1. The Current Status of TANet2 -- Taiwan’s Advanced Research Network
Dr. Fay Sheu
TANet2 Task Force
National Center for High-Performance Computing, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Ladies and Gentlemen. Good morning.
It’s my greatest honor to present the status of Taiwan’s high performance research network. First, let me briefly introduce our center. Our center is the only national laboratory on high performance computing. Since last year, we have been also in charge of several projects on the deployment of network infrastructure under the sponsorship and supervision of National Science Council. We coordinate the whole academia in executing the projects.

2. Taiwan on Internet--an early bird in Asia
Taiwan Academic Network (TANet), funded by the MoE, first linked up to the Internet at JvcNet in Princeton
Quickly became heavy users. Consistently ranked among top 12 when NSFnet was keeping traffic counts
Congestion a constant problem despite frequent upgrades at prohibitive cost
1997~98 -- Spurred by the NGI initiatives of the US and Canada, the NSC collaborated with the NSF, became a HPIIS partner and installed TANet2 as an advanced network for research

3. Early Planning
A tripartite partnership was formed to lease a DS3 for the trans-Pacific link (NSC-MoE-Academia Sinica)
The link is a costly venture at US$10 m/yr for 3 yrs.
A third of the bandwidth (15 Mbps) was allocated for TANet2 for connecting to vBNS via STARTAP
Application projects waiting to ride on the new network covered 33 topic areas, from 22 institutions in Taiwan and 42 institutions in the US
Peering with vBNS established in November ’98
Inaugural for the DS3 held December 22, 1998
Let’s survey how United States, the most advanced country in internet react? The Clinton government announced the Next Generation Internet Initiative on October the tenth of The NGI is a multi-agency federal R&D program that will develop new & more capable networking technologies to support federal agency missions, create a foundation for more powerful & versatile networks in the 21st century, form partnerships with academia & industry that will keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of information & communications technologies, enable the introduction of new networking services that will benefit our business, schools, and homes, and demonstrate new applications that meet important national goals and missions. The participating agencies include DARPA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NSF. The total budget is $100M/yr for 3 years.

4. Domestic Implementation
May 1, 1999 – construction of domestic infrastructure completed and began operation
The National Center for High-performance Computing was charged with management. Funding provided for circuit cost but not for additional personnel
11 POPs engaged to assist with services
Network Operation Center outsourced to Asia-Pacific Online
In Taiwan, the National Science Council is almost the exclusive funding agency to academia for research. Aside of that, the mechanism and functioning is very similar to National Science Foundation in United States.
NSF plays an important role in the NGI program. It provide vBNS, an OC-12 connection, as the nation wide platform for new technologies and applications. Originally, vBNS was deployed to connect the five super computing centers in United States since Under NGI, it will connect up to 100 accredited universities which can demonstrate meritorious applications.
NSF plays another important role in promoting the connections with foreign research networks. To avoid the international transit traffic going through the vBNS, NSF funded U. of Illinois in Chicago to run STARTAP, a science, technology, and research transit access point for international traffic. Together, it announced HPIIS, high performance international internet service, program in May 1997 to solicit the international connection with some requirements. The connecting country must have meritorious collaborative network application projects, high speed international link which is at least 10 Mbps initially, and will be upgraded to 155 Mbps in five years, and a well established research and education network similar to vBNS.

5. TANet2 and TANet No kinship but often share common grounds
TANet2 is funded by the NSC whereas TANet by the Ministry of Education
TANet2 serves the research community whereas TANet caters to education, from K-12 to higher education
Acts as symbiotic body in leasing costly circuits – by pooling funds when pricing schedule befits such action
Up to mid-1997, there is the only one academic network in Taiwan, TANet. It was inaugurated in 1990, and is among the earliest internet in Asia Pacific region. Since then, it has been the main network among research and educational institutions. With over 500 kilometer DS3 connections constituting the domestic backbone, TANet already connects more than 400 institutions and with more than 500 thousand users. The yearly budget is about 4 million US dollars, two third of it are from the Ministry of Education and one third from the National Science Council.
Even with so many users, the international connection is only two DS1 to US, i.e., 3Mbps and is always over congested. Also, TANet is basically supervised by Ministry of Education, whose recent mission is “Internet to every elementary school”. Being free of charge for more than 500 thousand users, TANet is always too congested to develop meritorious collaborative research either domestically or internationally.

6. Governance Approved 12/14/’98
Policy Committee
Users
Group
POP Administrators
Group
NCHC
Outsourc
APOL
NOC

7. Promotion & Outreach Web site built: http://www.tanet2.net.tw
Participated in demonstration exhibits at SC’98 (iGrid), SC’99, INET 2000 (iGrid2000), SC2000
Workshops held: NSC-NRC (3/’99), NSC-NSF (6/’99), TANet2 Day (4/’00), NRC-NSC (6/’00)
Liaison role--provides scientists with guidelines for international collaboration
46 institutions connected to TANet2, out of 61 approved

8. Services and In-house Research
Multicast service provided to 10 universities
MRTG, video conferencing
Looking Glass server
Net flow--dynamic graphical display
Connectivity -- status analysis
International connectivity testing -- with NIHnet of the
National Institutes of Health
The major contents of the proposal are as follow. Number one, to upgrade TANet international link from 2 T1 to a T3 lease line of bandwidth 45Mbps. This connection is jointly supported by three cabinet-level government organizations, the Academia Sinica, the Ministry of Education, and the National Science Council. One third of the bandwidth, i.e., 15Mbps, is connected to StarTap and will be dedicated for TANet/I2 usage. The yearly budget of this transpacific connection is roughly ten million US dollars for three years.
Number two, to plan a research network as a counterpart to vBNS. We will practice the engineering for connection, routing, and screening of traffic.
Number three, to solicit a number of application projects with demands of advanced network technology. 33 research topics are listed in the proposal which involve 22 Taiwan institutions and 42 US institutions.
For more details, please refer to our web site.

9. Bandwidth Expansion
Upgrade of domestic backbone done twice this year – February and October, 2000
partnership with MOE
economic use of bandwidth
two-star configuration
Link to STARTAP upgraded to 30 Mbps in October, 2000
The major contents of the proposal are as follow. Number one, to upgrade TANet international link from 2 T1 to a T3 lease line of bandwidth 45Mbps. This connection is jointly supported by three cabinet-level government organizations, the Academia Sinica, the Ministry of Education, and the National Science Council. One third of the bandwidth, i.e., 15Mbps, is connected to StarTap and will be dedicated for TANet/I2 usage. The yearly budget of this transpacific connection is roughly ten million US dollars for three years.
Number two, to plan a research network as a counterpart to vBNS. We will practice the engineering for connection, routing, and screening of traffic.
Number three, to solicit a number of application projects with demands of advanced network technology. 33 research topics are listed in the proposal which involve 22 Taiwan institutions and 42 US institutions.
For more details, please refer to our web site.

10. MOE TANet2 Topology Map NCHC AS NCU July, 2000 NTU NCTU NCHU NHLTC CCU
NDHU
NCKU
NTTTC
NSYSU
50 Mbps ATM ABR
250 Mbps ATM ABR
45 Mbps ATM ABR
20 Mbps ATM ABR

11. Meritorious Applications
Tele-medicine, Medical Information
Distant learning, edutainment
Tele-immersion (collaborative Virtual Reality)
Real-time control of telescope (BIMA)
High energy physics - CDF (AS & Fermi)
Internat’l Long-Term Ecological Research Network
Global atmospheric analysis on networked workstations
COSMIC
… applications
In the meantime, the academic community have established a lot of collaborative projects with meritorious network applications. With the high performance research network, these projects will be performed more effectively.
Some examples are listed here, including tele-medicine, distant learning, biological database sharing and data mining, real time control of telescope (BIMA project), high energy physics (CDF project), international long term ecological research network, global atmospheric analysis on networked workstations, and so on.
We have invited the PI of the above projects to showcase their research achievements in the TANet/I2 inaugurate ceremony last December.The big audience are very impressed. For researchers who are interested in the above areas, please feel free to contact us. We are willing to bridge them together for collaboration.

12. COSMIC Project COSMIC - Constellation Observing
System for Meteorology,
Ionosphere, and Climate

13. FX-net Collaboration between CWB and NOAA/ERL/FSL Contents Features
development of web-based forecast
workstation
use of AWIPS Forecast Preparation
System (AFPS)
data assimilation technique development
Features
online multimedia weather information transport
exchange of research meteorological data sets

14. Virtual Hospital Mirror

15. Grand Challenge Problems
合作單位：裕隆汽車
合作單位：台大, 榮總, 中研院, 生技中心
Visualization
Displays of various in-house
projects on ImmersaDesk
合作單位：高鐵局, Minnesota U, 台大

16. NBEN -- National Broadband Experimental Network http://ntpo. nsc. gov
NBEN -- National Broadband Experimental Network A Closed Circuit Testbed of the National Telecomm Program

17. National Telecomm Program
Initiated by National Science Council in May 1998
For broadband Internet & wireless communications
400 million US dollars for five years
Joint research efforts of CCL (ITRI), TL and III
Eight universities also participated, in addition to industry effort
Deployment carried out by the NCHC at 420,000
Began operation in mid 1999, with NOC at NCHC
The experimental network is supervised under National Telecommunications program which is initiated by National Science Council. The program covers two major areas: broadband internet and wireless communications. Through QFP and review, the program office sponsors the academic for researches in some selected areas. The only in-house project is to build a NBEN, national broadband experimental network. In this project, our center is responsible to deploy a high performance network infrastructure as the platform for new network technology research and development.
This national program will be implemented from May 1998 to 2003 for five years. The total budget is about 400 million US$. Most of the budget are from other government supported research institutes, such as CCL in ITRI, TL of Chung-Hua telecom., and III, institute of information industry. Nonetheless, the program office is responsible to coordinate and consolidate the R&efforts of these institutions.

18. Phase II NBEN Backbone STM-4 AS NCTU NCU NTU CHT-TL CHT-TI NTHU NCHC
NDHU
NCHU
Phase II
CCU
STM-1(ATM)
STM-1(ATM)
STM-4(ATM)
NCKU
DS3
STM-16
NSYSU
NBEN Backbone

19. Service-Oriented Pilot Projects

20. Application Distribution
Taiwan’s NGI Cascade
Experimental
Network
Technology Transfer
NSC
NBEN
TANet2
MoE
TANet
ISP’s
HiNet
SeedNet
...
Research
Network
Application Distribution
Education
Network
So, this viewgraph shows the vision and scope of National Science Council for Taiwan’s NGI. The original topology which consists of educational and commercial networks only is a handicap to advanced network development. A comprehensive topology should look like a pyramid. On top of that is the experimental network in which the elite network specialists can develop new technology. The developed technology can be deployed in research network so that the researchers can exploit revolutionary applications. Then, the education community can have a larger scale of trial before the new applications finally evolve for commodity usage in commercial network.
It is not until two years ago that the National Science Council commits to the deployment of experimental and research networks. There are three network projects on going. They are research network TANet/I2 for new applications, experimental network NBEN for new technology, and NBEN-SDH project for new trial on network architecture.
Commercialization
Commercial
Networks

21. Future Prospects Better infrastructure to facilitate innovation
Enhanced network services and applications
Total coverage with last mile bandwidth