Vice President Al Gore has announced that Yale is among 35 U.S. research institutions selected to receive National Science Foundation, NSF, grants that will enable them to connect to an extremely sophisticated nationwide telecommunications network that is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than today's Internet. Yale will receive $350,000 over the next two years to connect with the very high-speed Backbone Network Service, vBNS, and will match the grant with $350,000 in electronic network upgrades on campus. The enhanced speed of the vBNS system will make it possible for scientists across the continent to share powerful supercomputers and access huge databases to solve complex scientific problems, such as predicting the weather, finding cures for genetic diseases and accurately modeling the health of the environment.
In a closely related development, the vBNS has been designated as the primary telecommunications network for "Internet 2," a consortium of universities committed to the development of advanced networking to support future educational applications of telecommunications and technology. Yale is a charter member of the consortium.
"While continuing to rely upon the current Internet for most routine communications, universities require a higher performance infrastructure to support video conferencing, real-time control of remote instruments, and other leading-edge educational applications," says Daniel A. Updegrove, director of Information Technology Services, ITS.
An added advantage of upgrading Yale's networking facilities to accommodate the vBNS is that all of Yale's Internet traffic will become faster, says Mr. Updegrove, adding, "Most Yale buildings will have optical fiber by late 1997, making distribution of vBNS data streams at 100 million bits per second or higher feasible at almost all campus locations."
MCI Communications Corp., based in Washington, D.C., is providing the vBNS connections under a NSF agreement. The new NSF grants will bring to 64 the number of research institutions connected to the vBNS under the Clinton Administration's Next Generation Internet initiative, a $100-million-a-year, three-year project that will connect more than 100 research institutions to the higher-speed network.
The vBNS currently can transmit as many as 622 million bits per second with an eventual capacity of 2.4 billion bits per second. Such a system could transmit all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica in under a second. By comparison, the average modem in a home personal computer transmits only 28,800 bits per second.
In Yale's NSF grant application, three research projects were highlighted to illustrate the types of scientific problems that can be tackled using the vBNS connections. They are:
Function of the visual cortex: Steven W. Zucker, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is collaborating with the University of California at San Francisco on studies of visual cortex function using state-of-the-art imaging techniques. High- resolution brain images will be collected and transferred in near real time over the vBNS link, requiring average transmission speeds of 6 million bits per second or more.
Visible Human Project: Yale's Center for Advanced Instructional Media, under the leadership of Professor C. Carl Jaffe in diagnostic radiology, conducts a computer intensive collaboration with the National Library of Medicine to access and analyze large images from the Visible Human Project. Used for physician training and research, the project's minutely detailed, three-dimensional digital images of male and female human bodies were compiled from microscopic studies of cadavers. Access to vBNS also will support Professor JaffeUs work in image indexing and distributed medical databases in collaboration with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Physics collaborations: Physics professor Michael E. Zeller participates in large collaborations with high-energy accelerator laboratories studying particle physics. The experimental facilities, which are the largest in the world, are located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, and the Central European Laboratory for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. Because the individual collaborations involve as many as 400 researchers from scores of institutions, rapid communication and exchange of information are crucial. The CDF project at Fermi Lab and STAR project at Brookhaven will each require Yale to process a data stream of 10-20 million bits per second for monitoring and control.
Other prospective Yale applications of the vBNS are: -- Remote observation of stars and galaxies with the new WIYN telescope in Arizona, resulting in higher transmission speeds of higher quality images. YaleUs QUEST survey in Venezuela of distant quasars visible from the equator has even greater data transmission demands.
-- A neurophysiology project in which Professor Gordon Shepherd will share maps with his colleagues at other institutions of how neurons in olfactory bulbs react to specific odors. His group also is participating in the multi-agency Human Brain Project, under which researchers are developing and sharing extensive databases of varied neuron activity.
-- A NSF project under the direction of Professor Katepalli Sreenivasan in mechanical engineering, who is archiving very large data files of reactions to turbulence. His work requires vBNS connections for the most efficient distribution of the files to collaborators.
-- Digital imaging of resources at YaleUs libraries and art galleries in collaboration with the University of Michigan, which could point the way to wide-area collaborations in the visual and performing arts. Such a connection would link Michigan's new Media Union and the proposed Digital Media Center for the Arts at Yale.
Joe Paolillo and Jeremy George of Yale's ITS Data Network Operations developed Yale's vBNS network plan, while Martin Ewing of the ITS Science & Engineering Computing Facility provided scientific coordination. More information is available on Yale's web site: www.yale.edu/internet/