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Networked Computing for the 21st Century
Large Scale Networking |
 
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Goals and focus areas
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LSN R&D will help assure U.S. technological leadership in high performance network communications through research that advances the leading edge of networking technologies, services, and performance. Early Federal networking R&D investments helped build the technological foundation of today's global Internet. Development by Federal research laboratories, academia, and industry helped deploy prototype networking capabilities on a national scale and produced popular applications -- such as email and World Wide Web browsers -- that transformed the way people use computer networks, paving the way for our Nation's leadership in the multi-billion dollar information technology industry. Key research areas today include advanced network components and technologies for engineering and managing large scale networks of the future. LSN activities will:
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LSN accomplishments and plans
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Large Scale Networking FY 1998 accomplishments and FY 1999 plans Beginning in FY 1998 and building on base LSN research, the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative is the dominant focus of LSN R&D. This section describes FY 1998 accomplishments and FY 1999 plans in LSN R&D and in the NGI initiative. |
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Global Grid Communications and Global Mobile Information Systems |
DARPA's Global Grid Communications effort develops and demonstrates advanced communications technologies needed for Defense and intelligence operations for the 21st century. This program will show that advanced optical components developed in the program can be integrated with commercial communications resources and technologies as well as DoD tactical and satellite technologies developed elsewhere. In FY 1998, DARPA will demonstrate multi-wavelength network management and control in local area testbeds, 40 billion bit per second cross-connect switching, and a 32 channel transceiver chip. DARPA's Global Mobile Information Systems effort will enable mobile users to access and use the full range of services available in the Defense Information Infrastructure (DII) by developing nomadic technologies and techniques at the applications, networking, and wireless link/node levels. In FY 1999, DARPA plans to develop a mobile wireless network incorporating software radio technology and demonstrate application support for distributed computing in mobile environments, continuous multi-tier networking across wireless domains, and integrated high data-rate untethered nodes. |
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NSF's Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research (ANIR) |
NSF's ANIR efforts support the enhancement of networks connecting U.S. researchers and educators to information resources, computational resources, and special facilities. ANIR's centerpiece is the very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS), which is targeted to provide very high performance connections to approximately 100 leading universities and provide interconnections to other Federal research networks. Responding to the goals of the NGI initiative (page 48), these connections and advanced facilities serve as a testbed for advanced communications and networking technologies that might eventually be deployed in support of the greater Internet, and for developing revolutionary applications and information services. Related components of the ANIR program provide for network growth engineering, development support for network-based applications, and campus engineering design. ANIR supports basic research and experimental projects that focus on networking and communications systems. Research topics include wireless access and networks, collaboration technology -- especially where enabled by active networks -- and the convergence of computing, communications, and information. The projects typically are conducted by small groups of researchers in networking or communications and, as appropriate, from other areas of computer science and engineering, such as operating systems, data bases, software environments, and architecture; or from the social sciences, such as economics, psychology, or sociology. |
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National Scalable Cluster Project (NSCP) |
ANIR and NSF's Cross-Disciplinary Program will support the acquisition of equipment for the NSCP. This project combines supercomputing systems, high-speed networking protocols, and custom-designed software to extend the boundaries of applications in data mining, data archiving, parallel processing, and other research projects that require large scale computational engines to support knowledge discovery. |
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NSF's Chesapeake Bay Virtual Environment (CBVE) |
NSF's Chesapeake Bay Virtual Environment fuses 3-D visualizations of numerically-generated data into a large scale interactive virtual world. This framework will incorporate runtime computational steering, interactive visualization, data ensonification, and wide-area information dissemination. CBVE will support technology transfer and serve as a medium for information exchange by taking advantage of Internet-based media and complete World Wide Web functionality. The use of a virtual world as a new paradigm of information exchange coupled with a Web-based information architecture will allow multidisciplinary, multi-institutional groups of scientists, educators, students, and administrators to apply emerging high performance computing and communications technologies to studying the country's largest estuarine ecosystem. CBVE will initially couple a working 3-D circulation model of the Chesapeake Bay and adjoining shelf with working biological models for larvae of two commercially important species in Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tryannuas) and the blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus). Visualization of the entire model output in an immersive, interactive environment is the goal. |
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Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) |
EPSCoR's goal is to help states identify, develop, and use their academic science and technology resources to support a more productive and fulfilling way of life for their citizens. EPSCoR increases the R&D competitiveness of a state by developing and using the science and technology (S&T) resources residing in its major research universities. EPSCoR achieves its objective by:
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NSF satellite communications |
In FY 1998, NSF will support NOAA's GOES-3 satellite for Internet communications to South Pole Station, with continued development of the link to support remote operation of the instruments in its astronomy and astrophysics programs. NSF will also collaborate with NASA on its experimental satellite communications link to the South Pole for higher speed Internet connectivity and high speed file transfer. |
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Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) |
DOE conducts network research, advanced network deployment, and advanced application support for over 20,000 users of dozens of DOE experimental facilities and high performance computing resources. DOE's LSN program includes its core network and security research program in addition to the ESnet, its advanced production network. ESnet has played a major role in the development of the worldwide Internet and will continue to contribute to its evolution through participation in the LSN programs. ESnet is a service-oriented production network chartered to support mission-oriented DOE science. It provides advanced Internet Protocol (IP) and ATM services to 30 DOE sites, including national laboratories, universities, and international partners. ESnet will adopt and integrate leading-edge technologies to support DOE's mission applications, and will continue to implement and enhance advanced interconnection and peering arrangements with other Federal research networks as well as university networks and aggregation points (e.g., gigapops) to support DOE/university collaborations on DOE mission programs. 
The Energy Sciences Network (ESNet) is the DOE Office of Energy Research
nationwide network that supports open scientific research.
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Information technology metrology, testing and applications |
NIST produces tools to evaluate the software needed for next generation networks and to evaluate the quality of service that those networks deliver. In FY 1998, NIST built a laboratory testbed including many vendor implementations of the resource reservation protocol and the real time transport protocol. NIST also developed the Integrated Services Performance Instrument (ISPI) to evaluate the quality of service these protocols deliver, and the NIST Network Emulation Tool (NIST NET) that allows an application developer to artificially impair network performance to evaluate how much quality of service the application needs. Simulating protocols can save time and money by uncovering problems before systems are developed. In FY 1998 NIST completed simulations of the Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) Media Access Control (MAC) protocols and of the performance of IP over ATM in an HFC environment. These protocols are being evaluated for high-speed residential access over the Next Generation Internet. NIST is developing methods to speed the interoperability testing cycle. In FY 1998 a reference system for the IP Security (IPSEC) protocol was developed and is now available for Unix PCs. Because every vendor can test against the same reference, the number of incompatibilities between systems can be reduced. As an extension of this idea, NIST has developed a Web-based Interoperability Tester (WIT) for IPSEC. This allows developers to test against the NIST reference system using the Web, eliminating the need to download and install the reference system itself. WIT will be extended to other test systems in FY 1999. 
Software developers select interoperability test scripts through NIST's
Web-based Interoperability Tester (WIT) Web interface.
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Public Key Infrastructure |
In cooperation with a dozen industry partners, NIST has developed and issued a Minimum Interoperability Specification for Public Key Infrastructure Components. This specification helps ensure that PKI components, such as certificate authorities, from multiple vendors will interoperate across entire networks and the Internet. |
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Internetworking security |
NIST contributes to the development of advanced security technologies needed to ensure high levels of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of network systems and data. This is a critical need for the full realization of the potential of electronic commerce. With the support of the LSN and the Government Information Technology Services (GITS) Innovation Fund, NIST conducted Collaborations in Internet Security (CIS), a project involving multiagency collaborative research in the use of advanced network security mechanisms such as Kerberos, security smart cards, secure messaging, and PKI components. NIST has begun identifying, evaluating, and establishing the advanced encryption standard, intended to replace the existing Data Encryption Standard (DES) as the standard algorithm for symmetric key encryption and to provide high-quality encryption capability that will be useful well into the 21st century. |
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FedCIRC |
As Federal agencies expand their use of the Internet both to provide citizen access to government services and to support agency needs, there is an increasing threat of outsider attacks. Thus, there is a need for a 24-hour network threat monitoring and security incident response capability. NIST has collaborated with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), DOE's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), and other organizations to develop methods for monitoring and responding to these threats. To ensure that all agencies have access to such resources, NIST has established the Federal Computer Incident Response Capability (FedCIRC) to conduct the dual roles of threat monitoring and vulnerability analysis and incident notification and response support. |
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NLM's Medical Connections program |
At NIH, the NLM's Medical Connections program provides "jump start" funding to academic medical centers, community hospitals, and other healthcare organizations to connect to the Internet. The overall goal is to provide Internet connectivity to the top 3,000 healthcare institutions in the U.S. More than 250 U.S. medical schools and healthcare facilities have been connected during the past five years. Approximately 50 grants are being awarded in FY 1998. Special emphasis is given to linking medical libraries with healthcare delivery organizations and data base servers to support timely, accurate clinical decision making. The program also supports the creation of regional consortia of healthcare institutions for sharing medical information and distributing Internet capability within an institution. |
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NLM's National center for Biotechnology (NCBI) |
NCBI creates automated systems for storing and analyzing a vast and growing volume of molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics data -- a field known as bioinformatics. Through its use of analytical and predictive methods to identify key molecular patterns associated with health and disease, bioinformatics is an essential component of genome research, protein engineering, and drug design. Within a distributed database architecture, NCBI collects sequence data from researchers worldwide and incorporates them into GenBank, the NIH DNA sequence databank, a key data resource of the Human Genome Project. NCBI has produced an integrated database system consisting of GenBank, the genetic scientific literature in Medline, taxonomy, and 3-D molecular structures. This database is accessed daily through the Internet by more than 35,000 sites. Basic research on efficient data analysis techniques and large scale genome analysis is conducted within NCBI's Computational Biology Branch and has been a key factor in gene discovery. Combined high throughput sequencing efforts by NIH-funded centers and by commercial organizations has led to doubling of the size of the database each year. User demands have steadily increased largely due to availability of the World Wide Web and the diffusion of sequencing technology across multiple biological disciplines. The human gene sequence and mapping data are represented in the Web database of the Human Gene Map, a continuing collaborative project with Science magazine and 15 leading international laboratories. |
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NLM's Integrated Academic Information Management Systems (IAIMS) |
Academic medical centers are the backbone of the American biomedical research enterprise. These 120-plus institutions include health profession schools and their associated teaching and research hospitals, clinics, and laboratories. Information about patient care, research, education, and administration is the life blood of these complex centers. This information -- databases of bibliographic and factual information, molecular databases, patient records, laboratory and clinical data -- is in electronic form, but the electronic information sources are typically disconnected and isolated from one another. Communications among the various computerized systems in academic medical centers is often primitive or non-existent. The focus of the IAIMS program, initiated in 1984, is first to develop the technical and organizational infrastructure to link and retrieve conceptually related information from disparate sources within the medical center, and then to link the medical centers. The administrative, clinical, educational, and research databases should be able to communicate and to appear as one database to the user. The goal of the program is to develop, implement, and test generalizable systems of information flow management within university health science centers and major teaching hospitals. The expected outcomes are greater research productivity, improved access to patient data for technology assessment and health outcomes research, and more efficient patient care leading to increased efficiency in the use of healthcare resources. The work is expected to benefit all health delivery organizations, including community hospitals and outpatient services. |
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Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) |
In FY 1999, AHCPR will begin to evaluate quality, cost, and medical effectiveness of home care in rural, urban, and suburban areas for the elderly who are afflicted with chronic disease. |
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Joint Engineering Team (JET) |
The JET helps coordinate large scale Federal networking activities to support research and engineering. The JET is the successor to the Engineering and Operations Working Group of the Federal Networking Council (FNC), which was incorporated into the LSN Working Group in FY 1997. The JET is tasked with coordinating NGI Goals 2.1 and 2.2 (pages 52-55) as well as other LSN network research operational issues. Participants in JET meetings include Federal agency representatives; representatives from the university-based Internet2 (I2) community; and representatives from commercial network vendors for whose services the Federal networks contract. The JET coordinates networking activities and operations among multiple Federal agency networks including:
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Networking Research Team (NRT) |
The NRT coordinates the networking research of the LSN agencies, including activities associated with Goal 1 of the NGI initiative. The NRT's goals are to enhance overall Government R&D in networking research and to ensure LSN agencies jointly implement a comprehensive program in critical research areas such as differentiation of service, multicasting, network management and operations, and privacy and security. These goals will be accomplished through keeping NRT members informed about each participating agency's activities and research results, using Federal/academic/industry workshops and other forums to identify research needs, and planning and implementing a balanced program of individual agency and multiagency activities. |
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Next Generation Internet initiative
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The Federal NGI initiative, together with the country's other investment
sectors, will create the foundation for the networks of the 21st
century, setting the stage for networks that are much more powerful and
versatile than the current Internet. The NGI will foster partnerships
among academia, industry, and governments that will keep the U.S. at the
cutting-edge of information and communications technologies. The NGI
will also stimulate the introduction of new multimedia applications in
our homes, schools, and businesses as the technologies designed and
developed as part of the NGI are incorporated into products and services
that are subsequently made available to the general public. The NGI
initiative is essential to sustain U.S. technological leadership in
computing and communications and enhance U.S. economic competitiveness
and commercial eminence.
The NGI initiative is a key component of the ongoing multiagency R&D of the LSN Working Group. NGI activities will be leveraged off of and tightly coupled with the basic network research and infrastructure support that are funded under the LSN budget. 
The NGI will foster partnerships among academia, industry, and governments that will keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of information and communications technologies. |
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NGI Goals
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The NGI initiative has three goals:
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NGI Goal 1
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NGI Goal 1: Experimental research for advanced network technologies Goal 1 activities focus on research, development, and testbed deployment and demonstration of the technologies necessary to permit the effective, robust, and secure management, provisioning, and end-to-end delivery of differentiated classes of service. These activities cluster into three major tasks: (1) network growth engineering, (2) end-to-end QoS, and (3) security. These technologies along with increased bandwidth will help meet the needs for advanced functionality and for the real time demands of emerging and next generation applications technologies such as collaboration, distributed computing, and teleoperation and telecontrol. This is a multiagency effort with DARPA as the lead; participation by NSF, NASA, and NIST; and contributions by non-NGI-funded agencies. Notice of funding opportunities is through normal agency mechanisms such as solicitations and broad area announcements. Cross-agency participation in review panels and coordination by program managers help ensure that efforts are not unnecessarily duplicated and lead to an integrated solution -- a robust, scalable, shared infrastructure supporting lead agency users, other government agencies, the research community, and a large number of commercial users. DARPA, in partnership with industry, will develop network management and QoS technologies. Portions of DARPA's existing Quorum program in global distributed system technologies will form the basis for end-to-end QoS. Other agency programs will complement and leverage the Quorum program in developing advanced network services, QoS, and security technologies. NSF's FY 1998 NGI plans include providing integrated IP and ATM monitoring and analysis tools at its Goal 2.1 sites (page 52), and implementing caching and native multicast at appropriate sites. Anticipated FY 1999 activities include the implementation of security at appropriate sites. NASA's NGI Goal 1 plan is to sponsor R&D in new networking technologies and services to support high performance applications. NASA's NREN is the basis of this plan. NASA will continue to be an early adopter of emerging networking technologies. NASA-sponsored research will focus on network performance measurement, network interoperability scaling, management, QoS, and network security. NASA will fund and manage research in advanced network technologies that are richer in features, higher in performance, and deliverable at a reasonable cost. For example, NASA will enable real-time networking, group collaborations, and a seamless interface for space-to-ground communications. 
NREN implemented a consistent, wide bandwidth data pipeline between the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the NASA Ames Intelligent Mechanisms
Group that provided the Mars Pathfinder mission with MarsMap -- a
photo-realistic virtual reality model of the Mars environment that
assisted with rover data archiving and operational planning. Raw image
data from JPL was relayed via NREN to the NASA Ames Intelligent
Mechanisms Group for processing, and 3-D images were returned from Ames
to JPL for display. Here, the rover is seen exploring the Mars rock
dubbed "Yogi."
NASA will deploy a suite of advanced networking services to enable high performance applications. By partnering with industry and academia on R&D in internetworking technologies to achieve an interoperable high performance network testbed, NASA will help deliver advanced networking technologies to the aerospace community and ultimately to the public. In FY 1998, NASA's activities include developing standard simulation models to "grow" internetworks/intranetworks; developing baseline simulation statistics; and demonstrating the interconnection of NASA's NGI infrastructure with other agency NGI networks. FY 1999 activities will include NGI requirement analysis and configuration management and the deployment of ATM debugging, monitoring, and analysis tools. 
Via the NREN, remote, interactive simulations were conducted between the
NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator in California (pictured at the
left) and engineers located in Houston, Texas.
NIST is refocusing part of its on-going research program in advanced networking technologies, computer security, and conformance testing to support NGI goals. Through its traditional focus on measurement, standards, and test methods, NIST will help ensure that research in these areas results in standardized, interoperable commercial technologies. NIST will support the U.S. information technology industry by fostering the rapid commercialization and deployment of enabling and infrastructural networking technologies developed through the NGI. The complexities of, and interdependencies among, future network control systems and services (for example, multilayer QoS signaling, routing, flow control, and security) and their global scaling will require more than simple analysis. NIST is conducting R&D in techniques and tools to test and evaluate new networking technologies at all stages of development and deployment. Advances in measurement and testing technology will enable the rapid evaluation of research designs and prototypes and will facilitate the transfer of new technology to the NGI Goal 2 testbeds and the communications industry. The goal is for test and instrumentation technologies to become part of the protocol design and specification process, and be integrated into, and evolve with, the implementation and deployment of the network itself. |
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NGI Goal 2
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NGI Goal 2: NGI testbeds The networking testbeds developed under the NGI initiative will connect at least 100 sites -- universities, Federal research institutions, and other research partners -- at speeds 100 times faster end-to-end than those of today's Internet, and will connect on the order of 10 sites at speeds 1,000 times faster end-to-end than the current Internet. This end-to-end connectivity (such as between two workstations) will be at speeds from 100+ million bits per second (Mbps) to 1+ billion bits per second (Gigabits per second or Gbps). Some networks have already achieved OC-12 (Optical Carrier) speeds (622 Mbps) on their backbone links, and some experimental links are running at 1+ Gbps, but end-to-end usable connectivity is typically limited to less than 10 Mbps because of bottlenecks or incompatibilities in switches, routers, local area networks, and workstations. Goal 2 addresses these shortcomings through development and demonstration involving two subgoals, described below. Goal 2 testbed networks will aggressively incorporate Goal 1 technologies. The high performance connectivity testbed is a distributed laboratory delivering, at a minimum, 100 times faster speeds than current Internet performance on an end-to-end basis to at least 100 interconnected NGI participating universities, national laboratories, and Federal research sites conducting networking and applications research. This testbed will be large enough to provide full system proof-of-concept for hardware, software, protocols, security, and network management that will be required in the future commercial Internet. It will include easily accessible sites, remote sites, and sites in EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) states. Experiments to help researchers go beyond the current Internet infrastructure are planned. Goal 2.1 is a multiagency effort led by NSF, NASA, and DOE (beginning in FY 1999). Participants include DoD and other agencies. |
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Goal 2.1 |
Goal 2.1: High performance connectivity NSF has a two-phase strategy to build its Goal 2.1 testbed. The first task is to significantly expand and enhance NSF's existing program for high performance connections to its vBNS network to serve over 100 leading universities and to link them to their research partners by improving the interconnections among the vBNS and other Federal research networks. This work builds on existing high performance connections to the NSF supercomputing centers and their partners (PACI); the NSF-sponsored National Laboratory for Applied Networking Research (NLANR); dozens of funded individual investigators in university and industry laboratories; and ongoing funded research with investigators in DARPA, NASA, and other agencies. In particular, 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. Additionally, NSF's partnership with Internet2 will focus the collective efforts of more than 100 leading universities on next generation networking technologies and associated issues of deployment, management, and testing for NGI Goal 1. NSF's second task is to test and deploy Goal 1 technologies and Goal 3 applications. At the same time, NSF will begin forming a national organization of universities to plan and coordinate their ongoing role in the NGI and associated efforts. In FY 1999, NSF will work with other agencies to design and implement a more unified Federal research network that can better serve their entire research community. DARPA's FY 1998 network research objectives include establishing a Peer Network-to-Network Interface (P-NNI) hierarchy across ATM domains, network performance measurement, congestion management, IP and ATM address resolution mechanisms, and ATM signaling behavior across multiple providers. Another way to add new ACTS ATM International (AAI) nodes is to establish gateway agreements with other providers, such as through NSF for select vBNS-attached collaborator organizations. (ACTS is NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite program.) NASA will leverage NREN in meeting its NGI goals. NASA will provide both a high performance network application testbed and a network research testbed for the NASA community and its partners. These testbeds exist at the various NASA centers now and can be interconnected via NREN, thus providing virtual testbeds and harnessing the expertise distributed throughout NASA. NASA will focus on delivering a leading-edge application environment. Therefore, in FY 1998 and FY 1999, NASA will enable next generation application demonstrations across the network; internetwork with other Federal agencies and academic and industry partners at both the IP and ATM service level; and deploy advanced networking services such as IPv6, multicast, QoS, security, and network management tools. |
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Goal 2.2 |
Goal 2.2: NGI technologies and ultra high performance connectivity Goal 2.2 addresses the development of ultrahigh speed switching and transmission technologies, and the demonstration of end-to-end network connectivity at 1+ Gbps. DARPA's SuperNet is the Goal 2.2 testbed. Because of its high risk and pioneering nature, this testbed will initially involve about 10 NGI sites and a limited number of applications. There will be some overlap of Goal 2.1 and Goal 2.2 nodes. Attaining this goal, together with the technologies developed in Goal 1, will be the pathway to terabit-per-second (Tbps) networks, operated with the appropriate network management and control and guaranteed end-to-end QoS. Working in partnership with industry is the key to a shared infrastructure that can be profitably used to support high end scientific users and large numbers of commercial users. This is a multiagency effort with DARPA as the lead, with participation by NASA, NSF, DOE (beginning in FY 1999), and other Federal agencies. |
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Wide Area Broadband Core |
DARPA's Broadband Information Technology (BIT) program has developed basic wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission capabilities and will demonstrate a metropolitan network of five nodes, with link transmission capacities of 20 Gbps. DARPA will extend these technologies and deploy them in more complex, mesh-like topologies that involve long-distance links. The metropolitan testbed will be expanded into a wide area network using WDM with about 10 nodes. This wide area backbone will have sufficient aggregate transmission and switching resources to support hundreds of users at Gbps rates. This network will use existing network fibers (usually at different wavelengths) that also provide general Internet services. |
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Terabit per second technologies |
DARPA will develop the generation-after-next multiplexing, switching, and routing technologies that will bridge the gap among packet-based Gbps tributaries and the WDM-based optical core. This task will also lay the groundwork for the direct optical support of packet-based communication. A major component of this task will be to investigate statistically sound techniques for performing "space-division"-like spreading of the resultant time division multiplexing (TDM) traffic across a set of wavelengths. A second component will be the design and demonstration of a highly parallel and distributed switching fabric. Taken together, these efforts will enable the development of a highly distributed approach to Tbps switching, based on a combination of optical and electronic technologies, with many-to-many multicast capability. |
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Broadband local trunking |
The need to provide select sites with orders-of-magnitude-above-average access to the network core has been a recurring source of delay in commissioning advanced research facilities. This task will explore new and cost-effective approaches to delivering broadband access to select sites within a geographically restricted area. DARPA will examine the terrestrial extension of its SuperNet-rate facilities to the building and explore the effectiveness of high capacity (>150 Mbps) radio frequency (RF)-based trunking. In addition, DARPA will address wireless broadband local access. |
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DARPA demonstrations and field trials |
Most of the technologies to be developed by the previous tasks are associated with the physical, link, and networking layers. DARPA plans to demonstrate the newly developed capabilities through collaboration with some of its application-oriented activities, such as the Human Computer Interaction, Information Management, and Intelligent Collaboration and Visualization programs. |
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Multiagency partnerships |
NASA will partner with DARPA's ultrahigh speed testbeds through the participation of at least two NASA sites. NASA will investigate the feasibility and performance of engineering application demonstrations across these testbeds. The goal is to achieve an end-to-end high speed hybrid network capable of supporting both wireless and bounded-media applications. NSF's activities include select connections to Goal 2.2 networks and the funding of competitive academic research proposals. NSF will participate with DARPA and other agencies in ultrahigh speed networking links and technologies through NSF's PACI partners. The focus will be on technologies and protocols for advanced distributed computing. |
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End-to-end technologies |
NSF will:
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NGI Goal 3
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Goal 3: Revolutionary applications Applications are the ultimate metric for NGI success. Faster and more advanced networks will enable a new generation of applications that include crisis response, distance education, environmental monitoring, healthcare, national security, and scientific research. To achieve this goal, agencies will leverage NGI investments with other major application investments. Agencies will demonstrate new applications, as well as enhance and enable current mission applications that address national goals. Each demonstration will partner the advanced networking technologies developed in Goals 1 and 2 with modern applications technologies. Each community will bring its knowledge, skills, and methods to the partnership. The applications partner will provide the bulk of the resources and support needed to implement its applications, working within the framework of the NGI initiative to develop and demonstrate its applications over the high performance networking infrastructure by using advanced network technologies provided by other parts of the NGI. The applications demonstrations will primarily be proof-of-concept demonstrations intended to suggest new ways for the application partners to meet their mission needs. As part of an ongoing research effort, these applications will initially be built on less-than-fully-robust technologies and be operating in less-than-optimal networking environments. Many agencies have critical signature applications that will benefit from advanced networking services and capabilities. Both the Federal government's information technology services and the Federally supported R&D community have networking requirements that cannot be met with today's technologies. Higher speed networks with more advanced services and functionality will enable a new generation of applications that support fundamental governmental interests. For example, NLM is working to define NGI capabilities needed for routine use of NGI technologies in healthcare, public health and health education, and biomedical, clinical, and health services research. NLM will fund testbed projects demonstrating the use of these technologies by the healthcare community. These demonstrations will be designed to improve understanding of the impact of NGI capabilities on the nation's healthcare, health education, and health research systems in such areas as cost, efficacy, quality, security, and usability. As the NGI initiative develops new capabilities such as adaptive networking, collaboration technologies, medical data privacy, network management technologies, nomadicity, QoS, and security, advanced demonstration applications will take advantage of the new services that these capabilities enable. It is expected that agencies not in the NGI budget crosscut will participate in these applications. For example, EPA and NOAA have identified key applications requiring NGI speed and services. The education community is also putting significant effort into connecting K-12 schools to the current generation Internet. Advanced education applications such as distance learning are expected to be key components as the NGI matures. NGI applications prototypes will test these new capabilities to ensure that the protocols developed in Goals 1 and 2 are complete, robust, and useful in real applications and to provide a road map useful in future governmental and commercial services. 
Block diagram of the Prototype Radiation Treatment Consultation Network being implemented on the NIH campus. Four RCWS nodes are shown above, as well as the conference server and CIT's IBM SP2 supercomputer, and connections within the NCI Radiation Oncology Branch to their PowerTPS treatment planning system node and a sheet film digitizer node. This is the type of leading edge health services delivery network application that will benefit greatly from advances made through the NGI initiative. |
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Selection process |
The participating Federal agencies have established a coordinated selection process to identify NGI applications. These applications require the advanced networking capabilities of Goals 1 and 2. Agencies will be asked to adapt their applications as these capabilities are developed. The selection process will be used to ensure that applications tested and demonstrated on the NGI testbeds provide robust, realistic, complete tests of technologies that are extensible and adaptable to other applications. Selection will be an iterative process with Federal, academic, and industry participation. Applications will be derived from the Federally-focused applications in appropriate technology classes such as digital libraries, remote operation of instruments, environmental monitoring, crisis management, manufacturing, basic sciences, and Federal information services. |
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Coordination |
This multiagency effort will be coordinated by the participating agencies through the LSN Working Group. Since most of the funding for applications will come from the applications themselves, leadership will be provided by domain-specific affinity groups. Participation will be encouraged from a broad range of agencies with demanding networking applications. Applications will also be solicited from other interested research entities within academia and industry. |
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Applications |
Seventeen NGI applications were demonstrated at Netamorphosis and are described beginning on page 61. |
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NGI and I2
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NGI and I2: Complementary and interdependent Specific ways in which the Federal NGI initiative and the university-led Internet2 work together include:
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DOE NGI plans
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DOE FY 1999 NGI plans In FY1999, DOE proposes to join in the NGI initiative. DOE will leverage its current core programs in network and application research, as well as its system integration expertise, to enhance the Department's ability to satisfy mission requirements through the development and prototyping of advanced technologies and to further the NGI goals. DOE's proposed FY 1999 NGI program has three major components:
In order to enhance DOE and university collaboration on DOE mission critical applications and NGI research, DOE will support joint DOE-university network research to develop the capabilities and tools required by the applications and infrastructure administrators at DOE labs and select universities, as well as deploy DOE2000 tools and capabilities to support critical DOE mission applications. DOE will support the researchers at both the labs and the universities, to enable them to adapt their DOE application codes to make use of these new technologies as they are being developed, and to work with the network researchers to ensure that the new technologies are responsive to their application requirements. DOE will also support enhancements of certain critical path infrastructure elements such as ESnet, aggregation and interconnection points (for example, gigapops), and local networks and services, to implement and support these new technologies to provide the appropriate level of end-to-end services to the application. Network management and analysis tools that function across networks and administrative boundaries at interconnection points and support these new capabilities will be developed. |
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DOE FY 1999 research focus |
In FY 1999 DOE will experiment with and integrate network and applications research technologies on LSN and NGI testbeds, which include DOE laboratories, universities, and other Federal research centers. DOE's goal 1 activities will focus on providing easy to use middleware that is network aware and able to interact with the network infrastructure, including system software, tools, and libraries to support DOE applications. The objective is to enable applications to exercise more efficient and smarter control and use of network resources and to support greater end-to-end capabilities required by DOE's applications. In support of Goal 2, DOE will coordinate interconnection and peering arrangements and mechanisms with NGI networks to satisfy agency applications needs and provide programmatically-justified access to DOE's on-line facilities. This will include interconnecting with the other Federal agency and university networks at various speeds, locations, and media types (that is, IP, ATM, and WDM). It will also include developing and supporting advanced tools and infrastructure to address the technical and business issues associated with managing and supporting cross-domain internetwork interconnections and peerings. DOE Goal 3 applications that require NGI-type technologies and infrastructure are largely part of the DOE2000 initiative. Pilot projects include the Materials MicroCharacterization Collaboratory and the Diesel Combustion Collaboratory. The latter focuses on accelerating the iterative process between research and deployment by creating an environment that provides tools for archiving, sharing, discussing, and protecting scientific and proprietary information for participants in diesel combustion research, which includes major U.S. diesel engine manufacturers. One of the first steps -- currently in progress -- is establishing a public key infrastructure for protecting proprietary information centralized in an image library that will be accessed remotely by all partners. |
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