NSF Continues TransPAC Funding

released August 26, 2003

Indiana University has announced that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has extended funding for TransPAC, the high-speed international Internet service connecting research and education networks in the Asia Pacific to those in the United States. Principal investigator for TransPAC in the United States is Michael A. McRobbie, Indiana University vice president for information technology and CIO and vice president for research.

TransPAC supports such international collaborations as the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN) for distribution and analysis of experimental results in high energy physics; the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network, providing genomic data, computational resources, and community support for medical and biological research; the Joint Program for Arctic Atmosphere Observation between laboratories at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and the Communications Research Laboratory in Japan; and the Japan-U.S. collaboration in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

For the past five years, the TransPAC consortium has connected research and education networks in the Asia Pacific associated with the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) to the Internet2 Abilene network, the vBNS, U.S. federal networks, and other global international research and education networks. Operational support for TransPAC is provided in the United States by Indiana University's Global Research Network Operations Center (Global NOC) and in Japan by KDDI Corporation's APAN network operations center. International circuits for TransPAC are provided by KDDI Corporation.

In 1998, the NSF awarded $10 million over five years to fund TransPAC. The Japan Science and Technology Corp. in 1999 awarded $10 million over five years to double the capacity of TransPAC. In 2002, TransPAC increased bandwidth available for researchers from 155 megabits per second to 1.244 gigabits per second (Gbps). The funding extension by the NSF provides $1.75 million over the next year for continued operational support. In the coming year, plans include increasing TransPAC bandwidth capacity from the current 1.244Gbps to 5Gbps, more than quadrupling capacity for researchers.

 

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