Trying to Get Started in Missoula

[Don Morton]

Howdy, I've been pushing the idea of getting an AGN here at
U. Montana - Missoula, and I'm told that provision of funds
by our research office is close to 100% certain.  We're aiming
for implementation by end of fall semester, though we're all
still a bit in the dark.  I think we "might" be able to 
pull this off, but some of us might have to sacrifice
part of hunting season for it!  :(

I'm currently leading the effort and trying to provide the
energy to keep this alive and see that it actually happens.
In my opinion, in addition to thinking about equipment
acquisition, there are a couple of steps we ought to pursue
in order to make sure network issues are dealt with early
and, in the process, allow myself and others to get more
hands-on knowledge of all of this.  Since I still don't
have a good overall feel for how to run an AGN, my intent
is just to jump in where I can,learning as I go.

I'd like to pass my thoughts by those of you "in the know,"
along with some related questions.  If I should be asking
these questions elsewhere, please let me know.  My impression
is that "this" is the place for such discussion.

So, the initial steps I'd like to take are

1) Get a beacon server up and running here.  Our campus
network now has Internet 2, and I'm told that we "could"
get multicast enabled.  I've browsed through the AG and
Beacon websites, and I see nothing to suggest that I
can't get away with the following for a test setup:

- 100MHz Pentium running Slackware 7.1 (though can change to RedHat if
necessary)
- Standard 3com 3c??? 10/100 ethernet card
- multicast provided to me via 10BaseT network

Is this realistic?  I feel "somewhat" confident of
this first step...

2) Plan on viewing part of the PETSc workshop on 17/18 October.
In this area, I feel kind of weak.  My hope is to install
something like IP/TV on a Windows platform, or the Mbone tools
on a Linux platform, then maybe project the output.  I've
found the U. Oregon page for these packages.

I'm assuming that I need more than a 10Mb connection for this.
In terms of hardware - if we were to acquire something like
a 600MHz PC, would that be sufficient?  Will a single
ethernet card suffice?  In the AGN schematics I've seen, there
have been several streams coming into/from several machines,
so I'm not clear on how all of this might get demultiplexed for
a single IP/TV machine.  What about graphics - will a standard
SVGA card/monitor (or projector) suffice, or should I be thinking
about something else?  In reality, I'd like to run this on my
100MHz machine (we're poor out here) and delay the purchase of
something bigger, but my guess is that I need a lot of CPU power
for these multiple streams coming in.

Any comments are welcomed!  I'll be happy to give any of you a phone
call if that might be more productive.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Don
-- 
   Don Morton                     http://www.cs.umt.edu/u/morton/
   Department of Computer Science       The University of Montana
   Missoula, MT 59812 | Voice (406) 243-4975 | Fax (406) 243-5139