#usignite

This year, the U.S. Ignite Summit was at the Juniper Dome in Sunnyvale, CA, and OpenPath was one of the selected apps for the app showcase. While Richard was out in Sunnyvale, Jared went to Burlington, VT, one of the U.S. Ignite Gigabit cities, to get on the Gig there. We were kindly hosted by Champlain College. Faculty member Erik Esckilsen facilitated our meeting with Chris North, the helpful and knowledgeable Director of Infrastructure and Information Services, as well as the dynamic Dr. Kristin Wolf, the faculty member behind the apiary at the college who was leading an environmental education tour that day. We were tagging along, over the Gig, for our demo and field questions to Kristin from Sunnyvale.

Our test went well--there was a noticeable difference in quality, being on the Gig (both at Juniper and from Champlain). To set it up at Champlain, a switch needed to be changed in the ethernet port to make sure I was using the Gig (i.e., the student network, which is capped at 15MB per device, but that is plenty for a one-to-one demo even in HD).

Here we are, setting it all up:

Unfortunately it was a rainy day up there, so my hopes of getting into a beekeeper suit were thwarted. However, I learned a lot from Kristin's fantastic presentation on bees, and the kids had great questions both about bees and about OpenPath too.

And we got to eat some honey:

On Friday, January 11, 2013 I joined Prof. John Geske, Head of Computer Science for a day at Kettering University.  We presented a seminar to over 80 students, staff, faculty, and administrators to introduce the Reliable Communication Protocol for Remote Process Control project.  Pictures at http://tinyurl.com/KU-kickoff.  Kettering is becoming a GENI site and will participate in the project by coding, experimenting, and brainstorming applications for the reliable communication protocol.

As a member of the National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium (NDEMC) team I visited the headquarters of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) in Youngstown, Ohio on November 8.  We discussed areas and ways in which the two projects might work together. I learned a lot and look forward to following up.

After the meeting, the NAMII team gave us a tour of their facility.  The photo here shows Prof. Darrell Wallace of Youngstown State University, as he describes an inexpensive 3D printer that works in polymer and created the object in his hand.  Darrell leads the workforce and education outreach activities of NAMII.

Professor Comer, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University, is an internationally recognized expert on computer networking and the TCP/IP protocols. He has been working with TCP/IP and the Internet since the late 1970s. Comer established his reputation as a principal investigator on several early Internet research projects. He served as chairman of the CSNET technical committee, chairman of the DARPA Distributed Systems Architecture Board, and was a member of the Internet Activities Board (the group of researchers who built the Internet).

Comer's research is experimental. He and his students design and implement working prototypes of large, complex systems. The performance of the resulting prototypes are then measured. The operating system and protocol software that has resulted from Comer's research has been used by industry in a variety of products.

Prasad Calyam is a researcher in the cyber infrastructure software development and networking research groups at the Ohio Supercomputer Center/OARnet, The Ohio State University. Dr. Calyam’s expertise includes web architectures, network-based performance analysis technologies, cloud computing next generation internet protocols and the National Science Foundation-funded GENI (Global Environments for Network Innovation). He is also an expert consultant for industry, academia and government agencies in the design, development and training of software systems comprising of advanced architectures and network-based performance analysis technologies. 

John Geske, Professor of Computer Science, Kettering University

"I see my role in this endeavor as helping to create the collaborative framework in which Kettering University faculty and students can find meaningful research and development projects. I will help supervise undergraduate researchers, and I will help create the necessary faculty support to insure a continuous, successful collaboration. I currently have two faculty members that are committed to this project: Dr. Peter Stachev (web technologies/Internet-2) and Dr. Saroja Kanchi (newtorking/applied graph theory).

"Kettering University (with the support of the C.S. Mott Foundation) has been named as one the the sixty U.S. Ignite sites. Kettering University President Dr. Robert McMahan and the Mott Foundation believe that the technological benefits inherent to U.S. Ignite have the potential to help people improve their lives and their community and enhance the work in the areas of advanced manufacturing, education, and healthcare delivery. As part of the U.S. Ignite initiative, Kettering University has been the recipient of the  networking infrastructure necessary for us to play an active role in this collaboration. The proposed collaboration with Purdue, the Ohio Supercomputing Center, and San Leandro, is precisely the type of  project envisioned in the creation of U.S. Ignite. It is a significant first step in Kettering University achieving the stated goals of U.S. Ignite, and it provides Kettering University with the opportunity to create additional collaborative endeavors. As such, Kettering University is fully committed to the success of this collaboration."

Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy, Principal Investigator for Lit San Leandro and President and Founder of OSIsoft LLC, and Judi Clark and Jeff Kay of the Lit San Leandro Project are members of the team.

Dr. Kennedy, has taken the lead to modernize the digital infrastructure in City of San Leandro, California by building a state-of-the-art digital backbone loop of fiber optics that will allow service providers to deliver ultra-high-speed Internet at 10 Gbps. This capability will attract a new generation of companies to San Leandro, specifically software, technology and green-tech companies that may have a manufacturing component. OSIsoft is the Loop’s first customer. 

A public-private partnership, Lit San Leandro and San Leandro Dark Fiber LLC comprise the private partnership that works with the City of San Leandro to create the fiber loop. San Leandro Dark Fiber owns the fiber optic cable that runs through the city’s underground conduit. Lit San Leandro owns and operates the switch and routing facilities. Fiber has been pulled 75% around the City, and several buildings are connected. Lit San Leandro is connected to a 1 GigE port of Level3 Communications. 

The US Ignite initiative focuses on applications and services for ultra-fast broadband and software defined networks.  Now our effort to build a foundational service, a reliable real-time protocol, on which any number of services could be built has taken the next step.  A team is formed and our proposal for the Mozilla Ignite Development Round 1 has been submitted.  Read it here.  If this project excites you, please let me know.

In subsequent posts members of the team will write about themselves and their participation in the project.  To get things started, here is a pointer to the US Ignite launch event and remarks by UCLA's Deborah Estrin and myself on why this is so important for advanced manufacturing and the United States.

Cheers,  George