News for and about the Internet2 community

["Quick, Angela M" <>]

April 4, 2005

JOINT AWARDS EXTEND NEXT-GENERATION TRANS-PACIFIC NETWORK

TOKYO - A ceremony on Saturday, April 2, 2005, in Tokyo, Japan,
inaugurated TransPAC2, a high-speed international Internet service
connecting research and education networks in the Asia-Pacific to those
in the US. TransPAC2 is the 5-year continuation of the highly successful
TransPAC project and will further National Science Foundation (NSF)
efforts to provide fundamental network infrastructure to support
international e-science collaborations among researchers worldwide.

Peter Freeman, National Science Foundation Assistant Director for the
Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, and
Indiana University Vice President for Research and Information
Technology Michael McRobbie participated in signing the agreements on
behalf of the United States.

"Cyberinfrastructure is truly global, it knows no national boundaries
and in many fields the best research can only be done in a global
context. Thus TransPAC2 is a vital component of the global
cyberinfrastructure as it links research and education networks in the
Asia-Pacific - the fastest growing economic region in the world, to
research and education networks in the US," said McRobbie.

James Williams, Principal Investigator at Indiana University for the
TransPAC2 project, said, "We have seen an exponential growth in
digitally enabled science and research collaboration between the US and
Asia-Pacific since TransPAC began in 1998. TransPAC2 is a critical
component in support of these kinds of collaborations. It enables
scientists and researchers to form virtual international workgroups to
successfully tackle difficult computational challenges and data
exchange."

TransPAC2 is part of the NSF's International Research Network
Connections (IRNC) program. The NSF and the National Institute of
Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan will continue
funding TransPAC2. The NSF will fund TransPAC2 for $1M per year for five
years (SCI-0441096). NICT funding will provide additional support in
Asia.

The TransPAC2 network is managed in the US by Indiana University's
Global Research Network Operations Center (Global NOC) and in Japan by
KDDI. KDDI America is providing the Los Angeles to Tokyo circuit.

Co-Principal Investigator for TransPAC2 is Douglas Van Houweling,
President and CEO of Internet2. Van Houweling said, "Internet2 members
will benefit greatly from the continued support by the NSF and NICT of
this key network connection to the Asia-Pacific. High capacity
international connections such as TransPAC2 enable further scientific
discovery and accelerate the advances of research, teaching, and
learning."

TransPAC2 will more than double the previous capacity of TransPAC (to
10Gbps) while decreasing in cost. In addition, plans for TransPAC2
include an intra-Asia backbone network connection from Tokyo to Hong
Kong and a connection to Singapore, enabling researchers along these
paths to connect to TransPAC2. The intra-Asia backbone network fulfills
a key objective of the NSF to enhance the opportunities of researchers
in the Asia-Pacific region to connect to collaborators in the US.

As a vehicle for encouraging collaborations between groups in the US and
the Asia-Pacific, TransPAC had notable success. By participating in and
supporting the growth of new research communities such as Pacific Rim
Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), Global Grid Forum,
and Asia-Pacific Grid (ApGrid), TransPAC2 will leverage the
infrastructure investments made in the network. The idea that science
depends on global collaborations and that these collaborations depend on
international, reliable, high-speed networking and advanced networking
services is borne out in the formation of such communities as PRAGMA and
ApGrid. PRAGMA is an open, international initiative to establish
sustained collaborations and advance the use of the computational grid
among a community of investigators at the leading research institutions
around the Pacific Rim.

For more information about TransPAC2, visit: http://www.transpac.org

For more information about the Indiana University Global NOC, visit:
http://globalnoc.iu.edu

For more information about KDDI, visit: http://www.kddi.com

For more information about the National Science Foundation, visit:
http://www.nsf.gov

For more information about NICT, visit: http://www.nict.go.jp/overview

For more information about Internet2, visit: http://www.internet2.edu

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Media Contact:
Angie Quick
University Information Technology Services
Indiana University
317-278-1042