US Grid network provided by QwestDenver 09 August 2001 Qwest Communications will build the world's most powerful network to support the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Distributed Terascale Facility (DTF) program. The DTF network will consist of four 10 gigabit/second wavelengths for a total network capacity of 40 gigabits/second. The DTF network will be 16 times faster than any research network available today -- enough capacity to transfer the entire contents of the world's publicly accessible Web sites among any of the four DTF sites in only two hours.
Using its wavelength services network, Qwest will provide the
ultra high-speed broadband network to interconnect these four research
institutions, IBM will offer its geographically distributed Linux servers and
Intel will supply its Itanium-family processors.
The NSF is a leading indicator of future bandwidth demand, and the launch of
this network provides the latest and largest step in bandwidth demand, not
unlike the NSFnet, which was the original core of the Internet. The
pharmaceutical, automotive, biotechnology and petroleum industries, as well as
others, will be able to witness the power of these incredibly high-speed network
and computer systems, fueling the demand for network bandwidth to connect their
U.S. and worldwide supercomputing systems.
NSF will provide $53 million to the four DTF institutions in the 2002 fiscal
year. DTF will be a distributed facility that will provide scientists with an
unprecedented capacity for computing, data analysis and management;
high-resolution visualization; and long-distance collaboration. The DTF program
and the DTF network will further the mission of NSF's Partnerships for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program, which is creating a nationwide
computational and information infrastructure to enable breakthrough discoveries
in science and engineering. The PACI program includes two partnerships, the
Alliance, led by NCSA, and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure (NPACI), led by SDSC.
The DTF network will connect West Coast laboratories at SDSC in San Diego and
Caltech in Los Angeles with Illinois laboratories at NCSA in Champaign- Urbana
and Argonne in the Chicago area. The network also will provide links to
Internet2's Abilene research network and to research networks worldwide via the
STAR LIGHT interconnect in Chicago. The DTF network technical deployment and
operations team includes participants from all four DTF sites and Qwest, as well
as Internet2 and STAR LIGHT.
The DTF network will use Qwest facilities operating among San Diego, Los Angeles
and Chicago. In Illinois, the network will take advantage of I-WIRE (Illinois
Wired-Wireless Infrastructure for Research and Education), a fiber optic network
funded through Illinois Gov. George Ryan's "Illinois First" initiative. The
I-WIRE optical network will provide the DTF with network capacity and will give
Argonne and NCSA additional bandwidth for related network-research initiatives.
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