NSF AWARD

The University of Cincinnati became a member of Internet2/UCAID in December, 1997. UC subsequently prepared a grant application to the NSF under the High Performance Connections for Research and Education Institutions and Facilities program, more commonly referred to as the HPC program. The application was submitted in July, 1997 and approved, with funding actually made available September 1, 1998.

The NSF award 9729502 is a matching grant for funding an Internet High Performance Connection. This grant initially covered the period 9/1/98 – 10/31/99 in the amount of $194,066. During that period, the grant covered the cost of the necessary UC network router and backbone upgrades as well as the communication line costs associated with the connection of the UCNET network to Abilene via OARnet. The grant was renewed for a second year in the amount of $143,968 covering the period 11/1/99 through 8/31/00. A one year extension was requested and granted since all of the requested grant funding was not expended by 8/31/00. All funds from the grant are projected to be exhausted by the end of 2/2001.

STATUS

• All necessary hardware has been installed.
• The communication circuit, an OC-3c 155MB circuit, was installed 12/11/98.
• An operational connection to OARnet was in place 1/7/99.
• All UC Internet2 traffic will be routed via this new circuit.
• A subscription application has been submitted to Abilene.
• OARnet will route UC Internet2 traffic via their existing Abilene OC-3 connection when the Abilene subscription has been obtained.
• An Abilene Participation Application was signed by UC and UCAID on June 4, 1999.
• A fully functional Internet2 connection via Abilene was operational on June 8, 1999.

EXPERIENCES

Several applications are ready or are under development to take advantage of the increased bandwidth and vBNS connection. These include:

• Heterogeneous computing with geographically distributed systems.
  
• Parallel/distributed computing with networks of workstations. Potential collaborators on these applications include Ohio State University, University of California-Davis, Los Alamos, Oak-Ridge, Brown University, Lawrence Livermore National and the Naval Research Laboratory.
  
• Multi-media access including full color images, virtual reality, audio and video.
  
• Distance learning application development and experimentation.
  
• The Computer Engineering Research Consortium (CERC) of Ohio’s Mechatronics distributed design system. Participants in this research include four other Ohio Universities.

NETWORK TOPOLOGY