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National LambdaRail Launches Transit and Peering Project

Five NLR Members Begin Project to Improve Network Performance and Reduce Costs of Internet Services April 20, 2006 Cypress, California - National LambdaRail (NLR), a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, today announced that it has inaugurated a project to provision an intelligently managed nationwide peering and transit program. The initial participants include NLR members: the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP), Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership (MATP), Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). Called National TransitRail, the project aims to use commodity and peering traffic to improve network performance and reduce the overall cost of Internet services to NLR members. In keeping with NLR’s distributive management philosophy, Pacific Wave is managing this project on behalf of NLR. Pacific Wave will utilize expertise developed in its state-of-the-art West Coast distributed peering exchange facility that also provides US-based exchange services for Pacific Rim research and education networks. Utilizing NLR’s nationwide network fiber and optronics infrastructure at layer 2 and layer 3, the initial NLR participants are working to efficiently direct traffic as quickly as possible to the target network / organization, reducing the number of ‘hops’ required for the data to get to its destination. The team is also investigating the balance between peering sessions and transit routes at geographically dispersed locations. “NLR’s national footprint and large traffic flows will help drive many larger-scale peering relationships over time,” said Tom West, NLR President. “We believe that it is time for the research and education community to further exploit the reliability and redundancy that a national peering and transit infrastructure affords. This is the first step in that direction.” “CENIC and PNWGP have been engaged in providing peering services to their respective organizations through our Pacific Wave partnership,” noted Jim Dolgonas, President and Chief Operating Officer of CENIC. “NLR’s National TransitRail makes it possible to expand this success on a national scale.” “This project offers our FRGP NLR members a new way to increase network performance while, at the same time, lowering costs over time,” said Marla Meehl, Manager of the FRGP and networking at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). “Services like National TransitRail make our investment in NLR further benefit the FRGP members and their thousands of users in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.” The first phase of the project is expected to run for 9 months. Then, NLR plans to broaden participation to include all interested NLR members. About National LambdaRail National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, the power and the promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation’s scientists and researchers. Visit www.nlr.net for more information. About Pacific Wave Pacific Wave is a joint project between the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), and is operated in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. Pacific Wave enhances research and education network capabilities by increasing network efficiency, reducing latency, increasing throughput, and reducing costs. Visit www.pacificwave.net for more information. Contact: Concordia Chen concordia @ aldea.com 760-510-8406 ext. 5