Internet2 Demonstrates Optical Networking Firsts at

SC|05 Supercomputing Conference

Consortium's Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure Testbed Links Radio

Telescopes Across the Globe for Real Time Data Analysis

SEATTLE, Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time, three radio
telescopes distributed around the world will be connected via
dynamically provisioned dedicated optical circuits for an electronic
Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (e-VLBI) observation. Internet2
announced this scientific and networking achievement at the first
major demonstration of its nationwide Hybrid Optical and Packet
Infrastructure (HOPI) testbed, during the SC|05 conference held in
Seattle, Washington this week. The demonstration marks a critical
milestone in dynamic or "on demand" optical networking that can
support even the most extreme applications used by the global research
and education community today.

Leveraging the HOPI infrastructure together with the NSF-funded DRAGON
testbed, the telescopes located in Westford Mass. US; Greenbelt, Md.
US; and Onsala, Sweden will be dynamically linked via dedicated
low-latency optical circuits to a central data correlator and
simultaneously transmit multiple gigabits-per-second of data during a
20-minute observation. The team will also attempt to connect to a
fourth telescope in Kashima, Japan during the demonstration.
Historically, radio astronomy data was recorded on magnetic tape or
disk at each site and shipped to the central processing location for
the analysis.

"VLBI is one of the most powerful techniques available for the high-
resolution imaging of distant radio sources in the universe and for
making accurate measurements of the motion of the earth in space,"
said Alan Whitney, principal scientist at the MIT Haystack Observatory
in Westford, Massachusetts. "These capabilities also allow scientists
to measure such things as continental drift and to calibrate the
orbits of GPS satellites to enable more accurate position measurements
on the surface on the Earth. Advanced optical networks like HOPI and
DRAGON, will undoubtedly open new doors for radio-astronomy
observations and important science."

As a part of Internet2's mission to design and deliver an advanced
network infrastructure to meet the emerging needs of the research and
education community, Internet2 has built the HOPI nationwide testbed
to investigate next-generation network architectures that combine the
best qualities of optical and packet technologies. The testbed is a
model for the future of Internet2's high performance Abilene network
which serves as a platform for both experimental networking
applications as well as stable production IP services.

"The HOPI testbed has far-reaching applications in the scientific,
engineering, and medical arenas which have come to require far more
sophisticated network and resources than those previously available,"
said Rick Summerhill, co-chair of the HOPI design team and Internet2
director of network research, architecture and technologies.
"Internet2's HOPI investigation represents a new paradigm in
networking that goes well beyond traditional production services of
today. In doing so, we hope to catalyze a new era of advanced
applications which at this point have only been imagined."

Not only will the demonstration highlight the capability to provision
on- demand light paths within an administrative domain, but it also
proves for the first time, the ability to provision those optical
circuits across multiple network administrative domains for global
data transmissions. Utilizing DRAGON-developed inter-domain
Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) capabilities, which
provides control plane capabilities, automated end-to-end circuit
provisioning, and management of network resources, the optical routes
were seamlessly connected across scientific, HOPI and DRAGON domains.
The paths also crossed UKLight, SURFnet, NorthernLight, Nordunet,
SUnet, JGN2, StarlLight, GIG-EF, and BOSnet.

"We believe the control plane technologies DRAGON has developed and
integrated into HOPI pulls together a number of efforts within the R&E
community and the international Internet standards bodies to show that
these dynamic hybrid network architectures are indeed viable and of
great value to the scientific and academic communities," said Jerry
Sobieski, lead coordinator of the HOPI Testbed Support Center and
project manager for the DRAGON Project. "This demonstration opens the
door for both significant advances in radio astronomy and geodesy as
well as establishes a foundation on which the global networking
community can expand the scope and availability of these
capabilities."

Designed to model future optical networking infrastructures, the HOPI
testbed utilizes facilities from Internet2's Abilene Network, the
National LambdaRail (NLR) infrastructure, The MAN LAN exchange point,
and regional optical networks. HOPI nodes, deployed in Seattle,
Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., each consists
of a 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch provided by Force10 Networks, a fiber
cross connect switch provided by Glimmerglass, and HP's servers to
measure network performance and manage control plane capabilities. For
more information on the HOPI project visit:
http://networks.internet2.edu/hopi/hopi-media.cfml

The radio astronomy demonstration will be held during SC|05 at the
Internet2 booth at the following times:

Internet2 BOOTH#2435:

Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - 11am-2pm PT

Thursday, November 17, 2005 - 11am-2pm PT

About Internet2(R)

Led by more than 200 U.S. universities working with industry and
government, Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network
applications and technologies for research and higher education,
accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates
the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped
foster today's Internet in its infancy. For more information, visit:
http://www.internet2.edu.

About HOPI

Commissioned in early 2004, the Hybrid Optical and Packet
Infrastructure (HOPI) initiative has brought together networking
leaders from academia and industry to examine a hybrid of packet and
circuit switched optical technologies and explore how to create
scalable future networks to support the evolving needs of the research
and education community. Utilizing facilities from both Internet2 and
the National LambdaRail (NLR) infrastructure, the nationwide testbed
will provide a facility for researchers and scientists from around the
world to collaborate and experiment with new networking technologies
such as dynamically provisioned bandwidth, circuit switched
environments, and new transport protocols. For more information,
visit: http://hopi.internet2.edu/ SOURCE Internet2

-0- 11/16/2005

/CONTACT: Lauren Rotman of Internet2, +1-202-331-5345, or Lauren@internet2.edu/

/Web site: http://www.internet2.edu

http://hopi.internet2.edu /