Qwest to extend Energy net

Qwest Communications International will expand network connectivity for the Energy Department under a new contract.

The five-year deal continues Qwest’s support of the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), run by the department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Qwest officials have supported the network since 1999.

Under the new contract, Qwest will create a metropolitan area network for sites around the San Francisco Bay area. The network must be large enough to support the volume of data that Energy researchers generate. It is to transmit data at 20 gigabits/sec and be upgradeable to 100 gigabits/sec.

The sites include the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University in Menlo Park, the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Oakland and two hubs in Sunnyvale.

ESnet also includes a multigigabit backbone network connecting more than 40 Energy research sites nationwide. Last year, Qwest got an ESnet contract to increase bandwidth at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.