Washington International Exchange (WIX) is a high-performance exchange point in McLean, VA that supports Layer 2 Ethernet connections to facilitate peering among U.S. and international R&E networks. The exchange point is a collaborative effort of:

• Internet2– providing program management and operational oversight
• Mid-Atlantic Crossroads Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) – providing engineering and logistical support

Today, WIX serves as an open network exchange facility for a rich community of international and domestic research and education networks. By providing this critical connection point to the U.S. and abroad, WIX enables researchers to partner and collaborate with their peers around the world. WIX is also an active participant in the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). The GLIF community shares a common vision of building a new grid computing paradigm in which the central architectural element is optical networks, not computers, to support the most demanding e-science applications. The GLIF’s links are being made available for scheduled use by scientists involved with advanced data-intensive application, middleware, protocol, and optical networking development.

In the future, as more global research networks begin to implement dynamic circuit networks like those being deployed on the Internet2 Network in the U.S., WIX has deployed control plane technology into the exchange point to allow for the seamless set up of international dynamic circuits.