NEW, FASTER COMPUTER NETWORK EXPANDS THROUGH NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND

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NEW, FASTER COMPUTER NETWORK EXPANDS THROUGH NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND
26 February 2007 - Cornell University

Cornell University is the focal point of a new organization that will enable educational institutions in New York state and New England to connect to and support a new, high-bandwidth computer network.

With the formation of Northeast LambdaRail, participating institutions will be able to connect to the nationwide National LambdaRail networking infrastructure that provides scientists and scholars unprecedented capabilities, flexibility and control. The new NeLR network initially will allow member institutions to connect to one another and to the national network at speeds of 10 Gbps, ultimately scalable to terabit speeds. Such speeds will allow network members, for example, remote operation of Cornell's supercomputers or the exchange of massive amounts of data resulting from particle accelerator experiments or sky surveys by the Arecibo radiotelescope.

NLR is a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private-sector technology companies deploying a nationwide networking infrastructure to support research in science, engineering, health care, and education. It is also designed to provide a research platform for new networking technologies. Cornell joined the consortium in June of 2004, pledging $1 million a year over five years to help support the development of the network, always with the intention that NLR services would be made available to other institutions in the region and that those institutions would take over part of the cost.

Charter members of NeLR are: New York University, Columbia University, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, the State University of New York campuses at Albany and Buffalo, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Tufts University. NYSERNet, the New York State Education and Research Network, provides technical implementation of the network and also holds a seat on the NeLR board.

NLR is not only about speed but also about control. It owns its "dark fiber" and owns and operates the hardware that "lights" the optical fiber with signals, rather than simply buying bandwidth on commercial networks. Owning the fiber not only provides increased bandwidth at lower cost, but also allows researchers to set up dedicated connections for research, including research aimed at improving network hardware and software. The network also will enable "grid computing," in which a problem is parallel-processed on high-performance computers in several locations.

http://www.cornell.edu

About: Cornell University
Once called "the first American university" by educational historian Frederick Rudolph, Cornell University represents a distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals. Adding practical subjects to the classics and admitting qualified students regardless of nationality, race, social circumstance, gender, or religion was quite a departure when Cornell was founded in 1865.

Today's Cornell reflects this heritage of egalitarian excellence. It is home to the nation's first colleges devoted to hotel administration, industrial and labor relations, and veterinary medicine. Both a private university and the land-grant institution of New York State, Cornell University is the most educationally diverse member of the Ivy League.

On the Ithaca campus alone nearly 20,000 students representing every state and 120 countries choose from among 4,000 courses in 11 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. Many undergraduates participate in a wide range of interdisciplinary programs, play meaningful roles in original research, and study in Cornell programs in Washington, New York City, and the world over.

In his first inaugural address, at the Weill Cornell Medical College campus in Qatar in October 2004, Jeffrey Lehman, the first Cornell alumnus to become its president, articulated a vision projecting Cornell as "the transnational university of the future."

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