Registration

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Ana Preston, Program Manager, International Relations - Internet2 (US) [presentation]

Opening: An Overview of research and education networking efforts around the world

A quick review of the R&E networking efforts around the world.
This overview will also include an assessment towards measurements utilizing the PingER tool, which will provide a view on how Internet performance has evolved over the last 9 years; identifying regions with poor connectivity while providing an assesment of how far tehy are behind the developed world and whether they are catching up or falling further behind. There will also be an illustration of the correlation betwen the UN Technology Achievement Index and Internet performance.

Ana Preston - Internet2 (US) [presentation]
Les Cottrell - SLAC (US) [presentation]

Background information and resources:

• Context and objectives for having a first workshop
  Ana Preston/Heather Boyles, Internet2 International program

Overview from agencies and organizations on programs

U.S. Agency for International Development - USAID [presentation]
Overview of ICT programs
Kevin Hayes (US)
IT in Development Specialist, Higher Education
USAID

An overview of innovative approaches to networking and otherwise providing access to information in under-served areas will be presented. USAID initiatives and mechanisms for meeting development objectives through the use of ICTs will be described. Special emphasis will be given to applications for higher education

Organization of American States - OAS [presentation]
Saul Hahn (US)
Principal Specialist, Office of Science and Engineering
Organization of American States

OAS and networking in the Americas (REDHUCYT and historical perspectives) with perspectives on recent work for role of networks in development of science and technology.

 

Inter-American Development Bank - IADB [presentation]
Francisco Viera (US)
Inter-American Development Bank

The InterAmerican Development Bank is working with national institutions in 3 large regional projects that can be of interest to the community attending this workshop: the CLARA project; the Plan Puebla-Panama project which integrates telecommunications services in Central America and Mexico; and the IIRSA project aimed at the development of infrastructure integration in South America. This session will present the work methodologies applied by the Bank and will identify the alternative ways to participate in these processes.

BREAK

NSF International: Cyber-Enabled Collaborations with Low-Resource Science Communities [presentation]
Lori Perine (US)
US National Science Foundation

NIH International Programs [presentation]
Flora Katz (US)
Fogarty International Programs
Division of International Training and Research
NIH Fogarty International Center

Knowledge Sharing at the Edge: The World Bank's Global Communications System and The Global Development Learning Network
Michael Foley, World Bank Institute [presentation]
Vili Brajovic, World Bank Institute [presentation]

Development agencies have understood for some years now that knowledge, and not just finance, is the key to development. Since the year 2000, in an initiative of its President, Mr. Jim Wolfensohn, the World Bank has extended its Global Communications System to partners in developing countries in order to give them access to knowledge and experience on development issues from other development practitioners and institutes around the world. The Bank's communication system provides fully interactive voice, video and data services, through IP with built-in QoS, on VSATs and fiber connections to over 100 Bank offices worldwide, most of which are in poor countries. This network now includes independently owned distance learning centers (many of which are in universities) in both developing and more developed countries, in a partnership called the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN). There are currently 62 GDLN centers around the world, and this number will grow to over 100 in the next few years.

GDLN facilitates the cooperation between affiliated Distance Learning Centers in offering their facilities, services and interactive distance learning techniques to the development community to organize and implement knowledge sharing, training, consultation and dialogue events. Participants in GDLN activities include development practitioners such as government officials, NGOs, academics, civil society and stakeholders in development projects. While the World Bank Institute provides some of the content of GDLN, the network is open to all in the development community; donor and lending agencies, universities, the private sector, in other words, all who have a common agenda for development effectiveness through knowledge sharing.

Of interest to the members of the Internet2 community is the connectivity the GDLN provides to people in some of the poorest countries in the world, plus the possibility of building partnerships with the GDLN centers that can support their activities in these countries. The workshop presentation will provide a space to discuss these mutually beneficial opportunities.

 

LUNCH and Keynote Address

Mr. Mohamed V. Muhsin Vice President & Chief Information Officer The World Bank Group Mohamed V. Muhsin, a Sri Lankan national, is Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the World Bank Group. He was the first CIO of the World Bank and has been in this position since 1997. He is responsible for aligning information and technology strategy with Bank Group business strategy - directing the investment in IT to support the organization's goals. He has implemented major reforms using IT in the World Bank. He recently led major programs for global connectivity and the renewal of the Bank's information and knowledge management systems. Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Muhsin worked in senior positions the private sector in Sri Lanka and thereafter served in Zambia for several years as an Advisor to the President of Zambia on State Enterprise Reform and Group Financial Director of Zambia's Mining and Industrial conglomerate.

Expanding the reach of advanced Networking

This section will aim at providing a look at some success stories that can indicate quantifiable improvements (in a particular resource limited setting) while providing qualitative measures and models that could be used elsewhere. Via case studies, we will attempt to illustrate:

• Innovative approaches and challenges to expand networking access and usability.
• The need for such approaches

AID Agencies Working Together with National Research and Education Networking Organizations

European Experience of Development Aid and Research Networking

• DANTE and EuropeAID [presentation]
  • Dai Davies (United Kingdom)
    General Manager, DANTE
  • Dale Robertson (United Kingdom)
    Dir. Public Relations, DANTE

The European Commission has shown some considerable interest in using its Development Aid budget to assist in providing connections between countries eligible for aid and the GÉANT network. In pursuing this policy, it is seeking to provide more general development for research networking. By the very nature of the aid budget, many of the beneficiary countries have limited activities in the area of Research Networking. The use of aid money to stimulate international research networking raises a number of practical issues. Most notably, the potential divergence between the objectives of Research Networking and the objectives of development aid. Research networking tends to be used to a bigger global connectivity picture but aid budgets are usually targeted to a particular country. In general, the three European programmes - EUMEDCONNECT, dealing with the Southern Mediterranean, ALICE, dealing with Latin America and, most recently, TEIN 2, dealing with a number of Asia Pacific countries - have been quite successful. A further European initiative, SEEREN, is funded directly as a research and development activity.

The presentation will look at the practical issues involved and the results of the projects to date.

• AARNET and AusAID [presentation]
  • George McLaughlin (Australia)
    Dir. International Programs
    AARNet
  • Craig Keating (Australia) - remote
    AUSAID
  • Mary O'Kane (Australia) - remote

We will present on AUSAID's Virtual Columbo Plan and on the role that Aid and Development agencies can effectively play. The following reports provide mroe information. There will also be a short presentation on the status of connecting the University of the South Pacific (Fiji campus
initially) to the R&E networks of North America, Australia and the rest of the world.

• An advanced network for the University of the South Pacific - Report No. 1
  Report of a short study by Mary O’Kane investigating whether it would be possible to increase substantially the network connectivity of the University of the South Pacific for a reasonable cost
  
• An advanced network for the University of the South Pacific - Report No. 2
  A paper by Mary O’Kane which follows on from and provides more detail to a paper in July 2002 investigating whether it would be possible to increase substantially the network connectivity of the University of the South Pacific for a reasonable cost
  

Internet-To-Go: An Internet Connection in the Middle of NoWhere [presentation]
Robert Dixon (US)
Chief Research Engineer
OARnet and Ohio State University

A tiny satellite trailer has been designed to provide high-speed Internet access from any location. It is entirely self-contained, with its own power sources and wired and wireless networks. There are now five of these trailers in use across the country for originating educational video programs from remote areas.

 

Extending the Reach of Advanced Networking: Two Pilot Projects at the National Center for Research Resources [presentation]
Susan Kayar, NIH
Sheila McClure (US)
Division of Research Infrastructure
National Center for Research Resources - NCRR

Increased Internet connectivity in support of biomedical research is a high priority at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Two pilot programmatic initiatives within the Division of Research Infrastructure, National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), NIH will be the focus of this presentation. Current efforts to extend the reach of advanced networking to developing and minority institutions will be described. The two programmatic areas are: the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) and the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program.

IDeA provides support for institutions in regions of the U.S. that have not received substantial support historically from the NIH for the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research; the eligible institutions are located in 23 states and Puerto Rico. The IDeA program enhances the biomedical research infrastructure and research capacities of institutions, promoting the development, coordination, and sharing of research resources and expertise within and among institutions, and increasing the number of current and future competitive researchers.

The RCMI program provides support to enhance the biomedical research infrastructure in institutions with 50% or greater enrollment of underrepresented minorities that award doctorates in health or the health-related sciences. A number of IDeA eligible states and many RCMI institutions are hampered in their biomedical research efforts by inadequate Internet connectivity that is below current national standards for the sciences. A pilot IDeANet project, designed to increase connectivity among institutions in the IDeA western region of Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming, is now funded. One of the challenges is to provide information technology services in these geographically isolated areas. Establishing a stable high-performance network linking the RCMI sites is paramount to the development of the second pilot, the RCMI Translational Research Network (RTRN). The RTRN will be a cooperative research network to facilitate clinical research on diseases that disproportionately impact minority populations. This Network will consist of a consortium of clinical investigators and basic scientists from several RCMI programs, and other NIH-supported Clinical Research Centers; community health centers and other organizations with an interest in health disparities; and a data and technology coordinating center. The development of the RTRN will facilitate
(1) collaborative clinical research focused on health disparities;
(2) training of clinical investigators;
(3) distributed clinical data management, data mining, and data sharing across health disparity areas; and
(4) access to information related to health disparities for basic and clinical researchers, academic and practicing physicians, patients, and the lay public. Success of these initiatives will pave the way for a nationwide network linking a wide array of institutions.

BREAK

PingER project [presentation]
Les Cottrell, SLAC

This presentation will introduce the methodology used by the PingER project to measure end-to-end Internet performance. We will then illustrate the use of PingER to show overall Internet performance trends and differences to most regions of the world for the last 9 years. This will be followed up with some specific illustrations of how PingER has been used to help policy making decisions and indicate the results of those decisions. We will conclude with some of the challenges and the overall state of Internet end-to-end performance across the Digital Divide.

 

Case studies in Africa:

• IBAUD: Increasing Bandwidth for African University Development [presentation]
  Roy Steiner (US/Africa)
  IBAUD

Today, African Universities pay $5,000 to $20,000 a month for Internet access that would cost less than $100 in the US. Three actions could cut their cost by 70%:
1. Negotiate special licenses with African national telecommunications authorities,
2. Purchase satellite bandwidth in volume through a buying cooperative,
3. Help participating institutions use bandwidth more efficiently.
IBAUD is being proposed as a non-profit public-benefit organization to carry out these activities and to be self-supporting. Once the network is in place however the real challenging questions emerge. How can African Universities benefit from linkages to Internet2 and other international networks.

• Malaria Research in Africa: Building the Network and Connecting the Dots [presentation]
  Julia Royall
  Chief, International Programs
  Project Director, Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Communications Network (MIMCom)
  U.S. National Library of Medicine
  

Towards a Strategy to Expand the Reach of Advanced Networking

Moderator: Ana Preston, Internet2

Open Roundtable Discussion

Adjourn