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High Speed Internet2
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Linking
St. Louis researchers with collaborators around the nation.
By Christopher Brown
In the world of 21st century science, when it comes to the Internet,
the need is for speed.
And that means, as ordinary Web users will not be surprised to discover,
that the Internet isn’t quite good enough.
So get ready for Internet2, St. Louis. It’s coming to a university
or research center near you.
In mid-April, three major-research institutions in the Gateway city,
Washington University, Saint Louis University, and the Donald Danforth
Plant Science Center, announced they had formed a consortium through
which they will have access to Internet2, a high-performance nationwide
computer network for the scientific and university community.
Initially, the three institutions will connect Internet2 through
a “GigaPoP,” or network on-ramp, in Indianapolis.
But if enough other local institutions decide to join the consortium,
a GigaPoP may be installed in St. Louis, organizers say.
“The higher transmission speed of Internet2 supports the RCGA’s
IT, plant and life science, and advanced manufacturing strategies
by enhancing the ability of our universities and research institutes,
and the companies that have research projects with them, to more
effectively collaborate with world-class researchers outside our
region,” says Bob Coy, senior vice president Economic Development.
“By more efficiently networking with talent around the world, the
region is able to enhance its talent base virtually.”
Although the original Internet was developed by scientists at some
of the nation’s leading research universities, it would be fair
to say that this “network of networks” has never been optimized
for scientific uses.
Its initial design was governed by military imperatives: network
nodes were dispersed to ensure that the network could keep working
even after portions were knocked out from a nuclear attack, and
network rules of the road—for the transmission of information—were
written to ensure that individual messages would be able to reach
their destination even through a dismembered network.
More recently, the Internet has been given over to the marketplace,
as the needs of businesses engaged in commerce, and of ordinary
users exchanging e-mail and participating in chat rooms, have taken
center stage.
Those needs are, of course, important. But they are fundamentally
different from those of research scientists, who yearn for a network
capable of sending huge data sets virtually instantaneously to collaborators
across the country, to perform calculations of immense complexity
by merging the number-crunching power of computers dispersed around
the nation, to create real-time video conferences linking hundreds
of researchers from multiple sites.
“The Internet has become a largely commercial place, and is jammed
with other kinds of information,” says Thomas Moberg, chief information
officer at Saint Louis University.
“That’s why universities got together on Internet2, to create a
network with the characteristics we need, that will allow research
collaboration and sending of large files very quickly.”
The seeds of Internet2 were sown in 1995 with help from the National
Science Foundation. That led to the creation of the first Internet2
network, called VBNS, for very high-speed Backbone Network Service.
VBNS is run on a fiber-optic network provided by MCI/ Worldcom.
A second Internet2 network, Abilene, run on a fiber optic system
provided by Qwest, was added in 1998.
The initial group of universities participating in the development
of Internet2 numbered 34, but has since grown to more than 190.
The cost of participation is daunting: per-institution estimates
run as high as $500,000 per year.
At Saint Louis University, first users of Internet2 resources will
be researchers in the areas of neuroscience, earth and atmospheric
science, and genomic research, Moberg says.
At the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, much of the research
work being done will benefit from Internet2, says chief information
officer Kevin Scully.
“Our researchers work with extremely large data sets and with multi-layered
graphic images that are huge files,” he says.
“And so much of what we do is in collaboration with other researchers
around the country, we need to be able to share this data and these
images very quickly.”
At Washington University, which has had its own connection to Internet2
since 1998, several research projects have already benefited from
the network’s advanced capabilities, says Jerome Cox, Jr., senior
professor in computer science, and organizer of the consortium with
Saint Louis University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
One is a brain-mapping project being done in collaboration with
researchers from the University of California at San Diego, the
University of California at Los Angeles, and Johns Hopkins University.
“Each group has its own part of the project, and the data sets involved
are huge,” Cox says. “To exchange their results on the commercial
Internet would be impossible—this could only be done with a high-speed
network.”
Cox is particularly excited by another possibility of Internet2,
the use of network resources to make widely dispersed computers
function together as a single supercomputer with unheard of computational
power.
The target date for getting Saint Louis University and Danforth
Center researchers connected to Internet2 is this summer, Cox says.
He’s also hoping to entice other local institutions to join the
consortium. Among those that have expressed interest are the University
of Missouri, Southwestern Illinois College, Southern Illinois University,
and the Center for Emerging Technologies.
In addition, Internet2 rules of the road, which limit access to
research and educational uses, would permit access to the research
arms of local corporations including Boeing and Monsanto, Cox says.
There’s even a chance that the Internet2 will make its way into
the region’s high schools, Moberg says.
“This network will be able to link students from around the country
in ways we haven’t seen yet,” he says. “It could work its way into
the classroom very quickly.”
Chris Brown is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer. |
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