National LambdaRail

After the Federal commission of the USA on communication announced the multi-billion plan of preserving of competitiveness of the country during an era of the Internet, in the United States the debate on dalneshy development of broadband infrastructure of the USA became more active. Meanwhile the most important part of the digital future of this country by own efforts and without special noise is built by the consortium formed in 2003 by a number of research institutes, educational institutions, regional networks and Cisco company. As a result in all territory of the United States there was a very high speed national broadband network of National LambdaRail (NLR) which serves as the most powerful resource for the scientific and economic research capable to accelerate implementation of grandiose plans for universal implementation of broadband communication.

Unlike any other organization of this kind, NLR completely owns all optical fiber and the physical equipment in network more than 19 thousand kilometers long. Providing channels for transfer of the huge data arrays and media flows characteristic of future Internet, National LambdaRail helps to create a national test environment for testing of the latest developments in the field of digital communications.

NLR - the only national fiber-optical network in the world accepting research traffic of the universities and public institutions and also corporate data for a hosting. This network wholly meets communication requirements of both the state, and private sectors. All can use so unique resource: research engineers, medical centers, colleges, schools, cities, regional authorities, companies and individuals. Also the fact that the consortium which is based in the State of California built several high-speed regional networks in a number of states is important, having for the first time provided complex broadband connections to inhabitants of many regions of the country. But the most remarkable consists that NLR constructed unique digital infrastructure without any support from the state, without having spent any cent of taxpayers.

Today National LambdaRail enters a new era. Last year this organization completed large upgrade of the equipment, having brought high-speed performance and capacity of the network to the best world levels. At the same time, according to Grover Browning (Grover Browning, the director of NLR concerning engineering work and transactions), on the reliability National LambdaRail at least does not concede to druy networks, and even exceeds them. For example, in November, 2009 NLR did not allow seconds of idle times. One month earlier National LambdaRail Glenn Ricart headed. Its record of service - the live history of development of network technologies. Ricart constructed the first connection point to the Internet for the federal U.S. Government, headed development of the first Internet protocols for IBM personal computers, managed the first Internet backbone (NSFNet) and was a cofounder of the SURANet company which became one of the first-ever commercial Internet service providers. In the federal government he directed the program of DARPA, and in Clinton's administration was responsible for coordination of technology questions between the Defense Ministry and the White House. Besides, Ricart worked as the chief technical director of the company of Novell, and before transition to NLR - the managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

So far the capacity of National LambdaRail is involved only for 10 percent. Meanwhile the USA is threatened by the outsider's fate on implementation of broadband communication. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) puts the United States on the 18th place at the average cost of bandwidth, chronic lag of the USA in the rating of the countries with the developed broadband infrastructure fixes also national Fund of information technologies and innovations. In this list the United States fall below and below for already 10 years and now take only the 15th place.

In an interview to the Wall Street Dzhornel newspaper the federal commission chairman of the USA on communication Julius Genachowski called development of broadband infrastructure of one of the major national tasks comparable with construction of the railroads, networks of electricity transmissions and highways in the last decades. Considering all above, NLR and also Internet2 and 25 research organizations and the educational institutions working at the level of the American regions and states offered the Federal commission of the USA services of the networks for implementation of the comprehensive plan allowing the federal government to build a modern high-speed broadband network for public institutions and other crucial social structures.

National LambdaRail will become the most important component of this plan. Locating own network, this consortium is capable to connect it to more than 30 regional networks and networks of states to provide broadband communication in the most remote parts of the country with a speed, by 10 times exceeding the speed of any commercial network and at much smaller expenses. Recently NLR together with Internet2 decided to expand use of the switching center of NLR Cisco TelePresence for joint scientific research and support of educational process. As a result these services will become available to scientists, doctors, engineers and students in the territory of the USA and in other countries.