HPNC: Enabling the Next Step in Network Connectivity

Florida Institute Of Technology, Melbourne FL

Investigators

Abstract

Florida Tech proposes to connect to Abilene/Internet2 to ultimately provide Gigabit service to the desktop of each faculty and student. The internal network has full Gigabit capabilities to all major nodes. The external access to the Internet has expanded over the last three years and the next step in network connectivity is to gain access to Internet2. The award will permit Florida Tech to connect either through the Southern Crossroads Gigapop at Georgia Tech or through Florida International University. Three initial areas were targeted as research candidates requiring advanced networking: Astronomy, Meteorology, and Physics. Florida Tech astronomers are currently remotely controlling a fully automated telescope located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona in real time. Meteorologists are developing models of weather behavior from massive data sets that must be down-loaded from national databases for analysis on the NSF funded 48 node parallel processing systems at Florida Tech. The advanced connection will enhance modeling associated with NASA's Earth Science Application Modeling as well as proposed new interdisciplinary modeling initiatives which couple land-air-sea remote sensing data. The High Energy Physics research group must have direct access to enormous quantities of real-time data collected at the supercollider at CERN, the European Center for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland and the Brookhaven National Laboratory, (RHIC).