PUBLICATIONS Archived Press Releases

I-Light Fiber

December 12, 2001 Got Light? Indiana Leads the Way Lighting Its I-Light Fiber; Indiana has a first-of-its-kind resource to help propel the State forward in the Information Age INDIANAPOLIS, IN - Indiana University, Purdue University, and the State of Indiana now have their own optical fiber network, creating an ultra-high-capacity communications system that makes Indiana a major center for information technology and maintains the universities’ leadership roles in the development of advanced communication applications. Indiana becomes the first State to boast such a resource. “In addition to being the ‘Crossroads of America,’ - a title earned because the State was a transportation hub during the Industrial Revolution - Indiana is now the ‘Crossroads of Information,’ - fulfilling that same role in the Digital Revolution.” said Indiana Governor Frank O’Bannon at a ceremony Tuesday December 11 to officially light the fiber. Led by the State’s two major, public, research universities, and with the support and leadership of the State’s executive and legislative branches, I-Light (as the fiber network is known) provides near limitless connectivity between the two universities, hubbing out of their Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus, and connecting within the city to the Internet2 backbone, and other national and international networks. Funded by a $5.3-million appropriation, I-Light is today delivering gigabit speed connections, and will quickly expand to deliver multiples of 10-gigabit connections in the next few months, providing communication capabilities unheard of even today to the Universities’ researchers and general populations. As technology advances, the Universities will have the capability to expand their connectivity well beyond terabit levels and increase their role in the development of advanced applications. Essentially, I-Light creates a virtual campus network for the three major campuses of Indiana and Purdue Universities, enabling researchers to communicate over long distances, real time, as if they were in the same room. Demonstrating this during the I-Light event, researchers located in West Lafayette, Bloomington, and Indianapolis collaborated on a project to view and analyze a 3-D medical data image; something not possible until now, due to the limitations of the network. A Boost to the Indiana Economy And this is only the beginning. I-Light contributes to economic development in Indiana. Many states are competing to provide the fertile ground to create the next Silicon Valley. With its central location, and high quality of life, the addition of fiber ‘on ramps’ to the national and international research and business internets, Indiana is well positioned to attract start-up companies and established information-age enterprises. “Today, we are illuminating the future of Indiana” said Myles Brand, President of Indiana University. “Working hand-in-hand with our partners around the State, Indiana University is helping to create the information technology that will be so important to our State’s economic future.” And it’s not just new enterprises that will be attracted to Indiana, due to initiatives like I-Light. Verizon - the company that installed the fiber for I-Light - is a Fortune Top Ten company. Said Verizon’s Great Lakes Region President, John Dudley, “For businesses such as Verizon here in Indiana, this partnership will impact our growth as well as the quality of employees we can attract to Indiana.” Dudley went on to say: “Not only does I-Light signal to the rest of the country that Indiana is ‘open for business’, but it also says ‘we have the light on for you.’” “Indiana first began planning for I-Light in 1998 and moved swiftly through the concept-to-reality process, in what was a very complex project” said Michael A. McRobbie, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer of Indiana University. “Many other states have followed our lead, developing plans for such networks to aid in the research and development of advanced applications; but we believe we are the first in the nation to have our network fully operational.” Another facet of I-Light is its future impact for local economic development. For example, the City of Bloomington was able to leverage the initiative by adding two empty conduits connecting that city’s new carrier hotel to the regional facilities located in Indianapolis. In addition, the greater Lafayette area is currently launching an initiative to develop a comprehensive plan for fiber infrastructure in that region. Collaboration and Enabling Science Owning its own fiber resource significantly reduces the barriers to digital collaboration. I-Light will usher in a new age of collaboration between the Universities. “With I-Light, Purdue University and Indiana University will have greater leverage and potential for federal grants and can help Indiana become a more capable player in the Information Economy” said Purdue President Martin Jischke. “Medical personnel and engineers throughout the State will have the advantage of virtual, real-time collaborative workspaces, as they explore the diagnostic process for identifying diseases and their treatments” said Indiana University School of Medicine professor Gary Hutchins. “We can confer in real time and virtual space about treatment options and discuss potential refinements to the diagnostic process and the technology involved; something we could not do without I-Light.” Importance of Connectivity to National Fiber Infrastructure University ownership of optical fiber infrastructure is a key advantage of I-Light. Rather than having to pay commercial providers, the universities and the State of Indiana have the ability to expand capacity to whatever level is needed for little marginal cost. “By investing in their own high performance regional network infrastructure, Indiana has taken a very strong forward looking position in the development of high performance networking for the academic community,” said Aubrey Bush, Division Director, National Science Foundation. “This unique new capability is highly complementary to the Federal role in national and international connectivity for the research and education community. Indiana, with this new capability, builds on its already well established leadership role, and ensures a strong foundation for future developments both regionally and nationally.” Importance of Connectivity to Internet2 A key component of I-Light is that it not only links researchers at the two Universities with each other, but with colleagues at other research institutions. I-Light acts as a digital on-ramp, extending the access to Internet2 networks and other high-speed research networks out further into the heart of the State to IU at Bloomington and Purdue at West Lafayette. “Indiana University and Indianapolis have been integral to the success of Internet2” said Douglas van Houweling, President and CEO of Internet2. “With I-Light, the State of Indiana is taking a lead role by providing the foundation upon which the future of Internet technology can be built.” Indianapolis is home to the Internet2 Abilene Network Operations Center, managed by IU on the IUPUI campus, as well as the site of the Indiana GigaPoP, one of Internet2’s regional network aggregation points. Both IU and Purdue have been charter partners in Internet2 since its inception in the late 1990’s, and Indiana University President Myles Brand is also a member of the Internet2 Board of Directors. How fast is fast? A great deal is made of the speeds of connectivity represented by fiber paths. But a more critical component is capacity - how much data can be moved at one time. I-Light guarantees no bottlenecks in transporting information across the network. Initially, I-Light will provide for gigabit Ethernet connections between the campus networks at West Lafayette, Indianapolis, and Bloomington. Those campuses today feature 1-gigabit backbones, like all high-end research institutions in the nation. As those backbones grow to 10-gigabit rates, 100-gigabit rates and beyond, I-Light will be capable of expanding to match those rates by simply upgrading hardware technology at the cutting edge of these technologies. I-Light also has the ability to provide even larger, on-demand wavelengths between research groups on the various campuses, enabling very-high-capacity terabit connectivity when that functionality is needed. “It’s misleading to focus just on interconnecting capacities when enterprise local networks currently run only at, say, 1 Gigabit per second” said Steven Wallace, Director and Chief Scientist of the Advanced Network Management Lab, part of the Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University. “What’s important is that these fiber-interconnecting networks keep pace with rapid developments occurring on the sub-internet elements; and I-Light certainly will be able to do that long into the future.” “It’s also important to note that we can establish multiple connections across the I-Light. Sort of like a coronary bypass - we can add as many routes as we need across the fibers, until the flow allows for all data to move in an unfettered fashion” said Brian D. Voss, Associate Vice President for Telecommunications at Indiana University. “While we need only move at 1-gigabit capacities on any route - or whatever the backbone rate might be - we have the ability to simply add more connections until the flow-rate capacity meets demand.” Indiana Virtual Machine Room I-Light not only presents the opportunity for researchers and scientists to collaborate more effectively, it also allows the universities to pool their high-end computational resources to build larger, more effective facilities for those researchers and scientists to use. This Fall, Indiana University installed the largest university-owned supercomputer in the country at its Bloomington campus. It will be expanding that resource to include nodes in Indianapolis at the IUPUI campus. At the same time, Purdue’s IBM supercomputing capability in West Lafayette continues to grow and will be integrated with IU resources and massive data storage to form the Indiana distributed terascale computational facility. “Supercomputers, massive data storage facilities, and visualization environments are easily assembled into ‘grids’ of virtually unlimited capabilities” said James Bottum, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer of Purdue University. “That these resources - some of the largest in the world - are now available in the State of Indiana cannot be ignored.” A Resource for Today and Tomorrow “This network will help us illuminate the future - for example by shedding light on the causes and cures for disease - and create a stronger economy” said Indiana University President Myles Brand, accepting the Governor’s challenge to the universities to harness this resource. The opportunities that I-Light provides for sharing of information and ideas, combined with the talents of the universities’ researchers and scientists can lead Indiana to discoveries that will change our world. Contact: Brian D. Voss Associate Vice President for Telecommunications Office of the Vice President for Information Technology Indiana University ph: +1.812.855.3931 bvoss@indiana.edu Jerry Sheehan Associate Vice President for Planning and Operations Office of the Vice President for Information Technology Purdue University ph: +1.765.496.2266 js@purdue.edu Related Sites: www.i-light.iupui.edu www.indiana.edu www.purdue.edu www.internet2.edu www.nsf.gov