts of data at lightning speeds.
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