WRAL Tech Wire

ibiblio Now Rides the 'Rail' at MCNC Through NCREN

By RICK SMITH

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Long before Google and Wikipedia, Paul Jones and a team of people at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill set about building a library for people on the Web known as ibiblio.org.

And while other sites and services may receive more attention from the global media, ibibilio continues to increase in both size and popularity. Recently, the site that supports everything from live radio streaming using the latest Internet standards to a constantly expanding database of historical data moved its hosting operations to the former super computing center at MCNC.

There, ibiblio can call on the resources of the North Carolina Research and Education Network at not only runs the NCREN network but also works with researchers from around the globe on such cutting-edge technology as the so-called LambdaRail.

Lamda is to the Internet what I-40 at 4 a.m. in RTP compared to I-40 at rush hour.

Jones, who also teaches at UNC and is a widely recognized leader in the open source movement, cited several reasons for making the move from UNC-supported services in Chapel Hill to the MCNC operation.

“Savings, expansion possibilities, research relationships, vision of NCREN, NCREN’s expertise in high-speed networking and their consistent lead in networking,” Jones said. Then he added even more:

“MCNC’s state of the art machine room and, coming from Chapel Hill, plenty of parking!”

Of course, having access to the “rail” helps, too.

“The rail gives us very fast access to the best choices for connections to the commercial internet whilst serving the Triangle area efficiently and with room for expansion,” Jones said.

Here's a description of the Lamda project: "National LambdaRail (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities, regional networking organizations, and private sector technology companies providing a state-of-the-art national scale networking infrastructure. NLR exists both to serve “big science” and other discipline-based research initiatives in advancing knowledge and understanding and to support network research in developing new networking technologies and capabilities."

In other words, it's fast.

The Skinny

WRAL Local Tech Wire Publisher and Editor Rick Smith dishes out tidbits from the local technology sector. Read more articles…