ORION Newsletter

October 2004

Still time to register for CANARIE “Results” workshop
If you or your organization hopes to benefit from adopting, implementing, or investing in advanced network applications in healthcare, learning, business or new media, then consider signing up for next week’s "Showing Results - Sharing Knowledge” workshop, hosted by CANARIE. The purpose of the workshop, part of a series that began in Halifax last month, is to showcase the results of projects CANARIE has funded over the years, and to help the projects move forward by encouraging uptake of the initiatives. Project leaders will present their achievements and future plans to potential customers, strategic partners, investors, adopters and funders. The initiatives represent some of Canada's most innovative projects, involving collaboration between researchers, educators and industry. There is still time to register to the event, Nov. 3 and 4 at the Toronto Congress Centre. Visit www.canarie.ca/conferences/fall_series/index.html.

Advanced networking comes to Peterborough
Up to 50 people are gathering at Trent University for Peterborough’s introduction to advanced networking, at this week’s ORION-CA*net 4 Advanced Networking Day, co-hosted by Trent, Fleming College and Peterborough’s regional network – P*ran. “ORION brings wonderful, new opportunities to Peterborough and the entire region,” said ORION President/CEO Phil Baker, who kicks off the Oct. 26 workshop along with past Fleming College President Brian Desbiens, also an ORANO board member, and Dr. Susan Clark, Provost and VP of Academic at Trent. “Peterborough is now connected in a world-class way,” says Randy Neals, Manager, Network and Security at Trent. “The network enables us to do between universities, what we could only do across our own campus before its installation. It opens up a world of opportunity for our researchers.” “Being part of this network has removed the barriers to real global connectivity for educators in Ontario,” says Jason Orchard, Fleming’s director of Network Services and Telecommunications. “CANARIE is proud to support and partner with ORION and other provincial networks. Together, we are giving Canadians the tools for 21st century research, teaching and learning,” said Dr. Andrew Bjerring, president & CEO of CANARIE. Along with experts from ORION, CANARIE and the host institutions, the workshop also features researchers from the Fleming Geomatics Institute, the Greater Peterborough Region DNA Cluster and Trent Water Quality Centre.

ORION and ABEL team up on outreach to school boards
ORION and the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) program travel to Thunder Bay Nov. 17, to kick off the first of a series of workshops aimed at sharing information on the benefits and resources boards can expect by connecting to ORION and collaborating with educators across Ontario and around the world. The workshop will be hosted at Lakehead University’s new state-of-the art Advanced Technology and Academic Centre. Each of northwest Ontario’s school boards is expected to send representatives, including the three school boards that are currently connecting to ORION. Contact info@orano.on.ca for more information.

Halifax hosts 2004 IWAY Awards
The 9th annual 2004 CANARIE IWAY Awards Gala Dinner takes place on Monday, November 22, 2004 at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The national event organized by CANARIE honours individuals, groups and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to Canada's information society. IWAY, short for Information Highway, celebrates the innovators behind Canada's advanced network development and use. The Awards recognize innovation in research and development, and focus on advancements in Internet technology that will provide cultural, social and economic benefits to all Canadians. Winners are nominated by their peers and selected by a panel of high technology and advanced Internet professionals from across Canada. There are five award categories: New Technology Development, Application of Technology, Community Service, Adaptive Technologies, Public Leadership, and the Judges Choice Award.

Come and get it – Caltech opens up its research collaboration service
California’s Caltech is extending its Virtual Rooms Videoconferencing System (VRVS) and collaboration service to R&E networks and major research projects around the world. Promoted as a real-time, web-based infrastructure, the service supports all protocols and a full range of client devices for collaboration, from mobile systems through desktops to installations in large auditoria. The VRVS Project will offer each of its partners a dedicated "community" of virtual rooms hosted in the VRVS Web server, in exchange for appointing a designated full time administrator working on behalf of the partner's field. Touted as “globally scalable next-generation system for real-time collaboration by small workgroups, medium and large teams engaged in research, education and outreach, operating over a collection of national and international networks, the system was initially developed by Caltech as a prototype-production system serving the high energy and nuclear physics and other data-intensive science and engineering sectors. Today, around 12,000 users have been registered on the system. An average of 800 worldwide collaborative sessions are performed every month, involving more than 3000 users and representing a cumulative time of 4,700 hours of research collaboration over the Internet. Learn more at www.vrvs.org.

Majority of state nets access Internet2 backbone
More than 25,000 schools, libraries, and museums in 34 states have access to an Internet2 backbone network based on the results of a bi-annual survey. Titled Unleashing the Educational Power of Broadband, the survey was conducted by Internet2 to assess the adoption of high-performance connectivity among educational institutions across the U.S. It highlights the results of efforts by Internet2 members and the broader education community to take advantage of a program to allow expanded access to Abilene, the Internet2 national network backbone, by state and regional education networks through sponsorship by Internet2 university members. Access to high-performance networking provides teachers and students with a rich, interactive learning environment not available on today's commercial Internet. However, without adequate local connections to the network, the benefits of advanced networking remain largely unrealized for the majority of individual organizations, as the survey also revealed that while 84% of the connected facilities could potentially access the network at over 155 megabits per second (Mbps), the vast majority report connections of less than 10 Mbps. Visit http://k20.internet2.edu.

New president at Loyalist
Maureen Piercy takes over as Loyalist College of Applied Arts and Technology’s fourth president on January 1, 2005, succeeding President Douglas Auld who is retiring. Piercy intends to build on the college’s excellent reputation and track record while developing existing partnerships and forging new ones. Piercy currently serves as Loyalist's Vice-President Academic, and has 24 years of experience in the Ontario public college system. She has held several senior administrative posts at Loyalist including Vice-President of Continuing Education and Skills, and served as Acting President for two terms, in 1999 and 2003. Prior to joining Loyalist in 1988, Piercy was Director of Marketing and Information Services at Sheridan College. Piercy worked as a journalist/ researcher and editor with Maclean's magazine. She holds an honours undergraduate degree from Queen's University, a diploma in Print Journalism from Loyalist College, and a Master's Degree in Education from Brock University.

Support to link researchers to optical ocean grid
A US$3.9 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will assist oceanographers and computer scientists in designing a high-speed wireless and optical network infrastructure to link research institutions on land with several existing or planned ocean observatories off the west coasts of the United States, Canada and Mexico. It will be a prototype for undersea sensor networks, both in the delivery of data from sensors as well as the control of sensors and networks from land. The four-year grant was awarded to the University of Washington, the University of California-San Diego and partner institutions to build the Laboratory for the Ocean Observatory Knowledge Integration Grid (LOOKING). They will collaborate on designing experimental wireless, optical networks and Grid technology, including the development of Web services, networking protocols, devices and sensors. Learn more at www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=5691.

Astronomers demonstrate global Internet telescope
European and US radio astronomers have demonstrated a revolutionary way of observing the Universe through the Internet, allowing clearer views of the furthest and faintest regions of space. Using research networks, astronomers are able to see deeper into the distant Universe and capture unpredictable, transient events as they happen. VLBI (or Very Long Baseline Interferometry) is used by radio astronomers to image the sky in supreme detail. Instead of using a single radio dish, arrays of telescopes are linked together across whole countries or even continents. When the signals are combined in a specialised computer, the resulting image has a resolution equal to that of a telescope as big as the maximum antenna separation. Until now, data had to be recorded onto tape and then shipped to a central processing facility for analysis. Radio astronomers were unable to judge the success of their endeavours until weeks or months after the observations were made. By linking the telescopes electronically in real-time, they can now analyse the data as it arrives. This technique is now possible because high-bandwidth connectivity allows the world's research computer networks to be used as a giant virtual telescope and the imaging of objects with unprecedented detail, in real-time, which would have been impossible only a few years ago. Learn more at www.naic.edu/~astro.

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