The National Science Foundation has just connected India, Singapore, Vietnam, and Egypt to the “Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development” (GLORIAD), a dedicated fiber-optic network for high-speed large-bandwidth communication.
Among other uses, the network is employed to remotely operate telescopes and microscopes. It’s particularly useful for data-intensive visualizations. Researchers can carve out portions of the network for specific, uninterrupted long-distance collaborations that might include a lot of video conferencing and other intensive data exchange.
“Science is increasingly data-driven and collaborative, and does not respect national borders,” said Ed Seidel, acting assistant director of NSF’s Math and the Physical Sciences Directorate. “High-speed optical networks are critical to both national and international scientific efforts.”
This takes the US-China network from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps, a 4x increase in bandwidth.
