High-Performance Networking (Internet2)
Internet2® is a name and concept that most people know about; however, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (through Information Services) is associated with several consortiums and projects with the goal of providing high quality high-performance networking for research and education. Since 1998 Information Services personnel have been working to make UNL a leader in providing high-performance networking to faculty, staff, and students. UNL is a founding member of the Great Plains Network (GPN) Consortium and of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID). UCAID is responsible for Internet2 and associated projects.
As a part of Internet2, UNL is now participating in the National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) consortium and the K20 Initiative. One of the K20 goals is “To bring innovators in K-12, community colleges, universities, libraries, and museums into appropriate regional, national, and international advanced networking efforts, via the ‘Sponsored Education Group Participant’ (SEGP) process.” Participation in the SEGP program allows all educational institutions in Nebraska to utilize the benefits of Internet2 by simply connecting to Nebraska’s Educational Network (known as Network Nebraska).
UNL’s network connections for Internet2 are provided through the Great Plains Network Consortium, The Quilt, and the Abilene Network (an Internet2 high-performance backbone network).
Internet2
Internet2 is a consortium being led by over 200 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 is recreating the partnership among academia, industry, and government that fostered today's Internet in its infancy. The primary goals of Internet2 are to:
- Create a leading edge network capability for the national research community
- Enable revolutionary Internet applications
- Ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community.
For more information on Internet2, please see FAQs about Internet2 on the Internet2 website.
Internet-2 Capacity Increase for UNL
UNL actively participates in the Internet-2 network, a high-speed digital network dedicated to research and instructional activities. Over the past year, Information Services has been investigating options to increase the Internet-2 bandwidth available to UNL faculty and staff (along with the University of Nebraska as a whole). In February, a contract was awarded to Level-3 Communications to install an OC-12 network connection from UNL to the Great Plains Network (our Internet-2 access point in Kansas City). The anticipated completion date is late May or early June. Once operational, this new connection will increase UNL’s capacity to the Internet-2 network by a factor of four to 622Mb/sec. (4/4/05)
New Campus Online TV Service Debuts
Edupage, March 18, 2005
A new online television network began operating this month, offering programs from 33 college and university stations around the United States. The Open Student Television Network is supported by the CampusEAI Consortium in cooperation with Internet2. CampusEAI, a member of Internet2, is an organization of more than 100 colleges and universities dealing with software and digital content. The network runs on Internet2's high-speed backbone, resulting in an extremely high-quality signal. For those watching the new network who are not connected to Internet2, however, the picture quality can be compromised, though the sound works fine. Supporters of the network said it provides a needed avenue to get valuable campus-produced programming to broader audiences. Amy Grill, graduate student at Emerson University and manager of Emerson Television Channels, said, “We've got all of this content, and we're looking for ways to distribute it.” (Copied by permission of EDUCAUSE. © Copyright 1999-2005 EDUCAUSE)
Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 March 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/03/2005031701t.htm
The OPEN Student Television Network is currently only viewable by TVs and PCs at institutions that are connected to Internet2's Abilene network.
Research Computing
Information Services is a partner in UNL's Research Computing Facility (RCF). This facility is available campus-wide to researchers who require high-performance computing resources.
One of the major accomplishments for the RCF for FY 02/03 was upgrading the PrairieFire supercomputer to include AthlonMP 2200+ (1.8GHz) processors and 2GB per node. This has resulted in a machine that boasts over a half-teraflop of performance (529 Gflops) and over 256 GB aggregate RAM. The machine is currently being integrated with a tiled visualization display to facilitate high-resolution rendering of scientific data. Usage rates at the end of FY 02/03 were consistently near 75%, very high for a clustered supercomputer.
