Grand Valley State University computer science students preparing for Internet-related careers will have an even greater edge, thanks to a major technology grant to the university.
GVSU is one of only 12 schools in the nation to be awarded a hardware grant as part of the Cooperative Association of Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) program. The grant includes three Cisco 7000 routers. Cisco System's contribution of 96 Cisco 7000 routers, removed from backbone POPs, and roughly 200 CSU/DSU units from Cable & Wireless. The routers contributed by Cisco Systems, have been recently removed from service as internet backbone units, and had an original price of about $85,000. Additional hardware is being contributed by Cable & Wireless.
The GVSU Computer Science and Information Systems department will establish an Internet Teaching Laboratory (ITL) this fall as an expansion of our National Science Foundation supported data communications laboratory.
This lab will help train students to become Internet engineers and technology workers, explains Marty Levin, a GVSU Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) instructor. We will be able to simulate the Internet in our computer lab and teach our CSIS students how to attach a company to the Internet.
Levin, who submitted the grant application, will serve as the principal investigator on the CAIDA project.
The ITL project, sponsored by the CAIDA program, includes plans for hands-on teaching laboratories and establishment of modern networking equipment into university labs. It is also a collaborative effort to research and promote greater cooperation in designing and maintaining a robust, scalable Internet infrastructure.
Several former students, including alums who work at West Michigan Internet service provider Iserv and the local Cisco office helped prepare our application for this award, says Levin. We start experimenting with this equipment right away and will incorporate it into existing courses in the winter of 2001. We are planning to propose a new course focusing on wide area networks.
Contributions of equipment, funding, and people to the ITLs are being provided jointly by industry, government, and academia. The participating university supplies ancillary hosts and other equipment. As part of the collaborative undertaking, ITL universities will contribute classroom curriculum and lab exercises to the project and assist in helping new ITL facilities during their start-up.
GVSU will make our curriculum and lab exercises available to CAIDA grant participants and others via the CAIDA ITL Web page, says Levin. We are actively developing relationships with local commercial organizations and extending availability of the lab to other schools requests from other universities for assistance in the development of their data communications laboratories.
GVSU is in impressive national company. Other recipients of Internet Teaching Laboratories grants include: UCLA, USC, UC San Diego; Humboldt State University; Kent State University; North Carolina State University; Syracuse University; University of Alabama; University of Texas; University of New Hampshire, Ohio University; and Florida State University.
We expect to act as a regional center for Internet Teaching Labs in the same way that we are currently building support as a regional center for the Local Area Network (LAN) lab, explains Levin.
