Connection to Internet II to aid research efforts

By CHRISTINE VIDAL
News Services Editor

UB joined the "next generation" of the Internet April 9 when it connected to Internet 2, the new network developed by a consortium of universities to support research activities and other data and voice-communication needs that cannot be handled by the commercial Internet.

And UB administrators are asking faculty members to begin thinking about how to take advantage of this increased capability through new collaborations with colleagues at other institutions.

Internet 2, officially called the University Corporation for Applications in Internet Development, will allow researchers at 140 participating universities, including UB, to utilize much higher-speed, data-transfer capabilities than have been available before, according to Hinrich Martens, associate vice president for computing and information technology at UB.

Faster data transmission

Researchers using Internet 2 will have the capability to transmit data at 150 megabits per second, a rate six times faster than the commercial Internet's capacity of 25 megabits per second.

It also will allow users to establish point-to-point connections from a UB researcher's desktop to another researcher's desktop at another location.

In addition to the direct connection, Internet 2 will offer a quality of service "that assures that two researchers who have established a connection will have guaranteed bandwidth allocated to them for certain durations of time," a factor very important to collaborative research efforts, such as those involving remote manipulations that require real-time data and video links, Martens said.

Information can be merged

Internet 2 also will allow researchers to draw on different kinds of databases to merge or overlay information to perform certain studies. For example, Martens said, researchers at UB's National Center for Geographic Information Analysis (NCGIA) could tap into health information developed and maintained at one site, then blend it with demographic information obtained at another site and city maps that are maintained at a third site, compiling the data to achieve a research objective.

UB's Internet 2 connection is funded in part by a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to hook into the VBNs, a network connecting the supercomputing sites at universities all around the nation.

UB received the money as its share of a maximum $1.75 million grant from the NSF to five core members of NYSERNet, a not-for-profit organization of New York State research and educational institutions created in 1985 to advance the use of cutting-edge networking technology to support research and education.

The grant funded the NYSERNet 2000 project, a partnership with the state to build a high-performance network infrastructure that parallels the New York State Thruway and provides connectivity to the VBNs from New York City to Buffalo.

Seven New York State institutions-UB, University of Rochester, Syracuse University, Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic University, Columbia University and New York University-are part of the NYSERNet network, and another four-SUNY Stony Brook, University at Albany, Clarkson University and Polytechnic University in New York City-have applied to join.

In order to qualify for connection to the VBNs, applicants must be classified as either R-1 or R-2 institutions-UB is an R-1, top-level research institution-and provide information to justify the connection, such as collaborations with other universities that require high-speed communication on dedicated bandwidths.

Several centers will benefit

In addition to the NCGIA, centers at UB that Martens said he expects will benefit from the capabilities offered by Internet 2 include the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), the Center for Computational Research, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR).

But the potential is unlimited, Martens noted.

"We want faculty to be aware of it (Internet 2) and start thinking about what they can do to collaborate with their peers at other institutions," he said. "We need to start up and take advantage of this new capability through joint applications for funding to support the new research capabilities in an expanded dimension."

Martens also noted the important role played by Jerry Bucklaew, UB's network engineer, who worked with the NYSERNet engineering group to achieve the local campus connection.