UF Gets High Speed Internet Connection As Part Of Internet 2 Project

February 26, 1998

GAINESVILLE — The University of Florida is among 29 institutions to be connected to a high-speed network that will allow scientists and engineers across the country to share powerful computing and information resources, President Clinton announced Thursday.

The institutions, which also include Florida State University and the University of Miami, are the latest of a total of 92 research institutions approved for connections to the very high performance Backbone Network Service, a crucial part of Clinton’s Next Generation Internet project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is paying for the connections.

“By building an Internet that is faster and more advanced, we can keep the United States at the cutting edge of Internet technology and explore new applications in distance learning, telemedicine and scientific research,” Clinton said.

The connection is another step toward UF’s participation in Internet2, a high-speed Internet partnership linking more than 100 universities, federal agencies, private industry and nonprofit organizations. UF workers are busy getting the campus ready for researchers to use the network now, said UF Vice Provost Gene Hemp.

“We’re installing the high-speed Internet connections and routers as we speak,” he said.

The decision to include UF among the latest round of connections is an indicator of the high level of research at the university, Hemp said.

“We’ve now been recognized by the NSF as having meritorious research projects that require high-speed connections to other universities and government labs,” he said.

He said the NSF will give UF $350,000 over two years for the equipment and a portion of the monthly line costs linking UF to the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. He expects UF researchers to begin using the connection as early as April.

The backbone network service, begun in 1995, is an investment of $50 million in a five-year project with MCI Telecommunications Corp. Connections are evaluated by a peer review process and are approved based on scientific and technical merit.

The sophisticated telecommunications network currently runs at 622 million bits per second and is expected to operate at 2.4 gigabits per second by the year 2000. By comparison, the average home modem transmits 28,800 bits per second. The service is expected to always be several steps ahead of commercially available networking.

This large capacity allows scientists to collect and share large amounts of data, to collaborate better across large distances and to run complex equipment from remote sites. The ability to share data and equipment helps scientists studying everything from atoms to galaxies, and to remotely run simulations of science from environment to the beating heart.

Most institutions receive grants of up to $350,000 from NSF over two years for their connections to offset the cost of linking from the backbone to their sites.