NSF Supported Internet Connectivity

The title of my talk is "NSF-supported Internet Connectivity, or, How NSF May Be Able to Help You Get a High Performance Connection."

We actually have three categories of Internet connection. The first deals with K-12 public libraries, museums and vo-tech, and there we're interested in innovative technologies to connect these institutions -- such things as wireless or cable TV, or other technologies we may not have heard of yet. Colleges is a program that we have had going for a long time now, something like ten years, and we've assisted over 2,500 colleges and universities in connecting to the Internet. High performance connections is the third category, and that one along with innovative technologies was introduced in April of 1996. And here we're aiming at essentially the R1 and R2 universities.

If you are interested in more information on the connections program, all levels, you could go to our Website and there is the URL; and we have the announcement out there as well as an FAQ for all the categories, which hopefully will answer most of the questions that you have. We try to keep the FAQ up to date so that as things change, the latest answers are out there.

You can submit proposals to meet two deadlines -- January 31, July 31. You could send in your proposals up to two months ahead of each deadline. There are actually two different ways to submit your proposals. One is using Snail Mail, in which you'd submit ten copies to NSF. But the other is a new method called FastLane for electronic submission of proposals and, in fact, for doing all the ranges of business with NSF over the Internet. And this is, we think, the wave of the future. It actually won an award in late 1996 for innovative use of the Internet, so we're quite proud of it.

People often ask us about the relationship between Internet 2, Next Generation Internet, and our Connections program and how they fit together. And the answer is, they fit together very well. Internet 2, as you know, was generated by the higher education community. The Next Generation Internet was introduced by President Clinton in October of 1996, and it's aimed more at the federal agencies and what they can do to improve the Internet. And our Connections to the Internet program has been going since April of 1996. In all these cases, they're aiming for the higher education institutions and giving them the bandwidth and the performance characteristics that they need to do better research and better education. Most proposals we receive in the Connections program are oriented toward connection to the vBNS, but this isn't absolutely necessary. It has an acceptable-use policy that we recently liberalized to enable not only the meritorious applications that got the connection in the first place, but also the other traffic that is going to other vBNS-connected institutions. If the traffic is to go to non-vBNS-connected institutions, then it should go over the Commodity Internet. Most of the proposals are starting with DS3. Some go to OC3, but we do have the opportunity for people to upgrade in the future if they wish, with NSF assistance.

If you'd like more information on the high-performance connections program, we have a clickable map at this URL and a list of the high performance awards. This is particularly valuable for people considering writing proposals because the awarded sites have copies of their proposals and other information on what worked and what didn't, and who you can contact to get more information.

Proposals can be for individual institutions or they can be joint proposals, including several institutions. If you are going to write a proposal, you should organize it by the evaluation criteria, which we'll go over in a few minutes, and which are included in the connections announcement. There's a 15 page limit for the project description. If there are other institutions included in the proposal, five pages can be added for each additional institution. Addenda are okay, but the idea of having thickness or lengthy descriptions -- they are not considered virtues. We want all the information, of course, but we would prefer to have it be concise and well-presented. There's another aspect of this, and that is that proposals are reviewed in sets by panels, and they read several of them at a time. And it's just possible that your addendum may not be read.

Funding at this time is up to $350,000 per institution. You have up to two years for the duration of the award. Cost sharing must be at least equal to NSF funding. A question that's often asked is, can we put indirect costs on equipment or services? And the answer is, no, we're not able to fund that. There must be a commitment clearly stated to continue the connection beyond the expiration time of the NSF award, and, as I said earlier, it's possible to upgrade later with NSF assistance.

The evaluation criteria -- there are nine of them. The first one concerns the applications requiring high performance connection, and there you should describe the applications, the amount of bandwidth required or the other high performance characteristics; low latency, for example, and the other institutions or resources on the Internet to which you would connect. The contribution to the national or global infrastructure; there, we're talking about what you may have to offer to the infrastructure and what you would be gaining from the infrastructure with your connection. An engineering plan; this is usually how you would get your campus connected to a vBNS site or a high performance site, and here you should use maps and diagrams as much as you can. Local network infrastructure; the idea there is that the high performance capabilities shouldn't stop at the campus, but rather should go on to the researchers who have the high performance applications. Also, we are quite interested in having sharing of the connection by other researchers eventually, not necessarily at first, and so a plan for how you would enable other researchers to reach this connection is valuable and should be included. Quality of Service is the method for making sure that the researchers will have the characteristics that they need to do their jobs. Technical expertise is your ability to support the high performance connection. Campus-wide access I have mentioned earlier. Cost-effectiveness and cost sharing; again, we need to have at least as much cost-sharing from the institution as the amount of funding that we are providing. And dissemination of results; as a research institution, we are very interested in learning things, and we would like to know what works, what doesn't work in putting in these high performance connections. And the best way we've found is to have a Website at the institutions, so we will ask you to put up a Website with, perhaps, your proposal and your lessons learned and contacts.

If you would like more information from us, you're welcome to contact us. Here are the ways you can reach us. If you know of individuals, such as me or others, you are very welcome to get in touch with us individually as well.

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