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The amount of information becoming available on the Internet is astounding,
and continues to grow at a rapid pace. Many researchers make routine use
of the Internet on a daily basis, and exchange increasingly large amounts
of information with various parties. UMBC already has a ``presence'' on
the Internet that advertises our campus to the world. We need to carefully
manage this presence, and make networked information transfer both in and
out of UMBC as easy and cheap as possible. Our recommendations include:
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Faculty must be able to effectively access UMBC's computing resources from
off-campus. UMBC should provide SLIP (or equivalent) access to all faculty
and appropriate support staff. (ACS has recently starting providing TIA
access to UMBC networks using modem connections, which is a SLIP
``equivalent''.) These relatively low-cost facilities will allow faculty to
learn about network computing at home, where they are more likely to have
the time required to learn the skills needed to effectively use new ITT
technologies. Network access from home at night can sometimes be much
faster than during the day when some databases, networks are extremely
busy. The lack of adequate numbers of dial-in modems is a continuing
problem for faculty who work at night at home. This is probably the best
time of the day for busy faculty to learn about ITT.
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UMBC researchers will continually need ever higher speed access to data at
other locations. High speed access to regional government and industry
locations, where faculty often collaborate, may drive these high end
requirements. For example, in the next several years researchers in
Geography (2--3 faculty), Physics (2 faculty), Computer Science (3-4
faculty), Electrical Engineering, and possibly others will need high speed
access massive amounts of NASA Global Change Data. Biomedical researchers
will need access to image databases, DNA databases, etc. Researchers in the
social sciences and humanities will increasingly want access to archives of
digitally stored original material (slide/art archives), the many
governmental databases (census materials, etc.) and so on. The key problem
is that many of these databases are growing rapidly in size and require
high-speed connections for access.
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In the next 5 years, UMBC may be faced with the prospect that the
average home will have orders of magnitude more network bandwidth
access per person than UMBC. We need to monitor closely our need
for external bandwidth and have plans for increasing this
bandwidth. We need to make a strong case to the UM system for
vastly increased bandwidth between UM campuses and the outside
world. The committee has asked Jack Suess to explore the possibility of
UMBC acquiring Internet access independently from UM System. UMBC's
Internet access should be roughly 1/3 the bandwidth of UMCP's bandwidth,
which is expected to be in the 145 Mbit/sec range in the next several
years. UMBC presently has a 1 Mbit/sec link to the Internet.
Next: Desktop and Administrative
Up: Network Infrastructure
Previous: Recommendations for Internal
Dr. Larrabee Strow
Thu Mar 30 17:21:15 EST 1995