This proposal is a renewal of the 2 year award made to Rice University to implement a regional network in the state of Texas. This second phase is a three year award that would add 7 new universities: Baylor University, Lamar University, Prarie View A&M University, Southwest Research Institute, Texas Tech University, The University of Texas at Arlington, and The University of Texas at Dallas to the network. Also, this phase would augment the current Sesquinet Network Operation Center with a Network Information Center which would provide all campuses in the Sesquinet region with documentation, training and other much-needed user services. The network backbone would connect the major areas in the state with high speed (224 thousand bits per second - 1.5 million bits per second) lines via., Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and the Johnson Space Center. Each campus would be connected to these major "nodes" with medium speed communication lines (56 thousand bits per second). Cost sharing is offered by each campus participating in the network. Each campus pays for half the purchase price of the routing equipment, half the price of software maintenance, and the complete cost of maintaining equipment.***
