Last week, top research and education (R&E) leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 2015 Internet2 Global Summit. Designed to spark innovation and collaboration, this year’s theme was “Community: Leading the Way.” The summit showcased how the R&E community is transforming the way research is perceived, as well as expanding knowledge and promoting academic excellence.
Through the network capabilities of the District of Columbia government’s DC-Net and the Capital Area Advanced Research and Education Network (CAAREN) from the George Washington University, summit attendees were able to fully utilize the power of high bandwidth applications and capabilities in an end-to-end ultra-high capacity networking environment. With 10 gigabits per second local link connectivity provided by DC-Net’s fiber optic network from the Renaissance Washington D.C. Downtown Hotel to CAAREN and the Internet2 core, summit attendees had the opportunity to showcase advanced applications. During the summit, a total of 258TB (terabytes) of data traffic was moved to and from the hotel. This included a 4k super-HiDef video shown during Wednesday’s general session.
CAAREN is designed to build a high-performance R&E infrastructure in the D.C. area to facilitate world-class research, and serves as an onramp to Internet2 as a member of the United States Unified Community Anchor Network (U.S. UCAN). CAAREN offers research network services to organizations such as schools, libraries, hospitals, government institutions and some private-sector organizations.
DC-Net is the District’s government owned and operated fiber optic network and is the first 100Gbps capable municipal network in the U.S. In addition to bringing the power of the 21st century technology to government services, DC-Net connects schools and universities, health care providers and other community anchors throughout the D.C. region. DC-Net has partnered with CAAREN since 2013, enabling access to advanced research programming that is key for science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM) and other school initiatives.