Executive briefing

Princeton University seeks support under the high performance connections portion of NCRI's "Connections to the Internet announcement, NSF 96-64." The award would provide partial support for two years for a OC-3c connection to the very High Performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS).

NSF award number 9729437

Princeton University contacts:

• Ira Fuchs - PI
• Peter Olenick - Networking Manager

Applications include:

1. Department of Astrophysical Sciences: Cosmological Simulations - A high speed network connection will permit the Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium (GC3) to integrate different computers and disks over the network in order to increase the overall computing power. The primary computing partner is the National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA) at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
2. Department of Astrophysical Sciences: Remote Telescope Operations - The department, along with sister departments at five other U.S. institutions (Johns Hopkins University, New Mexico State University, University of Chicago, University of Washington and Washington State University), operates a modern 3.5-meter optical/infrared telescope located at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, near Alamogordo. The vBNS will support important instrumentation changes that permit modes of telescope operation which are simply not possible with conventional telescopes and thus enable unique science.
3. Department of Astrophysical Sciences: Sloan Digital Sky Survey Science - The vBNS will facilitate access to raw imaging data and it will support remote diagnosis of imaging data as it comes off the camera at Apache Point, New Mexico.
4. Department of Electrical Engineering - The vBNS will enhance ongoing research into network access to video materials. A growing number of experiments involve the transferal of large amounts of video data, both non-streaming and streaming, over the Internet.
5. Department of Physics: Radio Observations of Pulsars - The vBNS will permit members of the department to receive quickly data from the Arecibo Observatory for analysis and comparison with previously archived data in order to gain quick feedback of results and thus to optimize the telescope observing schedule.
6. Department of Physics: The Elementary Particles (EP) Group - The vBNS would support the group's extensive use of the Department of Energy's "Energy Sciences Network (Esnet)," particularly for remote access to laboratory-based computers, transfer of raw and reduced data, and exchange of code with project collaborators.

Princeton University is committed to the creation of a high performance local network infrastructure and is responsible for funding the local infrastructure without NSF/NCRI assistance. The high performance local network infrastructure will be made available as appropriate to all qualified members of the university community and will not be restricted to the applications described in this proposal that require the high performance network.

Princeton has had a long history of participation in networking and the Internet. Vice President Fuchs was the founder of the highly successful network BITNET and was responsible for the work which developed VMNET. Princeton was a charter member of JvNCnet, the first high-speed (T1 network) NSFnet consortium.

Princeton plans to incorporate the vBNS connection into its external connectivity network to provide seamless access to members of the University community.