NSF PR 98-3 - January 21, 1998
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NSF Agreement Will Help Researchers Make the Most
of High Performance Network
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded
$2 million over 30 months to the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University
of Illinois, Urbana Champaign to help university users
with high performance networking applications. The
National Laboratory for Applied Networking Research
(NLANR): Distributed Applications Support Team will
help researchers maximize their use of NSF's very
high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) for
science and engineering research.
"It is not enough to simply provide the networking
service of the vBNS," said George Strawn, NSF division
director for Advanced Networking Infrastructure and
Research. "We need to make sure the users have the
tools to conduct their research over the 'net, be
it visualizations of the beating heart, connecting
connections of 3-D virtual environments or models
of earthquakes."
The NLANR applications team will help users maximize
performance of their applications, solve network problems,
maintain information and links about applications
and provide training to network and applications engineers.
"NCSA's focus has always been on the end-user of technology,
whether they are users of supercomputers, high performance
networks, or both," said Charles E. Catlett, NCSA's
senior associate director for science and technology.
"Through the Distributed Applications Support Team,
we're leveraging NCSA's user support and advanced
applications development experience to provide help
for vBNS users through training, consulting, and in
some cases, pitching in on application development
and debugging."
Previously, NLANR was a collaborative effort among
five initial vBNS sites. Those were the San Diego
Supercomputer Center, the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center,
the Cornell Theory Center and the National Center
for Atmospheric Research. NLANR provided for engineering,
technical support and coordination of the supercomputer
center connections and a small number of remote users
involved in accessing the centers via the vBNS.
"As the vBNS has grown to include substantial connections
to university campuses, NLANR activities must also
expand to encompass support for the new users, sites
and applications as well as continued measurement
and testing of an expanded network," Strawn said.
This new award encompasses applications support; other
awards to NLANR team members are expected to provide
network-engineering support for institutions connecting
to the vBNS, and traffic measurement and operations
analysis of the vBNS and interconnected institutions.
Since 1995, NSF and MCI have provided the very high
performance Backbone Network Service, initially linking
five NSF supercomputer centers. Sixty-three universities
have been approved for connections; approximately
100 research institutions, chosen through a peer review
process, will be connected. The next round of connections
is expected to be approved soon. The network currently
runs at 622 megabits per second and is expected to
operate at 2.4 gigabits per second (2,400 mbps) by
the year 2000. The NSF's vBNS is a part of the presidential
Next Generation Internet initiative and also serves
as an initial interconnect for the corresponding Internet2
university effort.
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