Building on the successful operation of early public internet exchanges created by the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1996, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) together deployed a geographically distributed Pacific Wave peering facility in January 2004. With locations in Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, and Seattle, Pacific Wave formed the first distributed Internet Exchange aimed at improving cost-effective access for research and education networks across the Pacific.
Funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program, Pacific Wave connects U.S. researchers to over 30 Asia-Pacific countries as of 2025.
Working with colleagues across the US, Pacific Wave was a founding member of the North American Research and Education Exchange (NA-REX). Through NA-REX, researchers across the US can more seamlessly access International testbeds connected via any of the participating exchange points across the US, including StarLight in Chicago, AMPATH in Florida, WIX in metro-DC, MANLAN in New York, and BIX in Boston.
Internationally, the resiliency of the research and education networks has been enhanced through the Asia Pacific Oceania Network Collaboration (APOnet). This enhances access to capacity as well as resiliency to system outages through mutual backup of critical subsea routes, enabled through coordination among the members, including the University of Hawaii and the Guam Open Research and Education Exchange (GOREX). These critical collaborations offer access to optimized paths within the Pacific.
Pacific Wave continues to meet the growing capacity demands of scientists and researchers collaborating with each other and reaching critical cloud resources. An upgrade completed in 2025 created full end-to-end support for 400-Gbps interconnections.
Additionally, the centralized Pacific Wave exchange infrastructure is available as a core substrate of the international research and education network fabric, available to support multi-institutional, multi-domain research efforts such as the National Research Platform (NRP), the Global Research Platform (GRP), the Open Science Grid (OSG), FABRIC (Adaptive ProgrammaBle Research Infrastructure for Computer Science and Science Applications), FAB (FABRIC Across Borders), the P4 testbed, the National Data Platform (NDP), and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot (NAIRR). These platforms, testbeds, and partnerships will help researchers access the resources needed to discover, innovate, and advance technology while leveraging our shared technology cyberinfrastructure investments.
Pacific Wave was a pioneer in distributed Internet exchanges, paving the way for distributed commercial exchanges. For more than twenty years, Pacific Wave has done more than just envision high-performance, flexible interconnection among research and education (R&E) networks; it has set the standard for research and education network exchanges everywhere.
Recognizing the diverse needs of different networks and users, Pacific Wave has followed its vision of providing the flexibility and adaptability to leverage application and project opportunities that evolve at the breakneck speed of rapidly changing technologies. It is a vision of enabling network managers and users to support their production and experimental network support demands while at the same time providing the highest-performing interconnection, exchange, and peering.
Moving forward, Pacific Wave is extending its reach to allow more interconnection points and additional experimentation with new technologies. Pacific Wave supports researchers with easier access to compute and AI resources worldwide.