August 9, 2001
DENVER, CO -- Qwest Communications International Inc., (NYSE:Q) the broadband
communications company, today announced that it will partner with four U.S.
research institutions the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the San Diego
Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego;
Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.; and the California Institute
of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena to build the world's most powerful
network to support the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Distributed
Terascale Facility (DTF) program. The DTF will be the largest, most
comprehensive computing infrastructure ever deployed for scientific research.
Using its industry-leading wavelength services network, Qwest will provide
the ultra high-speed network to interconnect these four research
institutions, IBM will offer its geographically distributed Linux servers
and Intel will supply its ItaniumTM -family processors. 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 the fastest high-speed 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.
"This project reinforces Qwest's commitment to the research community by
building on our previous projects, such as our involvement in Internet2 and
the Abilene network, the NASA Research and Education Network, and the
Energy Sciences Network, as well as the Global Grid Forum, which envisions
a platform for worldwide shared computing resources," said Dr. Wesley
Kaplow, chief technology officer of Qwest Government Systems Division. "For
instance, Qwest committed $500 million to the Internet2 effort, which
connects more than 180 higher-education and laboratory-research
institutions and, much like the DTF network, is designed to accelerate the
creation of tomorrow's Internet."
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.
"With this network, the nation's most advanced computers, instruments and
data archives will be interconnected with greater capacity than we now have
at the largest computer centers. Yet, the resources are in four locations,
2,000 miles apart," said Dan Reed, director of NCSA and the National
Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) on behalf of the four DTF
partners. "We effectively are improving on the Internet's elimination of
distance and time barriers by making shared access to massive data whether
it's output from a radio telescope or scientific computer simulations a
routine endeavor."
"From the earliest days of the Internet, bandwidth within and among local
computers has been much greater than among geographic locations. This fact
has shaped the architecture of everything from corporate data centers to
the World Wide Web," said Argonne's Charlie Catlett, architect of the DTF
network. "Many of the things scientists have wanted to do over the past
several decades have been left untried simply because moving the data
around can take days or weeks. This network will reduce that time to
minutes or hours, opening up entirely new possibilities."
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 StarLightSM 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 StarLight.
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.
Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) is a leader in reliable,
scalable and secure broadband data, voice and image communications for
businesses and consumers. The Qwest Macro CapacityŽ Fiber Network, designed
with the newest optical networking equipment for speed and efficiency,
spans more than 113,000 miles globally.
For more information, please visit the Qwest Web site at
http://www.qwest.com/.
This release may contain projections and other forward-looking statements
that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may differ
materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to
the documents filed by Qwest with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
specifically the most recent reports which identify important risk factors
that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the
forward-looking statements, including potential fluctuations in quarterly
results, volatility of Qwest's stock price, intense competition in the
communications services market, changes in demand for Qwest's products and
services, dependence on new product development and acceleration of the
deployment of advanced new services, such as broadband data, wireless and
video services, which could require substantial expenditure of financial
and other resources in excess of contemplated levels, higher than
anticipated employee levels, capital expenditures and operating expenses,
rapid and significant changes in technology and markets, adverse changes in
the regulatory or legislative environment affecting Qwest's business and
delays in Qwest's ability to provide interLATA services within its 14-state
local service territory, failure to maintain rights of way, and failure to
achieve the projected synergies and financial results expected to result
from the acquisition of U S WEST timely or at all and difficulties in
combining the operations of Qwest and U S WEST. This release may include
analysts' estimates and other information prepared by third parties for
which Qwest assumes no responsibility. Qwest undertakes no obligation to
review or confirm analysts' expectations or estimates or to release
publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events
or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of
unanticipated events.
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