Having successfully linked more than 100 U.S. universities and national laboratories to most of the world's premier international networks in just over two years, the University of Illinois at Chicago Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) will use a second National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to enhance the network services of its STAR TAP program.

This summer, the NSF announced that, through this new award, it is extending its original three-year grant of $2 million, to $5 million through 2003, securing STAR TAP as the focal point of next-generation internet providers.

"We were extremely pleased that STAR TAP had achieved the goals set forth in the 1997 award, and we wanted to let the research community know that they could count on STAR TAP's continued presence for at least another three calendar years--a long time in 'internet years,'" said Steve Goldstein, NSF Program Director for International Networking. "That's why we made the second award well before the term of the first one had expired. We have learned that persistence is important, because crucial international scientific collaborations need to have confidence in the staying power of the infrastructure on which they depend."

The Science, Technology And Research Transit Access Point, or STAR TAP, is a proving ground for long-term interconnection and interoperability of advanced international networking. Launched in 1997, it provides a universal peering point in the U.S. where international networks have formal agreements to exchange data traffic with the NSF's vBNS and other advanced networks, such as Internet2's Abilene, and those of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, U.S. Dept. of Defense and NASA.

"STAR TAP has persistence, many U.S. and international peers, value-added services and enough critical mass to attract the contributions of many members of the networking and scientific research communities," said EVL director Tom DeFanti, "Our goal is to generate higher level services to decrease latency and improve bandwidth performance. These services include the newest protocols and technologies to simplify connectivity and facilitate digital media broadcasts. We are particularly pleased that this new award makes possible the addition of John Jamison, STAR TAP senior research scientist, to our team."

International research networking organizations that peer at STAR TAP are: CANARIE (Canada), CERN, IUCC (Israel's Inter-University Computation Center), MIRnet (Russia), NORDUnet (Nordic countries), SURFnet (The Netherlands), RENATER2 (France), SingAREN (Singapore), APAN (Asia-Pacific), and TANet (Taiwan). Israel has linked via satellite--important technology for countries without sufficient optic cable access. EVL manages STAR TAP in collaboration with the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago's Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), Indiana University, and Ameritech Advanced Data Services (AADS).

About EVL
UIC's EVL is a graduate research laboratory specializing in networked virtual reality and real-time interactive computer graphics. It is a joint effort of the UIC's College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, and represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the country offering graduate degrees to those specializing in visualization. EVL receives major funding from the NSF and is a partner in the National Computational Science Alliance.

For more information, see http://www.evl.uic.edu

STAR TAP is a service mark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.