Jet Propulsion Lab signs on - new SONET network - Government Activity

Communications News, Oct, 1999

The National Transparent Optical Network Consortium (NTONC) announced that NASA's jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) has signed on as the first user of the expanded national transparent optical network (NTON). NTON provides West-Coast connectivity for the defense advanced research.... projects agency (DARPA) sponsored SuperNet, an integral part of the U. S. government's next-generation Internet project.

JPL becomes the first organization to test and research applications on the initial segment of the NTON, operational between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Other network links will be phased in through mid-November when the entire network is projected to be operating at speeds up to 10 Gbps, connecting San Diego to Seattle. More than 50 corporations and local, state, and federal agencies will test a variety of highspeed applications on the network over the next three years. For example: remote medical diagnosis, real-time distance editing of motion pictures, videoconferencing at full-motion video speeds, and the Department of Defense's simulation testing of future weapons systems.

Nortel Networks provided OC-192 and OC-48 SONET network elements, vector ATM switches, terabit IP switch routers, and optical network devices at each node. GST Telecommunications manages the long-haul fiber links that result in a high-speed platform.