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Appendix 3. National LambdaRail, Inc.

www.nlr.net

January 2008

Tom West, CEO

FY 2007 was very eventful for National LambdaRail (NLR). Significant amounts of energy, time

and resources were spent in a second attempt at merging NLR with Internet2. In early November

the NLR Board voted to cease any further pursuit of merger. Meanwhile, NLR continued to

develop and expand its infrastructure, services and user base throughout the year.

The NLR nationwide backbone completed its fourth year of operation and is currently supporting

a wide range of major research projects as well as production level services and international

peering designed to serve the researchers and educators at the several hundreds institutions,

federal labs and medical facilities that comprise NLR.

Among the major developments this past year, NLR extended its infrastructure from New York to

Boston and from Boston to Starlight (Chicago). This was achieved through a cooperative

agreement with CANARIE. NLR has access to 10 G waves on CANARIE's installed fiber-based

system between Montreal and New York. In exchange NLR provided CANARIE a 10G wave

between Settle and Starlight. NLR added its FrameNet service with a Ge switch in Boston.

A very satisfying accomplishment this past year involved establishing network peering

relationships with almost all of the National Research and Education Networks (NREN) around

the world. Such peering relationships are vital to our ability to serve our community. As a

newcomer we are very appreciative that NLR has been welcomed as a peer amongst NRENs and

have pledged our commitment to work towards end-to-end connectivity worldwide. We have

become a contributing member of the GLIF efforts to help achieve this goal.

Other NLR highlights included: 1) implementing the Cisco-based Telepresence system to support

meetings and collaborative efforts among researchers and others across the nation; 2) installing an

optical switch that is being used in a cooperative fashion by several research groups with their

own optical switches to conduct research on this technology and its related services; 3) providing

WaveNet circuits and routers for the very successful member-managed TransitRail service; 4)

becoming an active provider of nationwide backbone services to any of the 69 grant recipients of

the FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Program that elect to link into NLR via our member regional

optical networks; and, 5) experiencing a steady growth in the number of users of NLR's

PacketNet, FrameNet and WaveNet services.

Going into its fifth year NLR, with its "owned" and "self-managed" nationwide infrastructure, is

fulfilling the "vision" of putting the control, power, and the promise of an advanced network

infrastructure into the hands of U.S. scientists and researchers and educators. Because NLR owns

the national-scale optical networking infrastructure, the research community is ensured of

unprecedented control, flexibility, and cost effectiveness in meeting the networking requirements

of the most advanced research and education applications and in having access to the resources

demanded by cutting-edge network research. At the same time, NLR's nationwide IP network,

PacketNet, has proven to be a highly reliable production service that peers with key National

Research and Education Networks around the globe.  And, NLR's FrameNet, switched Ge

service, is being discovered by an increasing number of researchers and educators as an

inexpensive and flexible service for a myriad of applications.

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