The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, is a state-of-the-art, fiber optics network that runs throughout Louisiana, and connects Louisiana research universities to one another as well as Internet2 with the availability to the National LambdaRail. LONI connects Louisiana's major research universities–Louisiana State University (LSU), Louisiana Tech University, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Southern University, Tulane University,University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of New Orleans–allowing greater collaboration on research that produces results faster and with greater accuracy. LONI provides Louisiana researchers with one of the most advanced optical networks in the country and the most powerful distributed supercomputer resources available to any academic community with over 85 teraflops of computational capacity. 

 

The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, is a statewide fiber optic, high-performance computing and distributed storage network infrastructure funded by a $50M state investment from the State of Louisiana. LONI, with more than 1600 km of backbone fiber, is geographically distributed across the entirety of Louisiana and portions of Mississippi. The robust 40 Gbps backbone network has connections to Internet 2, Commodity Internet, and other major national and international networks. It currently connects approximately 100 teraflops of supercomputing resources and more than a petabyte of storage distributed around the statewide grid from LONI and Participant resources.  LONI is available for use by academic, government, and industry partners in collaboration with LONI member research institutions and is managed by the Louisiana Board of Regents through the LONI Management Council.   Points of Presence (POPs) are located at major research universities, but the network is managed and operated by LONI Network Operation Center at LSU.

 

LONI connects supercomputers at the participating universities and other computing resources throughout Louisiana, and centers to a 50-teraflops supercomputer, Queen Bee. Located in the state Information Systems Building in downtown Baton Rouge, Queen Bee is the core cluster of LONI and one of the Top 50 supercomputers in the world. The supercomputer's name comes from a nickname of former Gov. Blanco, and was named to honor her commitment to building LONI during her administration.
 

LONI offers its participants a world-class network and high performance computing environment with the strategic integration of highly available and scalable bandwidth, computational, storage and personnel resources.  This network was conceived to transform research and education in Louisiana and to attract industry and government partners into the State to capitalize upon this resource.  LONI is available to industry, academic, and government partners, providing the following benefits:

• The ability to support cyber-related training activities using high-definition multi-cast conferencing with high-speed access to most major research universities and national laboratories across the country.
• Access to a cadre of knowledgeable professors, staff, students and graduates who are highly trained in the use of leading edge networks and high performance computers.
• Access to high performance computers and data storage resources for research and development.
• The ability to demonstrate, test and evaluate software and hardware in a configurable wide area network.

 

LONI Staff

LONI is a Louisiana state project which is run by the Board of Regents and contracted out to LSU. The staff working on LONI project are paid by LSU and LONI.