CISE Grant (Award 9876395) Annual Report January 2001
Project Participants
What people have worked on your project?
| NAME | PROJECT ROLE | TIME |
|---|---|---|
| Steven Zink | Principal InvestigatorI | >160 hrs |
| Davan Weddle | Co-PI | >160 hrs |
| Lori L. Temple | Co-PI | >160 hrs |
| Lyle Pritchett | Co-PI | >160 hrs |
| Ed Anderson | Senior personnel | >160 hrs |
| Sally Phares | Senior personnel | >160 hrs |
| Joseph Lombardo | Senior personnel | >160 hrs |
| Jeff Wolff | Technician, programmer | >160 hrs |
| Allan Webber | Technician, programmer | >160 hrs |
| Garrett Mead | Technician, programmer | >160 hrs |
| Lou Grandieri | Technician, programmer | >160 hrs |
| Dick Belaustegi | Technician, programmer | >160 hrs |
| Ricahrd Jarvis | UCCSN Chancellor | >160 hrs |
| Thomas Anderes | UCCSN Interim Chancellor | >160 hrs |
What other organizations have been involved as partners?
- Williams Fiber (Salt Lake City, UT)
- Nevada Power (Las Vegas, NV)
- Sierra Power (Reno, NV)
- CENIC(UC/CSU consortium, CA)
- Nevada Department of Transportation (Carson City, NV)
- Nevada State Department of Information Technology (Carson City, NV)
Have you had other collaborators or contacts?
- Nevada State Attorney General's Office
- Brooks Fiber (Reno, NV)
- Sprint (Anaheim, CA)
- Qwest (Anaheim and Sacramento, CA)
- NLANR technical group (NCSA, Urbana-Champaign, IL)
- Dan VanBellingham (EPSCoR)
- Ken Bishop (Kentucky)
- William Decker (NSF)
- Russ Hobby (CENIC group, CA)
- Pat Murphy (Cisco, Las Vegas, NV)
- Tom Perkins (Cisco, Las Vegas, NV)
Activities and Findings
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported as your major research and education activities:
Activities during year one focused on the engineering aspects of the Nevada Research Network infrastructure and negotiations with service providers for fiber connectivity. All in-state networking equipment was purchased under an EPSCoR grant, and configuration and testing was completed at the SCS Reno office. Equipment is installed at UNR, UNLV, and DRI campuses, and fiber upgrade projects are complete to allow campus connections to SCS. Negotiations with Williams Fiber, Nevada Power, Sierra Power, Qwest, Sprint, and CENIC are completed for long-haul and last-mile OC3 service between SCS Las Vegas and Reno offices to the CENIC network at Anaheim and Sacramento, California, respectively. The only expeditures on CISE funds so far this year are for border routers between the long-haul carrier and the NRN infrastructure.
Year two activities have revolved around implementation efforts. Purchases included the fiber optic termination equipment for the last mile facilities and cards and fiber distribution panels for the intra-campus connections. All equipment has been installed. The last mile construction in Reno and Las Vegas was completed by Sierra Pacific Communications during September, 2000.
The OC3 line and equipment to the Stead facility (near Reno) was also installed. This will accommodate some early Internet 2 scientists.
Notification from Williams Communications was received that they will turn over the fiber circuits to UCCSN January 2, 2001. At that time SCS has several activities to complete including termination of the circuits, provisioning them and making the bandwidth assignments. The State of Nevada will also connect into their portion of the fiber at that time.
At the Qwest pop, final connectivity will be made by Pacific Bell, Williams and CENIC. A draft agreement with CENIC is already in place and will be executed at the appropriate time.
The ad hoc NRN Advisory Committee continues to meet approximately every 6 weeks to monitor progress and planning as well as budget tracking.
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported as your major findings:
Network engineering options have been evaluated and most are now finalized.
Early activities focused on the engineering aspects of the Nevada Research Network infrastructure, negotiations with service providers, equipment purchases and required staff training. A signed contract with Williams was put into place. Verbal agreements with Sierra Power and Nevada Power for last-mile connections from Williams' POPs in Reno and Las Vegas, respectively, developed into signed contracts. Provisions for vBNS/Abilene connectivity via the CAL-REN network in California were discussed with the CENIC governing board and plans made to implement.
During year two, activities focused on completion efforts. Williams completed installation of the fiber and is turning it over January 2, 2001. A contract with Sierra Pacific Communications was put into place for the completion of the last mile arrangements in Reno and Las Vegas. Construction at both locations was completed. A draft agreement with CENIC was put into place and will soon be executed.
Intra-campus connections was made and tested including an OC3 line to Stead. In other words, everything is completed and poised for the final connectivity.
Training and Development
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported on
training and development.
Project co-PIs and support personnel have attended a number of ATM, vBNS, IN2, Abilene, and NLANR conferences and workshops to become familiar with high-speed networking technical and policy issues.
For year one, no training or development activities is planned for campus researchers and their support staff.
During year two, activities were scheduled to help the research community understand the resource they would soon have access to.
During January 2000 DRI (north) held a lunch time information session. Topics covered included NRN, Internet 2, Abilene, UCAID, and the meaning of all of these in terms of bandwidth, the projects sited in the proposals and the tentative timeline.
Another informational event was held for the potential researchers who will use Internet 2. (See outreach activities for details).
Also during year 2, two support personnel attended the Kansas Chautauqua and one support technician attended fiber optic terminal equipment school provided by Cisco.
Outreach Activities
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported on
outreach activities.
The NRN project has maintained a Web site for informing UCCSN campuses and monitoring agencies since the original EPSCoR proposal was submitted in February, 1998. This site was moved from 'www.dri.edu/NRN' to 'www.nevada.edu/nrn' and features the original grant proposals, quarterly status reports, partnerships, engineering plans, and a list of contacts which includes the PI and co-PIs of this project.
Regular reports are made to the Vice Presidents for Research from the campuses involved and at monthly System-wide Network Connectivity meetings. In addition, network and computing staff at the three institutions are updated periodically by their NRN representatives.
On February 16 and 17, 2000 separate information sessions were held, one in Reno and one in Las Vegas, for potential researchers using Internet 2. These were the first public meetings held to give the researchers an overview and to answer questions for them. A total of 12 researchers attended from the University of Nevada, Reno, 14 researchers from the Desert Research Institute attended and 17 researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas attended. Several other support personnel and administrators were also in attendance to hear Dan Van Bellingham and Dr. Ken Bishop speak. This activity generated a lot of excitement which has lead to supplemental proposals by several researchers.
Publications and Products
What Have You Published in Journals?
Do you have any major journal publications to report?
Two SCS newsletter articles were published. This newsletter is circulated among the seven UCCSN institutions and is available on the web.
"Statewide Telecommunications: Major Network Enhancements in Progress." System Computing Services Newsletter. Spring 2000. http://www.scs.nevada.edu/about/news/f2000/.
"Nevada Research Network: Cost and Resource Sharing for the Future." System Computing Services Newsletter. Fall 2000.
http://www.scs.nevada.edu/about/news/f2000/
Is NSF support acknowledged in the publication?
Yes
What Books or Other One-Time Publications Have You Produced?
Do you have any books or major one-time publications to report?
"Connecting Nevada's Future" is a 9.5 minute video detailing the project, funding and partners.
Is NSF support formally acknowledged in the publication?
Yes
Internet Dissemination
If you have a relevant Web site or other Internet site, please enter or update URL(s). (Select the Web page that best represents or introduces the work and results made possible by this award.)
http://www.nevada.edu/nrn
If necessary, explain or update how this site relates to the award.
The NRN Web site contains information related to the EPSCoR-funded state infrastructure as well as vBNS/Abilene connectivity funded by this CISE grant.
This site contains the original EPSCoR and CISE proposals, updated engineering drawings, contact information, quarterly reports, and links to other Internet2 sites.
Is NSF support acknowledged on the web site?
Yes
Other Specific Products
Have you developed any other specific product of significance?
None
Contributions
Contributions within Discipline
How have your findings, techniques you developed or extended, or other products from your project contributed to the principal disciplinary field(s) of the project? Please enter or update as appropriate.
The principal discipline of this project is high-speed network access in support of meritorious research applications. At this time, negotiations with commercial service providers are completed, and partnerships with local power companies and state agencies beyond those specified in the proposal are well-established. By means of trading state highway rights-of-way for fiber capacity from Williams Fiber, substantial cost savings for the in-state infrastructure are being realized. Partnerships with local power companies in Reno and Las Vegas for last-mile connectivity between Williams and SCS offices are also resulting in substantial cost savings and long-term working relationships. An agreement with the CENIC group to allow connection of the NRN to vBNS/Abilene through the CAL-REN network has resulted in lower last-mile costs and a potential for closer working relationships between Nevada and California research campuses.
All of these developments result in smaller ongoing costs, ensuring the ability of UCCSN to maintain the research network connectivity after the CISE grant period ends.
Contributions to Other Disciplines
How have your findings, techniques you developed or extended, or other products from your project contributed to disciplines other than your own (or disciplines of colleagues and associates not covered under "Contributions within Discipline")? Please enter or
update as appropriate.
A number of campus research programs involving climate research, terawatt physics, and earthquake modeling are posed to take immediate advantage of the high-speed network as soon as it is available. To date, however, no other disciplines have yet benefitted from the groundwork, preparation and installation which were a major focus of NRN activity of the past year.
Contributions to Human Resource Development
How have results from your project contributed to human resource development in science, engineering, and technology? Please enter or update as appropriate.
Co-PIs, members of the NRN support team, and campus researchers have attended Internet2 meetings and workshops, the Chautaqua at Kentucky and Kansas, the NLANR DAST workshop in Tucson, and Cisco ATM classes in preparation for implementing and supporting the high-speed network covered by this grant. Some of this material (e.g., distributed computing issues) has been disseminated to campus support staff and
applications programmers.
Contributions to Resources for Research and Education
How have results from your project contributed to physical, institutional, and information resources for research and education (beyond producing specific products reported elsewhere)? Please enter or update as appropriate.
The entire goal of this project is to improve the information resources available to Nevada researchers. A secondary benefit is improving collaboration between Nevada research campuses and other computational resources available on the national research networks. At this time, the work is nearly complete to make these resources available, but researchers have not yet seen the benefits of this work.
Contributions Beyond Science and Engineering
How have results from your project contributed to the public welfare beyond science and engineering (e.g., by inspiring commercialized technology or informing regulatory policy)? Please enter or update as appropriate.
The negotiations with Williams Fiber to exchange state highway right-of-way access for bandwidth will drastically reduce long-term costs to the state of Nevada. Using existing right-of-way routes reduces the environmental impact of adding fiber capacity to the state. In addition, other state agencies and departments will benefit from the availability of high-bandwidth fiber capacity at greatly reduced costs under this agreement. Given the normal economic disadvantages Nevada experiences because of geographical distances between its two major population centers, the effect of these reduced costs cannot be overstated.
During year two, further conversations have occurred among the state agencies as to how similar arrangements might be made regarding other potential projects. This agreement with Williams Communications has brought a recognition that state resources, such as right-of-way, has value regarding other opportunities.
Special Requirements
OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE
A brief summary of the work to be performed during the next year of support if changed from the original proposal.
CHANGE IN OBJECTIVES OR SCOPE
Changes in the objectives or scope of a project require prior approval from NSF. Would you like to make such a request electronically now?
A grantee approved no-cost, one year extension was submitted October 11, 2000. This was done because the advent of the Williams Communications agreement and the subsequent last mile agreements with Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power required construction. The original timelines had not included an allocation for the construction process.
SPECIAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Do special terms and conditions of your award require you to report any specific information that you have not yet reported?
No.
INFORMATION SPECIALLY REQUIRED
Please enter below the additional information required by the terms and conditions of your award:
N/A.
UNOBLIGATED FUNDS
Do you anticipate that more than twenty percent of the funds under your NSF award will remain unobligated at the end of the period for which NSF currently is providing support?
No.
Please review and revise below the funds thus far supplied under your award, if necessary:
ANIMALS, BIOHAZARDS, HUMAN SUBJECTS
Has there been any significant change in animal care and use, biohazards, or use of human subjects from what was originally approved (or approved later)?
None.