Researchers will soon have their own clouds, thanks to the efforts of a non-Profit organisation Internet2.
Internet2 has worked out a way to let scientists create and connect to virtual spaces, within which they will be able to conduct research across disciplines and to experiment on the nature of the web.
Robert Ricci, a research assistant professor at the University of Utah’s School of Computing said that this will allow computer-science researchers to look at new ways of potentially designing networks that could influence how the internet itself works.
Internet2 connects more than 250 American colleges and universities, as well as corporations, research groups, and government agencies. The group also facilitates research by connecting campuses and transmitting large amounts of data at a faster speed than commercial networks offer.
New software developed by the group divides the Internet2 network into private sectors with two projects, CloudLab and Chameleon, provide frameworks for the creation of clouds connected by Internet2.
Ricci said that this will enable computer scientists to do is come up with better network-management systems to support scientists who have these large data transfers.
Boffins will benefit from the project, but so should computational scientists and researchers in other fields.
This will be a big hand in situations where digital and physical worlds intersect, such as in the collaboration between researchers.
The programme is funded by a $10-million grant from the National Science Foundation, and will be free to researchers whose proposals are approved.
It means that Universities with a large hardware budget will not be the only ones who benefit from this sort of technology.
