Infrastructure

 

Since 2000 Sida/SAREC has supported the University of Ouagadougou (UO), the Polytechnic University of Bobo Diolasso (UPB) and the National Science and Technology Research Centre (CNRST) in Burkina Faso. The Sida assistance initially consisted of cooperation in research projects and support to students post graduate studies in Sweden and Burkina Faso.

This proposal is a continuation of joint research carried out over the last 4 years. The project will establish a local minigrid incorporating high performance computing resources and extend the grid over the interuniversity backbone network to at least two other local universities which will then be linked to the Swedish cluster. Initial performance evaluation would be done for specific characteristics of the local minigrid against features that are peculiar to a county like SL. Following the successful completion of the initial phase, we expect to start detailed investigations on two fronts: algorithm design for selected classes of problems, especially heuristic optimizations targeting the grid, and, secondly on middleware design for the so called OGSA. The system will then provide a worthwhile computational resource, backed by a knowledgable local staff that could form the basis for a significant enhancement in computational research in many areas. The development cluster will be moved from UU to UCSC early in 2006. Starting with software development on these local facilities, large scale computational science research in Sri Lanka could if necessary make use of even more computing power by accesing links to computational grids outside the country.

Optical network is a high-capacity telecommunication networks using optical technologies. Interactive Learning Space (iSpace) is intended to explore new possibility to support multimedia conferencing and communication between geographically distributed sites.

Objective of the project is to deploy a broadband city network and distance learning spaces in Vientiane.

Expected significances are

• To initiate the establishment of Lao National Research and Education Network (NREN) in Laos.
• To raise ICT awareness of Lao Society especially in academic, governmental and industrial sectors.
• To initiate idea for distant teaching and learning process to efficiently utilize the limited teaching staff.

The project is carried out as a joint collaboration between STEA, NUOL and KTH,where 2 of STEA staff came to KTH to attend the master program in internetworking. They are expect to do extensive research and study in Sweden for 7 months before go back for implementation in March 2005. At the same time, one NUOL's research will prepare the detail plan for the project. It is essential to have TSlab responsible for transferring know-how to STEA because TSlab has good experience in both networking and iSpace. TSLab has conducted many research in these areas i.e. www.balticopen.net, www.sol-ix.net, www.kistaip.net, www.stockholmopen.net, etc. In addition, TSlab will send 1 coach and 2 KTH students as part of the team to Laos for 6 weeks to support the implementation of the project.

Objective: Deploy a Broadband City Network and a distance learning pilot in Vientiane to:

• Initiate the establishment of a Lao National Research and Education Network (NREN)
• Support the formation and dissemination of knowledge and competence in Laos.
• Raise ICT awareness and motivate expansion of the telecommunication infrastructure.
• Increase cooperation among Lao and Swedish universities, industry and public administration.

Methodology:

• To design and deploy a broadband network, iSpaces and at least one pilot course, and demonstrate the results, as a joint project spring 2005.

Significance:

• For Laos: Strengthening of education, training and technology awareness are highest priority activities in the Lao National ICT Policy.
• For NUOL: A high priority in the NUOL ICT master plan.
• For KTH: Unique opportunities to evaluate open networking concepts researched at TSLab

This project is both a continuation and a new direction compared to the Uppsala University project in the first phase. The original proposal was to provide a high performance computing infrastructure within the university environment of a developing country and to justify the concept by developing a pilot computational project in Bioinformatics. As a result of the project, the SweLanka Grid concept was established with computational nodes in Colombo and Uppsala. The problems created by the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004 led to logistical problems that delayed the installation and implementation of the equipment. In the aftermath of the tsunami, priorities within Sri Lanka had changed somewhat and hence the simple numerical tsunami model was added to the pilot applications. It is proposed to continue work on the tsunami modeling and to extend the bioinformatics work on advanced data analysis for generic data using the GRID resources provided in Sri Lanka.