CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

The Times-Picayune By Coleman Warner In a matter of weeks, a high-speed, fiber-optic computer "node" will be activated in downtown Baton Rouge, opening an expressway of sorts between university researchers in Louisiana and colleagues across the nation. And so begins the test of a bold technology project that will require at least $40 million from the state in the next decade. The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative will boost by a thousand times, to 40 billion bits per second, the bandwidth -- or data-transmitting capacity -- available to scientists at eight Louisiana universities, making it far easier for them to trade complex images or other information across cyberspace. The average computer user's leap from a dial-up to a high-speed Internet connection can only hint at the impact of the change, officials say. Advertisement Professors sharing astrophysics or engineering data no longer will have to deliver it in small pieces electronically, or store it on tapes for mailing, and they will have a better shot at landing federal grants, said Mike Abbiatti, the Louisiana Board of Regents' associate commissioner for technology. Strongly backed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, LONI will allow local researchers to join a powerful computing network, the National LambdaRail, that links research centers in many states and fosters international data-sharing. Supported initially by a smattering of universities and technology companies, the powerful network has grown rapidly in the past two years. Researchers "can find better answers in a shorter period of time," Abbiatti said. "Can they do applications now? Yes, they can. Are they the type of applications that our researchers want and need? No, they're really not." Paying dividends At Louisiana Tech University, one physics professor needs the high-speed connections to exchange data with a Chicago laboratory in a study of the composition of atoms, and a computer-science professor needs it to assist in an eye study at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, said Les Guice, a Louisiana Tech vice president for research. Others say LONI, using lightwave signals on fiber-optic lines insulated from the Internet, could deliver vast amounts of information from digital libraries, needed in the humanities as well as hard sciences, and might be used, for example, to quickly convey results from a large-scale archaeological dig. Although it won't be in full operation for months, LONI already is paying dividends, helping Louisiana researchers win more than $20 million in grants from federal science and defense agencies because they were able to tout the asset in their proposals, said Guice, the LONI Management Council chairman. Perceptions of Louisiana in the scientific community have improved as a result of the project, said Abbiatti, a member of the National LambdaRail board. His view was seconded by Ed Seidel, a renowned astrophysicist who has pushed fiber-optic networking ideas since he joined Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge two years ago. The Chronicle of Higher Education last year recognized Louisiana as a leader in such state ventures, after key financial commitments by Blanco, the Legislature and the Board of Regents, which will run LONI. Sangtae "Sang" Kim, director of the Division of Shared Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation, last week said LONI is indeed changing Louisiana's image. "States that make such an investment put their universities in a much more competitive position," Kim said. "That is the direction science is taking; the so-called data-intensive (research) is in fact a new frontier." Drawing criticism But even as Board of Regents officials and others prepared to launch LONI, behind-the-scenes friction has developed over the state's purchase in recent days of Cisco Systems switch and routing equipment for the system through BellSouth, for $8.4 million, and of IBM computers, for $2.5 million. The state's decision to purchase the Cisco and IBM equipment through current state contracts, rather than issue a fresh request for proposals, drew sharp objections from at least one competitor, Kyle Paulson, a representative of Insight Corp. in Alexandria. Paulson said he believes he could have offered a better deal on the equipment, or on equipment from different manufacturers serving the same purposes. But he said his pitches to Board of Regents officials were ignored. "I don't get any responses back from them," said Paulson, who said he used to work for Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif. He acknowledged the purchases didn't violate state law but said state officials passed up possible benefits from direct competition because they wanted to avoid a process that would demand more time. "Is it the right way for a procurement of this size? I would say not. It's definitely manipulating the system for the convenience of state employees," he said. Donald Vandal, a Board of Regents deputy commissioner who turned aside Paulson's pleas, and Abbiatti acknowledged that officials faced time pressure: a desire to complete LONI before a September meeting of the National LambdaRail board in Baton Rouge. But they insisted the state got excellent deals on the hardware, in part because of discounts offered by IBM and BellSouth, a view shared by state purchasing director Denise Lea. Guice said purchasing decisions were proper. He also noted the LambdaRail system depends on Cisco equipment and that LONI equipment needed to be compatible with it. "When you get these really sensitive pieces of equipment trying to communicate with each other, it's important that they're synchronized properly," he said. The economic factor At a more public level, the LONI project raises a different question: How will it stimulate economic development? That was a leading justification for the new state spending. Higher-education officials say research grants translate into economic development by prompting new college expenditures and the hiring of more researchers, and by fostering discoveries that could be marketable. But Duane Blumberg, a state economic development official who serves on the LONI Management Council, said work is just beginning on how established companies can tap the fiber-optic network, on a fee basis, to meet their needs. He can envision, for example, oil company executives using LONI to transmit and analyze three-dimensional images of the Gulf of Mexico seabed. "We're at the beginnings of this kind of technology," Blumberg said. "I'm sure that the future will hold lots of things that we're not even dreaming about today."