National LambdaRail is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications.  NLR serves a diverse set of communities including computational scientists, distributed systems researchers and networking researchers. The unprecedented richness and flexibility of this unique optical and IP infrastructure, combined with robust technical support services, allow multiple concurrent large-scale networking research and application experiments to coexist on the same infrastructure. The session will focus on the organization, progress, opportunities and challenges of NLR, with presentations by NLR participants and the NLR Director, Development & Operations. Cisco, an NLR participant and provider of the NLR networking equipment, will discuss Cisco’s focus on networking research and their goals in joining NLR. From the Series:Internet2 Spring 2004 Member Meeting