Though most universities play out their rivalries on the football field or basketball court, not all opposition is limited to athletic arenas these days — universities are now battling it out in the research lab: Institutions, such as Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, are competing to produce the best research.
Generating the best research requires savvy technological infrastructure: Universities must be able to transport huge amounts of data in real time across the globe. But it’s not enough to have your campus wired to the hilt; it takes a village to support research at the university level — a village of well-wired institutions.
However, many universities have difficultly funding and sustaining investments that support the fiber-intensive tasks that research requires. And although many institutions acquire grants to finance the research, oftentimes the campus is technologically ill-equipped to conduct the research. 
Despite the competitiveness, university research is a team effort: Competing universities form networking cooperatives to supplement their campus infrastructure and bolster their research computing capabilities.
As the world becomes increasingly globalized, and education is increasingly underfunded, these networking cooperatives allow universities, corporations, government entities and national labs to combine funds and buy into a network that is robust enough to support their research needs.
At first glance, these institutions appear to be disconnected because they specialize in different research areas, and they compete for recognition, the best students and the most advanced technology. But many are part of the same research entity, and the cooperatives act as the nervous system of this body: They are vital to the life of the body, making the networking system vital to the life of research.
A byproduct of this interconnectivity is access to next-generation applications and experimentation, which is also essential in order for universities to develop a competitive edge. Many universities, for example, are working with radio telescopes that are plugged into an international networking system. This is their gateway to a high-tech virtual lab.
The National LambdaRail, one of many networks, gives the University of New Mexico (UNM) access to applications and experiments like these. University CIO Gilbert Gonzales said these networks allow UNM to connect with researchers in other cities and in federal labs.
