APPLICATIONS

The AtlanticWave service, officially launched by the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and a group of collaborating not-for-profit organizations, is a distributed international research network exchange and peering facility along the Atlantic coast of North and South America. The main goal of AtlanticWave is to facilitate research and education (R&E) collaborations between U.S. and Latin American institutions. AtlanticWave will provide R&E network exchange and peering services for existing networks that interconnect at key exchange points along the Atlantic Coast of North and South America, including MAN LAN in New York City, MAX GigaPOP and NGIX-East in Washington D.C., SoX GigaPOP in Atlanta, AMPATH in Miami, and the São Paulo, Brazil exchange point operated by the Academic Network of São Paulo (ANSP). AtlanticWave supports the GLIF (Global Lambda Integrated Facility - www.glif.is) Open Lightpath Exchange (GOLE) model. AtlanticWave was proposed as an integral component of the successful proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program by Florida International University (FIU) and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). SURA has played a vital role in the actual creation of AtlanticWave, by providing the initial funds needed to purchase a 10-Gigabit Ethernet wave on the National LambdaRail (NLR) and the Florida LambdaRail (FLR) to interconnect the four east coast U.S. exchange points, as well as facilitating the formation of the collaboration. The organizations collaborating in establishing and operating AtlanticWave include SURA, FIU, FLR, Southern Light Rail (SLR), MAX, Internet2, and the International Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF). “AtlanticWave promises to expand our international efforts in scientific discovery,” said Jerry Draayer, President and CEO of SURA, a U.S. non-profit organization that fosters collaborations in science and engineering among its more than 60 member universities. “Our mission is to enhance the research capacity of our members, the region and our nation, and extends to international collaborations. With the creation of AtlanticWave enabling enhanced research partnerships with our Latin American colleagues, our research universities should be positioned better to continue advancing world class research and education,” said Draayer. While AtlanticWave’s main goal is to facilitate research collaborations between U.S. and Latin American institutions, it will have broader impact. By connecting the east coast exchange points, it will enable richer collaborations among science and engineering research and education communities in the broader North American, Asia-Pacific, Latin American and European regions as well. For example, AtlanticWave will make it possible for a research laboratory at CERN, on the Franco-Swiss border, to collaborate with a laboratory in São Paulo to run an experiment that requires dedicated network resources for a fixed period of time. In addition, the service will allow Canada’s national research and education network, CAnet4, to directly interconnect with networks from Latin America who are connected to the São Paulo exchange point, such as the ANSP of Brazil. In the short term, AtlanticWave is already having an impact on the Supercomputing 2006 conference being held in Tampa, Florida, November 13-17. FLR engineers using optical equipment provided by Cisco Systems have extended AtlanticWave from Miami to the Tampa conference site. This additional 10Gbps link to the AtlanticWave will make it possible for several additional research groups to demonstrate their advanced applications at the conference. Networks already connected to AtlanticWave exchange points can automatically begin using the service to establish peering relationships with international networks. Networks interested in using the AtlanticWave service can obtain information about how to connect by visiting the AtlanticWave project web site at its Web site.