iCair Coverage (April 1999)

[From: The Daily Northwestern]

In 1969, the nation listened to Neil Armstrong proclaim that he had taken a “giant leap for mankind.”

On Tuesday, a researcher in Singapore pioneered new ground in cyberspace when his image and words were beamed directly to Northwestern’s Chicago campus.

His words: “Hello, Joe. It’s great to see you.”

Demonstrating a live videoconference with Singapore, University President Henry Bienen announced Tuesday the official opening of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research, a first-of-its-kind collaborative effort between NU and several technological corporations.

Joined by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and executives from IBM, Ameritech and Cisco Systems, Bienen said researchers at iCAIR will create digital technologies for communications, business, education, medicine, engineering and entertainment.

The center, 1890 Maple Ave., Evanston, was created as an extension of a 1994 effort between NU and several other research institutions to create the high-performance Metropolitan Research and Education Network. NU administrators announced their plans to create iCAIR last August.

Despite the Internet’s rapid growth, panelists said more research needs to be done in order to understand its complexity and enhance its applications.

“The tools we have today are completely inadequate to describe the Internet,” said Stephen Wolff, Cisco’s executive director of advanced Internet initiatives. “There are genuine, fundamental and basic research issues at stake.”

Center administrators also said they plan to equip NU’s dormitories with the powerful broad bandwidth used to transmit information from the center.

“We think broad band ought to be prolific, ubiquitous and persistent so that anyone can tap in at any time,” said iCAIR director Joel Mambretti. “There’s an ambitious project under way to do some aggressive wiring in dormitories so that you can use broad band in your dorms.”

The center will help attract students to NU and give them unique hands-on-learning experience, Mambretti said.

“Students find working on exciting, new, leading-edge projects quite enticing,” Mambretti said. “Students will be able to learn the tools of their trade far in advance of just about anyone else in the world.”

Bienen said he was delighted NU is hosting the center.

“In the 21st century, the Internet will play a much greater role in commerce, medicine and education,” Bienen said. “This is a learning-by-doing phenomenon.”

Durbin said iCAIR will establish Chicago as a center for technology.

“It will help stake out ground and territory in terms of the future for technology, science and engineering,” he said. “I want Chicago and Illinois to be a crossroads of information.”

Durbin is sponsoring a bill to increase the federal government’s investment in Internet research by $366 million and he wants Illinois to receive much of the funding.

Research conducted at the center will go through a developmental stage, but it may reach consumers sooner than people think, Mambretti said.

“If you remember the Internet as it was, right now it’s not much like the Internet of 10 years ago,” Wolff said. “The Internet of 10 years from now is going to look nothing like it is now.”

Panelists demonstrated some Dutch prototype systems which offer television programs on demand from three networks. Eventually, thousands of channels could be offered. News broadcasts would have the potential to be more context-rich on such a system because viewers will be able to immediately link to maps.

In the future, watching television programs at scheduled times will be a “quaint model,” Mambretti said.

“If you want to see something, you can go see it. People can watch what they want whenever they want.”

CHICAGO (AP) – Imagine you have a rare disease and the one doctor who knows how to cure you is on the other side of the planet.

If this is the kind of news that might keep you from buying that rod and reel for next year’s fishing season, take heart. On Tuesday, Northwestern University and several corporate partners launched a project that could save the life of anyone in just such a spot.

Located on Northwestern ‘s Evanston campus, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research will be the receiving point for computer-based research going on all over the world. The center, which participants call the first of its kind, cost $10 million to open and will be manned by about two dozen people, including IBM engineers, Northwestern researchers and students.

“There is very interesting cutting-edge work taking place all over the world,” said Andy Schmidt, a senior product manager with Ameritech, which is providing equipment and services to the center. “What Northwestern has done is create an institute that focuses this work and provides resources to collaborate on all sorts of projects.”

As a result, the center “will accelerate the pace with which advanced Internet applications are brought to market,” said the center’s director, Joel Mambretti.

One field that Northwestern and its corporate partners hope to affect dramatically is medicine.

“If you have a rare kind of cancer and the expert is in Shanghai, it’s not going to do you a lot of good if he can’t view X-rays, mammograms and so forth in real time,” said Tim Blair, an IBM spokesman.

Through the center, participants hope, physicians would be able to transmit images via the Internet instantaneously that today might take several hours to process. A high-speed network available to all those working on a specific case would transform the practice of medicine, Schmidt said.

Such high-speed networks already exist, but the center will allow researchers from all over the world to tap into them and collaborate on projects in telecommunications, health care, education, financial services, manufacturing and more, Blair said.

Right now, researchers from Northwestern and Allied Signal are using such a network to collaborate on the design and development of new airline braking systems, said Susan Andrews, a Northwestern spokeswoman.

International Business Machines is setting up two projects to test new technology that could make the Internet faster and better able to run video images.

Together with Ameritech, Cisco Systems, and Northwestern University, IBM tomorrow will unveil plans for an experimental project focused on new video applications that are 1,000 times faster than current World Wide Web speeds.

The project will be split between Northwestern’s campus and IBM’s Schaumberg, Illinois-based branch. With the help of the Telematics Institute and Surfnet, IBM will open a similar site in the Netherlands.

“We need a better Internet structure than we have today,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM’s Internet Division. With the new centers, “our No. 1 objective is to experiment in the real world.”

IBM will demonstrate a project with the Singapore government to conduct a videoconference over the Internet with high-resolution, full-screen images and almost simultaneous responses–impossible with current Internet technology. “The [time] delay factor can be cut down significantly,” said Rich Wall, program director of IBM’s Advanced Internet Project.

The company also is working on video software to let workers at different locations receive training or collaborate on projects, Wladawsky-Berger said. “We’re trying to see what it will take to support a real-time meeting,” he said.

While these first pilot projects will be conducted with universities and governments, IBM will start working with corporate customers in the next six months, Wladawsky-Berger said.

In the centers, IBM and its partners will try to overcome other Internet bottlenecks. Those roadblocks include the lack of a standard way to divide the available space in a network for transmitting information, voice, and video.

Storage is another focus. IBM will experiment with revving Internet speeds by using storage systems distributed throughout a network, rather than in one system in a remote location.

Later this month, IBM will give money to four universities to foster development of Internet technology.

At 11,744 hits per second, computer giant claims Web server is world’s fastest.

SOMERS, NY (Reuters) – IBM Corp. said it introduced the world’s fastest 64-bit, four-way Web server Tuesday, designed to provide e-business customers and Internet service providers with unparalleled speed, performance and high availability.

The RS/6000 Model H70 addresses the e-business, enterprise-resource planning, supply-chain planning and business intelligence applications, IBM said in a statement.

The server set a new industry record of 11,774 hits per second in the latest benchmark tests that measure basic Web server performance, making it the fastest four-way Web server.

The computer giant, in a separate announcement, detailed its advanced Internet projects to help customers transform the way they do business by benefiting from high-speed networks. As part of these projects, IBM will focus on developing advanced technologies and applications that take advantage of bandwidth-rich networks.

It launched a global project, International Center for Advanced Internet Research, with Northwestern University and others for creating advanced Internet applications.

IBM (IBM) also said it would form a European Advanced Internet Application Center in the Netherlands in partnership with the Telematics Institute and SURFnet. The center, which is slated to be operational in the second half of 1999, will extend IBM’s innovation to European customers who are ready to deploy advanced Internet technologies and will focus on ways to maximize distributed storage technology to enhance network performance.

IBM’s stock was up 2-1/4 to 186-3/16 in early Tuesday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Tru64 Unix 5.0 delivers dynamic allocation of resources, mainframe-like partitioning for running multiple workloads, and management via the Web from any system on the network. Drawing on OpenVMS, TruCluster 5.0 will let users install apps or add disks across an ES40 Tru64 cluster in one step. “Our strategy is to provide the most easy-to-use Unix clusters,” says Tim Yeaton, VP and general manager of Compaq’s Unix software division.

Due later this month, IBM ‘s H70 server starts at $26,900, with AIX and support for four 340-MHz RS64-II CPUs. Its $111,920 HA- H70 Cluster Server bundle has everything needed for high availability and easy administration, says Mike Maas, IBM ‘s manager of server product marketing for RS/6000s. That includes two servers, integrated storage, High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing software, optional hardware and software for pretested apps, and high-availability services.

Compaq and IBM are wise to embrace simplicity, says Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at Illuminata. “Customers can’t afford to be system engineers,” he says. IBM Unix server customer David Frampton, IS manager at Tape Products Co., a Cincinnati distributor, agrees. He says integrated solutions offer “ease of administration for reduced downtime.”

Server Specs
– Compaq AlphaServer ES40, with up to four 500-MHz Alpha CPUs, 16 Gbytes of memory, starts at $30,000. Low to midrange cluster configurations from $50,000 to $100,000.
– IBM H70 , with up to four 340-MHz RS64-II CPUs, 8 Gbytes of memory, starts at $26,900. HA- H70 cluster configuration starts at $111,920.

ARMONK, N.Y. — International Business Machines Corp., the world’s No. 1 computer maker, is setting up two projects to test new technology in hopes of making the Internet faster and better able to run video images.

Together with Ameritech Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Northwestern University, IBM tomorrow will unveil plans for a project split between Northwestern’s campus and IBM’s Schaumberg, Illinois-based branch. With the help of the Telematics Institute and SURFnet, IBM will open a similar site in the Netherlands.

The centers will experiment with new video applications on Internet technology that’s 1,000 times faster than current World Wide Web speeds. IBM has backed the move to an Internet unfettered by choppy video images and delays in downloading information, and the company has bet its future on developing computers, software and services aimed at companies running their businesses over the Internet.

“We need a better Internet structure than we have today,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM’s Internet Division. With the new centers, “our No. 1 objective is to experiment in the real world.”

Videoconference

IBM will demonstrate a project with the Singapore government to conduct a videoconference over the Internet with high-resolution, full-screen images and almost simultaneous responses — impossible with current Internet technology.

“The (time) delay factor can be cut down significantly,” said Rich Wall, program director of IBM’s Advanced Internet Project.

The company also is working on video software to let workers at different locations receive training or collaborate on projects, such as engineers designing a new product, Wladawsky-Berger said.

“We’re trying to see what it will take to support a real-time meeting,” he said.

While these first pilot projects will be conducted with universities and governments, IBM will start working with corporate customers in the next six months, Wladawsky-Berger said.

In the centers, IBM and its partners will try to overcome other Internet bottlenecks. Those roadblocks include the lack of a standard way to divide up the available space in a network for transmitting information, voice and video.

Storage is another focus. IBM will experiment with revving Internet speeds by using storage systems distributed throughout a network, rather than in one system in a remote location.

Later this month, IBM will give money to four universities to foster development of Internet technology.

SOMERS, N.Y. -(Dow Jones)- International Business Machines Corp. Tuesday said it launched advanced Internet projects to develop technologies and applications for bandwidth-rich networks.

IBM, Northwestern University and other partners launched the International Center for Advanced Internet Research to enable collaboration among researchers.

IBM (IBM) said it will also establish a European Advanced Internet Applications Center in the Netherlands with the Telematics Institute and SURFnet. The center will provide IBM technology to European customers ready to deploy advanced Internet technologies, and is expected to be operational in the second half of the year.

Also, IBM is involved in other advanced Internet projects, including work on emerging technologies, standards and public policy issues.

SOMERS, N.Y. (Reuters) – IBM Corp. said Tuesday it introduced the world’s fastest 64-bit, four-way Web server, designed to provide e-business customers and Internet service providers with unparalleled speed, performance and high availability.
The RS/6000 Model H70 addresses the e-business, enterprise resource planning, supply chain planning and business intelligence applications, IBM said in a statement.

The server hits sets a new industry record of 11,774 hits per second in the latest benchmark tests that measure basic Web server performance, making it the fastest four-way Web server.

The computer giant, in a separate announcement, detailed its advanced Internet projects to help customers transform the way they do business by benefiting from high-speed networks.

As part of these projects, IBM will focus on developing advanced technologies and applications that take advantage of bandwidth-rich networks.

It launched a global project, International Center for Advanced Internet Research, with Northwestern University and others for creating advanced Internet applications.

IBM also said it would form a European Advanced Internet Application Center in the Netherlands in partnership with the Telematics Institute and SURFnet.

The center, which is slated to be operational in the second half of 1999, will extend IBM’s innovation to European customers who are ready to deploy advanced Internet technologies and will focus on ways to maximize distributed storage technology to enhance network performance.

IBM’s stock closed Monday up $6.88 at $183.94 on the New York Stock Exchange.

[The IBM press release may be read at http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/2237.wss.]

Northwestern University and a group of corporate backers led by IBM today unveiled the International Center for Advanced Internet Research, a research project dedicated to the development of next-generation electronic business applications.

The charter of the new project, which will be based at Northwestern’s campus in Chicago and IBM’s facility in Schaumburg, Ill., is to create a high-speed network for testing and developing applications that will enable corporations to leverage the Internet for conducting electronic business and communicating with branch offices, partners and customers.

“This is not research for research’s sake,” said John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology at IBM. “This project is designed to enable electronic businesses in the future to rely on a much more responsive, reliable and robust network.”

Some of next-generation applications the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) researchers will be working on include global multiparty videoconferencing, virtual reality, collaborative engineering, telemedicine and full-screen, interactive distance learning.

The idea behind the project is to develop these next-generation applications in a laboratory setting and then transfer the technology to the commercial sector as high-speed technology becomes more commonplace across the Internet. Although it is not clear how the technology will transfer from the labs to corporate entities, Patrick said IBM and iCAIR researchers will be working with Fortune 500 companies to adopt these new applications.

In addition to IBM, Ameritech and Cisco Systems also contributed to the project. Ameritech is contributing a portion of its high-speed network in the Chicago area, and Cisco is supplying some of the infrastructure equipment, according to iCAIR officials. The combined contribution of all three companies is approximately $10 million.

Much of the rationale behind the new research project, which Patrick said is more application-oriented than similar university-centered projects, such as Internet 2, is that the Internet is advancing at a rapid pace and extensive research is needed to harness future breakthroughs in bandwidth and speed.

Stephen Wolff, executive director of advanced Internet initiatives at Cisco, said iCAIR will provide the commercial sector with a model for managing an Internet that will be radically different from the one that exists today. “The Internet of 10 years from now will not be anything like the Internet of today,” he said. “We have no way of simulating or modeling an Internet of the size that it will become in a few years.”

In addition to transferring a team of about eight engineers to the iCAIR facilities to Northwestern’s Chicago campus, IBM also announced that it will establish a similar facility in the Netherlands to serve the European business community.

IBM on Tuesday detailed a program aimed to create richer multimedia applications that fully exploit the next-generation Internet2 for conducting electronic-business.

As part of its Advanced Internet Projects, IBM will focus on creating advanced technologies and applications that take advantage of “bandwidth-rich networks.” Company officials said these projects represent the latest in a range of initiatives in which IBM is helping sculpt the future of business conducted over the Net.

IBM is teaming with Northwestern University to launch the first global project to create such advanced Internet applications. Their newly formed International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) will permit communication and collaboration among researchers around the world, officials said.

Internet2’s bandwidth is expected to be about 1,000 times greater than today’s Internet, making it more practical to create applications with video, audio, and other multimedia capabilities that benefit from such high bandwidth. These applications figure to be much more intuitive for conducting transactions and other mission critical functions, company officials said.

“The Internet of tomorrow isn’t just about bigger, faster pipes, it’s about what you are able to do because of that increased bandwidth,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM’s Internet Division.

At iCAIR, researchers will be able to leverage advanced research projects to more rapidly deploy interactive applications with commercial enterprise users. Examples of such applications could be multiparty videoconferencing to virtual reality-enabled manufacturing and design, collaborative engineering, or interactive distance learning.

IBM’s has offered it facilities in Schaumburg, Ill. as part of the iCAIR center and will have a staff dedicated to projects working with Northwestern on its Evanston, Ill., campus, company officials said.

In addition, IBM, in concert with the Telematics Institute and Surfnet, will also create a European Advanced Internet Application Center located in the Netherlands. This center is intended to extend IBM’s technology expertise to European customers that are ready to deploy more advanced Internet-based advanced Internet technologies.

IBM is also a charter member of the Internet2 project. As part of that effort IBM is working closely with a variety of university-based researchers to create significantly higher performing technologies and products for higher education and eventually, the commercial sector. The company was the first private company to be approved as a corporate partner on the recently formed Abilene research network.

For more information about advanced technology projects being developed by IBM and others for the Internet users can contact :
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/gts-it-service-home-page-1.html.

IBM Corp., in Armonk, N.Y., can be reached at http://www.ibm.com/us/en.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/33841/ibm_drives_advanced_multimedia_internet_research/

IBM on Tuesday introduced a 64-bit, four-way Web server whose speed, performance and high availability are expected to appeal to e-business customers and Internet service providers.

In a statement, IBM (IBM) said the RS/6000 Model H70 addresses e-business, enterprise resource planning, supply chain planning and business intelligence applications. Powered by up to four RS64-II microprocessors and the AIX operating system, the rack-mounted H70 provides a 75 percent Web serving boost over its predecessor, the H50, according to company officials in Somers, N.Y.

The H70 has established an industry record of 11,774 hits per second in the latest SPECweb96 benchmark tests, officials said, making it the fastest four-way Web server — 29 percent faster than a similarly configured Sun Enterprise 450 from Sun Microsystems Inc.

The new H70 is the lowest-priced 64-bit high-availability cluster system ever from IBM, officials said. At the same time, IBM has reduced prices on the H50 and HA50 by up to 20 percent.

Separately, IBM today launched the International Center for Advanced Internet Research with Northwestern University and other partners for creating advanced Internet applications. The center will “leverage advanced research projects to rapidly deploy breakthrough, interactive applications with enterprise customers.” These will include global multiparty videoconferencing, virtual reality-enabled manufacturing and design, collaborative engineering, and full-screen, interactive distance learning.

IBM also announced it will establish a European Advanced Internet Application Center in the Netherlands in partnership with the Telematics Institute and SURFnet. It is expected to be operational in the second half of the year.

IBM can be reached at www.ibm.com.

IBM and Cisco spearhead effort to create technology for the future.

Northwestern University on Tuesday banded together with several partners in the high-tech industry to create a research center focused on futuristic Internet applications for businesses and consumers.

The International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), which is already in operation, is located at Northwestern’s campuses in Chicago and Evanston, Ill., and at IBM facilities in Schaumburg, Ill.

Corporate partners include IBM (NYSE:IBM), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) and Ameritech Corp. (NYSE:AIT). Along with Northwestern, the four entities contributed about $10 million to the project.

“iCAIR is the first of its kind, an advanced center for the development of prototypes of advanced, 21st-century applications,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM’s Internet division. “This is very much a real-world laboratory, enabling us to show customers how they can leverage high-speed networks to radically transform their businesses.”

The center will focus on applications for the faster, more robust Internet of the future, including videoconferencing, video-based distance learning, telemedicine and other rich-media-based communications.

iCAIR is one of several current forays into advanced Internet-based systems. Northwestern University, for example, is also a founding member of the Internet2 project for linking academic institutions with a high-speed, next-generation network.

Notable R&D decline

But overall, research and development has declined in the last 30 years, according to authorities, and some believe more intensive, long-term efforts are needed to ensure the continued growth of the technology sector.

According to U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, D-Ill., overall R&D expenditures as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product have dropped by half since the 1960s, while federal expenditures are down 40 percent.

He said technology research from that era is currently responsible for 80 percent of the stock market’s value.

The founding members of iCAIR intend that the center will continue to fuel this same kind of growth in the decades to come.

The future Internet

“The Internet of 10 years from now will not be anything like the Internet of today,” said Stephen Wolff, Cisco’s executive director of its advanced Internet initiatives division.

“There will be no such thing as logging onto the Internet — you will always be on the Internet, it will be part of the woodwork… [and] if this is true, we need to think about how to build such a network.”

‘There will be no such thing as logging onto the Internet — you will always be on the Internet, it will be part of the woodwork.’
— Stephen Wolff, Cisco