The campus research data network will see significant upgrades in speed and performance over the next two years, thanks to a $992,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The upgrades will also provide new opportunities for research and teaching in networking science and computer security.

"The NSF is trying to support 'Big Science,' and they know that universities need to upgrade their networks," said Matt Bishop, a professor of computer science and co-principal investigator on the grant with Peter Siegel, vice provost for Information and Educational Technology.

Siegel said UC Davis has a long track record of collaboration between faculty and central IT. This gave the campus a unique advantage with the NSF, which listed such a true partnership as a key criterion for the award.

The campus research network is separate from the administrative network that carries everyday Web functions, email and so on. The research network is connected at 10 gigabits per second to high-speed national research networks such as the CENIC High Performance Research Network and Internet2.

In some cases, for convenience, researchers deliver hard drives by hand rather than send large amounts of data over the network. By expanding the reach and capacity of the campus research network, transferring very large data sets electronically over the network will become more practical.

The campus’s successful proposal highlighted three major 'Big Data' areas:

• Genome Center — Researchers need to move as much as a terabyte of data for a genome sequence, with the size growing all the time.
• Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences, or KeckCAVES — It allows scientists to visualize their data in a three-dimensional, virtual reality environment, with the UC Davis research network as it is today, the data must be carried to the Earth and Physical Sciences Building on hard drives.
• Large Synoptic Survey Telescope — Once operational, it will generate as much as 30 terabytes of data a night as the telescope surveys the sky from a mountaintop in Chile.

UC Davis officials said the network improvements will have a wider impact as more researchers collaborate across campus and around the world on data-intensive projects.

The upgrades will include an enhanced ability to monitor network performance and find bottlenecks, Bishop said. There will also be a separate research area for carrying out experiments in data networking.

Much of the grant will pay for new hardware. The grant also includes funding for staff to work with researchers on handling big data files, and for students to conduct research.

Said Siegel: "This will be a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to work closely with the research team and with IET staff managing the research network. Students will be able to apply what they learn in class about issues of large-scale data movement."

The grant was one of 39 awarded under NSF's Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering Program, and one of six proposals to be awarded more than $900,000.