Mission
The Network Subcommittee is charged with developing and overseeing the UA research network. The goal of the research network is to provide high-speed low-latency network access to the diverse scientific communities within campus and collaborating institutions worldwide. The research network is aimed at serving as the Science DMZ, enabling data-intensive applications that require fast data transfer between UA campus and other collaborating institutions.
We seek to achieve these goals by (1) employing Software Defined Network (SDN) to achieve network virtualization, which allows the network infrastructure to be shared by multiple researchers dynamically based on their needs; and (2) providing tools to reserve high-speed Internet2 connections for projects that require guaranteed data transfers with collaborating institutions.
The committee will initially focus on the following goals:
- Identify stakeholders and gather short- and long-term needs;
- Create a university-wide research network plan to meet the identified short- and long-term needs;
- Identify the necessary technologies, along with hardware and software required, to build the research network;
- Develop a plan for (incrementally) deploying the research network;
- Identify funding sources to build and deploy the research network;
- Create a communication and marketing plan to inform faculty and researchers of the research network; and
- Develop a long-term strategy for supporting the research network.