UW to develop Internet 2 ‘middleware’

The university has received a grant to facilitate online sharing of knowledge, instruments and other scientific resources, and foster Web-based collaboration.

The National Science Foundation plans to grant $12 million to eight universities and nonprofit educational agencies under the aegis of the NSF’s Middleware Initiative.

“This grant will enable us to create and deploy advanced network services,” says Keith Hazelton, the lead architect for Madison’s involvement. “This will make it easier for Internet users to access a wide range of resources available through high-performance networks.”

Besides Madison, the consortium consists of Educause, University of California-San Diego, University of Chicago, Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering, Internet2, Southeastern Universities Research Association, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The I2 Middleware Architecture Committee for Education effort includes directory, Public Key Infrastructure and security, digital video and videoconferencing.

UW–Madison’s Hazelton leads the directory work group. The grant will enable him to spend half his time on directory middleware. The directory portion of the grant will also support individuals from several other campuses.

UW–Madison will benefit from this work in several areas:

• Setting standards for what information is put in campus directories about people.
• Agreement on how to represent roles (student, faculty, researcher, etc.)
• Granting access to resources and services based on those roles.
• Advice on how to link the general campus directory to application-specific directories, and how to share directory info between institutions.

For example, to reach their potential, videoconferencing and Video On Demand services need identifying information about people, devices and networks. NMI directory efforts are tackling these network video needs as a key area.

Some funding will go to Educause to disseminate the results to their 3,800 member institutions so they can use it for their own middleware needs.