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The UF Office of Information Technology Newsletter | |
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Florida Lambda Rail Project Now Live! | |
The Florida LambdaRail, LLC project officially went live in March, 2005. FLR, as it is commonly called, is a Florida limited liability company (LLC) formed by members of higher education institutions to advance optical research and education networking within Florida.
Florida LambdaRail's high bandwidth optical network links Florida's research institutions and provides a next-generation network to support large-scale research, education outreach, public/private partnerships, and information technology infrastructure essential to Florida's fast-growing economic development.
FLR Partners
Florida LambdaRail is connected to the National LambdaRail (NLR), a national distributed optical networking laboratory, providing a platform for advanced research that can be conducted by networking experts, computer scientists, computational scientists and industrial partners. See http://www.nationallambdrail.org for more information about the National LambdaRail project.
Florida LambdaRail is one of many regional research networks that are members of NLR and consists of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), Florida International University (FIU), Florida State University (FSU), Nova Southeastern University (NOVA), University of Central Florida (UCF), University of Miami (UM), University of North Florida (UNF), University of West Florida (UWF) and the University of Florida (UF) where the Network Operations Center (NOC) is located.
Improving Connectivity
One of the overriding drivers behind the new network is to provide networking infrastructure that will improve all aspects of network connectivity for participating institutions, thus allowing them to access resources and collaborate in ways that currently are not possible or affordable. The objective is to facilitate academic, clinical, and scientific research, as well as technology development and education, by enabling high-speed communications among the nine member universities and with other state, national and international research entities.
Benefits of FLR
The FLR has been implemented with no dependence on additional state funding by offsetting a significant portion of FLR member costs. This includes lower costs through aggregation of Internet and Internet2 connectivity, wholesale purchase of bandwidth, combined network capabilities, and future savings in network-related costs.
The FLR network will facilitate researchers and work teams in multiple locations to share work and interact in real-time through video, audio, shared whiteboards, and shared laboratory notebooks available online.
FLR users will take advantage of interactive distributed simulations linking high-powered computational resources with remote users and other computers. Distance learning will enable delivery of courses and programs over the Internet, allowing a wider reach to geographic areas and a variety of demographic populations.
Other benefits include access to digitized databases as well as video teleconferencing, enabling geographically dispersed work teams to bridge time and place by utilizing video transmission over high-speed connections.
For more information on the Florida LambdaRail Network please visit http://www.flrnet.org