NEWS RELEASE: USF Receives NSF High Performance Connections Grant

Vice President Gore announced on September 18, 1998, that the National Science Foundation (NSF) will award High Performance Connections grants to the University of South Florida and 35 other universities across the nation, bringing the total of such awards to 128. USF President Betty Castor indicated that this award underscores the University's prominence and progress in the field of high speed networking innovation, and in developing the advanced research applications made possible by the technology.

The University of South Florida has received this grant to link into NSF's very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) or other NSF-approved high performance networks, allowing scientists and engineers to collaborate and share powerful computing and information resources. The vBNS is crucial to the President's Next Generation Internet (NGI) and serves as the initial interconnect for Internet2 member institutions.

The University of South Florida's research encompasses multi-collaborative digital imaging and video for detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, high-speed multimedia communication, tele-medicine, molecular design and recognition, study of world oceans and weather, intelligent visualization of tera-byte data bases, and intelligent transportation systems through machine vision.

The NSF grant of $350,000 over two years will allow linking from USF's sites to the vBNS backbone via the FloridaNet gigapop in Gainesville and the Southern Crossroads gigapop in Atlanta. The University will match the grant with an additional $350,000 to be invested in its 100 Mb/s to the Desktop initiative, expanded OC3 links via ATM to regional campuses, and additional single mode fiber installation. Thus, a total of $700,000 will be invested in the high performance networking project at USF. NSF is spending about $12.25 million over two years for this round of grants.

Begun in 1995, the vBNS is a five-year, $50 million effort of the federal government, which is collaborating on the project with MCI Telecommunications Corporation. University connections to the vBNS are evaluated by a peer review process and approved on the basis of scientific and technical merit.

This sophisticated telecommunications network runs at 622 million bits per second and has begun a transition to operation at 2.4 gigabits per second. By comparison, the average home modem operates from 28,800 to 56,600 bits per second. In addition, the vBNS is expected to always be several steps ahead of commercially available networking.

This high capacity network allows scientists and engineers to collect and share vast amounts of data, collaborate better across large distances, and run complex equipment remotely. Scientists, for instance, can create 3D models of anything from molecules to machinery on San Diego Supercomputer Center-based equipment; use virtual reality 3D CAVE equipment with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; share visualizations of the Chesapeake Bay or weather simulations; or search distributed archives of maps, video clips, and photographs.

               University of South Florida -- Press Release, September 29, 1998.

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