CENIC Announces Connection to NASA Ames To Support Research and Education

Cypress, CA (November 10, 2005) – The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) today announced the completion of a gigabit Ethernet connection linking the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) to CENIC’s advanced services California Research and Education Network (CalREN). Network traffic via the NASA Research and Engineering Network (NREN) at ARC, including traffic from leading scientists working on Department of Energy projects, will travel across this newly installed fiber connection to reach sites, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California via CalREN. They will also be able to reach sites across the nation and world via CalREN’s connections to national and international research and education networks such as Internet2, NLR, ESNet, and CAnet2.

The NREN connection to CalREN has been made possible by an agreement between CENIC and NASA to share the costs of construction of dark fiber to the NASA ARC facility at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley. Under the terms of the agreement, NREN will gain the use of twelve strands of dark fiber, allowing the center to connect to CalREN at CENIC’s Sunnyvale hub site and Northern California international peering point. CENIC also operates an international peering exchange in Los Angeles, providing international research and education networks the choice of two convenient locations for connection.

CENIC will use its fibers to support additional connections to CalREN. The ability to access CENIC’s robust network and related services will serve as a magnet for attracting a variety of research and education entities considering tenancy at the NASA Research Park (NRP) located at the former Moffett Air Base and adjacent to ARC. Higher education institutions already committed to establishing facilities at the NRP include the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Center, Carnegie Mellon (West), and San Jose State University. Industry partners include the ASRC Aerospace Corporation, Honeybee Robotics, and Ozen Engineering Inc.

"The combination of state of the art network infrastructure, prominent research institutions, and corporate researchers and developers in one location creates the synergy and environment that leads to innovation and economic development," CENIC’s President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Dolgonas said.

He also noted that the fiber infrastructure enables CENIC and NASA ARC to support leading-edge research at minimal cost for the foreseeable future. Dolgonas pointed to the fiber sharing agreement as evidence of the entities' commitment to meeting growing bandwidth needs, both today and tomorrow, in a fiscally responsible manner.

Eric Frost, Associate Professor of Geological Sciences at San Diego State, is among those who will be able to use the new CalREN network connection. "My colleagues at Calit2 and I look forward to working with Ames to use CalREN's 10 GigE connection as a test bed for disaster response. Smaller bandwidths are currently being used by Calit2, NASA, NOAA and other groups for image processing and visualization efforts to assist with the response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita (see http://katrina.telascience.org). Future efforts will be much more successful with the additional bandwidth."

Ken Freeman, manager of the NASA Research and Engineering Network, noted that the partnership is unique for NASA. "The success in launching this partnership is owed in large part to the entities’ shared commitment to providing highly reliable, yet flexible, advanced networking options to researchers and their partners around the globe. It warrants praise for the stellar team CENIC has managed to assemble, and recognition of the quality services they provide to the research and education community."

The capacity and functionality enabled by the network will benefit numerous efforts underway at NASA, including providing connectivity to the 800+ users of the Columbia supercomputer housed at ARC, one of the world's fastest supercomputers. High-performance connectivity is essential to support the finite volume General Circulation Model (fvGCM) code used for hurricane prediction and to create global atmospheric models, and the Estimating the Circulation of the Ocean (ECCO) project, which requires cross-country data transfer rates on the terabyte level each day. NREN will be used to support the continuing Return to Flight effort for the Space Shuttle orbiter and to assist in completing the President’s vision for exploration to the moon and Mars during the first half of this century.

About CENIC and CalREN

CENIC is a not-for-profit corporation serving the California Institute of Technology, California State University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Southern California, California Community Colleges and the statewide K-12 school system. CENIC's mission is to develop, deploy and operate leading edge network-based services and to facilitate and coordinate their use for the research and education community to advance learning and innovation. More information about CENIC can be found at http://www.cenic.org.

CalREN is the nation's most powerful statewide, education and research-focused network. Serving all educational institutions in California (K-12 on up), CalREN network connections offer educators and researchers the ability to access and use state-of-the art resources throughout the nation and the world. The network enables delivery of advanced curriculum, access to advanced research resources and services regardless of size or location, and provides a flexible growth path for continued high-quality, education-focused network connectivity.

About NREN

The NASA Research and Engineering Network (NREN) focuses on the development and early deployment of high-performance networking technologies in addition to providing high-performance connectivity to the Columbia supercomputer. NREN provides a nationwide Wide Area Network (WAN) connecting selected NASA centers and peers with other high-performance network test beds to enable NASA scientists, engineers and researchers to reach their partners within other Federal agencies and academia. As NASA integrates emerging networking technologies into their activities, it will be able to revolutionize mission applications involving space exploration, the design of air and space vehicles, Earth system modeling, and access to information contained in vast databases. More information about NREN can be found at http://www.nren.nasa.gov.

About NASA Ames

NASA Ames was founded in 1939 and has evolved into one of the nation’s premiere research labs in support of NASA missions and the nation’s Vision for Space Exploration. More information about NASA Ames is available at http://www.NASA.gov/centers/ames/about/index.html.