DATE: Wednesday, October 8, 1997            TAG: 9710080509

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   63 lines

ODU WADES INTO THE LATEST INTERNET SCHOOL IS AMONG UNIVERSITIES DEVELOPING A FASTER SYSTEM

Larry Ramey, a recent Old Dominion University physics grad, has distilled an explanation of why universities are banding together to create a second Internet.

``Since the Internet has been clogged up by knuckleheads, the universities are getting together to run one infinitely more useful for things other than people looking at pornographic pictures,'' Ramey says.

So why is Ramey standing on a chair at ODU's Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, wearing virtual reality goggles, waving a wand and chasing a simulated Dennis Rodman around the landscape?

It's actually quite prestigious. The oceanography center had its electronics visualization lab linked to a similar lab in Chicago to present a demonstration to a third group at this week's Internet 2 conference in Washington, D.C.

By Tuesday evening, the oceanography lab was to have participated in demonstrations to ambassadors and members of Congress.

Internet 2 is a budding project spearheaded by dozens of universities and corporate partners such as IBM, Cisco Systems and FORE Systems. Their aim: To build an almost unfathomably high-speed Internet alternative.

Data would travel at least 100 times faster on Internet 2 than on the current Internet. ODU, one of the first 13 institutions allowed to tap into the network, has an OC3 connection. That's 155 megabits per second.

ODU and Virginia Tech began developing Virginia's statewide high-speed network in 1995. Lynn Kubeck, ODU's assistant vice president of computing and communications, said that one of the university's intended uses for the network is its distance-learning program, TELETECHNET.

Over the long term, universities won't likely be able to horde Internet 2 only for research purposes, Kubeck said. Universities will have to balance the need for education, such as TELETECHNET, with the needs of researchers.

One possible solution: Allow researchers to make reservations for the bandwidth they need for a specific project, Kubeck said.

Glen Wheless, a research assistant professor at the oceanography center, says the speed of the regular Internet compared to that of Internet 2 is like moving water ``through a straw versus a sewer pipe.''

The universities are pumping a total of $50 million a year into the program to connect students and faculty to the new network.

Cathy Lascara, a colleague of Wheless', explained that Tuesday's show, which used a K-12 virtual reality educational program, was a ``proof of concept'' demonstration intended to show that distantly located researchers can work in the same environment at the same time over the new network.

Lascara, Wheless and other researchers at the oceanography center plan to use the high-speed network for ``tele-immersion'' research on studies of the Chesapeake Bay and other projects.

The research scientists are developing statistical models of the Chesapeake Bay. They can take those models, bounce them to a more efficient supercomputer in another state, retrieve the reformulated model and then see their impact on a multi-dimensional computer model of the Chesapeake Bay.

Wheless said, ``We can put you right down in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and you can watch simulated tidal flow.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

BETH BERGMAN

The Virginian-Pilot

Cathy Lascara...

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu