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Media Relations
Kansas State University
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-6415
media@k-state.edu

Information provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.

Source: Caterina Scoglio, 785-532-4646, caterina@k-state.edu
Web site: http://www.gpeni.net
News release prepared by: Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, 785-532-6415, ebarcomb@k-state.edu

Monday, Dec. 22, 2008

K-STATE STUDENTS, FACULTY IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING HELPING BUILD NETWORK ALLOWING RESEARCHERS TO TEST IDEAS ON REAL NETWORK RATHER THAN COMPUTER MODELS

MANHATTAN -- Researchers who work on future Internet design soon will have a better tool to test their ideas with help from Kansas State University and a consortium of other colleges and universities.

K-State is part of the Great Plains Environmental Network Innovation, a group of universities in the Midwest that are part of a nationwide project to improve infrastructure for researchers working on network science and engineering experiments, including future Internet design.

Along with K-State, the group also includes the University of Kansas, the University of Nebraska and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. It is supported with optical switches from Ciena interconnected by Qwest fiber infrastructure, in collaboration with the Kansas Research and Education Network and Missouri Research and Education Network.

This group is part of a nationwide project, Global Environment for Network Innovations, that encompasses institutions from across the nation including Stanford and Washington universities. Both the national and regional groups are funded by the National Science Foundation.

Caterina Scoglio, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Don Gruenbacher, associate professor and department head of electrical and computer engineering, are principal investigators at K-State.

Scoglio said the goal of the project is to give multiple researchers a real network on which to try out new ideas.

"We need to understand how to provide a built environment where we can try our experiments," Scoglio said. "Normally we do computer simulations, but sometimes it's not close enough to reality."

Scoglio said that the project was giving K-State faculty and students the opportunity to work with well-known computer network researchers.

"This is a great opportunity for Kansas State University and the state of Kansas," she said.

Scoglio credits Greg Monaco, director of the Great Plains Network, in bringing K-State on board with the project. She also said two K-State entities have helped make the university's participation possible.

"We have been able to participate in this project with the other universities because of the help and support of K-State information technology services, particularly with the help of Lynn Carlin, interim vice provost for information technology services, and James Lyall, associate vice provost for information technology services, who both helped make possible the needed fiber optic connection to the other universities."

Scoglio also said K-State's ADVANCE program, a National Science Foundation-funded project to increase the participation and advancement of women faculty in the science, mathematics and engineering disciplines at K-State, has provided assistance to the project through networking, lecture series and other collaborative opportunities.

At K-State, work on the three-year project began in September. K-State electrical engineering students working on the project from Manhattan include: Sam Hays, doctoral student; Yunzhao Li, doctoral student; Karim Morcos, master's student; Nidhi Tare, master's student; and Dylan Zehr, master's student.

From out-of-state: John Sherrell, master's student, Belton, Mo.