Pacific Wave to be the First Extensible International Peering Collaboration.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

HONOLULU--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 26, 2004

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) have agreed to cooperate in a joint project to create, deploy and operate an advanced, extensible peering facility along the entire Pacific Coast of the U.S.

The implementation of this novel international peering facility known as Pacific Wave creates a new peering paradigm by removing the geographical barriers of traditional peering facilities. Pacific Wave enables any U.S. or international network to connect at any one location along this U.S. Pacific Coast facility, as well as the option to peer with any other Pacific Wave participant regardless of the site of their physical connection.

"By presenting a seamless, unified international peering exchange facility at strategic Pacific Coast locations, the Pacific Wave peering facility will be a magnet for research and education partners throughout Canada, Mexico, South America and the Pacific Rim. It's an innovative network facility bound to enhance the robustness of cyberinfrastructure for global collaborations," noted Douglas G. Gatchell, program director for International Networking in the Division of Shared Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation.

The Pacific Wave international peering exchange facility will initially offer connection points in Los Angeles and Seattle, which are proximal to submarine cable landing sites along the coast. A 10 Gig-E service will interconnect the two Pacific Wave nodes. Plans for the Layer 2, Ethernet-based exchange facility include support for all IP traffic types (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) and jumbo frames. The Pacific Wave 10 Gig-E facility from Los Angeles to Seattle is expected to be deployed by the summer of 2004. The program will be jointly managed by CENIC and PNWGP.

Both CENIC and the PNWGP work to enhance network services for research and education in their regions, and each are actively engaged in the collaborative deployment of the National LambdaRail (NLR). The availability of the NLR facility made it simple to provision the first connector between LA and Seattle.

PNWGP has operated an international peering facility in Seattle since 1998, which has significant participation by federal and Pacific Rim research and education entities. The University of Southern California (USC), a founding member of CENIC, has operated the Los Angeles Access Point (LAAP) since 1996 and is partnering with CENIC to transition the LAAP to become the Pacific Wave Los Angeles connection point. Current participants of these two peering locations will benefit from the advanced capabilities of the new Pacific Wave international peering collaboration.

Some of the organizations already participating in peering at these locations include AARNet (Australian Academic & Research Network), Boeing Research, CA*Net4 (Canada's Research and Education Internet Backbone), Defense Research & Engineering Network (DREN), Energy Sciences Network (ESNet), GEMnet, Internet2/Abilene, Microsoft Corporation, SingAREN (Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network) and TANET2 (Taiwan Academic Network).

For more information about Pacific Wave, visit www.pacificwave.net.

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 facilitate and coordinate the development, deployment and operation of a set of robust multi-tiered advanced network services for this research and education community. For more information about CENIC, visit www.cenic.org.

PNWGP is the Northwest's Next Generation Internet, Internet2/Abilene applications cooperative, testbed, point of presence and home to the Pacific Wave International Peering Service. PNWGP and Pacific Wave connect together high-performance international and federal research networks with universities, research organizations and leading edge R&D and new media enterprises throughout Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Canada, Australia and Japan. For more information about PNWGP, visit www.pnw-gigapop.net.