Thanks to a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) has developed 100 gigabit per second (Gbps) networking at Cornell, bringing the next generation of networking connectivity directly to the university’s faculty and student researchers.

Dave Lifka, Cornell Vice President for Information Technologies, Chief Information Officer, and Director of the Center for Advanced Computing, said, "This award is a real achievement for CIT and Cornell. Providing the research community with high performance connectivity is extremely important to the university’s mission."

Building a Dramatically Faster Infrastructure for Research

With these improvements, researchers have faster and higher-volume access to remote data sets, instrumentation, and computational and data analysis resources in a wide range of fields, such as astronomy, computer science, high energy physics, life sciences, and material science.

High-profile research projects likely to benefit include:

• individual health and well-being through analysis of genetic variations in the human genome
• water resource management
• analysis of atmospheric and aerosol particle data
• global health and biodiversity

The new network capacity has set the stage for the next-level data requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT), for ever-more-powerful scientific instruments, and for cloud computing models that require large-scale data resources.

As Laurie Collinsworth, Principal Solutions Architect, explains, "We expect these improvements to serve as an enabler for future research grants, as applicants cite the advantages of the new infrastructure to their research."

The new infrastructure provides dramatically increased bandwidth (from 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps) between the university and NYSERNet's research and education network and Internet2 peering institutions, as well as a frictionless high-bandwidth pathway to the university’s Rhodes Hall data center and data transfer node.

Getting Involved

If you believe your research could benefit from access to increased networking bandwidth, contact Laurie Collinsworth (ljc1@cornell.edu) for further details.

To read more about the grant and project plans, visit 100 Gbit Networking at Cornell for details.