NSF PR 01-98 - December 5, 2001
International Research Gains From Optical Networking
Chicago-based StarLight project deploys the latest
fiberoptic technology
The StarLight network-research facility is now open
for business, providing high-speed connections for
U.S. researchers to communicate with colleagues abroad.
Short for "Science Technology and Research Light-Illuminated
Gigabit High-performance Transit," StarLight uses
the latest optical technology to achieve speeds of
2.5 billion bits per second (gigabits), with a full
10 gigabits expected by Spring 2002.
Starlight uses both electronic and optical switches
to manage the individual wavelengths (called "lambdas")
of existing local, national and international fiber-optic
bandwidth. The resulting optical connection is a stable
resource for far-flung scientists and engineers, while
also presenting a unique "laboratory" for researchers
who study advanced networking itself.
StarLight is a project of the University of Illinois
at Chicago (UIC), Northwestern University and the
Argonne National Laboratory, with funding from the
National Science Foundation (NSF). The facility is
an important part of the growing "Cyber-Infrastructure"
that supports applications such as real-time, multi-site
virtual reality presentations, advanced interactive
data mining and remote control of large-scale instrumentation
(including telescopes and microscopes).
"Think of a two-lane road passing by your house as
the equivalent of, say, a DSL or cable modem line,"
said Tom DeFanti, professor of computer science at
UIC and co-leader of the project. "StarLight supports
networking equivalent to a 10,000-lane highway."
The Netherlands' national research and education computer
network, SURFnet, has the first international connection
to StarLight. Its 2.5 gigabits are expected to reach
10 gigabits by next spring. Joe Mambretti, StarLight
project co-leader at Northwestern, expects further
10-gigabit links to Canada, Asia and several European
sites in 2002.
StarLight will also host connections to the world's
most-advanced multi-site supercomputing system. Called
the TeraGrid, that NSF facility was awarded in August
2001 to a team from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at
San Diego, and the California Institute of Technology
and Argonne.
"NSF supports StarLight for numerous reasons," said
Aubrey Bush, director of the NSF Division for Advanced
Networking Infrastructure and Research. "My division
is interested in the facility as an experimental testbed
for trying out new networking technologies. But it
also provides an important capability to scientists
and engineers who need ultra-fast access to on-line
resources across the world. By stretching the boundaries
of what is feasible, StarLight helps us see the future
of global networking while helping to solve today's
pressing scientific problems."
StarLight is the latest evolution of STAR TAP (Science,
Technology And Research Transit Access Point), an
on-going project managed by UIC and Argonne. STAR
TAP's top speed of 622 million bits per second (megabits)
serves U.S. researchers with connections to North
America, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and
the Middle East.
For more about StarLight, see: http://www.startap.net/starlight
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