National LambdaRail is a 12000 miles (19,312.1 km), high-speed national network infrastructure owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community that runs over fiber-optic lines, and is the first transcontinental 10-Gigabit Ethernet

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

 network. Its very high capacity (up to 1.6 Tbit/s aggregate), high bandwidth (40 Gbit/s implemented; planning for 100 Gbit/s underway) and high availability (99.99% or more), enable National LambdaRail to support some of the world's most demanding research projects. Users include NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and over 280 research universities and other laboratories. In 2009 National LambdaRail was selected to provide wide-area networking for U.S. laboratories participating in research related to the Large Hadron Collider

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....

 project, based near Geneva, Switzerland.

It is primarily oriented to aid terascale computing efforts and to be used as a network testbed for experimentation with next-generation large-scale networks. National LambdaRail is a university-based and -owned initiative, in contrast with Abilene and Internet2

Internet2

Internet2 is an advanced not-for-profit US networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government....

, which are university-corporate

Corporation

A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...

 sponsorships. National LambdaRail does not impose any acceptable use policies on its users, in contrast to commercial networks. This gives researchers more control to use the network for these research projects. National LambdaRail also supports a production layer on its infrastructure.

Links in the network use dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), which allows up to 64 individual optical wavelength

Wavelength

In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...

s to be used (depending on hardware configuration at each end) separated by 100 GHz spacing. At present, individual wavelengths are used to carry traditional OC

Optical Carrier

Optical Carrier transmission rates are a standardized set of specifications of transmission bandwidth for digital signals that can be carried on Synchronous Optical Networking fiber optic networks...

-X (OC3, OC12, OC48 or OC192) TDM

Time-division multiplexing

Time-division multiplexing is a type of digital multiplexing in which two or more bit streams or signals are transferred apparently simultaneously as sub-channels in one communication channel, but are physically taking turns on the channel. The time domain is divided into several recurrent...

 circuits or Ethernet signal for Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...

 or 10 Gigabit Ethernet

10 Gigabit Ethernet

The 10 gigabit Ethernet computer networking standard was first published in 2002. It defines a version of Ethernet with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s , ten times faster than gigabit Ethernet.10 gigabit Ethernet defines only full duplex point to point links which are generally connected by...

.

Glenn Ricart is president and CEO of National LambdaRail. Wendy Huntoon is chief technology officer and Kurt Snodgrass chief administrative and financial officer. Jim Dolgonas, president and CEO of CENIC, is the Chair of the National LambdaRail Board of Directors.

National LambdaRail was founded in 2003 and in 2004 its national, advanced fiber optic network was completed. In addition to being the first transcontinental, production 10-Gigabit Ethernet network, National LambdaRail was also the first intelligently managed, nationwide peering and transit program focused on research applications. National LambdaRail operates the first and only non-commercial Cisco TelePresence exchange and recently conducted the first international TelePresence session over a research and education network

Goals

The goals of the National LambdaRail project are:

• To bridge the gap between leading-edge optical network research and state-of-the-art applications research;
• To push beyond the technical and performance limitations of today’s Internet backbone
  Internet backbone
  The Internet backbone refers to the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected networks and core routers in the Internet...
  
  s;
• To provide the growing set of major computationally intensive science (often termed e-Science
  E-Science
  E-Science is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid...
  
  ) projects, initiatives and experiments with the dedicated bandwidth, deterministic performance characteristics, and/or other advanced network capabilities they need; and
• To enable and to rekindle the possibilities for highly creative, out-of-the-box experimentation and innovation that characterized facilities-based network research during the early years of the Internet
  Internet
  The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
  
  .

Member organizations

Members of National LambdaRail (NLR) are state or regional optical networks (RONs), which provide the last mile connectivity to the individual universities and laboratories using NLR. NLR currently has 13 members which enable more than 280 research universities and government laboratories to connect to NLR. The following is a list, from the official National LambdaRail web site, of LambdaRail member organizations.

• CENIC (The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California)
• Florida LambdaRail
• Front Range GigaPop / University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
• Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN)
• North Carolina Light Rail
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
• Pacific Northwest Gigapop
• Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center / University of Pittsburgh
• Southeastern Universities Research Association
• Southern Light Rail
• The Virginia Tech Foundation/Mid-Atlantic Crossroads
• University of New Mexico (on behalf of the State of New Mexico)