about pacific northwest gigapop

Strategic Locations and Resources

The PNWGP leverages and enhances an already well established telecommunications infrastructure based in Seattle and serving the Pacific Rim as well as the Pacific Northwest. The PNWGP facility is located in a neutral carrier hotel in downtown Seattle. The hotel houses major network facilities and fiber providers, most Inter-eXchange Carriers (IXCs), and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) including Worldcom, Sprint, AT&T, Qwest (Abilene), Time Warner Telecom, NTT/Verio, Williams, and Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN).

The core of the PNWGP is distributed between the carrier hotel and the University of Washington campus with redundant links between the two sites provided over UW-owned fiber. In addition, the core of the PNWGP is extended via two separate protected OC-3c circuits to Fairbanks, Alaska in the north, and to Portland, Oregon in the south.

In support of the PNWGP, the University of Washington Network Operations Center (UW NOC) located on the UW campus will provide sophisticated, around-the-clock monitoring and network management. The UW NOC served that function for the original and exceptionally reliable Internet Service Provider in the Pacific Northwest, NorthWestNet, and later under contract with Verio Northwest. It is the NOC for the statewide Washington K-20 network as well as for some of the region's major hospitals and clinics.

UW NOC and network engineering staff were among the small group that envisioned and architected National LambdaRail and Internet2. They are the leaders in fiber deployment for research as well as the Internet2 technology workgroup taskforces.