9312679 Bajzek The advent of information services and the emergence of a set of information navigation and access tools (such as Gopher and WAIS) have made the Internet more user-friendly and more useful to novices, as well as enhancing its potential value to veteran users. Users do not yet receive maximum benefit from these tools. PREPnet plans to configure these tools to produce environments that match the needs of its constituency groups. We believe that education and training coupled with the planned information environment will make PREPnet more valuable to users. Also, to improve the quality of its current connectivity services and to plan to meet future demands, PREPnet needs to gain a better understanding of performance-related factors, such as availability, load, congestion, and delay. Many midlevel networks suffer from the lack of a freely-available, standardized, low-cost package to gather, record, and process aggregate performance statistics that can be compared with statistics from other networks. Prepnet proposes that NSF support a joint project with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to develop a set of tools, application, and procedures for measuring network performance that would be deployed by PREPnet and other midlevel networks. ***
