ENGINEERING

CHAMPAIGN, IL -- Four Web-based tutorials developed by the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) promise to make it easier and faster for members of the national research community to build, install, and use an Access Grid node. The tutorials are available at http://webct.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8900/public/AGIB. Users will need to create a login and password. The tutorials are organized as four units: how to build and install an Access Grid node; how to operate a node; how to produce an Access Grid event; and how to set up an Access Grid event. The tutorials also include a glossary of terms and examples of different kinds of Access Grid events. "Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for academic research centers and new communities--including Minority Serving Institutions, government agencies, and businesses--to connect to the Access Grid," said Dan Reed, director of the Alliance and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois and chief architect of the NSF TeraGrid project. "The bottom line is that the Access Grid is an enabling technology that brings people together and opens up new possibilities for communication and collaboration." The Access Grid is an integrated environment that supports group-to-group communication using high-speed networks over the Internet. It provides high-quality audio and real-time video that allows groups at multiple sites to interact and share data and scientific instruments. Fifty-six sites worldwide now operate and maintain Access Grid connections, or nodes, and some of these sites have multiple nodes. Argonne National Laboratory, an Alliance partner, developed the Access Grid concept and leads the Alliance's Access Grid deployment effort. The tutorials are part of a comprehensive Alliance effort to develop and deploy software that will make it easier and quicker for the research community to take advantage of new Alliance technologies. Called the In-a-Box initiatives, the effort includes the Access Grid-in-a-Box (AGiB) software package and three others: Cluster-in-a-Box, Grid-in-a-Box, and Display Wall-in-a-Box. The Access Grid Web-based tutorials will compliment the AGiB compact disc. All the In-a-Box discs will be available for the first time at the Alliance research exhibit at SC2001 in Denver beginning Nov. 12. "These tutorials are the result of the efforts of many people who worked hard to pull together all the information about the Access Grid and put it into a format that is easy to understand," said Lisa Childers, a senior scientific programmer at Argonne and co-lead of the Alliance's AGiB effort. "They answer the questions newcomers often have about the Access Grid and they should help a lot of sites become contributing members of the Access Grid community." The first tutorial, aimed at technical users, covers building and installing an Access Grid node, including hardware and software specifications and networking requirements. The second tutorial offers technical information needed to operate an Access Grid node. Topics covered include the Access Grid concept of virtual venues, how to use backchannel communications, and how to manage display environments. The third tutorial addresses the technical aspects of producing an Access Grid event, including the roles of various technical staff and handling technical difficulties. The fourth tutorial targets non-technical administrative staff and covers how to set up an Access Grid event. For more on the Access Grid, see www.accessgrid.org/ For more on the Alliance In-a-Box software deployment initiatives, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/TechFocus/Deployment/