AboveNet in partnership with the Texas Learning & Computation Center (TLC2) at the University of Houston (UH) has created the Research & Education Network of Houston. RENoH, as it is known, enables the collaboration of widely spaced environments and locations. This project includes HD video and data intensive research collaborations among Houston institutions of Higher Education and their collaborators in Texas, the U.S. and internationally.

Dr. Lennart Johnsson, director of TLC2 said, “RENoH is the ultra-high-capacity Houston metropolitan fiber optic network established by TLC2 and AboveNet to facilitate collaboration among UH faculty and collaborators at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine in the Texas Medical Center, and collaborators elsewhere.” He added, “RENoH’s connection to the national high-speed networks for research and education, Internet2 and the National Lambda Rail (NLR), enables global data-intensive research and education collaborations through the international connectivity of those networks.”

RENoH allowed Houston institutions to participate in the multi-year preparation for the analysis  infrastructure of data from the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator built in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the next several months the LHC will produce in excess of 10,000 trillion bytes of data each year (about 10,000 state-of-the-art high density hard disks-worth of data each year), data to be shared among thousands of collaborating scientists globally, many in Texas.

“We are pleased to be able to provide our expertise in creating high performance networking to the University of Houston and their extended community,” said Bill LaPerch, AboveNet President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are excited to be part of this cutting edge research and education effort.”

The AboveNet connectivity is a critical step in bringing high-speed low-latency bandwidth to UH and Houston institutions of higher education and research for this purpose. RENoH initially provided more than 500 miles of fiber optic connectivity linking the Houston area institutions of higher education with each other and with LEARN, Internet2 and NLR. It connects them to the critical research resources of the national and international high-performance backbone networks.

“The partnership with AboveNet to establish RENoH was critical to our ability to establish a network capability second to none.  This network enables the University of Houston and collaborating Houston area institutions to participate in world leading research collaborations and provide our students with the best educational opportunities possible,” said Dr. Lennart Johnsson. “RENoH served as a catalyst for LEARN”, the state fiber-optic network established for 33 educational organizations throughout Texas”, Johnsson continued.

“AboveNet’s high bandwidth fiber enables the high performance computing, storage and visualization infrastructure that can help accelerate the transition of research into products and services. This will improve economic competitiveness, serve as a catalyst for enterprises in designing and operating their infrastructure and help secure the nation’s future competitiveness,” Dr. Johnsson added.