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Information Technology Frontiers for a New Millenium
Glossary
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2-D
Two dimensional.
3-D
Three dimensional.
4-D
Four dimensional.
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A
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Abilene
Advanced backbone network developed by Qwest, Cisco, Nortel, and Indiana
University to support the University Corporation for Advanced Internet
Development's Internet2 project.
ACCESS DC
The National Computational Science Alliance's Center for Collaboration,
Education, Science and Software located in Arlington, Virginia.
Access Grid
The National Computational Science Alliance's hardware, software,
and telecommunications capabilities for distributed research collaboration
and teleconferencing.
aCe
NASA's architecture adaptive Computing environment.
ACM
Association for Computing Machinery.
ACTS
DOE's advanced computational testing and simulation program.
ADEPT
Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype.
AES
Advanced encryption standard.
AFM
Atomic force microscopy.
AHCPR
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Renamed the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in FY 2000.
AHRQ
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the Public Health
Service of the Department of Health and Human Services. Formerly the
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR).
Akenti
A security model and architecture developed by LBNL.
Algorithm
A procedure designed to solve a problem. Scientific computing
programs implement algorithms.
Alliance
The National Computational Science Alliance, one of NSF's two PACI
partnerships.
AMP
Advanced measurement platform.
ANI
NSF Advanced Networking Infrastructure program.
ANIR
Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research Division, part of NSF/CISE.
ANL
DOE's Argonne National Laboratory.
APAN
Asian-Pacific Advanced Network.
API
Applications program interface.
ARC
NASA's Ames Research Center.
ARIN
American Registry for Internet Numbers.
ARPS
Advanced Regional Prediction System.
ASAP
ASCI's Academic Strategic Alliances Program.
ASCI
DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative.
ATDNet
Advanced Technology Demonstration Network.
ATM
Asynchronous transfer mode, a telecommunications technology, also
known as cell switching, which is based on 53-byte cells.
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B
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Backbone network
A high capacity electronic trunk--for example, the NSF vBNS
backbone--connecting lower capacity networks.
Bandwidth
A measure of the capacity of a communications channel to transmit
information; for example, millions of bits per second or Mb/s.
Benchmark
A point of reference (artifact) to compare an aspect of systems
performance (for example, a well-known set of programs). Also, to
conduct and assess the computation or transmission capabilities of a
system using a well- known artifact.
Beowulf
NASA-funded high performance operating system for networked workstations.
BGMP
Border gateway multicast protocol.
Bit
Binary digit.
BLS
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BMC
Biomolecular computation.
BioCoRE
Biological Collaborative Research Environment.
BOSSNET
A Boston-area network providing SuperNet access. Supported by DARPA
and a consortium of local institutions.
bps, or b/s
Bits per second.
Bps, or B/s
Bytes per second.
Byte
A group of adjacent binary digits operated upon as a unit (usually
connotes a group of eight bits).
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C
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C
C programming language.
C++
C++ programming language, an object-oriented descendant of the C language.
CA*Net
Canada's high performance network.
CAD
Computer-aided design.
CAIRN
Collaborative Advanced Interagency Research Network.
CalREN-2
California Research and Education Network.
CalTech
California Institute of Technology.
CAS
NASA's Computational Aerosciences project.
CAVE
Cave Automatic Virtual Environment. A surround- screen,
surround-sound, projection-based virtual reality system.
CD
Compact disc.
CDL
California Digital Library.
CDMA
Code-Division Multiple Access, a digital cellular technology that uses the
available spectrum of frequencies by digitally encoding each individual
conversation.
CERHAS Center for Electronic Reconstruction of Historical
and Archaeological Sites.
CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
CHARMM
Chemistry at Harvard Molecular Mechanics.
CIC
Computing, Information,
and Communications.
CIO
Chief Information Officer.
CISE
NSF's Directorate
for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
CMU
Carnegie Mellon
University.
Computational Grid
The National Computational Science Alliance's
network of high end parallel computing systems.
CONQUEST
AHRQ's COmputerized
Needs-oriented QUality measurement Evaluation SysTem.
Coral
A network performance
measurement tool.
CORBA
Common object request broker architecture.
CoS
Class
of service.
COTS
Commercial off-the-shelf. Describes hardware and software
that are readily available commercially.
CSTB
Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board, part of the National Research Council.
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D
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DARPA
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of DoD. Formerly ARPA.
DASADA
DARPA's dynamic assembly for systems adaptability, dependability, and
assurance program.
DCS
DARPA's Digital Collaboration Services.
DE
Digital Earth, an interagency geo-referencing framework project.
DeepView
DOE's scalable software system for collaborative scientific microscopy.
DES
Data encryption standard.
DHHS
Department of Health and Human Services.
DiffServ
Differentiated services. Also a standard being developed by the IETF to
implement differentiated services across provider networks.
DL
Digital Libraries.
DLI
Digital Libraries Initiative.
DLMF
NIST's Digital Library of Mathematical Functions.
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid, a biomolecule from which genes are composed.
DNS
Domain Name System, a core element of Internet architecture.
DoD
Department of Defense.
DOE
Department of Energy.
DoS
Denial of service, a form of network attack in which multiple messages
overwhelm a system's capacity to process them.
DPSS
DARPA's distributed-parallel storage system.
DREN
DoD's Defense Research and Engineering Network.
DSM
Distributed shared memory.
DSMC
Direct simulation-Monte Carlo.
DWDM
Dense wave division multiplexing.
DVC
Data visualization corridor.
DVD
Digital video disc.
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E
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EIA
DOE's Energy Information Administration.
EMERGE
DOE's ESnet/MREN Regional Grid Experimental testbed.
Emerge
NCSA's prototype software for retrieving information from many
databases with a single query.
EOT-PACI
The joint Education, Outreach, and Training programs of NSF's
Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI).
EPA
Environmental Protection Agency.
EPSCoR
NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
EQC
Ensemble quantum computer.
EROS
U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation Systems.
ESnet
DOE's Energy Sciences Network.
ESS
NASA's Earth and Space Sciences program.
ETHR
Education, Training, and Human Resources, formerly one of the IT R&D
PCAs. Predecessor to the SEW PCA.
EVL
Electronic visualization laboratory.
Exa-
A prefix denoting 1018, or a million trillion; for example, exabytes.
Extensible Markup Language
See XML.
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F
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FAA
Federal Aviation Administration.
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FedNets
Federal agency networks.
FedStats
Federal Statistics.
FEMA
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FGDC
Federal Geographic Data Committee.
FIPS
Federal Information Processing Standard.
FISAC
Federal Information Services and Applications Council, which reports
to the IWG/IT R&D.
Flops
Floating point operations per second. The term "floating point"
refers to that format of numbers that is most commonly used for
scientific calculation. Flops is used as a measure of a computing
system's speed of performing basic arithmetic operations such as
adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing two numbers.
FM
Formal methods.
FY
Fiscal Year.
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G
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G, or giga-
A prefix denoting 109, or a billion; for example, Gflops or
gigaflops, gigabytes, gigabits.
Gb
Gigabit.
GB
Gigabyte.
GbE
Gigabit Ethernet.
Gbps
Gigabits per second.
GBps, or GB/s
Gigabytes per second.
GEO
Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting, referring to a satellite.
GFDL
NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
Gflops
Gigaflops, billions of floating point operations per second.
Gigapops
Gigabit per second points of presence.
GIS
Geographic information system.
Globus
A joint project of ANL and USC to build distributed computational grids.
GOIN
Global Observation Information Network.
GPS
Global Positioning System.
GSA
General Services Administration.
GSFC
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
GSM
NOAA's global spectral model.
GSM
Global System for Mobile Communication, a European and Asian cellular
communications system based on the TDMA standard.
GUI
Graphical user interface.
GUSTO
Globus Ubiquitous Supercomputing Testbed Organization.
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H
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HACP
NSA's high assurance computing platform.
Haptic
Describes devices that simulate the sensations of touching and grasping.
HAVPN
High assurance virtual private networking.
HAZMAT
NOAA's Hazardous Materials Response and Assessment Division.
HAZUS
Hazard loss estimation methodology.
HCI & IM
Human Computer Interface and Information Management, one of the IT
R&D PCAs. Successor to the Human Centered Systems (HuCS) PCA.
HCI & IMCG
Human Computer Interface and Information Management Coordinating
Group. Successor to the HuCS Working Group (HuCSWG).
HCSS
High Confidence Software and Systems, one of the IT R&D PCAs.
Successor to the High Confidence Systems (HCS) PCA.
HCSSCG
High Confidence Software and Systems Coordinating Group. Successor to
the HCS Working Group (HCSWG).
HECC
High End Computing and Computation. Previously one of the IT R&D
PCAs, but now subdivided into the High End Computing Infrastructure
and Applications (HEC I&A) and the High End Computing Research and
Development (HEC R&D) PCAs.
HECCCG
High End Computing and Computation Coordinating Group, which
coordinates the HEC I&A and HEC R&D PCAs. Formerly High End Computing
and Computation Working Group (HECCWG).
HEC I&A
High End Computing Infrastructure and Applications PCA.
HEC R&D
High End Computing Research and Development PCA.
Heterogeneous system
A system that contains computing systems, networks, or software from
more than one vendor.
HFC
Hybrid-fiber coax, a type of cable connection between end users and
commercial communications networks.
HiPPI
High performance parallel interface.
HP
Hewlett-Packard Company.
HPC
High performance computing.
HPCC
High Performance Computing and Communications. The Federal R&D effort
launched by the High- Performance Computing Act of 1991. Immediate
predecessor of the CIC R&D programs, which were succeeded by the
current IT R&D program.
HPCMP
DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Program.
HPNAT
High Performance Networking Applications Team, which reports to the LSNCG.
HPNSP
High performance network service provider.
HPSS
High performance storage system.
HSCC
High Speed Connectivity Consortium, a SuperNet testbed.
HTMT
Hybrid technology multithreaded, an experimental supercomputing architecture.
HuCS
Human Centered Systems, formerly one of the IT R&D PCAs. Predecessor
of the HCI & IM PCA.
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I
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IA
Information assurance.
I&A
Identification and authentication.
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation.
ICSP
Interagency Council on Statistical Policy.
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force.
iGrid
International Grid.
IKE
Internet key exchange protocol.
INFOSEC
Information security.
Internet
The global collection of interconnected, multiprotocol computer
communications networks including Federal, private, and international
networks.
I2
Internet2.
I/O
Input/output.
IP
Internet Protocol.
IPv6
Internet Protocol, version 6. The first IP release to use 128-bit
addressing, greatly expanding the possible total number of Internet
addresses; and to include such NGI features as built-in security,
multicast, dynamic configurability, and mobility.
IPsec
IP security protocol.
IPsec WIT
IPsec Web-based interoperability tester.
ISAKMP
Internet Security Association Key Management Protocol.
IST
Internet Security Team, which reports to the LSNCG.
IT
Information technology.
IT2
"Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century," an FY 2000
Presidential initiative to increase the Government's IT R&D
investment.
ITR
NSF's Information Technology Research program.
ITCM
FISAC's Information Technology for Crises Management Team.
IWG/IT R&D, or IWG
Interagency Working Group on Information Technology R&D. Successor to
the Subcommittee on CIC R&D.
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J
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Java
An operating system-independent programming language. Initially
designed for use on the Internet as a simpler, object-oriented
alternative to C++, Java can be employed in coding small interactive
application modules (applets) used in Web pages.
JET
Joint Engineering Team, which reports to the LSNCG.
JPL
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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K
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K, or Kilo-
A prefix denoting 103, or a thousand; for example, kilobits.
Kbps
Kilobits per second or thousands of bits per second.
KCS
NSF's knowledge and cognitive systems program.
KeLP
Kernel lattice parallelism, a framework for implementing portable
scientific applications on distributed memory parallel computers.
Kernel
The core software of an operating system.
KMI
Key management infrastructure.
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L
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LAN
Local area network.
LANL
DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory.
LAS
NOAA's Live Access Server.
LBNL
DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Legion
An object-based metasystem software project.
Linux
An open source operating system.
LLNL
DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
LSN
Large Scale Networking, one of the IT R&D PCAs.
LSNCG
Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group. Formerly the Large Scale
Networking Working Group (LSNWG).
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M
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M, or Mega-
A prefix denoting 106, or a million; for example, Mbps, or megabits per second.
Mb
Megabit.
MB
Megabyte.
Mbps, or Mb/s
Megabits per second or millions of bits per second.
MBps, or MB/s
Megabytes per second or millions of bytes per second.
Mcell
NPACI's cellular microphysiology simulation project.
MCM
Multichip module.
MCNC
An advanced electronics, telecommunications, and high performance
computing laboratory in North Carolina.
MEII
DoD's minimum essential information infrastructure.
Metadata
Information derived from and describing data, such as the author,
creation date, format, and modifications to original.
Mflops
Megaflops, millions of floating point operations per second.
MirNET
U.S.-Russian network consortium.
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MONET
Multiwavelength optical networking.
Monte Carlo
A simulation technique using a pseudo-random number generator to
develop multiple independent trials simulating a range and
probability distribution of results.
MPI
Message passing interface.
MPICH
A multiplatform configurable implementation of MPI.
MPI-I/O
Message passing interface-input/output.
MPLS
Multiprotocol label switching.
MPP
Massively parallel processors.
MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging.
MTA
Multithreaded architecture.
M-VIA
An implementation of virtual interface architecture (VIA) for Linux.
MVICH
A DOE/NERSC project to provide portable high performance
communications for cluster computing.
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N
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nano-
A billionth (10-9). A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NC
Nanocrystal.
NCA
Nanocrystal array.
NCAR
National Center for Atmospheric Research.
NCDC
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
NCHS
National Center for Health Statistics, part of NIH.
NCI
National Cancer Institute, part of NIH.
NCO/CIC or NCO
National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications.
NCRR
National Center for Research Resources, part of NIH.
NCSA
National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. Headquarters of the National Computational Science Alliance,
part of NSF's PACI.
NERSC
DOE's National Energy Research Supercomputer Center.
NESC
EPA's National Environmental Supercomputing Center.
Netlogger
DOE tool providing real-time analysis of network performance.
NGI
Next Generation Internet, a Presidential initiative that is part of the
IT R&D program.
NGIX
Next Generation Internet Exchange Point.
NGC
AHRQ's National Guideline Clearinghouse.
NIAP
NIST/NSA National Information Assurance Partnership.
NIH
National Institutes of Health, part of DHHS.
NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Department
of Commerce.
NLANR
National Laboratory for Applied Networking Research, sponsored by NSF.
NLM
National Library of Medicine, part of NIH.
NMR computing
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy-based computing.
NOAA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the Department
of Commerce.
NORDUnet
A network spanning the Nordic countries.
NPACI
National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure. Part of
NSF's PACI.
NPSS
Numerical propulsion system simulation software.
NREN
NASA Research and Education Network.
NRL
Naval Research Laboratory, part of DoD.
NRT
Networking Research Team, which reports to the LSNCG
NSA
National Security Agency, part of DoD.
NSF
National Science Foundation.
NSFNET
An NSF computer network program, predecessor to vBNS.
NSTC
The Presidential National Science and Technology Council.
NTON-II
DARPA's National Transparent Optical Network on the West Coast.
NYSERNet
New York State Education and Research Network.
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O
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OC
Optical Carrier. Typically used with a speed designation. OC-1 is
51.85 Mbps and all other OC-x are multiples of this speed, e.g., OC-3
= 155.52 Mbps.
OCXmon
OCx monitor. A generic name for non-invasive performance measurement
for OC network links, e.g., OC-12mon, OC-48mon.
OMB
White House Office of Management and Budget.
ONR
Office of Naval Research, part of DoD.
ONRAMP
A Boston-area SuperNet testbed.
OOF
NIST's object-oriented finite element software.
OOMMF
NIST's object-oriented micromagnetic modeling framework.
OpenMP
Open message passing.
Option White
DOE's new 10-teraops computing platform at LLNL.
OS
Operating system.
OSD
Office of the Secretary of Defense.
OSTP
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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P
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P/NWGP
Pacific/Northwest GigaPop.
PACI
NSF's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure,
comprising the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) and
the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(NPACI).
PathForward
DOE's ASCI program of partnerships with industry, academia, and other
Federal agencies to accelerate development of technologies needed for
ultra-scale computing systems.
PCA
Program Component Area. The IT R&D program is organized into PCAs:
High End Computing and Computation (HECC, subdivided into HEC I&A and
HEC R&D); Human Computer Interface and Information Management (HCI &
IM); Large Scale Networking (LSN, including NGI); Software Design and
Productivity (SDP); High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS); and
Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce
Development (SEW). Each PCA spans an area in which multiple agencies
have activities.
Penn State
Pennsylvania State University.
Peta-
A prefix denoting 1015, or a thousand trillion; for example, petabits.
Pflops
Petaflops, 1015 flops.
PingER
DOE network-monitoring tool providing ping end-to-end reporting.
PITAC
President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.
PKI
Public key infrastructure.
PMEL
NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
PSE
ASCI's problem solving environment.
PVM
Parallel virtual machine.
PVP
Parallel vector processor. |
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Q
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QBone
I2's end-to-end testbed to accelerate the development of interdomain quality
of service.
QC
Quantum computing.
QoS
Quality of service.
qubit
One quantum bit.
Quorum
DARPA program to develop seamless, interoperable distributed defense networks
from COTS products.
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R
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R&D
Research and development.
RBAC
Role-based access control.
RedHat
A company that distributes and supports the Linux OS.
REE
NASA's Remote Exploration and Experimentation project.
RENATER2
French network.
RSFQ
Rapid single flux quantum, a high-speed superconductor logic.
RSPAC
NASA's Remote Sensing Public Access Center.
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S
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SAN
Storage area network.
SCxx
Abbreviation for the national high performance networking and
computing conference, formerly called SuperComputing, e.g., SC99.
Scalable
A system is scalable if it can be made to have more (or less)
computational power by configuring it with a larger (or smaller)
number of processors, amount of memory, interconnection bandwidth,
input/output bandwidth, and mass storage.
SDM
ASCI's scientific data management program.
SDP
Software Design and Productivity, one of the IT R&D PCAs. Established
in FY 2000.
SDPCG
Software Design and Productivity Coordinating Group.
SDSC
San Diego Supercomputer Center.
SensIT
DARPA's sensor information technology program.
SEW
Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce
Development, one of the IT R&D PCAs. Successor to the ETHR PCA.
SEWCG
Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce
Development Coordinating Group. Successor to the ETHR Working Group.
SF Express
Synthetic Forces Express, a project using high performance
distributed computing systems to support large-scale interactive
simulations.
SGI
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
SIGINT
Signals intelligence.
SII
Scalable information infrastructure.
SIMA
NIST's Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications program.
SingaREN
Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network.
SMI
NSA's security management infrastructure.
SMP
Shared memory symmetric multiprocessor.
SNL
DOE's Sandia National Laboratories.
SNMP
Simple Network Management Protocol.
SOI
Silicon-on-insulator.
SONET
Synchronous optical network.
SPARC
Space Physics and Aeronomy Research Collaboratory.
SSP
DOE's Stockpile Stewardship Program.
STAR TAP
NSF's Science, Technology, And Research Transit Access Point, an
international transit network meeting point in Chicago.
Subcommittee on CIC R&D
Subcommittee on Computing, Information, and Communications Research
and Development. Predecessor of the Interagency Working Group on
Information Technology R&D (IWG/IT R&D).
SuperNet
A DARPA NGI network to demonstrate multi-Gbps end-to-end transmission.
SURA
Southeastern Universities Research Association.
SURFnet
Netherlands network.
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T, or Tera-
A prefix denoting 1012 or a trillion; for example, terabits, teraflops.
TANnet2
Taiwan network.
Tbps, or Tb/s
Terabits per second.
TBps, or TB/s
Terabytes per second.
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol.
Tele-nanoManipulator
A system enabling scientists to see, touch, and manipulate
nanometer-scale objects, such as viruses, using remote microscopes
over high-speed networks.
TDMA
Time Division Multiple Access, a digital wireless technology enabling
multiple simultaneous data channels on a single radio frequency.
TIDES
DARPA's Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and
Summarization project.
TransPAC
U.S./Asia-Pacific Consortium.
TREC
Text REtrieval Conference, sponsored by DARPA and NIST.
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U
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UCAID
University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, which
operates the Abilene network supporting Internet2 project research
universities.
UCLA
University of California-Los Angeles.
UCSB
University of California-Santa Barbara.
UCSD
University of California-San Diego.
UIC
University of Illinois at Chicago.
UMLS
NLM's Unified Medical Language System.
UPC
A programming language that combines features of AC with features of
Split-C and PCP, two other parallel C languages.
URI
OSD's University Research Initiative.
USC
University of Southern California.
b
United States Geological Survey.
U.S.
United States.
UW
University of Washington.
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U
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vBNS
NSF's very high performance Backbone Network Services.
VCC
NASA's virtual collaborative clinic.
VE
Virtual environment.
VGI
Virtual graphics interface.
VIA
Virtual interface architecture, an industry-standard interface for
system area networks.
VIEWS
DOE's Visual Interactive Environment for Weapons Simulation.
Virginia Tech
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
VLAB
NASA's Virtual Laboratory.
VLSI
Very large-scale integration.
VON
Virtual overlay network.
VPN
Virtual private network.
VRML
Virtual Reality Modeling Language.
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W
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WAN
Wide area network.
WDM
Wavelength division multiplexing.
Web
A reference to the World Wide Web.
Windows NT
A Microsoft network operating system.
Wireless technologies
Communications technologies that use radio, microwave, or satellite
communications channels versus wire, coaxial cable, or optical fiber.
WWW
World Wide Web.
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X
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XML
Extensible Markup Language, an offshoot of the hypertext markup language
HTML that enables formatting of multimedia Web pages.
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