The Rest of the Story...

William F. Decker, Program DirectorAdvanced Network InfrastructureNSF CISE/ANIRMailto: wdecker@nsf.govWeb: http://www.cise.nsf.gov/anir

2

Synergy!

Program

Awards

Results

3

Reasons to be WatchfulGovernment Performance Results Act

(GPRA): http://www.nsf.gov/od/gpra/start.htmCongressional expectationsPITAC/NGI expectationsConstituent expectationsNetwork researchPopulism/elitismInfrastructure/researchCultures

4

Reasons to be OptimisticSupportive partnershipsPublic trust; bipartisan

supportNSF leadershipPITAC and IT2

Community track recordCurrent status of the

program

5

What Do We Know?Some knowns:

Two backbones Numbers of awards International

connections Campus connections

plans Some performance

information Planned applications

Some unknowns: Long-term

connections plans Status of campus

engineering plans; delivery to researchers

Performance results Applications results

and measures vPI plans

6

High Performance Connections Awards (as of 4/12/99) -- 154 Sites

1,0

1,0

2,2 (DC)

Non-EPSCoR EPSCoR

2,1

2,2

18,17

1,0

1,0

3,0

2,1

1,0

2,1

2,1

3,2

2,1

2,2

7,5

2,2

1,1

2,2

1,1

2,2

2,2

3,1

2,0

2,2

5,5

1,0

5,4

3,3

3,1

8,5

4,3

2,2

6,5

2,1

3,3

1,1

5,5

8,7

4,3

1,1

7,7

1,02,2

2,2

2,21,0

5,4

1,03,2

x,y - x sites, of which y are connected sites

7

Awards by Carnegie Class

CarnegieClass

Total in Class HPC Awards

Research 126 111Doctoral 113 24Master’s 529 6Other* 13

* 3 Medical, 1 Engineering, 4 Research Institutes, 3 Supercomputing Centers, and 2 GigaPoPs

8

STAR TAP – Global View

9

Traffic Characteristics: vBNS vs. Commodity Internet

Games

NNTP

ssh

shell/cmd

DNS

SMTP

FTP

Web

Multicast

Other

10

Performance IssuesActive Measurement Project: PC-based

machines in ~50 campus research LANs“Upper bound” results based on UDP: about

80Mbps with east/west endpoints on 100Mbps LANs

Off-the-shelf TCP performs poorly: about 6Mbps with east/west endpoints on 100Mbps LANs

Campus engineering, endpoint device tuning or engineering, and applications engineering still need lots of work!

11

HPC Proposals: Meritorious Research Applications by “Directorate”

90/150 HPC proposals analyzed (to date); 557 meritorious applications cited: Mathematical & Physical Sciences (MPS) - 31% Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering (CISE) - 18% Geosciences (GEO) - 13% Engineering (ENG) - 11% Health Sciences (HS) - 10% Biological Sciences (BIO) - 7% Other (Business, Libraries, Fine Arts, Humanities) - 7% Education (EHR) - 3% Sociological, Behavioral, Economic Sciences (SBE) - <1%

12

HPC Proposals: Meritorious Research Applications “Features”

Data transfer - 73% High-end computing - 45% Collaboration - 39% Federal facilities, networks,

or other agency support - 37%

Visualization, imaging - 34% Multi-media, multicasting -

28% Simulation, modeling - 23% Instrument access or remote

device control - 19%

Data mining, databases - 17%

Education, distance learning, collaborative learning - 13%

Medical uses - 12% Highly distributed

experiments - 10% International involvement -

7% Networking research - 4%

13

What Do We Think? Solutions for local loop problems (availability and cost)

have been found in most cases Have finally reached a critical mass of connected sites Don’t yet have as much information about Abilene as we

do about vBNS Penetration of backbone services/functions into campus

network environments has been very limited Science-enabling performance and functionality has a

ways to go; applications stories are unclear Inter-Directorate interests are growing: telescopes, digital

libraries, biological instrumentation, Doppler radars

14

Opinions/ChallengesWe need much more

work at the top of the protocol stack.

Campuses need to do much more than connect.

We must not overlook the needs of network researchers.

15

Assessment PlansSite VisitsPerformance Monitoring and AnalysisSurvey and AssessmentCommittee of VisitorsGPRA ReportFeedback into Planning ProcessesFeedback into Budget Proposals