REPORTER A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED FOR THE UAB COMMUNITY Feb. 1, 1999 VOL 23-NO 15
I2: The wait is over! By Sean Selman The anticipation is over; UAB has access to Internet2. Senior Network Applications Specialist Jill Gemmill (Data
Communications/Network Services) confirmed this past week what many campus researchers have noticed in recent days: They are getting faster responses when transmitting and receiving information via
certain links on the Internet. One researcher in particular noticed a
faster-than-usual response when logging onto a popular database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). He notified Director Elliot Lefkowitz (Microbiology), who decided
to check it out for himself. Lefkowitz, director of UAB's Biological Computing Resource Facility, used a trace-route command that allowed him
to follow the progression of information along Internet routes backwards from UAB to the NCBI. He learned that the site was linked to the campus through the faster connections of Internet2. "Anyone doing genetic sequencing at UAB is going to connect to this site at one time or another. It is the
starting point," Lefkowitz said. Having an Internet2 connection to the Web site will greatly expedite the work of those who use biological sequences and genomic databases. The new connections also
will take some of the load off of UAB's normal Internet connections. The NCBI Web site offers a variety of services to researchers, including links to PubMed, Entrez, GeneBank, BLAST
and even a map-in-progress of the human genome. "We're getting to each of these screens immediately. That's what's new," Lefkowitz said, and it's that faster
transmission speed that excites officials. "This NCBI site is the first one that we know of that is a widely
used address on campus accessible by Internet2," Gemmill said. "This is an example of how the Internet2 project can assist research and education at UAB. This is why we've spent our time, money and
effort in doing this." Lefkowitz said the improved connection to NCBI will make his job easier, too. His
facility provides gene-sequence analyses that UAB researchers can access for a charge, and he received about one gigabyte of sequence information from GeneBank every two months on nine CD-ROMs. Senior Network Applications Specialist Jill Gemmill and Research Assistant Professor Elliot
Lefkowitz demonstrate the new improved transmission speed for Internet2 connections. "Now it's possible for me to download that gigabyte file in about half an hour," Lefkowitz said. He also can
download the information more often, keeping it more up-to-date. Researchers also will have faster access to the NCBI information. "They have always been able to connect to GeneBank on the Web," Lefkowitz said. But it would take them too long to
access the information, so they went to his facility to request it. "If they want access to sequencing information, this NCBI site is the best way to go," he said. The project goals include creating a national computer network reserved for research and education use, enabling
new types of network applications and transferring the new technology to the broader academic public. Since joining Internet2 in 1997, UAB has been awarded funds by the National Science Foundation to develop
high-performance computer networks that operate about 100 times faster than conventional Internet connections. The grants have been used to develop infrastructure to support state and regional
connections to Internet2 and to develop a high-performance Internet2 connection for research universities in Alabama. At the end of 1998, The University of Alabama, UAB and The University of Alabama in Huntsville reached an
agreement with ITC^DeltaCom to connect the universities to a gigaPoP, or regional connection, at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This allowed the collective system campuses to form an Alabama
gigaPoP, a regional connection to Internet2. Gemmill said that, for now, UAB's on-campus network infrastructure varies widely. In some areas, this variation might limit a computer's ability to take full advantage of Internet2 connections. However, she said officials are working on a proposal to upgrade computer network connections on campus so that most researchers can benefit from the speed of Internet2.
In this week's edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a spokesman for the
national Internet2 project said the high-speed research network would be fully operational by the end of January. Project members have completed a crucial networking link to a hub in New York,
completing a trans-continental circuit that runs through Cleveland, Indianapolis, Denver, Sacramento and Seattle. Connections to hubs in Atlanta and Houston are scheduled to be added soon. For more information on UAB's Internet2, log onto [http://www.uab.edu/internet2].
To see the capabilities of improved connections to the NCBI, log onto [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/].
Internet2 allows researchers faster access to genetic database
UAB Reporter Staff
Anticipation
for next-generation Internet connections has been high at UAB for two years, since UAB joined the 130 universities working with government and industry leaders to develop Internet2 for
research, teaching and learning.
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