The High-Performance Computing and Communications initiativeincludes four components, one of which is the National Research and Education Network (NREN). The NREN initative provides for research sponsored by Federal agencies on a variety of networking technologies. The National Science Foundation has funded research allowing NSFNET backbone services to be provided at 45 million bits per second. The Department of Energy (DOE) is funding investigations into high-speed cell-switching architectures, and inconjunction with NASA is fielding an ATM-based network to connect DOE and NASA sites and academic and industry researchers funded by the two agencies. This award funds a link between the NSFNET and the new DOE/NASA internet. The award enables the evaluation of the packet-switched NSFNET as it connects to the cell-switched ATM network, as well as consideration of ATM routing and addressing,management tools, and performance analysis.
