UD's Swany works on application honored by Internet2
Martin Swany

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1:41 p.m., April 23, 2010----The Research and Education Data Depot network (REDDnet), whose lead collaborators include Martin Swany, associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware, has developed one of four applications named 2010 winners of the Internet2 Driving Exemplary Applications (IDEA) Award.

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The Internet2 IDEA awards were announced Friday, and sharing the honors are the REDDnet Data Logistics Toolkit and model for storage facilities supporting data-intensive collaboration; EchoDamp, a multichannel audio mixer and echo controller for videoconference-based musical and other collaboration; Worldview, a real-time 3-D network monitoring and visualization system; and Shibboleth, a federated web-based single signon software that manages authorized access to protected online resources.

“This year's winning applications have two things in common: All have applied advanced networking technology to enable transformational progress in research, teaching and learning, and all promise to increase the impact of next generation networks around the world,” said Tom Knab, CIO of the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University and chair of the IDEA award judging committee. “The winning submissions were selected from an exceptionally strong nominations pool and represent a cross-section of the wide-ranging innovation that is occurring within the Internet2 member community.”

REDDnet is a National Science Foundation-funded infrastructure project that provides a large distributed storage facility for data-intensive collaboration among the nation's researchers and educators in a wide variety of application areas including high energy physics.

The underlying software distribution, called the Data Logistics Toolkit (DLT), provides a powerful platform for campuses looking to create bridges for data intensive collaboration with national or regional infrastructure.

The REDDnet model provides "working storage" to help manage the logistical factors in moving and staging large amounts of data across the wide area network -- not just fast transport, but enormous data volumes, globally distributed data, asynchronous data access and data preprocessing. To solve these problems, REDDnet integrates high performance networking with a unique form of storage technology specifically designed for both deployment scalability and fast data transfer within wide area networks.

Users include collaborating researchers who are trying to move data from one collaborator (person or institution) to another, or researchers who want to share large data sets for limited periods of time (ranging from a few hours to a few months) while they work on it.

Technology creators believe it will provide a powerful platform for campuses to create bridges with national or regional infrastructure for data-intensive collaboration.

“Network storage resources are critical to big science projects, like the Large Hadron Collider, which require the ability for scientists to house both raw and processed data. This data also needs to be available at well connected end sites so that it can be accessed easily or stored for backup purposes,” said Paul Sheldon, professor of physics and director of the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education at Vanderbilt University and REDDnet principal investigator. “REDDnet provides a streamlined solution tailored to researchers to facilitate the scientific output across a wide range of disciplines. Our team is grateful for the IDEA award honor and for the recognition of the impact that this project has brought to the community.”

In addition to Sheldon and Delaware's Swany, REDDnet collaborators include Micah Beck, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee; Terry Moore, associate director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee; and P.R. Blackwell, director of the Columbia Regional Geospatial Service Center at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Each application was nominated by a member of the Internet2 community and judged by a member-based committee on innovation in advanced network applications for research, teaching, learning and collaboration, the depth of each project's positive impact on primary users, its technical merit, and its likelihood to be broadly adopted by its community of potential users.

About Internet2

Internet2 is an advanced networking consortium led by the research and education community. An exceptional partnership spanning U.S. and international institutions who are leaders in the worlds of research, academia, industry and government, Internet2 is developing breakthrough cyberinfrastructure technologies that support the most exacting applications of today -- and spark the most essential innovations of tomorrow.

Led by its members and focused on their current and future networking needs since 1996, Internet2 blends its human, IP and optical networks to develop and deploy revolutionary Internet technologies.

The University of Delaware is a charter member of the Internet2 initiative.


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