This award is made under the high performance connections portion of NCRI's Connections to the Internet announcement, NSF 96-64. It provides partial support for the connection of four universities: the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Miami to the NSF very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS). Under this award, each institution will implement a DS-3 (45 Mbps) ATM connection to a Florida gigaPop which, in turn, will be connected to the vBNS through a shared OC-3 (155Mbps) connection to the Southern Crossroads connection point at GCATT, from which there is access to the vBNS. This proposal will support a number of advanced network-based research projects, in areas such as: brain research, image processing, quantum physics, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, global weather forecasting, real-time multicasting, virtual reality 3D diagnostic anatomy, global satellite remote sensing, ocean modeling, medical informatics and many others. These new vBNS connections will facilitate research collaboration not only among the four institutions but also with federal laboratories such as Sandia and Nasa Jet Propulsion laboratory, other research institutions, and agencies such as NASA Langley. This award provides partial support for establishing and operating the four institutional vBNS connections for a period of two years. Within the next several months, additional research universities will connect to the Florida gigaPoP, and the bandwidth of individual institutional connections will be increased from DS-3 to OC-3.
