 USJFCOM
to join high-tech scientific research network
U.S.
Joint Forces Command will join five other local partners
on the Eastern Virginia LightWave Internetworking Technology
Enterprise network, a high-speed, high-bandwidth network
in southeastern Virginia that supports scientific and
military research.
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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(SUFFOLK, Va. - Nov. 07, 2006) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command
(USJFCOM) will join five other local government and education
partners on a high-speed, high-bandwidth network designed
and engineered specifically for scientific and military
research.
The Eastern Virginia LightWave Internetworking Technology
Enterprise network (E-LITE) will be connected to the National
LambdaRail (NLR) network, which is a unique nationwide
network infrastructure that is owned and maintained by
the U.S. research community. That community includes U.S.
research universities, regional networking organizations
and private technology companies.
The
NLR is an 11,000-mile nationwide infrastructure that
enables the simultaneous deployment of multiple networks
for experimental and production purposes. The hope is
that E-LITE's linkage to the NLR will allow USJFCOM and
its partners to more openly share research data and finds.
E-LITE
is in the final stages of service provisioning through
a five year contract awarded to Verizon in December 2005
by Old Dominion University, who manages and funds the
project. Verizon has installed 150 miles of fiber-optic
cabling, as well as networking hardware at each of the
E-LITE partner node locations at NASA Langley, College
of William & Mary,
Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center (VMASC), Jefferson
Labs and USJFCOM's Suffolk complex
USJFCOM's Mark Williams, the Joint Technology and Simulation
division deputy chief, described the NLR as a research
and development national super highway used to transport
large amounts of experimentation research from one institution
to another at extremely high speeds and at a reasonable
cost.
E-LITE offers a comprehensive list of services to users,
including;
• a multiple 10 gigabyte per second Internet Protocol
(IP) network itself, offering significantly greater speed
than the current system.
• a quick start facility for new research projects
in support of data and computation intensive science projects,
• a capability to spare projects in case there
is a channel specific failure,
• and a test bed facility for Internet2 shared
by the universities.
"From the superhighway (NLR), you have these tributaries
and branches that distribute connectivity to the local
area, and E-LITE is that network that's going to distribute
here in southeastern Virginia," he said.
Williams
said this also helps establish southeastern Virginia
as the primary hub for modeling
and simulation.
"With support at the local, state, and federal level,
southeastern Virginia is becoming the modeling and simulation
capital. The commercial capabilities here and the economic
development side of this is pretty huge too because having
this high speed network in this local area will draw these
companies that make and sell products along these lines," said
Williams.
Williams said USJFCOM's goal is to use the NLR to collaborate
with academia on system design and engineering to develop
new simulation tools and products that would essentially
push new capabilities to the joint warfighter faster, cheaper
and better.
"We're always looking at developing new technology
and techniques to help train them better," he said. "We're
developing products in the modeling and simulation world
to help stimulate their real world systems in training
environment.
"The
result of this is a better warfighter, through better
training and we're constantly improving them, developing
new tools to help them achieve their mission."
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