US National Science Foundation

Introduction

The main aim in this assignment is to introduce the US National Science Foundation. The discussion will be about how the organisation got started and what it’s doing in modern times, which is relevant to the NSF.

Discussion

In the middle of the cold war in the 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union were at ye others’ throats. Each country wanted to have the edge over one another. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came up with an idea of linking computers with one another in a scattered and disperse network so that computers could share data and the researchers could conduct from thousands and thousands of miles away, but they came across a problem existing telecommunications framework did not have a switch which meant you get data from a long way away but not in large quantities of data.¹

In 1973 the NSF took over the Defence Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency known as (DARPA) just after the NSF took over DARPA they over a program called Arpanet, they would hook up their laboratories up to the network using tools like TCP/IP other innovations that allowed them to share data across the country, this showed everyone the value and feasibility of big networks but they were still quite expensive. Although across the globe researchers and scientists started to build their own large computer networks.²

In 1981 the NSF launched a program called the Computer Science Network (CSNET) its use was to extend network benefits which means you can have a internet gateway connected the US with Europe and Asia.³

In 1985 they also started a program called The National Science Foundation Network also known as (NSFNET) it manages all America’s Networks and it was also created to link researchers to America’s NSF-funded supercomputing centres which means it use a cross country 56Kbps spine for the Internet but the program was abandoned in 1995.⁴

In 2003 started a network program called (known as the “100x100 Project for the Clean Slate Design”) the researcher started to think of the network as a clean slate. The researchers started to think how they could make networks more safer, more reliable and a lot more user friendly. This went on to Software Defined Network/Open Flow. This led to big companies to start to look at their work, companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Yahoo!, HP, NEC, Dell, Juniper and many more.⁵

In May 2007 the NSF announced support for a research platform called GENI which stands for Global Environment Network Innovations. GENI will be used for secure financial transaction to stop your hackers from getting at your finance. It cost the US Government $2.5 million a year. (Bolt, Beranek and Newman) BBN technologies has been given the job of handling the program. They set up an office called GENI Project Office (GPO). The office will work closely with broad networking communities to create and develop the GENI design. In just over 25 year, the Internet has went from a uncertain research network to a critical piece of the national communication infrastructure.⁶

Conclusion

From doing this assignment I think the US National Science Foundation has contributed a lot to modern day society. The NSF is widely regarded as one of the most respected associations in advanced networking and it has a bright future.

References