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 at the Westin Building. The Westin houses major network facilities and fiber providers, most Inter-eXchange Carriers (IXCs), and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) including Sprint, AT&T, CenturyLink, Time Warner Telecom, NTT/Verio, among others.

The core routing functions of the PNWGP are distributed between the carrier hotel and the University of Washington campus with redundant, diversely routed 10Gbps links between the two sites provided over UW-owned fiber.  Both Internet2 and National LambdaRail are co-located and interconnected to PNWGP at the PNWGP facility.  PNWGP maintains a minimum of two separate 10Gpbs links to upstream Internet Service Providers

In support of the PNWGP, the University of Washington Network Operations Center (UW NOC) located on the UW campus provides 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 leaders in fiber deployment for research, as well  as in Internet2 technology working groups and task forces.

Reviewed and updated:  October 31, 2011