Contents

Introduction

Connections

Performance

Methods

Examples

Resources

Glossary

Getting Started Guide
Resources

1. Organizations and Projects
2. State/Regional Organizations
3. FAQs, Newletters, Press Releases, and Glossaries
1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
2. Newsletters
3. Press Releases
4. Glossaries
4. Training
5. ImmersaDesk Traveling Resource

1. Organizations and Projects

NLANR

The National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR), funded by the National Science Foundation, provides engineering, traffic analysis, and technical end-user support for NSF High Performance Connections sites and high-performance network service providers such as the vBNS and Abilene networks.

Contact NLANR

UCAID

The University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development is a non-profit consortium, led by university members working in partnership with corporate and affiliate members, to provide leadership and direction for advanced networking development within the university community.

Contact UCAID/I2

I2 (Internet2) is a project of UCAID that is facilitating and coordinating the development, deployment, operation and technology transfer of advanced, network-based applications and network services.

Abilene is a project of UCAID that is providing a high-performance research network backbone, supporting the Internet2 project. Abilene also refers to an advanced backbone network that connects regional network aggregation points, called gigaPoPs, to support the work of Internet2 universities as they develop advanced Internet applications. The Abilene Project complements other high-performance research networks.

Connecting to Abilene

vBNS

The vBNS is the MCI/NSF very high-performance Backbone Network Service. The vBNS is a nationwide network that supports high-performance, high-bandwidth research applications.

Contact vBNS

NGI

The Next Generation Internet is the White House's initiative to promote advanced networking research.

Current NGI Grants, Awards, Projects, and Researchers

Grid Forum

The Grid Forum is an informal consortium of institutions and individuals working on wide-area computing and computational grids.

 

The Grid Forum focuses on the promotion of Grid computing via the documentation of "best practices" and "standards", with an emphasis on rough consensus and running code.

Breakdown of the Working Groups within the Grid Forum

Contact GridForum

Globus

The Globus Project is a toolkit for working with computational grids. Globus is a joint project between the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, and The Aerospace Corporation.

Globus/GUSTO Collaborators
Contact Globus

Legion

Legion, an object-based metasystems software project at the University of Virginia, is designed to build a system of millions of hosts and trillions of objects, tied together with high-speed links. Users working on their home machines have the illusion of working on a single computer, with access to all kinds of data and physical resources (e.g., digital libraries, physical simulations, cameras, linear accelerators, video streams).Groups of users can construct shared virtual work spaces to collaborate research and exchange information. Legion supports this abstraction with transparent scheduling, data management, fault tolerance, site autonomy, and a wide range of security options.

CORBA

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) [OMG:95a] is an emerging open distributed object computing infrastructure being standardized by the Object Management Group (OMG). CORBA automates many common network programming tasks such as object registration, location, and activation; request demultiplexing; framing and error-handling; parameter marshalling and demarshalling; and operation dispatching. Results from research on high-performance and real-time CORBA are freely available for downloading in the open-source TAO ORB.

NSF ANIR

The National Science Foundation's Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research Information program, part of CISE.

The NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering has three goals:

To enable the U.S. to uphold a position of world leadership in computing, communications, and information science and engineering

To promote understanding of the principles and uses of advanced computing, communications and information systems in service to society

To contribute to universal, transparent and affordable participation in an information-based society.

To achieve these, CISE supports investigator initiated research in all areas of computer and information science and engineering, helps develop and maintain cutting-edge national computing and information infrastructure for research and education generally, and contributes to the education and training of the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.
CISE Program Descriptions
Contact ANIR

NCAR

The National Center for Atmospheric Research is managed by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). NCAR is partnering with NLANR on important network applications projects. NCAR's mission is to plan, organize, and conduct atmospheric and related research programs in collaboration with universities, to provide state-of-the-art research tools and facilities to the entire atmospheric sciences community, to support and enhance university atmospheric research education, and to facilitate the transfer of technology to both the public and private sectors.

UCAR Member Institutions
Contact NCAR

CAIDA

The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) is a collaborative undertaking to research and promote greater cooperation in the engineering and maintenance of a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure.

Participate in/Join CAIDA
Contact CAIDA

STAR TAP

The Science, Technology, And Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) is a persistent infrastructure, funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research division to facilitate the long-term interconnection and interoperability of advanced international networking in support of applications, performance measuring, and technology evaluations. STAR TAP anchors the international vBNS connections program.

Contacting/Connecting to STAR TAP
STAR TAP Contacts and Partners

Alliance

The National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) is a partnership among more than 50 U.S. universities and research institutions to prototype the computational and information infrastructure of the next century. The Alliance's National Technology Grid will consist of a broad range of high-end parallel computing systems located at NCSA and other leading-edge facilities within the Alliance -- the supernodes of the Grid.

NPACI Partners
Contact NPACI

2. State/Regional Organizations

CENIC (California)

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) represents the common interests of California's higher education academic and research communities in achieving robust, high capacity, next generation Internet communications services. CENIC's membership is drawn from California higher education institutions and information technology industries. It is highly accountable to the institutions it serves in order to fulfill the trust that will be placed with it. The mission of CENIC is to facilitate and coordinate the development, deployment and operation of a set of seamless and robust intercampus communications services capable of supporting advanced research and education applications in furtherance of California's leadership in higher education and research.

CENIC Advisory Councils
Become a CENIC Associate
Contact CENIC

NYSERNet (New York)

NYSERNet is advancing network technologies and applications that enable collaboration and promote technology transfer for research and education, expanding these to government, industry, and the broader community.

NYSERNet Organization
Contact NYSERNet

Great Plains

The Great Plains Network (GPN) is a consortium of Great Plains states dedicated to supporting scientific research through the use of networking technology. Assisted by the NSF EPSCoR program, the consortium has constructed a high speed network connecting the educational state networks in the EPSCoR states of Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

Great Plains Participants
Contact Great Plains

SURA

The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is a consortium of many universities within 13 southeastern states and the District of Columbia established in 1980 as a nonstock, nonprofit corporation. Generally, the organization's purpose is to serve as an entity through which colleges, universities, and other organizations may cooperate with one another and with government and other organizations in acquiring, developing, and using laboratories, machines, and other research facilities and in furthering knowledge in the physical, biological, and other natural sciences and engineering.

Become a SURA Member
Contact SURA

3. FAQs, Newletters, Press Releases, and Glossaries

3.1 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

NLANR/DAST FAQ

Find the answers to questions about the Distributed Applications Support Team for NLANR.

NLANR/ES FAQ

Find the answers to questions about the Engineering Services Team for NLANR.

Abilene FAQ

The Abilene FAQ.

Alliance FAQ

The National Computational Science Alliance FAQ

Globus FAQ

The Globus FAQ.

Legion FAQ

The Legion FAQ.

UCAID/I2 FAQ

The UCAID/Internet2 FAQ.

vBNS FAQs

FAQs for the vBNS.

3.2 Newsletters

Alliance data link

The National Computational Science Alliance online technical newsletter.

The Network Analysis Times

An NLANR electronic newsletter to share network analysis activities, open discussions, and invite collaboration.

NLANR Packets calendar

The NLANR online calendar of events.

3.3 Press Releases

NLANR Press Releases

Press releases about NLANR.

I2 Newswire

The Internet2 online newsletter.

3.4 Glossaries

Getting Started Guide Glossary

The next chapter in this guide, organized conceptually.

NLANR/DAST Glossary

The NLANR/DAST glossary of networking and high-performance computing acronyms and abbreviations.

whatis.com

whatis® is a knowledge exploration tool about information technology, especially about the Internet and computers. It contains over 2,000 individual encyclopedic definition/topics and a number of quick-reference pages.

4. Training

NLANR/DAST Training

The NLANR/DAST Training site. These NLANR workshops teach effective, hands-on strategies for using and optimizing distributed computing codes, and introduce the concept of Computational Grids and the Globus toolkit. Examples and lectures are used to teach distributed computing concepts as used on wide area networks. Workshops explain the details of the network from the transport layer on down and walk participants through successful, practical case studies. Sign up for upcoming workshops, or browse the archives of previous workshops.

NLANR/ES Training

The NLANR Engineering Training site. NLANR workshops from this team provide training on topics including network performance measurement and monitoring, applications, and network tools. Also included are case studies and infrastructure updates, as well as updates from Gigapops and campuses. Various aspects of optimizing high speed links are also covered, including using them for video conferencing, TCP implementation and tuning, and performance measurement.

ANL Globus Training

Web tutorial from the Globus team at Argonne National Lab.

NLANR Globus Tutorial

An introductory article about computational grids and Globus, as well as RealVideo archives of both user-level and administrator-level Globus tutorials presented by ANL's Steve Tuecke.

5. ImmersaDesk Traveling Resource

NLANR ImmersaDesk Schedule

The NLANR ImmersaDesk (Idesk) is a Fakespace Systems (formerly Pyramid Systems, Inc.) ImmersaDesk R2. Check the Idesk Schedule, and see how you can request this resource.

 

The ImmersaDesk family are portable, drafting-table style, projection-based virtual reality tools. Wearing special glasses, a user can look into the Idesk's 4'x 5' angled screen to "see, hear, and touch" a computer-generated 3D image that is simulated with near-perfect accuracy. Both elevation and birds-eye views are possible. The ImmersaDesk successfully achieves the illusion of an immersive virtual environment without fully surrounding the user.

Contents

Introduction

Connections

Performance

Methods

Examples

Resources

Glossary