Calient picked for OptIPuter

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, Feb 14, 2003

Calient Networks, a provider of intelligent all-optical switching systems and software, will team with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on development of the, "OptIPuter," a powerful distributed cyber-infrastructure project designed to support data-intensive scientific research and collaboration. UIC has awarded a major purchase of all-optical switches to Calient Networks, which will install them at facilities in the United States and the Netherlands.

The OptIPuter program is funded by the National Science Foundation. OptIPuter is so named for its use of optical networking, Internet Protocol, as well as computer storage, processing and visualization technologies. It is a "virtual machine" that sits atop a LambdaGrid, an experimental network of optical fiber, where each fiber carries data on multiple wavelengths of light to connect distributed computing resources at speeds equivalent to internal PC bus speeds. Each lambda can transmit data at 1 to 10 Gbps, and soon will achieve 40 Gbps and greater speeds.

Calient switches installed at the StarLight site in Chicago and the NetherLight site in Amsterdam will make those facilities the most advanced 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps switch/router exchanges in the world. Calient will also enable UIC's evaluation of the newly standardized signaling protocol suite, Generalized Multiprotocol Lambda Switching (GMPLS), and its applicability to OptIPuter's network provisioning, reservation and control systems.