BARWAN's Experimental Facilities
Berkeley Computer Science Division and
Soda Hall Networking Infrastructure
The University of California at Berkeley is the nation's premier public
university, with a world-renowned research reputation and an especially
strong engineering program. According to the most recent U.S. News and
World Report rankings, the Berkeley graduate computer engineering program
is ranked number one in the country, the graduate computer science program
is tied for first (with CMU, MIT, and Stanford), and the electrical
engineering program is ranked second. In a recent National Research
Council report, three of nine major computer systems technologies of
the last 25 years were initially developed by Berkeley researchers:
time sharing operating systems (Berkeley BSD Unix), Reduced Instruction
Set Computers (RISC), and Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID).
Soda Hall provides an ideal environment for investigating in-building
wireless overlay networks (see
figure). The network is based on scalable
ATM technology, with fiber/twisted pair distribution systems designed to be
well-integrated with the building's physical layout. Any point in the
building is near network connectivity, giving flexibility in the placement
of wireless basestations. The 500+ workstations within the building are
within a small number of network hops from any point on the network. High
bandwidth and low latency connectivity give us an extraordinary opportunity
to exploit this unique experimental resource to develop distributed
processing approaches for mobile network management and application support.
Bay Area Gigabit Network (BAGNet)
BAGNet is supported by PacBell's CalREN program, which has awarded grants
providing OC-3 ATM service to fifteen computer science research organizations
in the S. F. Bay Area, including U.C. Berkeley (see Figure 13). It provides a
high bandwidth, low latency wide-area backbone that can provide points to
wireline resources from the wireless overlay networks at a number of sites
around the Bay Area.
UCSF CalREN ATM and NLM ACTS Connectivity
The Laboratory for Radiological Informatics is developing UCSF's integrated
picture archiving and communication systems
(PACS) research and development
program. This facility provides resources for medical image communication,
integration of electronic patient records, image and data content extraction,
and information distribution for research, and interactive computer-assisted
medical education.
PacBell's CalREN program supports an OC-3 ATM WAN linking several hospitals
in S.F (see here). In addition, UCSF and
Mt. Zion Hospital are linked by an OC-3 ATM LAN
(see here).
These provide BARWAN with wireline connectivity for medical image
transmission and distribution applications.
UCSF's Advanced Picture Archive and Communications System (PACS). More flexible
access to this operational system will be provided through BARWAN's wireless
overlay networks.
UCSF/NLM ACTS Satellite Testbed for medical library access and image
transmission
(see here). This network will be used
to integrate the BARWAN into
other national level testbeds.
Hughes Research Laboratories and Hughes Network Systems
The Information Sciences Laboratory (ISL) at HRL has access to a wide
range of state-of-the-art workstation, servers, and database and
object-oriented software. The corporate sponsor for the proposed
project is Hughes Network Systems (HNS), a global leader in satellite,
digital cellular and enterprise networking technologies, including
VSAT satellite networks, digital cellular systems, CDPD, and ATM
Switching. The corporate technology expertise and resources of HNS
are available to the BARWAN testbed.
Other Testbeds in the San Francisco Bay Area
Monterey Bay Testbeds
Through collaboration with Professor J.-J. Garcia Luna of UC Santa Cruz,
BARWAN is committed to establishing connectivity to the Santa Cruz
experimental packet radio network, the Monterey Bay REINAS environmental
sensor network, and the PacBell CalREN-sponsored ATM testbeds in the
Monterey Bay area.
Other Bay Area Testbeds
Several major centers of wireless research activity are located in the
San Francisco Bay Area, including SRI, Stanford, and Xerox. We are working
to integrate these efforts with the BARWAN activity.
Randy H. Katz, ed., randy@cs.Berkeley.edu; Last edited: 26 APR 95