INTERNET DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING GAINS MOMENTUM
Three weeks after the official launch of the Intel-United Devices “Volunteer Your PC” initiative to fight cancer, over 286,000 users have signed up to donate the spare CPU cycles of more than 368,000 Web-connected PCs.  Over 24 million hours of CPU time has been pooled thus far to help process molecular research being conducted by the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford in England and the National Foundation for Cancer Research.  The Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project server uses a computer aided drug design program that runs as a screen saver on each client device.  The software models the interaction between potential drug proteins and a target protein that is involved with the growth of cancer.  It operates whenever the client CPU would otherwise be idle and then sends the results back automatically over the Web.  Intel said the peer-to-peer networking application has the potential to turn the unused computing power of millions of individual PCs into the largest computing resource in history.  The project aims to register six million users this year.  http://www.ud.com/home.htm
April 22, 2001

• United Devices, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, developed and manages the infrastructure for the Internet distributed computing project.  The company plans to apply the Web distributed computing technology to a number of other commercial applications, including web site testing and indexing, 3D animation and rendering, financial analysis and other scientific projects requiring super computing power.  
  
• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, which originated at the University of California at Berkeley, is the largest Internet distributed computing project to date and has a global network of 3 million Web-connected computers.  The computers deliver an average aggregate of about 14 Teraflops and have completed over 500,000 years of processing time over the past year and a half.  The project scans through over 40 GB of data collected daily by the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico in hopes of identifying radio signal fluctuations that may indicate a sign of intelligent life from space.  The director of the SETI@home project, Dr. David Anderson, is now the Chief Technical Officer of United Devices.

QWEST LAUNCHES CONTENT DELIVERY SERVICES
Qwest Communications launched a portfolio of managed content delivery services aimed at high-demand Web sites and corporate intranets and extranets.  The new services, which are based on Cisco Systems’ content networking equipment, include:

• Qwest Content Switching, which optimizes Web server performance with load balancing between multiple locations and provides geographic fault tolerance to provide greater scalability and higher availability.
• Qwest Internet CDN, a pre-packaged solution that supports static and rich media content on a dynamic usage-based billing model and is based on a set of distributed content delivery nodes.
• Qwest Enterprise CDN, a pre-packaged solution that enables LAN bandwidth speeds for business-to-business applications within an enterprise using existing dedicated Internet connections.  
  http://www.qwest.com/about/media/pressroom/1,1720,576_archive,00.html
  Qwest, April 19, 2001

NTT COMMUNICATIONS EXPANDS ITS GLOBAL DATA SERVICES
NTT Communications announced a major expansion of its data services aimed at domestic and international customers worldwide.  NTT Comm’s Arcstar Value-Added Global Data Network Service will now include Frame Relay to 27 countries, ATM services (CBR, ABR and UBR) at up to 45 Mbps to seven countries, and private leased circuit service at up to 45 Mbps to 23 countries.  http://www.ntt.com/NEWS_RELEASE_E/news01/0004/0417.html
NTT Communications, April 17, 2001

•  In May 2000, NTT Communications acquired Verio, one of the largest providers of Web hosting services in the US, for approximately $5.5 billion, excluding approximately $500 million it already held in the company.  In July 1999, NTT Communications unveiled a major restructuring aimed at reforming its corporate culture and spurring its competitiveness in next generation IP networks outside of Japan.

INTEL DEMONSTRATES REAL-TIME DSPs FOR WIRELESS HANDHELDS
Intel demonstrated the first working silicon for its digital signal processor (DSP) architecture being developed for wireless handheld devices.  The Intel Micro Signal Architecture (MSA), which was developed in partnership with Analog Devices, incorporates DSP and microcontroller functions onto a single chip operating at 400 MHz.  Intel said its DSP would provide real-time capabilities for processing audio, video, image and voice signals in cellular phones, personal organizers, digital cameras and handheld video games.   http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20010417net.htm
Intel, April 17, 2001

FLAG TELECOM ATLANTIC-1 SYSTEM READIES FOR SERVICE
FLAG Telecom successfully completed the final mid-Atlantic splice of the Northern loop of the FLAG Atlantic-1 cable system (FA-1), a multi-terabit dual cable, fully redundant loop system connecting London, Paris and New York.  The cable is scheduled to enter service this quarter.  FLAG Telecom's initial lit capacity on the system will be 160Gbps, with an upgrade to 280Gbps expected in the first quarter of 2002.  http://www.flagtelecom.com/index_e1.htm
FLAG Telecom, April 20, 2001

VENDORS TEST MPLS LDP AND RSVP-TE INTEROPERABILITY
The Advanced Internet Lab (AIL) at George Mason University completed vendor interoperability tests focused on using MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) and MPLS Resource Reservation Protocol for traffic engineering (RSVP-TE) to efficiently provision networks using traffic engineering and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).  The LDP testing was carried out between Alcatel's 7420, Avici Systems' TSR, Cisco Systems' LS1010, 7200 and GSR, Nortel Networks' Passport 15000 and Unisphere Networks' ERX 700. The RSVP-TE testing was conducted between MPLS-enabled products that included Agilent Technologies' RouterTester, Avici Systems' TSR, Cisco Systems' GSR, Foundry Networks' NetIron 800, Marconi's ASX 4000 and Unisphere Networks' ERX 700.  The next round of testing is scheduled to begin in August 2001.  http://www.ail.gmu.edu
George Mason University, April 18, 2001