MCI WorldCom operates NSF's High-speed back bone for another three years

The two-year HPC awards average $350,000, matched equally by each recipient. The extension agreement means that MCI will continue to make the service available, although universities will incur 100 percent of the costs once their HPC grants end.

The vBNS schools can continue to purchase MCI services under existing contracts, at prices guaranteed in the original NSF-MCI agreement.

"The extension upholds our responsibility to ensure that the university research community is well-served by vBNS," said Aubrey Bush, director of the NSF Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research (ANIR) division.

"The three-year extension aligns with the known lifetimes of other networks like Abilene and STAR TAP to keep us moving forward with multiple, interoperable backbones."

STAR TAP is the NSF-funded hub connecting U.S. research networks internationally to sites in Europe and Asia.

Universities with high performance connections capitalize on supercomputing resources made available through NSF's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program. The vBNS also provides advanced connectivity to other U.S. research networks, including the Department of Energy's ESNET and the NASA Research and Education Network.