New GLIF map now available
13 May 2008 -- GLIF, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, announces the availability of a new world map that showcases its advanced research and education multi-gigabit optical network infrastructure. The infrastructure has grown since the previous map was created a little more than two years ago, with participation from more National Research & Education Networks, countries, consortia, institutions and individual research initiatives, on more continents. These participants provide the physical lambda networks that are interconnected at GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges, or GOLEs. GOLEs have the equipment necessary to interconnect and establish end-to-end lightpaths, which are used by international research teams who are working together to discover innovative solutions to complex problems of global importance -- from biodiversity, to global climate change, to health issues, to the origin of life itself.
GLIF is a virtual organization, or facility, of network providers, network engineers, computer scientists and computational scientists who are developing new computing paradigms and cyberinfrastructure, based on optical networks, to enable international multidisciplinary teams to work together. Science has no geographical boundaries, and GLIF's network of interconnected optical wavelengths (also known as lambda grids) is used to dynamically create powerful distributed systems of computers, data storage, visualization displays and instruments at collaborating sites around the globe, making it easier for researchers to share resources, information and knowledge.
The GLIF map does not represent all the world's Research & Education optical networks. The GLIF map also does not show international capacity that is dedicated to production usage. The GLIF map only illustrates excess capacity that its participants are willing to share with international research teams for applications-driven and computer-system experiments. GLIF's resource providers agree to share all or part of their lambdas, at all or some of the time. This is the GLIF philosophy, as GLIF does not provide any network services itself; researchers approach individual GLIF network resource providers to obtain lightpath services.
The GLIF Map 2008 visualization was created by Robert Patterson of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), using an Earth image provided by NASA Participating Networks -- AARNet Optical Network (Australia), AARNet-SXTransPORT (Australia), ASGCNet (Taiwan), AtlanticWave (US), CANARIE (Canada), CATLight-i2CAT (Barcelona), CAVEwave (US), CENIC (US), CERN/TIFR (Geneva/Mumbai), CESNET (Czech Republic), CiscoWave (US), CSTNet-ASGCNet (China/Taiwan), CSTNet (China), CSTNet-NICT (China/Japan), DAS3-Grid'5000 (Netherlands), EnLIGHTened (US), ESnet-SDN (US), Fermi Lightpath (US), GLORIAD (Canada, China, Korea, Netherlands, Nordic countries, Russia, US), IEEAF (US), IllinoisWave (US), Internet2-DCN (US), JANET Lightpath (UK), JGN2plus (Japan), KOREN-APII-JGN2plus (Korea/Japan), KREONet2 (Korea), KyaTera-Fapesp (Brazil), LEAD (US), LONI (US), MiLR-UltraLight (US), National LambdaRail (US), NORDUnet (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland), Pacific Wave (US), RNP-CPqD-GIGA (Brazil), RNP-Ipe (Brazil), RUNNet-RBNet (Russia), SLR (US), SURFnet (Netherlands), TaiwanLight (Taiwan), TaiwanLight-NetherLight (Taiwan/Netherlands), Teraflow (US), TransLight (US), TransLight/StarLight (US), UltraLight (US), UltraScience Net (US), US LHCNet (US), WHREN-LILA (US). Participating GOLEs -- AMPATH (Miami), CERN (Geneva), CzechLight (Prague), HKOEP (Hong Kong), KRLight (Daejoen), MAN LAN (New York), MoscowLight (Moscow), NetherLight (Amsterdam), NGIX-East (Washington DC), NorthernLight (Copenhagen), Pacific Wave (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Sunnyvale), SouthernLight (São Paulo), StarLight (Chicago), T-LEX (Tokyo), TaiwanLight (Taipei), and UKLight (London).