Thanks to OARnet’s fiber-optic, 10-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) connection from the labs at The Ohio State University Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis (CEMAS) to the network’s ultra-fast, 100-Gbps statewide backbone, any organization connected to OARnet’s network can purchase time and directly operate CEMAS’ instruments from a remote location with no perceptible delay.
CEMAS technicians installed two remote stations, each about 60 miles from the microscopy center: one in the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and another at the University of Dayton.
“With our direct connection to OARnet, we have a shorter, simpler path to our remote stations, since we’re not traversing a university network or the commercial Internet,” said Daniel Huber, a CEMAS technical officer, as well as a research engineer at the Ohio State Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials. Huber has been working with OARnet and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) to enhance remote microscopy techniques since 2006. “Utilizing OARnet, it’s just a handful of hops—maybe three or four hops,” he said. “So we’re looking at a very, very low wait, maybe only three milliseconds- that’s almost the same delay you’ll have just inside of a facility.”
