The StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility is a research and education carrier-neutral co-location open exchange point, established by the National Science Foundation with a focus on high performance services for data intensive science. The StarLight Facility is located on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus. It serves numerous metropolitan, state-wide, regional, national, federal, and international advanced networking initiatives, including multiple large scale research testbeds.

StarLight supports multiple local, state-wide, regional, national and international wavelength-rich distributed computational science environments, with switching and routing at maximum performance levels. StarLight also supports persistent testbeds for conducting research and experimentation with innovative path signaling, network programming, provisioning and management, data-transfer protocols, real-time distributed data mining, and AI/DL/ML applications.

StarLight’s architecture is designed to be distributable among opportune points-of-presence (POPs). StarLight provides multiple autonomous peering light-paths and L2 paths for its communities, using common sets of protocols and techniques.

Overview

StarLight Layer 2 and 3 Services are coordinated and engineered by NOC engineers at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). The StarLight NOC operates equipment at the StarLight co-location facility providing interconnectivity to worldwide research and education networks. The StarLight engineering team is responsible for the pre-installation design / engineering and the post-installation third-level engineering support of StarLight. The StarLight NOC monitors its equipment at the facility and can contact StarLight engineering if needed. Contact 710engineers @ startap.net

StarLight is hosted with a co-location facility operated by Northwestern University to support advanced research and education network infrastructure and services. The facility is located on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University.

Hours

Normal business hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5pm CDT/CST.

The facility is closed during holidays for general access and requests, with the exception of emergency outages.

To inquire about initial connections, contact

j-mambretti @ northwestern.edu

Contact

E-mail contact is the preferred means of reporting any type of network problem, question or emergency.

On-Site Hands Support

Designated Northwestern University network engineers are available Monday-Friday, 8:30am-6PM CDT/CST. These engineers are responsible for organizing and arranging site access, installations, cross-connections, and verifying equipment state, all on a rudimentary basis. Any support above that level should be contracted prior to the work itself or directed to a different organization. If you would like to establish a remote hands and eyes contract, e-mail 710facility @ northwestern.edu

Customer Number

Your customer number is either 4 or 5 digits, and is used to uniquely identify your organization. To help our NOC and engineering staff serve you better, include your customer number on all shipments, mail and e-mail correspondence.

Access

All access to the co-location facility, both normal and after hours, must be scheduled 48 hours in advance by sending e-mail to: 710facility @ northwestern.edu *Please include your customer number in the subject header of your e-mail.

Emergency access to the facility is granted on a per-incident basis. Please contact Northwestern University’s Network Operations Center at +1-847-467-2222 prior to your arrival. Be prepared to provide a company-issued identification badge and your customer number.

Shipping Information

The following information must appear on the shipping label of any item shipped to the facility:

[Your Organizational Name]
c/o iCAIR Northwestern University
Rubloff building mailroom/shipping dock
420 E Superior St, Chicago IL 60611
Phone number for the Rubloff Mailroom/dock:
1-312-503-0380

U.S. Holidays

Northwestern University observes the following holiday calendar:

• Memorial Day
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Day after Thanskgiving
• December 22 - Jan 1

NOTE: During the Christmas / New Year Holidays, Northwestern and ANL observes December 22 - January 1 as holidays. During this break, only emergency response for service impacting events is provided. Please create a ticket by emailing 710factiliy @ northwestern.edu, and follow-up with our Service Operation Center (SOC) at 847-467-2222.