UC Berkeley's
New Fat Pipes
by David Pescovitz
Tom
Kalil speaks via videoconference to an audience in San Diego
during the launch of CommerceNet's Next-Generation Internet
Application
Centers.
Courtesy NPACI
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Just as the multimedia
capabilities of the Internet are finally brought home through fast
cable modems and DSL lines, UC Berkeley students are helping create
a whole new Internet that makes today's high-bandwidth connections
and content pale in comparison. In April, the Center for Information
Technology Research in the Interest of Society with support from
the State of California and non-profit consortium CommerceNet opened
the doors of Net21, a Next-Generation Internet Applications Center.
Located on the Berkeley campus in the Center for Commercialization
of ITS Technologies, Net21 boasts a fat pipe connection to the next-generation
Internet, known as Internet2, with speeds 1,000 times faster than
most business-class services today. Born in 1996 from a consortium
of 34 research institutions, Internet2 now connects several hundred
academic institutions, government agencies, and a handful of corporations
over two high-performance network backbones. But without applications
that take advantage of its high-speed optical network, Internet2
doesn't look much different than its predecessor.
"It's the chicken and egg problem," says Tom Kalil, Berkeley's
Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology.
"Without an advanced infrastructure, you don't know what applications
could run over broadband networks. And as a result, you have no
incentive to deploy those networks."
TTo foster the development of broadband networks and applications
tailored to their capabilities, the State of California Department
of Science and Technology Innovation (DSTI), the Corporation for
Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), and CommerceNet,
a not-for-profit organization of business, government, technology,
and academic leaders, launched two Next-Generation Internet (NGI)
Applications Centers – Net21 and the CalNGI Center at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center. While select California companies and
non-profits are receiving $4 million annually in grants to support
their NGI research, Kalil believes that the biggest winners are
the UC Berkeley undergraduate engineering students accepted into
the new Next Generation Internet Scholar program.
"Quite simply, Net21 enables students to live and work in the
future," says Kalil who as one of President Clinton's key technology
advisors was instrumental in the Federal Government's Next-Generation
Internet Initiative that helped support Internet2's development.
"If you look at the last few killer apps of the Internet—Napster,
Google, the first graphical Web browser—they were all developed
by students."
To date, thirteen students from the Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Sciences were awarded NGI Scholarships based on project
proposals. Research guidance comes from EECS chair Shankar Sastry,
CITRIS chief scientist Jim Demmel, and the students' faculty advisors.
One project, Kalil explains, is focused on the Cooperative Library,
a Berkeley-based peer-to-peer file-sharing technology. For example,
Internet2 users could potentially search a massive database of downloadable
videoclips for a particular soundbite. Other research revolves around
integrating bandwidth-intensive multicast and streaming media into
distance learning applications and developing Web browsing technology
for people with severe physical disabilities.
"Net21 is about more than bandwidth," Kalil says. "People
are looking at advancing Internet applications across many dimensions.
Broadband is one feature of the NGI, but it's not the only one."
CITRIS
CommerceNet
Lab Notes is published online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking
research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.
Editor, Director of Public Affairs: Teresa Moore
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
Designer: Robyn Altman
Subscribe or send comments to the Engineering Public Affairs Office: lab-notes@coe.berkeley.edu.
© 2002 UC Regents.
Updated 6/20/02.
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