SIUC hosting telecommunications-Internet2 day

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The present and future of telecommunications and Internet2 will be on display at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, at the SIUC Student Center.

Information Technology-Telecommunications is sponsoring the open house and Internet2 Day.

Throughout the day, Telecommunications will offer equipment displays and demonstrations in the Gallery Lounge. David R. Bouhl, deputy director of Information Technology, believes that a lot of people don't realize the wide range of telecommunication services available.

"Most people think we're just about standard desktop telephones," Bouhl said.

Those people will get to see what other campus services are available, such as audio and video conferencing; cell phones, pagers and PDAs; voice mail and unified messaging; automatic call distribution and automated attendant service; wireless communications; voice-over IP; fiber optic and high-speed communications wiring; and campus telephone instruments.

On the Internet2 side, sign-in begins at 9 a.m., followed by a welcome and introductions. At 9:30 a.m. and again at 1:30 p.m., T. Charles Yun will present Internet2 Day's keynote address.

Yun, who joined the Internet2 Applications Team in November 2001, supports Internet2 Applications activities in scientific communities such as NEESGrid, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Grid (http://www.neesgrid.org), a newly funded effort by the National Science Foundation to link several earthquake research facilities around the country. He is also working on Internet2 initiatives in the areas of high energy, nuclear physics and astronomy. Before joining the Internet2 team, he was a project and quality manager at Aptegrity in San Francisco.

"Internet2 at SIUC" sessions follow the morning and afternoon presentations. A question-and-answer session runs from 11 a.m. to noon.

The idea, says Bouhl, is to offer those who can attend the flexibility to spend a few hours there and not the whole day.

Internet2 is a not-for-profit consortium led by more than 200 U.S. universities. Its intent is to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technology, which will in turn accelerate the creation of tomorrow's Internet. With participation by more than 60 leading companies, Internet2 recreates the partnership of academia, industry and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy.

The primary goals of Internet2 are to create a leading edge network capability for the national research community, to enable revolutionary Internet applications and to ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to a broader Internet community.

Internet2 at SIUC came into being two years ago when SIUC was one of 22 colleges and universities across the country to win $150,000 matching grants from the National Science Foundation aimed at Internet2 access.

Researchers who need a little help figuring out how Internet2 can help them can pick up information at Internet2 Day that explains the applications and how Internet2 can be used in such areas as arts and humanities, health sciences, biological sciences and teaching and learning.

"The primary impetus for Internet2 is to support the research and academic mission of our faculty. Our goal for Internet2 Day is to bring information to the campus to introduce the capabilities now available on campus to support research and academia," Bouhl said.

(See the Internet2 home page at http://www.internet2.edu/.)