News for and about the Internet2 community

[Michelle Pollak <>]

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION CONTINUES TRANSPAC FUNDING

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana - Indiana University today announced that the National 
Science Foundation (NSF) has extended funding for TransPAC(R), the 
high-speed international Internet service connecting research and education 
networks in the Asia Pacific to those in the United States. Principal 
Investigator for TransPAC in the US is Dr. Michael A. McRobbie, Indiana 
University Vice President for Information Technology & CIO and Vice 
President for Research.

"As a vehicle for encouraging collaborations between groups in the US and 
the Asia-Pacific, TransPAC has had notable success. We are pleased that the 
NSF has extended funding for TransPAC," Dr. McRobbie said. "This extension 
supports the critical international collaborations between researchers in 
the United States and those in the Asia Pacific in digitally enabled science."

TransPAC supports such international collaborations as the Grid Physics 
Network (GriPhyN) for distribution and analysis of experimental results in 
high energy physics; the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network, providing 
genomic data, computational resources, and community support for medical 
and biological research; the Joint Program for Arctic Atmosphere 
Observation between laboratories at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and 
the Communications Research Laboratory in Japan; and the Japan-US 
collaboration in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

"NSF's continued co-funding of international links clearly underscores the 
importance of global e-science collaborations and the growing dependence on 
shared cyberinfrastructure resources for complex problem solving," said Tom 
DeFanti, principal investigator of the NSF-supported StarLight optical 
Internet exchange in Chicago, where TransPAC connects in North America.

For the past five years, the TransPAC consortium has connected research and 
education networks in the Asia Pacific associated with the Asia Pacific 
Advanced Network (APAN) to the Internet2 Abilene network, the vBNS, US 
federal networks, and other global international research and education 
networks. Operational support for TransPAC is provided in the US by Indiana 
University's Global Research Network Operations Center (Global NOC(R)) and 
in Japan by KDDI Corporation's APAN network operations center. 
International circuits for TransPAC are provided by KDDI Corporation.

In 1998, the NSF awarded $10 million over five years to fund TransPAC. The 
Japan Science and Technology Corp. in 1999 awarded $10 million over five 
years to double the capacity of TransPAC. In 2002, TransPAC increased 
bandwidth available for researchers from 155Mbps (megabits per second) to 
1.244Gbps (gigabits per second). The funding extension by the NSF provides 
$1.75M over the next year for continued operational support. In the coming 
year, plans include increasing TransPAC bandwidth capacity at no increase 
in cost from the current 1.244Gbps to 5Gbps (gigabits per second), more 
than quadrupling capacity for researchers.

About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest 
and also one of the largest universities in the United States with more 
than 110,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. IU has a 
growing national and international reputation in the area of information 
technology and is a national and international leader in advanced 
networking. IU, at its Indianapolis campus, is home to the Abilene Network 
Operations Center as well as the Global Research Network Operations Center 
(Global NOC(R)). For more information, see http://www.indiana.edu/.

About TransPAC
TransPAC(R) offers its high-bandwidth research network to nearly 100 
Asia-Pacific and United States educational institutions and research 
laboratories for testing a range of applications, including astronomy, 
molecular biology, high-energy physics, medicine, meteorology, 
computational science, and distance learning. For more information, see 
http://www.transpac.org/.

About KDDI
KDDI Corporation, with subsidiaries and offices in countries around the 
world, provides high-quality, seamless network service that interconnects 
every corner of the globe. The comprehensive support of KDDI not only 
covers network services such as leased circuits and frame relay/cell relay 
services but also extends to system integration and housing of customer 
telecom facilities. Network operation centers in Tokyo, New York, Los 
Angeles and London provide 24/7 operations and monitoring of customer 
networks. For more information, see http://www.kddi.com/english/ and 
http://www.apan.net/.

About the Global NOC
The Global Research Network Operations Center (Global NOC(R)) at Indiana 
University manages the international network connections from advanced 
research and education networks in the Asia/Pacific, Europe, Russia, and 
South America to the Science Technology and Research Transit Access Point 
(STAR TAP) and the leading US high-performance research and education 
networks such as Abilene (the network that supports the Internet2 project), 
the NSF's very high performance Backbone Network System (vBNS) and the 
Department of Energy's ESnet. For more information, see 
http://globalnoc.iu.edu/.

About StarLight
StarLight(sm), the optical STAR TAP(sm) initiative, is an advanced optical 
infrastructure and proving ground for network services optimized for 
high-performance applications. For more information, see 
http://www.startap.net/starlight/.

Media Contacts:

Christine Fitzpatrick
Indiana University OVPIT
317-278-1818


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