This project facilitates national and international collaborations among scientists for environmental research by establishing a high-speed Science DMZ at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, an emerging research institution, whose research focus is on the Gulf of Mexico and its resources. The Science DMZ is designed to securely and reliably share data among scientists for research in various fields such as coastal, marine, atmospheric, and environmental sciences. This new cyberinfrastructure is aimed to promote connectivity among all scientific researchers in the Texas A&M University system institutions - 11 universities and 1 Health Science Center. The high-speed Science DMZ network, to some extent, is designed to be physically separate from the existing campus-wide network infrastructure to ensure high data rate, reliability, and security. Fiber optic links, high-performance switches, and high-performance routers, all in duplicate, are used to connect four major science and engineering buildings to the Science DMZ thus achieving high reliability and double data rate. Traffic to and from the Science DMZ are not firewalled, thus allowing free flow of science data. Instead, security of the Science DMZ and its data servers are provided by passive monitoring of incoming as well as outgoing traffic by an intrusion detection system. The InCommon authentication system allows external collaborators to access resources at the data centers. The project will transform the university into a major source of environmental research data, create research opportunities for its minority student body, expand research in all key environmental research areas around the globe through collaboration, and improve data flow for greater dissemination of ongoing research findings.
