High-speed Network Links U.S., Russia, China

released 12.22.03

Contact

Trish Barker NCSA Public Information Specialist tlbarker@ncsa.uiuc.edu 217.265.8013

CHAMPAIGN, IL — Scientists in the United States, Russia and China will be better able to collaborate and communicate thanks to the creation of a secure, high-speed network known as Little GLORIAD.

Little GLORIAD is being funded in part by a $2.8 million National Science Foundation grant to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional funding comes from a consortium of Russian ministries and scientific organizations and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"As part of the international community of science, we share common concerns that reach across national borders," said NSF Director Rita Colwell. "As we all aim to strengthen our nations' capabilities in research, we also aim to contribute to the cumulative knowledge that lifts the prospects of people everywhere. This new network serves as both a physical and symbolic reminder of our common goal of solving problems and building a world of peace and prosperity."

"This new program should further enable scientists and educators across the globe to cooperate on issues of critical importance, from coordinating responses to natural disasters to biological, physics and atmospheric studies," said NCSA interim director Rob Pennington.

Other topics to be addressed by the three nations include better understanding of the human genome, joint exploration of space, distributed monitoring of seismic events, astronomical observation, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics collaborations, and atmospheric and other environmental studies and simulations. The network will also enable education collaborations between universities and local schools—including shared seminars, distance learning programs, and multinational science fairs.

The new 155 megabit per second (Mbps) network triples the capacity between the U.S. and China and represents the first-ever linkage across the Russia-China border. The network continues current levels of service between the U.S. and Russia, which have been jointly running the NaukaNet for science and education collaboration for five years.

The new project is an important step in the development of the larger Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD), which the three countries are jointly developing for a mid-2004 launch. The proposed GLORIAD network will consist of a 10 Gbps "lightwave" network around the entire northern hemisphere. The network will begin at the StarLight facility in Chicago, will transit the Atlantic Ocean to the Netherlight facility in Amsterdam, continue to Moscow and to Novosibirsk in Russia, then cross Siberia to Beijing and Hong Kong before crossing the Pacific Ocean and completing the ring in Chicago.

NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.