emin Emerging Technologies

National LambdaRail

Description

National LambdaRail (NLR) is a major initiative of United States research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. The foundation of the NLR infrastructure is a technology known as Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), which allows different wavelengths of light to carry information down the same fiber optic pair. Current DWDM implementations allow up to 40 wavelengths per fiber pair, each capable of transmitting information at 10 Gigabits per second (10 Gb/s).

Penn State has been connected to NLR since May 23, 2006. Emerging Technologies along with Telecommunications and Networking Services (TNS) and Consulting and Support Services (CSS) participated in some of the initial implementation discussions. ET expects to develop one or more pilot projects, which will be ready for the initial Penn State deployment of NLR. Penn State will use NLR to:

  • provide Penn State researchers with unprecedented connectivity to collaborators at other NLR universities;
  • test high bandwidth end-to-end applications, e.g. Media over IP; and
  • participate in Internet2 testbed activities.

Publications

N/A

Resources

National LambdaRail
ITS's NLR page

Primary ET Contact

Phil Devan PhilDevan@psu.edu

Collaborators

Telecommunications and Networking Services (TNS) and Consulting and Support Services (CSS) (http://css.its.psu.edu/), units of Information Technology Services (ITS).

Expected Deliverable(s)

Several pilot projects to test the capabilities of NLR. In particular, ET is developing the capability to transfer compressed and uncompressed high-definition video over IP in near real time (under the Media over IP initiative).

Level of ET Involvement

ET's role in NLR is to identify potential applications that can take advantage of NLR.

Initiative Start Date

September 2005