Appendix C
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Distinguishing Characteristics of Revolutionary Applications
The following is a description of the functional NGI application requirements. These requirements are to be met by an appropriate combination of the applications themselves, technology affinity groups, and the capabilities of Goals 1 and 2.
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Security. Telemedicine and electronic commerce, for example, will rely on the capability to maintain privacy and the confidentiality and integrity of personal data.
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Data Sharing. Digital libraries, other science and technology information banks, etc., will be required for network based applications such as federated genome data bases, crisis response, and Earth Observing Satellite (EOS) data used throughout the Space and Earth Sciences community.
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Software Sharing. Scientists at different locations will need the capability to conveniently share software that supports data analysis, visualization, and modeling to all manner of remote collaborations.
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Controlling Remote Instruments. Communicating with distant fellow workers is required for using remote scientific facilities and for aerodynamic design across a network.
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Visualization. Remote visualization technology is important for seeing what is being controlled at a remote facility or for viewing the results of computational simulations. Advanced visualization technologies such as network integrated, immersive virtual reality devices will be needed to allow multiple design or experimental teams to work together across distances to simultaneously observe or analyze data, images, etc.
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Scalability. Network technologies used by wide area applications must be able to be scaled up to support applications at the national level far better than is possible today.
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High end Computation and Computing Resources. Testbeds will need to integrate supercomputers and computational technologies for a number of reasons. In remote experimentation, supercomputers may be used for real time diagnostics to ensure that devices are performing within specification. In other forms of telescience, supercomputers may be used for instrument recalibration or for real time modeling of experimental data.
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Self-Organizing Networks. This capability provides self-adaptation when the physical configuration or requirements for network resources have changed. Crisis management requires the ability to establish or reestablish networks in the field among managers, action agents (such as police, fire, health care), and situation-specific information.
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Nomadicity. The ability to move resources as needed will become increasingly important. It will include Òmobility of access rightsÓ so the network will know how to treat a new resource. This may range from full rights to complete denial of access.
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Rapid Resource Discovery Capability. Currently, network administrators painstakingly document resources, assign rights, and monitor use. In the future, everyone will require the ability to discover network resources as needed. The most extreme case will be during the response to a natural disaster or other crisis.
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Portability and Interoperability of Applications. As networking and computing become more ubiquitous, work will increasingly be accomplished only with the end-user application requiring the idiosyncrasies of networks and computers to be transparent to users.
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Virtual Subnetworking. This provides the ability to establish specialized communities of interest that may be a group of researchers collaborating on a climate model, a contractor and subcontractors working on a new product, or a task force developing a new policy.
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Ease of Use. At heart of future networks will be ease of use. It will be as easy to add resource to networks as it is to plug in a phone today.
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Reliability. When advance networking services are implemented, they will be fragile and suitable only for research, yet the designs must eventually be scalable to full commercial and even military robustness.
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