AT&T, SURA Partnership Will Advance Grid Networking Infrastructure

A collaborative agreement formed Tuesday between AT&T and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is expected to speed the creation of regional and national grid services. SURA, a nonprofit organization, is comprised of more than 60 leading research institutions in the southern U.S. and the District of Columbia.

Under the partnership, researchers and academia will have access to Grid networking — AT&T's newest national network infrastructure for experimental work on new networking technology and applications. The telecommunications company will make available, at no cost to SURA, 8,000 miles of dark fiber network and a substantial inventory of optical networking equipment. These assets will be used to develop experimental network services to support advanced research that would not be possible otherwise.

AT&T also will lease to SURA and its partners additional network facilities and capacity as needed. The company will make its network assets available through USAWaves, a research and education (R&E) networking initiative created by SURA.

Grid networking, by definition, enables computing facilities, scientific data repositories and applications to be shared. As a result, researchers are able to more rapidly solve complex problems, conduct computer-intensive research or analyze vast amounts of data. For example, advances in the areas of database mining, particle detectors, telescope observatories, electron microscopes and technical testing devices are all being networked, allowing data to be shared, managed and accessed.

AT&T's partnership with SURA will help advance many regional initiatives requiring advanced network infrastructure and services. Several R&E optical networking initiatives are underway in Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. The Southern Governors' Association (SGA) also is pursuing several projects that may benefit from the agreement. SURA has been working with SGA to define and develop strategies for implementing its projects.

A SURA-sponsored study of potential corporate partners interested in developing new network services to strengthen education and scientific research in the South led to the partnership with AT&T. A full announcement on the collaborative agreement is available at http://www.sura.org/.