UF Significantly Upgrades Research Capabilities

Elias G. Eldayrie, Vice President and CIO

On January 30, the University of Florida activated an ultra-high-speed connection to the Internet2 Innovation Platform, expanding computing power 10-fold and offering a computing network found in only three other places in the United States.
UF is one of the pilot sites chosen to connect to Internet2, the fastest way to move data from one research laboratory to another. The 100 Gbps connection allows scientific discovery and collaboration on a scale not possible at 10 Gbps, which is the current research standard. The 100Gbps connection enables scientific contributions and increased impact of UF on the national and international research communities.
The connection of our Campus Research Network (CRN) to the Florida LambdaRail strengthens UF’s participation in high-impact projects, such as the recently discovered Higgs boson particle, iDigBio, and the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI). These projects involve massive data storage and computational needs at the Terabyte and Petabyte levels.  This investment is part of UF’s effort to provide our researchers an infrastructure that ranks among the top-10 in the nation.

More information about how the Internet2 Innovation Platform can significantly advance UF science and engineering research is available in InsideUF and UFIT News.