PROJECT SUMMARY
Florida’s senior institutions of higher education have a long history
of leading edge research,
diversified and high quality educational programs, and the use of networks
to support these
activities. However, the networking needs of advanced research can
no longer be met solely
through the current Internet. To remain on the frontiers of research,
Florida’s universities require
access to a high-performance network infrastructure with characteristics
that are suited to the
research environment—the NSF very High Speed Backbone Network Service
(vBNS).
To address these challenges, seven of Florida’s ten state universities
and one of the state’s leading
private institutions have come together to develop a coordinated plan
for building a high-performance
statewide network for research and education. These institutions are:
Florida A&M
University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University,
The Florida State
University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida,
the University of Miami,
and the University of South Florida. The proposed network will link
these institutions with each
other, with other research universities in the southeast, and with
the NSF vBNS. All of the
universities represented in this proposal are members of the Internet2
consortium.
This proposal requests partial support for the FloridaNet project from
the National Science
Foundation in the amount of $2,800,000 to support the construction
of a distributed gigapop
linking the eight participating institutions and a high-speed connection
to the vBNS. Matching
funding from the participating institutions will exceed this amount.
The University of Central
Florida will serve as fiscal agent for this proposal.
FloridaNet will be developed in phases, with the initial phase configured
as a star topology with
the central gigapop located at the University of Florida in Gainesville
(see Figure 3 on page 56).
Each institution will connect to the gigapop at DS3 to OC3 speeds.
The FloridaNet distributed
gigapop will be connected to the Southern Crossroads gigapop at the
Georgia Institute of
Technology at OC3 speed. The Southern Crossroads gigapop will, in turn,
have OC3 speed access
to the vBNS, migrating to OC12 when available.
In addition to providing Florida’s research institutions with access
to the vBNS, FloridaNet will
provide connectivity for commodity Internet traffic on a non-competing
basis. This will create, for
the first time, a true higher education network serving all of the
needs of Florida’s institutions of
higher education. Using state and institutional resources, FloridaNet
can be expanded beyond the
configuration proposed herein to provide connectivity to all of the
state’s universities and colleges
(ten four-year universities, 97 independent institutions and 28 community
colleges). Of these
institutions, only the eight participating universities will initially
have access to the vBNS.
The institutions represented in this proposal are firmly committed to
the development of FloridaNet
and the advancement of high-speed networking to support leading edge
research. This is evidenced
by the applications proposed, the levels of institutional financial
commitment, the participation of
each institution in the Internet2 project, and the letters of institutional
commitment and support
included in Appendix B.
High Performance Connections Grant proposal in pdf format