March 2004




ORION Day at Waterloo
Some of the most cutting-edge research in the country is taking place in Waterloo, Ontario. That was clearly in evidence last week as researchers presented their work at the most recent ORION - CA*net 4 Advanced Networking Day, at the University of Waterloo. The university, which prides itself as one of the early adopters of advanced technology and connectivity, co-hosted the March 18 event with ORION and CANARIE, Canada's advanced internet development organization, which operates the CA*net 4 national backbone. Presentations ranged from using multiple terabytes of data on the web as a new and powerful linguistic resource, to user-controlled lightpaths. Find out more and download some of the presentations at the event web site, at http://www.orion.on.ca/postwaterloo.html

Fanshawe selected for AFV demo
Fanshawe College is one of only two Canadian sites to host a North America-wide event designed to showcase alternatives to standard gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles. The one-day exposition on April 2 offers visitors an opportunity to see the vehicles, meet the experts, learn about trends, explore ownership opportunities, and discover AFV (alternative fuel vehicles) training and job possibilities. The National AFV Day Odyssey is coordinated across North America at 58 sites by the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium (NAFTC). Located at the University of West Virginia, NAFTC is a consortium of members from educational institutions, industry, government, and others promoting cleaner air and energy independence by supporting the use of advanced-technology and AFVs. Fanshawe's event will be held at the London Campus Truck Shop in "C" Building on Friday, April 2nd from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Winnipeg is the second Canadian location. Visit http://www.nationalafvdayodyssey.org for more details.

Bell works with educators on privacy and risk management
In a world of unlimited, online communications and stringent surveillance needs, educators now face new challenges and new requirements under the law. Chief Information Officers and Directors of Education from Ontario colleges, universities and school boards will gather in Toronto on April 7 to hear from government and Bell Canada experts on privacy and risk management in education's new high-tech environment. Since the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act was introduced in 1990, technology has rapidly advanced, and educators now require an enhanced level of diligence to address this Act. They also need to be compliant with the new federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Participants will hear from John Swaigen, Legal Counsel, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario and Suzanne Morin, Senior Legal Counsel, Bell Canada and others. Among other topics, participants will learn about best practices for proactively integrating privacy and risk management procedures. For more information, contact leslie.hetherington@bell.ca.

Internet2 tackles performance measurement
A recent transatlantic data transmission is helping achieve greater performance measures in the use of high-performance networks by the global science community. The Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative Performance Environment System (E2E piPEs), in close cooperation with DataTAG and GEANT in Europe and CANARIE in Canada, is tackling critical performance measurement issues that face the greater Internet community. One such step to address these issues is to work towards the interoperability between the E2E piPEs project, the National Science Foundation supported National Laboratory for Applied Research (NLANR) Advisor project, and the High Energy Nuclear Physics MonALISA (MONitoring Agents using a Large Integrated client Architecture) project. A demonstration was recently conducted at the First International Grid Networking Workshop (GNEW 2004) and the Transatlantic Performance Monitoring Workshop both at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. It focused on moving data packets across the IP- routed infrastructure and a next-generation hybrid optical-packet network, and measuring the performance of this packet transfer over three separate transatlantic, bi-directional paths between Los Angeles, California and Geneva. "This demonstration highlights the degree of collaborative work going on with our partners to deploy, on an international basis, an end-to-end performance measurement and monitoring infrastructure critical to supporting the use of high-performance networks by global science communities," said Cheryl Munn-Fremon, director of Internet2's End-to-End Performance Initiative.

Ireland and Taiwan connect across CA*net 4 via UCLP
Two of the world's leading research networks HEAnet in Ireland and TANET2 in Taiwan autonomously cross connected to each other across CA*net 4 March 26, using the new developed User Controlled LightPath (UCLP) network management software co-funded by Cisco Canada and CANARIE. For the first time networks in Europe and Asia have direct layer 1 peering with complete topology control of the layer 1 network infrastructure. The UCLP software allows end users to create and manage their own optical layer 1 VPNs and dynamically reconfigure them as they desire without signaling or requiring permission from a central network management authority. The UCLP software allows users to cross connect layer 1 VPNs on a peer to peer basis, as well as create daughter VPNs. This allows users to create lambda grid networks that are optimized for the needs of high end applications and data flows. The UCLP software also allows users at the edge to integrate wavelengths and dark fiber from different suppliers and create wide area networks that is part of their enterprise network management domain with the ability to create VPNs across these heterogeneous facilities and offer them to their own users. In the next phase of the program, the same state-full web services based on OGSA used for UCLP will be extended to sensor networks and software process to make them a seamless part of the network in what is called "network recursive architectures". It is hoped that this will be the foundation of the evolving cyber-infrastructure or e-infrastructure environments. See www.canarie.ca/canet4/uclp/index.html for more infomration, or www.canarie.ca/canet4/uclp/uclp_software.html to download a copy of the software.


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