Advanced Cooperative Research Networks Project
The Advanced Cooperative Research Networks (ACORN) Project was
established to manage high performance network infrastructure, nationally
and internationally, for use by ACSys and other researchers. It
was involved in several networks:
ACORN tested emerging broadband technologies and helped develop
a high-speed network backbone for the national IT research community.
Project Highlights
ABN provides continuous connectivity to the ACSys sites in Canberra,
Adelaide and Sydney, plus VisLab in Sydney, and the Bureau of Meteorology
in Melbourne. The network provides 155Mb/s access, with the main
delivery via an 12Mb/s circuit to each site. ABN was originally
supported by Telstra, but later provided by Optus as part of their
national Multinet ATM network.
AJNL connected ACSys and the Real World Computing Program (RWCP)
in Tokyo. Funding for the link came from DIST in Australia and MITI
in Japan. It is a 768kb/s CIR (1.5Mb/s bearer) Frame Relay link
that connects into AARNet in Australia and various national Japanese
networks. This link was made available to all AARNet connected researchers
in 1998. Around 15 project proposals were received. Active projects
on the link include: distributed computing, remote control of robots,
bioinformatics research and telemanufacturing experiments.
APAN is a multi-national network connecting countries throughout
Asia, including Australia through the AJNL. Through a dedicated
link to the U.S. (TransPAC), it also provides connectivity to the
US national vBNS research backbone network, the Canadian CA*Net2
network and in the future to the Internet2/Abilene network.
TransACT was a proposal from ACT Electricity and Water to provide
high-speed network connectivity to all households in Canberra, using
a dedicated fibre network following the power lines. A trial was
conducted during 1999, with ACSys providing a demonstration service
on this network using the Digital Media Library Program’s Sun
Media Center.
AARNet conducted a series of trials for advanced service delivery,
with ACORN supporting trials in high-quality videoconferencing over
ATM as well as IP based videoconferencing with multicast technologies.
It was determined that AARNet's intercity links were sufficient
to support basic levels of IP-videoconferencing, but that campus
networks introduced bottlenecks that need to be worked on. Another
outcome was the formation of a research group to investigate a roll-out
of native IP multicast across AARNet, covering issues such as traffic
management and billing.
Contact
Markus Buchhorn
Faculty of Engineering and Information
Technology
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Phone: 02 6279 8810
markus.buchhorn@anu.edu.au
Network Modelling, Abstraction and Parallel
Processing Project
The Network Modelling, Abstraction and Parallel Processing (NewMAPP)
Project began with the Traveller Information and Traffic Management
(TRITRAM) Project. TRITRAM was a joint project between ACSys and
the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) to develop
a traffic simulator which interfaced in real-time to the RTA's traffic
control system, the Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS).
The simulator permitted the interaction between traffic and the
control system to be studied in ways that are difficult, or impossible,
to achieve in real traffic. It has several potential application
areas: in traffic engineering work testing new traffic control strategies;
in operator training; and as a test-bed for developing of new control
algorithms for SCATS.
Project Highlights
TRITRAM has been verified against detailed traffic survey data
collected during the acceptance testing of a SCATS installation
in Hong Kong. This data included on-street queue length and travel
time measurement as well as the flow and turn rate data that had
been used in earlier work in validation of TRITRAM.
TRITRAM includes the capability for detailed simulation of traffic
control at intersections, including the software running in the
standard intersection controller computers used in conjunction with
SCATS.
Diversion of vehicles around congestion caused by crashes can be
modelled correctly in TRITRAM.
TRITRAM was used in the RTA for the validation of a port of SCATS
from PDP-11 to personal computers.
TRITRAM was compared against SITRAS, a micro-level traffic simulator
developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), with positive
results. Collaborative research with the UNSW Transport Engineering
Group has been initiated.
TRITRAM was used in the Electrical Engineering Department at the
University of Technology, Sydney, as a test-bed for investigating
algorithms providing bus priority signalling in SCATS in a joint
project with the RTA. This project has now been transferred to the
RTA. The RTA has selected TRITRAM for the validation of a major
re-engineering of SCATS
Contact
Peter Lamb
CSIRO Mathematical and Information
Sciences
GPO Box 664
Canberra ACT 2601
Phone: 0 2 6216 7047
peter.lamb@cmis.csiro.au
|
