News

Contact:
Theresa Ott Boisseau, SDSC/CAIDA, 858-822-0956
David Hart, SDSC, 858-534-8314

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO -- The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) is now soliciting proposals for a second round of grants of hardware and software to establish Internet Teaching Laboratory (ITL) facilities on U.S. campuses. The deadline for proposals is May 25, and the solicitation is available on the Web at http://www.caida.org/outreach/itl/solicitation_may00.xml.

Any U.S. college or university faculty member who will teach networking courses during the next academic year is invited to submit proposals to enhance and complement those courses. The lab facilities will be tailored to the requirements of individual institutions, as defined by the plans and curriculum content defined in their proposals for the Round 2 solicitation. CAIDA recently announced the 13 awardees of the first round of Internet Teaching Labs (http://www.sdsc.edu/News Items/PR041700.html).

"Few Internet engineering courses include a realistic hands-on laboratory component, largely due to a lack of equipment," said Evi Nemeth, leader of CAIDA's Internet Engineering Curriculum (IEC) project. "Industry participants have generously committed equipment, software, and time to make the ITLs possible, and we hope that these laboratories will have a major impact on undergraduate education in computer science and networking."

The grants are made possible by a generous donation of equipment and engineering expertise from Cisco Systems, Cable and Wireless, and MCI WorldCom. Included are about 100 routers, CSU/DSUs, interface cards, and software.

Proposals will be screened by CAIDA staff and then evaluated by the CAIDA IEC Advisory Board, which consists of networking experts from universities, industry research labs, backbone ISPs, and major networking equipment manufacturers. Between 10 and 12 awards will be given.

The ITL equipment items must be used only for teaching and research purposes, and are not to be incorporated into any production networking efforts at the receiving institutions. Routers and associated equipment will be transferred directly from Cisco Systems to selected universities.

Shipment of routers to recipient schools is expected to occur within one to four weeks following notification of awards. CAIDA engineering personnel and commercial collaborators will assist with on-site implementations of the ITL facilities if necessary. CAIDA personnel will also be available during the first year of operation to provide limited technical assistance (primarily e-mail and voice) and to assist in fostering a cooperative, collaborative relationship among the participating ITL schools. Lab exercises that are developed at ITL institutions will be shared via the IEC Web site. Some materials in the IEC repository (http://www.caida.org/outreach/iec/) contain router laboratory exercises and can help bootstrap the use of ITLs in networking curricula.

Proposals should be a maximum of five pages in length (including any schematics or graphics) and should be in ASCII or HTML format. Proposals must be submitted using the Web form at http://www.caida.org/outreach/itl/round2_submit.xml. Questions concerning the solicitation or equipment should be submitted electronically to itl@caida.org. For further information on the IEC project, see http://www.caida.org/projects/iec/ or write to iec@caida.org.

CAIDA is a program of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego. In addition to sponsoring the Internet Teaching Laboratories and the Internet Engineering Curriculum Repository, CAIDA creates measurement and traffic analysis tools for use by Internet engineers and visualization technologies to complement these tools and increase understanding of network topology. For more information on CAIDA, see http://www.caida.org/. For more information on SDSC, see http://www.sdsc.edu/.