Nevada Research Network EPSCoR Grant (Award 9871974) Final Report

EPSCoR Grant (Award 9871974) Final Report

Project Participants

In this section you will be asked:

What People Have Worked on the Project?

The table below summarizes information we have so far on persons involved with your project.

More than 160 Hours	Participant's Name(s)	Project Role(s)
No	Jane A. Nichols	Principal Investigator
No	Steven Zink	CoPrincipal Investigator
No	Davan Weddle	CoPrincipal Investigator
No	Lori L. Temple	CoPrincipal Investigator
No	Lyle Pritchett	CoPrincipal Investigator

(Last) Are any other persons involved with the Project?

The following people have continued to play the same role as reported earlier:

Joe Lombardo Support NSCEE/UNLV, Internet 2 contact, policies

Ed Anderson Support UCCSN/SCS, Contract negotiations, pricing

Sally Phares Support UCCSN/SCS, Budget, IN2 contact, policies

Lou Grandieri Support UCCSN/SCS, Network engineering

Allan Webber Support UCCSN/SCS, Network engineering

What Other Organizations Have Been Involved as Partners?
(1) We already have information on other organizations you have reported as partners in your project.
Organizational Partner(s)
Williams Fiber
Nevada Department of Transportation
Nevada State Department of Information T
CENIC
Are any organizations other than yours partners in the project, or have they been?
Have you had other collaborators or contacts?
Please review and, if appropriate, revise what you have said about other collaborators or contacts.
Nevada Power (Las Vegas, NV)
Sierra Power (Reno, NV)
Nevada State Attorney General's Office (Carson City, 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
This section will serve as your report to your program officer of your project's activities and findings. Please describe what you have done and what you have learned, broken down into four categories:

Describe the major research and education activities of the project.
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported as your major research and education activities:
Early activities focused on the engineering aspects of the Nevada Research Network infrastructure, negotiations with service providers, equipment purchases and required staff training. Configuration and testing of the equipment for the in-state connections got underway. Equipment was installed at UNR, UNLV and DRI campuses and fiber upgrade projects were nearing completion to allow campus connections to SCS.
During year 2, activities focused on completion efforts. At UNLV the conduit to accommodate a connection across campus and to the southern Desert Research Institute (DRI) that would eventually extend and connect to System Computing Services (SCS), was completed February, 2000. The subsequent cabling was completed April, 2000. The final fiber installation to complete all the connections between DRI, UNLV and SCS across the campus and to upgrade that portion of the UNLV campus network was completed June, 2000. This upgrade affected Chemistry (17 faculty, 8 staff, 4 post docs, and an unknown number of graduate Students), Biology (26 faculty, 19 staff, 2 post docs, and an unknown number of graduate Students), Engineering (51 faculty, 24 staff, and an unknown number of graduate students).
A process to connect UNLV researchers to the desktop for Internet 2 is underway and is expected to be completed by January 2001.
At DRI (north) installation of fiber from there to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) School of Mines (above ground, single mode fiber-24 strands) was completed to make the final leg of the connection to SCS. The 7204 router has been installed, test data is moving across this new link. This impacts about 120 researchers at DRI.
At the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) a conduit which will eventually encase fiber from the UNR School of Mines to SCS has been installed. A temporary solution to carry data is in place until the fiber pull is completed. This will complete the DRI (north) to UNR Mines to SCS connection for Internet 2 connectivity. An OC-3 circuit connecting UNR's Stead facility to SCS has also been installed and is ready for service.
Additinally, UNR has upgraded switches and wiring in the following areas:
- Laxalt Mineral Engineering (Mackay School of Mines)
- Laxalt Mineral Research (Mackay School of Mines)
- Applied Research Facility (formerly U.S. Bureau of Mines Bldg)
- Engineering Lab Center (College of Engineering)
- Scrugham Engineering Mines (College of Engineering)
- Physics (Arts & Sciences)
- Medical School
Negotiations, agreements and installation of Williams Fiber are complete. Last-mile service agreements between SCS and the CENIC network at Anaheim and Sacramento are complete and work is underway but not completed as of August 30, 2000. Last mile services involving UCCSN, Nevada Power, & Sierra Pacific Power agreements are complete, work is underway with expected completion September, 2000.
The NRN development team continues to meet about every 6 weeks to monitor progress as well as ensure proper budget tracking.
The NRN Advisory Committee met January 11, 2000 for the first time and began discussions regarding NRN policies.
Describe the major findings resulting from these activities.
Please review and, as appropriate, revise the information you have reported as your major findings:
A signed contract with Williams Fiber is complete and the fiber is in place. Final agreements with Sierra Power and Nevada Power for last mile connections from Williams' POPs in Reno and Las Vegas, respectively, are in place and the work is expected to be completed October, 2000. Provisions for vBNS/Abilene connectivity via the CAL-REN network in California have been discussed with the CENIC governing board. Membership and provisioning for final connection is expected to occur October, 2000. All end piece equipment has been tested in a lab environment and is awaiting final end-to-end connectivity.
Describe the opportunities for training and development provided by your project.
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.
No training or development activities were planned for campus researchers and their support staff for year one."
During year 2, 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 item 4-outreach activities for details).
Also during year 2, two support personnel attended the Kansas Chautauqua.
Describe outreach activities your project has undertaken.
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 grant proposals, reports, partnership information, engineering plans and a list of contacts which includes the PI and Co-PIs of this project. This web page will continue to be maintained as long as it is appropriate to do so.
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
In this section, you will be asked to describe the tangible products coming out of your project. Specifically:

What have you published as a result of this work?
Journal publications
Do you have any major journal publications to report?
Please enter the following information (leave blank any information not yet determined):
Author(s):
Title:
Journal:
Volume:
Year: Beginning Page Number:
Status of Publication:
Published Accepted, awaiting publication Submitted, under review, Other:
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 EPSCoR or NSF support acknowledged in the publication? Yes
Books or other non-periodical, one-time publications
Below are the books or other one-time (non-periodical) publications resulting from this project that you have thus far reported.
"Connecting Nevada's Future"
Do you have any books or major one-time publications to report?
What Web site or other Internet site have you created?
If you have a relevant Web site or other Internet site, please enter or update URL(s).
"http://www.nevada.edu/nrn"
If necessary, explain or update how this site relates to the award.
"The Nevada Research Net Web site is located at "http://www.nevada.edu/nrn." The site contains information related to the EPSCoR funded state infrastructure as well as activities related to the NSF/CISE grant."
Is NSF support acknowledged on the web site? Yes
Feel free to refer to this site in later responses. However, all such references, and the one on this screen as well, will be analogous to footnotes. That is, the material to which they point is not part of this report itself, nor of the resulting official NSF record. It is a separate "publication." You cannot count on its being visited by your program officer, a reviewer, or a committee of visitors to NSF. So please be sure that your report under this system can stand on its own.
On the other hand, NSF may use links to your Web site to showcase your work, along with that of other awardees, via on a Web site for your program, discipline, or the like.
What other specific products (databases, physical collections, educational aids, software, instruments, or the like) have you developed?
Have you developed any other specific product of significance?
Please identify the type of product about which you will be entering information:
Data or database
Physical collection (samples, specimens, cell or germ lines, etc.)
Audio or video
Software or netware
Educational aid (not covered in a previous category)
Instrument or equipment
Other invention
Other:

Contributions
Now we invite you to explain ways in which your work, your findings, and specific products of your project are significant.

Describe the unique contributions, major accomplishments, innovations and successes of your project relative to :

the principal discipline(s) of the project;
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. Negotiations with commercial service providers have come to fruition 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 will result 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 EPSCoR grant period ends.
other disciplines of science or engineering;
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 benefited from the groundwork and preparation which were a major focus of NRN activity of the past year."
the development of human resources;
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 has been disseminated to campus support staff and applications programmers.
the physical, institutional, or information resources that form the infrastructure 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 groundwork is nearly laid for implementing these resources."
other aspects of public welfare beyond science and engineering, such as commercial technology, the economy, cost-efficient environmental protection, or solutions to social problems. 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 agreement with Williams Fiber to exchange state highway right-of-way access for bandwidth will drastically decrease 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 the geographical distance between the two major population centers, the effect of these reduced costs cannot be overstated."