NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
CONTINUES TRANSPAC FUNDING
Science Foundation (NSF) has
extended funding for TransPAC(R), the
high-speed international Internet
service connecting research and education
networks in the Asia Pacific to
those in the
Investigator for TransPAC in the
University Vice President
for Information Technology & CIO and Vice
President
for Research.
"As a vehicle for
encouraging collaborations between groups in the
the Asia-Pacific, TransPAC has had notable success. We are pleased that the
NSF has extended funding for
TransPAC," Dr. McRobbie
said. "This extension
supports the critical international
collaborations between researchers in
the
TransPAC supports such international
collaborations as the Grid Physics
Network (GriPhyN)
for distribution and analysis of experimental results in
high energy physics; the
Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network, providing
genomic data, computational
resources, and community support for medical
and biological research; the
Joint Program for Arctic Atmosphere
Observation between
laboratories at the
the Communications Research
Laboratory in
collaboration in the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey.
"NSF's continued
co-funding of international links clearly underscores the
importance of global e-science
collaborations and the growing dependence on
shared cyberinfrastructure
resources for complex problem solving," said Tom
DeFanti, principal investigator of
the NSF-supported StarLight optical
Internet
exchange in
For the past five years, the
TransPAC consortium has connected research and
education networks in the Asia
Pacific associated with the Asia Pacific
Advanced Network (APAN) to
the Internet2 Abilene network, the vBNS, US
federal networks, and other global
international research and education
networks. Operational support for TransPAC is provided in the
University's Global Research
Network Operations Center (Global NOC(R)) and
in
International circuits for TransPAC are provided by KDDI Corporation.
In 1998, the NSF awarded $10
million over five years to fund TransPAC. The
Japan Science and Technology
Corp. in 1999 awarded $10 million over five
years to double the capacity of TransPAC. In 2002, TransPAC
increased
bandwidth available for researchers
from 155Mbps (megabits per second) to
1.244Gbps
(gigabits per second). The funding extension by the NSF provides
$1.75M over the next year
for continued operational support. In the coming
year, plans include increasing TransPAC bandwidth capacity at no increase
in cost from the current
1.244Gbps to 5Gbps (gigabits per second), more
than quadrupling capacity for
researchers.
About
and also one of the largest
universities in the
than 110,000 students, faculty
and staff on eight campuses. IU has a
growing national and international reputation
in the area of information
technology and is a national and
international leader in advanced
networking. IU, at its
(Global
NOC(R)).
For more information, see http://www.indiana.edu/.
About TransPAC
TransPAC(R) offers its
high-bandwidth research network to nearly 100
Asia-Pacific and
laboratories for testing a range of
applications, including astronomy,
molecular biology, high-energy
physics, medicine, meteorology,
computational science, and distance
learning. For more information, see
About KDDI
KDDI Corporation, with
subsidiaries and offices in countries around the
world, provides high-quality,
seamless network service that interconnects
every corner of the globe. The
comprehensive support of KDDI not only
covers network services such as
leased circuits and frame relay/cell relay
services but also extends to system
integration and housing of customer
telecom facilities. Network
operation centers in
Angeles and
networks. For more information, see http://www.kddi.com/english/ and
About the Global NOC
The Global
University manages the
international network connections from advanced
research and education networks in
the Asia/Pacific,
(STAR TAP) and the leading
networks such as
the NSF's very high performance
Backbone Network System (vBNS) and the
Department
of Energy's ESnet. For more information, see
About StarLight
StarLight(sm),
the optical STAR TAP(sm) initiative, is an advanced
optical
infrastructure and proving ground for
network services optimized for
high-performance applications. For more
information, see
http://www.startap.net/starlight/.
Media Contacts:
Christine Fitzpatrick
317-278-1818
cfitzpat@iu.edu
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