Additional Participants

Senior Personnel

Ami Gaspar

Programmer/Technician

Christian Wilson

Organizational Partners

University of Maine at Augusta
University of Maine at Farmington
University of Maine at Fort Kent
University of Maine at Machias
University of Maine at Presque Isle
University of Southern Maine

Project Period

September 1, 2011-August 31, 2013

Level of Access

Open-Access Report

Grant Number

1108153

Submission Date

11-29-2013

Abstract

Project Description

This RII C2 proposal from Maine (ME) EPSCoR is focused on addressing last-mile bottlenecks at seven campuses of the University of Maine System. Maine's Research and Education Network, MaineREN, delivers high performance inter-campus fiber connectivity to public and private institutions across the state, but the intra-campus networking has lacked the same investment by the state.

The proposed improvements include:
- Rewiring eight buildings at the University of Maine Orono Campus (UMaine) with Cat-6 cable, increasing end-to-end performance to 10 Gbps.
- Upgrading the fiber backbone between the two University of Southern Maine (USM) campuses, one in Portland and one in Gorham, 12 miles apart. In addition, upgrades will be done for the buildings housing the ME RII Track-1 researchers, including the Law Building, Library, Bailey Hall, and the buildings that make up the fiber core for the Portland campus.
- Upgrades to edge routers to connect to the MaineREN backbone for UMaine Augusta (UMA), UMaine Farmington (UMF), UMaine Fort Kent (UMFK), UMaine Machias (UMM), and UMaine Presque Isle (UMPI).

Intellectual Merit
The proposed upgrades in network connections will greatly improve the networking capacity available to the University of Maine system and enable researchers to take advantage of state-wide upgrades with improved end-to-end performance. The proposed RII C2 connectivity improvements will support the Maine RII Track-1 Sustainability Science Initiative (SSI) by increasing bandwidth availability for the SSI data management and visualization approaches. SSI is advancing the emerging field of sustainability science in three integrative ways: 1) examining interactions between social and ecological systems (SES) as landscapes change in response to urbanization, forest management, and climate variability; 2) investigating how much SES knowledge affects, and is influenced by, the actions and decision of stakeholders, with a goal of strengthening connections between knowledge and actions; 3) evaluating the factors that facilitate and impede interdisciplinary collaboration, with a goal of identifying and implementing individual and institutional best practices that are needed to support successful interdisciplinary research programs in sustainability science.

Broader Impacts
By filling in relatively small gaps in the infrastructure, Maine will be able to make very large gains in the effectiveness of the state's cyberinfrastructure (CI) that will allow researchers to fully utilize investments to improve research effectiveness, promote collaboration, improve K-12 interaction, and develop the future workforce of the state. The networking upgrades will support the 300 researchers, students, and stakeholders that are part of the SSI collaboration over 17 different disciplinary fields. The SSI activities have the potential to increase Maine's research capacity and competitiveness and grow Maine's green innovation economy. The proposed project will leverage the RII Track-1 programs for broader impacts.

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