National LightRail: Towards a National Optical Research Network

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National LightRail Towards a National Optical
Research Network

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NLR Footprint and Layer 1 Topology
SEA
POR
SAC
BOS
NYC
CHI
OGD
DEN
SVL
CLE
WDC
PIT
FRE
KAN
RAL
NAS
STR
LAX
PHO
WAL
ATL
SDG
OLG
DAL
JAC
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National Light Rail

• Dark Fiber National footprint
• Serves very high-end Experimental and Research
  Applications
• 4 - 10GB Wavelengths initially
• Capable of 40 10Gb wavelengths at buildout
• Partnership model

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Rationale for NLR

• Current market demonstrates willingness of
  private sector setting stage for strong
  partnership of academia, corporations and
  government
• Research community in USA and worldwide working
  on large scale research and development
  applications calling for increasing bandwidth as
  evidenced by the Grid and Terascale projects
• Unified approach best investment for biggest
  payoff for the most users
• Federal program funding support focused on
  research and experimental applications needing
  significant network capacity
• Leadership worldwide in research and education
  increasingly dependent upon large-scale
  collaborative research activities
• Meet the future needs of the research and
  community most economically

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Drivers and Motivations

• RESEARCH Network research tools
• EXPERIMENTAL Exp. infrastructure
• OPERATIONAL 24/7 high performance
• Aubrey Bush
• NSF

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Drivers and Motivations

• Cost
• Control
• Flexibility
• Responsiveness
• Innovation
• End-to-End networking

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Why Fiber?

• Capacity needed is not otherwise affordable
• Capabilities needed are not available
• Cheaper in the long range
• Leverage with carriers
• Insurance against monopoly behavior
• Stable and predictable anchor points

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Why Fiber? Innovation

• Research cant be held hostage to what industry
  thinks the market want.
• Infrastructure investments of the past are
  getting in the way of real innovation.
• The situation is reminiscent of the telco
  infrastructure situation before APRANET.
• Bob Kahn
• CRA-Snowbird 02

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Optical Transport - Light Rail

• Multi-State interest in a larger geographic fiber
  based infrastructure
• Vendors very interested in selling National
  footprint

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Goals and Uses

• Research! (including Network Research)
• Experimentation in networking and in education
• Regional fiber/ ? efforts in edu research
  sectors
• Education
• Academic Med. Center driven Clinical activities
• Development implementation of network
  computing technologies not otherwise likely to be
  generally available commercially as early as
  needed in RE.
• Enabling deterministic and other e2e bandwidth/
  ?s, dark fiber and conduit for Grid, eScience
  etc. for Regionals etc.

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NLR Service Offerings

• Waves!!!!
• Dark Fiber
• MetaPoP capabilities
• Dedicated OC-192c or 10GE waves
• No wave can interfere with others
• Shared IP service
• Must be able to tolerate outages
• Supports experimental code
• Subdivided waves for dedicated uses
• Delivered as gigabit Ethernet

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NLR Governance

• LLC - Equity Partners
• Joint Research Council
• Joint Technology Council
• Distributed Network Engineering/ Operations
• Waves governed/managed by various groups

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Backers

• Carnegie Mellon/PSC
• Virginia Tech
• Duke
• Georgia Tech
• Florida
• Texas

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Backers

• CENIC
• PNWGP
• NCAR
• SURA
• UCAID

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Technology Partners

• Cisco Systems
• Level 3

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COSTS

• 80.2 MILLION
• Over
• 5 Years

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NLR Footprint and Layer 1 Topology
SEA
POR
SAC
BOS
NYC
CHI
OGD
DEN
SVL
CLE
WDC
PIT
FRE
KAN
RAL
NAS
STR
LAX
PHO
WAL
ATL
SDG
OLG
DAL
JAC
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National Light Rail Lambda Route Map
REGEN
TERMINAL
OADM
Metro 10 Gig E
4
Seattle
Chicago
Denver
Cleveland
Kansas
Ogden
Boise
4
2
4
4
6
2
6
4
Salt Lake City
Portland
StarLight
2
Boston
5
Pittsburgh
Sacramento
2
Sunnyvale
15808 LH System
15808 ELH System
2
4
4
Fresno
15540 Metro System
4
10 Gig E
4
New York City
Washington DC
OC192
4
Los Angeles
2
4
4
2
Stratford
4
San Diego
4
4
Walnut
Nashville
Dallas
Raleigh
Olga
Pheonix
Atlanta
4
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NLR POP Architecture
Long Haul OC48/OC192/10GigE DWDM
NLR
DWDM
10 Gig E or OC192
Gig E
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Calren/DC/HPR/NLR POP Architecture
CalRen DC
HPR
NLR
Long Haul OC48/OC192/10GigE DWDM
DWDM
10 Gig E or OC192
Gig E
CalREN/DC
HPR
NLR
15500
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Questions?