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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
NATIONAL LambdaRail GRID COULD BE
BOON TO LOCAL ECONOMIES
The National LambdaRail (NLR) Grid, when completed, will allow users to
transmit data at speeds about 100 times faster than is possible right now, and
many communities are hoping to be a part of it. Hampton Roads, Va., is one of
them.
The benefits of being a part of the Grid are clear enough. Areas with
infrastructures capable of supporting the Grid will attract a lot of money for
academic, defense and commercial research. However, it is not yet known how
the Grid will work, and it is not yet known who will be allowed to use it.
This summer, Old Dominion University's Virginia Modeling Analysis and
Simulation Center will join Joint Forces Command to form their own Grid. If it
works, it will act as a gateway to the NLR.
In the meantime, steps are being taken that would help Hampton Roads get on
the national Grid at a cost they can afford. As it stands, Hampton Roads might
be on the Grid by the end of the year.
NLR would admit institutions from Hampton Roads if they have valid research
needs and can afford to support the Grid with their own infrastructure.
The national Grid was conceived two years ago. Prior to 2000,
telecommunications companies laid fiber-optic cable in anticipation of booming
Internet businesses. But with the high-tech crash, demand for the cable failed
to meet expectations.
Today, about three quarters of the cable remains inactive. NLR has a
20-year
lease for 15,000 miles of cable owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. of
Broomfield, Colo.
The $83 million rail is a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing network
that
transmits more than 40 light waves, or lambdas, that are each capable of
transmitting 10 gigabits of data per second. Ten gigabits a second is 100
times faster than the speed that office computer networks move data.
Members of the Grid would be able to perform large-scale experiments at the
same time by being on the same network as some of the biggest supercomputers
in the world, including the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
in Urbana, Illinois.
Members also can use and send data much more cheaply than they could on
their
own lines, at less than 10 cents per megabyte per second compared to $70 per
megabyte per second.
So far, only a small piece of the Grid, between Chicago and Pittsburgh, is
active.
According to the schedule, the Grid between Washington, D.C., Raleigh,
N.C.,
and Atlanta –- the piece that Hampton Roads would likely connect to -– should
be built by early summer. From there, the Grid will run through Jacksonville,
Fla., Dallas, San Diego, Seattle, Denver, Chicago and New York City, and
various points in between. The National LambdaRail is being pioneered by a
consortium of academic institutions and Cisco Systems Inc.
Several Virginia colleges have signed on, raising money to build a node of
the
Grid in Washington, D.C., which would allow access by institutions in this
state. The schools make up the Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership, led by
Virginia Tech, which together have committed $10 million over the next five
years to have the Grid come through Virginia.
Old Dominion University, which also is a member of the Mid-Atlantic
Terascale
Partnership, plans to spend "millions of dollars" to integrate the school's
various departments on the national Grid. The school's costs will decline as
more institutions join the Grid, because it is a cost-share system.
ODU and the other schools in the partnership will pay $100,000 each year
over
five years to hook up to the Grid.
VMASC has already realized the value of large-scale computing, and hopes to
revolutionize training methods for Joint Forces Command, which is the center
for modeling and simulation for joint training among all branches of the
military.
The center has developed software for the military that simulates
battlefield
conditions and allows all branches of the military to train together. With
this local Grid, the military would have enough computer power to conduct
these exercises worldwide.
Ultimately, this type of Grid would allow doctors at Portsmouth Naval
Medical
Center to securely send and receive X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging
scans between here and the battlefield. There are commercial applications as
well.
Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, the military would not have shared data so
readily,
but the government realized after the terrorist attacks that it needed to
begin sharing information across departments so that decision-makers and
troops would know what's happening around the world in real-time.
Still, when it comes to Grid computing, security and privacy are issues for
the military and businesses alike.
While the Grid should bring jobs from defense and high-tech companies,
assuring those involved that their data is secure wil continue to be an
issue.
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