Purdue News
Purdue NewsFebruary 26, 1998
Purdue is one of 29 institutions scheduled to be connected this summer to a nationwide network that supports high-performance, high-bandwidth research applications.
The National Science Foundation awarded grants today (Thursday, 2/26) to provide funds to connect 29 additional institutions to the very-high-performance Backbone Network Service. Ninety-two institutions now have been approved for connections, including Indiana University.
President Bill Clinton announced the awards today in a speech in San Francisco.
"By building an Internet that is faster and more advanced, we can keep the United States at the cutting edge of Internet technology, and explore new applications in distance learning, telemedicine and scientific research," Clinton said.
Most institutions receive grants of up to $350,000 from NSF over two years to offset the cost of linking from the high-speed network to their sites. Purdue has not yet been notified of the amount of its grant.
The new connection, which will serve as an auxiliary service to Purdue's current Internet connection, will be available to support a growing number of high-speed applications for research and instruction, said John M. Steele, director of Purdue's Computing Center.
"The high-speed connection will allow researchers to collect and share large amounts of data, to collaborate better across large distances, and to run complex equipment from remote sites," Steele said. "It also will be used to share teaching resources among universities that are connected."
The high-speed connection also will permit and encourage uses and new applications that haven't been possible before, Steele said.
"Many of these new applications are still under development," he said. "Initially, the high-speed connection will be used primarily by faculty and research staff to run high-bandwidth research applications. Down the road, as new applications emerge, the system will be used in instructional ways between universities and laboratories that are connected."
Steele said the process of wiring and installing a new high-speed connection to Purdue will begin this spring, and should be completed by the beginning of the fall semester.
Launched in 1995, the very-high-performance Backbone Network Service, called vBNS, is the product of a five-year cooperative agreement between MCI Telecommunications Corp. and the National Science Foundation.
"The vBNS is a facility -- like a laboratory or a supercomputer center -- that will accelerate science in all disciplines as well as push the limits of networking technology and applications," said George Strawn, director of the NSF's Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research division.
The sophisticated telecommunications network currently runs at 622 million bits per second. By the year 2000, it is expected to operate at 2.4 gigabits, or 2.4 billion bits, per second -- about four times faster. By comparison, the average home modem transmits 28,800 bits per second.
The vBNS is expected to always be several steps ahead of commercially available networking, Strawn said.
Source: John M. Steele, (765) 494-9646, e-mail jsteele@purdue.edu
Writer: Susan Gaidos, (765) 494-2081; e-mail, susan_gaidos@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
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