The original motivation for this project was outlined in a article published by Visual Numerics Inc. (VNI), "Scientific Applications on the Internet". With NPIB Project scientists and engineers who use a variety of remote site computers would benefit from visual distributed computing project objectives.

1997: NPIB : documentation and examples.
Dennis Seay in the Distributed Information Systems continued the development of NPIB.

1998-2001: NPIB 1.4 / NPIB 1.5 / NPIB 1.6, NSF funding (EEC-9700815)
Randy Levensalor developed ver. 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. Documention: ESM4714 class project ( 2000).

CRCD: Development of NPIB continued with funding from NSF's (CRCD) project, where NPIB was used for both research collaboration and curriculum development.

NPIB 1.4 is the result of major modifications where the "network-flow-programming" paradigm of a form "Builder 1.3" was replaced with: 1) a text editable file format (*.npib) that was viewed on a web browser with a Java applet, and 2) a "Receiver" daemon that coordinated the execution, visualization, and archival storage of the computer simulation results. NBIP 1.5 was enhanced with: 1) a Java-based simple to use GUI form builder, 2) a Web browser *.npib form "viewer" applet, and 3) a form Receiver daemon that uses a socket interface and continued to provided the same funtion. NPIB 1.6 was further simplified where: 1) the form builder and viewer were combined, 2) the *.npib file format was abandoned for a simpler "form" builder that used an html file format, and 3) the "Receiver" daemon was replaced with an executable cgi script located in the server cgi-bin directory. Recent versions of NPIB are also available in the "Tools" section of the the CRCD Web pages and linked here for convenience.

2001:    Final Report to Sponsors: NSF, Visual Numerics Inc., and Sun Microsystems Inc.