NSF
Form1358(1/94)
USA-Taiwan
Cooperative Project
for Advanced Internet Inter-Connection
For decades,
the tie between USA and Taiwan, the Republic of China, in the academia
has been notably strong compared to many other nations in the world.
Most university faculty in Taiwan possess advanced degrees from U.S.
institutions, and/or spend their sabbatical leaves in U.S. institutions.
As a result, research collaborations between faculty from the two countries,
either through individual connections or organization exchanges, are
more than common. To further add to this abundance of collaborations
is the large faculty population in U.S. institutions with Taiwan origin.
All these close ties are exemplified by one of the heaviest Internet
traffic with USA among the Asia-Pacific countries, that of TANet (Taiwan
Academic Network) from Taiwan.
TANet, inaugurated
in 1990, is the earliest Internet connection in the Asia-Pacific region.
Being a non-profit network sponsored by the government, TANet connects
all major education and research institutions in Taiwan. As of mid-1997,
nearly 400 institutions with 500,000 users are connected by TANet, with
the majority of connections in the speed range well above dial-ups,
some even into hundreds of megabits.
With the close
relationship between USA and Taiwan researchers as well as the large
user-base with high-speed connection on TANet, the current bandwidth
between the two countries (DS1x2, 3Mbps) is already over-consumed. By
the end of 1997, TANet will upgrade its USA link to DS3 bandwidth (45Mbps),
with two-thirds of the bandwidth intended solely for higher education
and research use. It is foreseen that, unless this DS3 has a properly
chosen connection in USA, the routing and transmission delay in USA
will not only adversely affect the efficient use of the new high-speed
link, but is also likely to discourage further investments.
Therefore, in
seeking the best achievable results on the forthcoming upgrade investment
on TANet, and even more importantly to expedite USA-Taiwan academic
collaborations leveraging the state-of-the-art network technology, this
proposal outlines the plans to:
- Implement
a proper high-speed connection to Internet-2 and NGI through vBNS
and STAR TAP as the DS3-link between USA and Taiwan is established;
- Gradually
upgrade the USA-Taiwan connection as well as the domestic TANet backbones
in the next 5-years;
- Implement
new Internet technology on TANet and the USA-Taiwan link, for the
purpose of faster and smoother dissemination on technology expertise
and application experience in the future;
- Devise long-term
collaboration mechanism and environment upon the upgraded USA-Taiwan
link;
- Identify
potential topics for pilot research projects.
By connecting
to STAR TAP and therefore making Taiwan more accessible from other nations
also connected, it is also hoped that this proposal may expand Taiwan's
international scope in research and open the door for more and better
collaborations.
This proposal
intends to provide the required resources for the high-speed international
link within the capabilities of National Science Council (NSC), Ministry
of Education (MoE), and Academia Sinica (AS) within the 5-years duration
of this proposal. Only the symbolic "port fee" that connects
the USA-end of DS3 to STAR TAP is sought from NSF of USA.
