New optical protocol provisions in milliseconds

Scientists at MCNC Research & Development Institute and North Carolina State University have successfully demonstrated a new optical networking protocol called Just In Time (JIT) that’s aimed at provisioning user-initiated all-optical networks in a few milliseconds or microseconds, depending on the type of switch used. The demonstration linked systems at the U.S. Department of Defense's Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, the Naval Research Laboratory's Center for Computational Science and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Given JIT's ability to quickly set up and transmit tens, or possibly hundreds, of gigabits of bandwidth, the Naval Research Laboratory hopes to use it for high-performance computing applications such as immersive real-time visualization of satellite imagery, computational fluid dynamics, ocean and weather modeling, and space physics. The research that led to JIT’s creation was partially funded by NASA and supported by the Advanced Research and Development Activity, a Department of Defense research and development community.