The North Carolina Networking Initiative is a leader in the advanced networking arena and North Carolina's only virtual networking community. The collaborative effort involves Duke University, N.C. State University, UNC-Chapel Hill and MCNC, along with Cisco Systems, Carrier Access Systems, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks. The consortium explores and develops leading edge network technologies, engineering and applications. It gives universities and industry partners in Research Triangle Park an edge in research, computing, higher education, business development and advanced applications.