Nationwide Fiber Optic Science Network

zCyl writes "An article at SMH describes a large fiber optic network called the National LambdaRail, which has completed 1,084 out of a planned 16,000 kilometers between major universities and research institutions. Upon completion it should transmit 400 Gbps and stretch across the continental U.S. Access to the network will be intentionally restricted to scientists and researchers only 'for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications'."

Comments

Urban America

[Angram]

You answered your own question: "I can move 14 miles to town, and have access to DSL, Cable, and WiFi"

The concept of rural is that which is distinguished from the city. While cities are havens for technology, the countryside is for nature. If you want tech, go where tech is, don't get angry because tech won't come to you. It's not cost effective to wire rural areas - isolated household require up to several miles of dedicated lines serving only one customer, which is not cost effective. It would require decades of subscription from you to pay for the lines to your house. This isn't the case in urban/suburban areas where individual houses only require a few dozen feet of cable.

Oh, and you wouldn't have the internet at all if not for the academics you're trying to fight. If you want a better connection, support the people trying to invent the technology to make it feasible.

Re:How would you use that?

[zcat_NZ]

That's part of the research; designing equipment that can forward, filter, prioritise, and route traffic at that kind of bandwidth.

Geant movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The european research network (up to 10Gbit/s) has an infomercial at their webpage that is interesting, since all the applications and benefits discussed pretty much applies in the US as well.

Re:How would you use that?

[Arch_dude]

Nope. A Cisco 12000 has 16 ports of 10Gbps. It receives 160Gbps, and transmits 160Gbps, so it "can move" only 160Gbps. Cisco calls this "320Gbps." the internet industry calls this "Cisco math." A Juniper T540 has 32 lines of 10Gbps, so it can actually "move" 320Gbps. A big Avici router can do better.

Internet2 and Lambdarail are different.

[zymano]

They are cooperating networks

Why Yet Another High Speed Research Network?

[Crypto Gnome]

From what I can understand (amongst all the blurb) this LambdaRail is all about a complete network of (lots-and-lots-of) switched 10Gbps Lambdas (optical wavelengths). So at any point you can dedicate N Lambdas to a particular use and guarantee (at a physical/optical level) bandwidth/latency/QoS.

Specifically, absolutely unconditionally zero impact to any other data transmissions across the network because these transmissions are actually physically (ie optically) seperate and distinct transmissions.

In short, if we could literally segment a 'slice' off the network and isolate it from everything else running around, what would/could we do with it?

Internet2 is a completely different concept.

All the data is transmitted across one network (ie not guaranteed via 'optical separation'; ie 'just like The Internet Today, only much faster') and researching how to route/switch/filter a trillion-zillion packets with minimal latency/guaranteed QoS/additional application-specific functionality and then given those network-abilities researching how to manage that network and what new uses you can apply to that network.With (apparently) the specific intention of eventually, one day, before-the-heat-death-of-the-universe, rolling out said network and enhanced functionality to "the real world/the rest of us humans".