An Interdisciplinary Collaboration on Performance Aspects of a High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

An unresolved and underdeveloped area for the evolving Internet is the issue of ubiquity. Rural areas across the nation are affected by the lack of network access; solutions are either prohibitively expensive, or many years away from implementation. The research and education communities have immediate connection needs, for researchers working in remote areas (in the field, in observatories, and with autonomous telemetry sensors) and for remote educational facilities, at reasonable performance levels to the Internet. The goal of this project is to create a substantial and robust wireless backbone network for bidirectional traffic flows by expanding upon a prototype connection recently installed by the Measurement and Network Analysis Group of the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), as well as the School of Engineering and its Center for Wireless Communications (CWC). This proposal is a collaboration between network researchers and disciplinary researchers in geophysics, and other fields. Multiple different users with different impacts will help to define and understand requirements, as well as appropriate parameters for the implementation of a high performance wireless networking environment, with high performance extending beyond raw speed and including aspects of predictability, as well as spacial and temporal availability. The project is heavily leveraged with the existing network measurement and analysis activity of NLANR, as well as the seismic measurement and analysis activities at SIO. The immediate impact of providing services to researchers and telemetry stations in the field and a delivery mechanism for distance education in disadvantaged areas (in San Diego County) is clear. This network will have the technological capability to accommodate a high volume of data (for both communications and telemetry), thus increasing the scope and area of many projects currently limited by these constraints. The wireless network's primary function as an applied test bed to address distance access issues over a relatively large rural area in general, and to assess performance characteristics of such a network will result in long-term developments and advances in the area of Internet technology. The impact of this Internet Technologies project will be substantial and wide-spread. Benefits to the research and education communities - and ultimately, the public - include improved functional capabilities (across a variety of disciplines), facilitated collaborations between institutions, better and more reliable network access, and a prototype which can be emulated throughout rural areas in the U.S.