National LambdaRail (NLR) Enables Greater Control, Flexibility for Provisioning VLANs

Q-in-Q Tunneling Capability Now Integrated With NLR's Circuit Configuration Tool, Sherpa

 Cypress, CA, August 2, 2010 –   Effective immediately National LambdaRail (NLR), the coast-to-coast, high-performance network owned by the U.S. research and education community, has made Q-in-Q tunneling capability available within its NLR Sherpa dynamic circuit configuration tool on the NLR Layer 2, Switched Ethernet service, NLR FrameNet.   

As a result, NLR users now have greater control and flexibility to provision VLANs on NLR FrameNet.  They no longer need to be restricted to VLANs that have the same, unused tag along the entire, intended route including at all desired endpoints as well as through NLR.  With Q-in-Q tunneling, also known as 802.1Q tunneling based on the underlying IEEE standard, NLR is able to preserve user VLANs being transported through its network by tunneling user VLANs through other VLANs on NLR FrameNet.  When requesting VLANs to meet particular project requirements, Q-in-Q may be selected as an option in NLR’s Dynamic VLAN Service, which enables authorized users in the NLR community to provision, modify, enable, and disable dedicated or non-dedicated VLANs on FrameNet on their own and in real time based on NLR Sherpa. 

Grover Browning, Director, Engineering and Operations, NLR, said, “As many NLR users need to collaborate with a number of different institutions, coordinating VLAN tag assignments added a great deal of complexity.  With Q-in-Q tunneling, NLR has now removed that burden, and made this new capability readily accessible to our community by integrating it into the Sherpa circuit configuration tool.”  

For a demonstration of NLR Sherpa, including Q-in-Q tunneling, please visit:  http://www.nlr.net/sherpanet.php.  It will allow you to see exactly how the service and tools work on NLR FrameNet without configuring the network or acquiring an account.  Demo username is sherpademo and password is nationwide.

Existing users of NLR's Dynamic VLAN Service may contact the NLR Network Operations Center (NOC) with any questions about Q-in-Q and Sherpa at noc@nlr.net.  To inquire about initiating a VLAN on NLR, please contact NLR's Experiments Support Service (ESS) at ess@nlr.net. username: sherpademo password: nationwide).

###

About National LambdaRail (NLR) 

Owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community, NLR is one of the world’s most advanced networks:  12,000 miles of high-performance optical fiber coast to coast, capable of speeds up to 100 Gigabits per second.  Over 280 universities and federal labs use NLR as their network for leading-edge research.    With no restrictions on usage or bandwidth, very high availability, a choice of next-generation network services and applications, and customized support for individual researchers and projects, NLR creates opportunities for collaboration, innovation and commercialization among the global research community and between private and public partners.  For more information, please visit www.nlr.net.                                                                                                                        

Media Contact

Kristina Scott, NLR, 650.678.9034, kscott@nlr.net

We welcome your questions and feedback. Contact us at editor@nlr.net.

To learn more about National LambdaRail, visit www.nlr.net.