1

Optical Research Networks

WGISS 18: Beijing China

September 2004

David Hartzell

NASA Ames / CSC

dhartzell@arc.nasa.gov

2

Agenda

• Background

• Motivation

• Applications

3

Background

• In the continental U.S., there is a surplus of optical fiber deployed in the ground.

• New optical and electronics technology even further extends this “glut” of fiber to amazing bandwidths.

4

Fiber

• In the late ‘90s there was a rush to deploy as much fiber as possible, due to increasing bandwidth demands.

• After the dot-com crash, many companies went bankrupt, and fiber was available for pennies on the dollar.

5

WDM

• Also, there were significant advances in Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM).

fiber

Before WDM

6

With WDM• Now, many wavelengths (or colors or Lambdas) can

be easily ‘mixed’ down one fiber, increasing capacity.

fiber

7

Dense WDM (DWDM)

• With DWDM, we now have up to 40 wavelengths per fiber.

• Our routing and switching technology current maxes out at 40 gigabits/s (160 lambdas per fiber on the way).

40 gig/s x 40 colors = 1600 gigabit/s/fiber!!

8

Motivation

• With all the cheap fiber in the ground, it seemed like a good idea to buy some (while it is still cheap) and light it up on your own.

• But, even though the fiber is cheap (relatively speaking) it is still expensive.

9

The NLR• Enter, the National Lambda Rail (NLR).

• NLR is a U.S. consortium of education institutions and research entities that partnered to build a nation-wide fiber network for research activities.– NLR offers wavelengths to members and/or Ethernet

transport services.

– NLR is buying a 20-year right-to-use.

10

NLR Progress

• NLR currently has the $80- to $100-million investment to build the entire network.– Using latest optical technologies from Cisco.

• Northern tier of network is complete, southern by summer ‘05.

11

12

Denver

Seattle

LASan Diego

ChicagoPitts

Wash DC

Raleigh

Jacksonville

Atlanta

KC

Portland

Clev

Boise

Ogden/Salt Lake

NLR Layer 1

NLR Route

NLR – Optical Infrastructure - Phase 1

13

Seattle

Denver

Los Angeles

Cleveland

Pitts

Raleigh

Wash DC

Kansas

OgdenPortland

StarLight

Chicago

Atlanta

Boise

15808 LH System

15808 ELH System

15454 Metro System

Jacksonville

Sunnyvale

San Diego

15808 Terminal

15808 Regen (or Terminal)

15808 OADM

15454 Terminal

CENIC 15808 LH System

NLR Phase 1 - Installation ScheduleWill Complete Aug 2004

Complete

Complete

Complete

Complete

In Place

August

Complete

July

14

Current NLR Members

• CENIC

• Pacific Northwest GigaPOP

• Pittsburgh Supercomp. Center

• Duke (coalition of NC universities)

• Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership

• Cisco Systems

• Internet2

• Florida LambdaRail

• Georgia Institute of Technology

• Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)

• Texas / LEARN

• Cornell

• Louisiana Board of Regents

• University of New Mexico

• Oklahoma State Regents

• UCAR/FRGP

Plus Agreements with:

• SURA (AT&T fiber donation)

• Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL)

15

Applications• Pure optical wavelength research• Transport of Research and Education

Traffic (like Internet2/Abilene today)• Private Transport of member traffic• Experience working operating and

managing an optical network– Development of new technologies (GMPLS) to

integrate optical networks into existing legacy networks

16

The Future

• Concepts like the NLR provide wavelengths for members, and wavelengths for pure research.

• It is probable that the next-generation Internet2 will ride on the NLR.

• NLR provides an AUP-free transport for members.

17

NASA’s Columbia System

• NASA Ames has embarked on a $130-million Linux Super Computer.– Twenty 512 processor IA-64 SGI Altix nodes– NREN-NG: an Optical support WAN

• NLR will be the optical transport for this network, delivering high-bandwidth to other NASA centers.

18

ARC/NGIX-WestARC/NGIX-West

JPLJPL

GSFCGSFC

NGIX-EastNGIX-East

NREN SitesPeering Points10 GigE

NREN-NG Target

NLR SunnyvaleNLR Sunnyvale

NLR Los AngelesNLR Los Angeles

MATPMATP

NLR HoustonNLR Houston

NLR ClevelandNLR ClevelandNLR ChicagoNLR ChicagoStarLightStarLight

JSCJSC

GRCGRC

Approach

MSFCMSFCNLR MSFCNLR MSFC

LRCLRC

Implementation Plan

19

Thanks.

David Hartzell

dhartzell@arc.nasa.gov