SURA: Accomplishments

Past SURA IT Accomplishments
The development, deployment and improvement of information technologies in support of scientific research in the southeast has been part of SURA's mission for nearly two decades. Below are listed a few of SURA's past programs and events that have helped to shape the use of information technology in support of research and education within the SURA community and beyond.

SURA-NMI Integration Testbed
2001-2005
SURA managed the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI) Integration Testbed program as part of the NMI-EDIT Consortium under NSF Cooperative Agreement 02-028,ANI-0123937. This program brought real life feedback to bear on the design and evolution of NMI middleware from September 2001 through May 2005. A middleware-enabled, robust IT infrastructure is key to growing the science capacity of the South and the nation - a primary focus of the SURA mission. Through the NMI, SURA members and collaborators contributed to the immediate advancement of scientific applications and the establishment of a sustainable cyberinfrastructure for broad and future use.

SURA Conferences and Workshops
1998 - present
In 1997, the National Science Foundation revised the original Supercomputer Centers program to create the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI). Two leading edge sites were identified (NPACI & NCSA) and SURA was invited to participate in the new program as a member of the National Computational Science Alliance's (NCSA) Partnership for Advanced Computational Services (PACS). The program's objectives, to help disseminate and support technologies developed by Alliance teams, to coordinate Alliance resources and services to users, to aid in Grid deployment and to provide outreach to the research community, meshed well with the SURA mission.

SURA's participation evolved into a series of meetings and workshops' which have formed an important link to member research communities for the dissemination of information and deployment of technologies and to encourage collaborations and specific advanced network applications development within the SURA footprint as well as national and international interaction. More information on SURA workshops is available under current Conferences and Workshops.

LSVNP (Large Scale Video Network Prototype) -
January 2000 - June 2001
SURA, along with BBN Technologies, co-sponsored the LSVNP (Large Scale Video Network Prototype) project, a project of ViDe. LSVNP was an 18-month advanced networking project designed to investigate, deploy, and disseminate information regarding model architectures for video services. As a significant project component, LSVNP provided H.323 video conferencing services for use by actual project teams distributed throughout the U.S.. This enabled several projects to investigate the use of video conferencing as it applied to their own project objectives while serving as a proving ground for related emerging digital video technologies. The Web site that supported LSVNP is being maintained for future reference at http://www.vide.net/lsvnp.

SURA "Mbone-H.323" Video Conferencing Gateway Discussion -
September 2000
On September 27, 2000, SURA sponsored a meeting that brought together engineers from three differing digital conferencing technology efforts for a full day technical discussion. Attendees included RADVision (leading ITU H.323 standard & stack developer), ViDe, VRVS (Virtual Room Video Conferencing Service, from CalTech/CERN), and the NCSA Alliance AccessGrid. These efforts are of specific interest and impact to the SURA community since there are user "islands" of collaborative conferencing beginning to form around each of these technologies within the SURA region. The final report from this meeting served as a first and formal step for those involved in investigating the necessity and probable impact of gateway development.

SURAnet - A ground-breaking regional network initiative -
1987 - 1995
By the mid-1980s it was clear that access to high-capacity computer resources would be needed to facilitate scientific collaboration among SURA member institutions. A high-performance network to provide this access was essential, but no single institution could afford to develop such a system. SURA stepped up to the challenge and, with support from the NSF and SURA universities, SURAnet was up and running in 1987. Large-scale collaboration among SURA-affiliated scientists became an everyday reality.

SURAnet participated in the development of Internet communications standards and telecommunications protocols that enabled researchers and federal agencies to communicate and work in this early Internet environment. SURAnet made it possible for educational institutions, government entities and private companies to connect to the Internet. SURAnet was so successful that it outgrew SURA's primary mission, and the SURA Board approved its sale in 1995 to the private sector. Many of the protocols and procedures created under SURAnet are still in use in the commercial Internet today.