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Internet 2 Crawls Forward
JimBoBereLLa writes sent us yet another story about that wondrous beast known as Internet2. Talks about specs and bandwidth and applications currently being used to test the new network (which currently connects 180 points, of which my sofa tragically is not one of them). A fairly fluffy piece, but at least it's nice to know that it's getting somewhere every few months.
Uh.... I think I'm missing something here. First, Internet2 is (was?) a research-only network. It's not (supposed to be) a place for pr0n and other commercial use.
You speak of standards. The Internet, as we see it, is just a collection of heterogenious networks in a homogeneous naming space (well, mostly--a discussion of NAT is beyond the scope of this comment). You want to move to I2? Fine. Go enroll as student or faculty at one of 180 research institutions. Just don't go there for much Quake use :-)
You also take a look at kermit. Kermit was not an Internet protocol per se, but was a terminal-terminal download protocol that assumes unreliable network streams. Yes, that means certain instances of kermit-over-IP existed, but it doesn't mean that kermit was necessarily an Internet application-level protocol, where most transfer tools assume a TCP-level (or equivalent) functionality, leaving error detection and correction (among other things) to the lower-level protocols, and it dealing more with the application-specific information.
As for benchmarking /. code, I really don't see the difference of its code running on I2, Internet, or my home LAN; provided that the host is mated to a decent backbone, its performance would be more dependent upon load/system configuration than the underlying network itself. I2, with its much smaller user base and a similar backbone, consequently has much lower load, so it should perform better.
Besides, if you wanted to compare/contrast I2 to Internet, you'd probably do a network traffic analysis (peak bandwith, peak latency, multiplexing capabilities, etc), which would be a function of the routers than anything else.
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After reading through the previous posts it doesn't seem to me that anyone has addressed the scariest part about I2, "quality of service". What this actually means is that within the header of an IPv6 packet is a priority byte. Based on the value of this byte will determine whether that packet sits waiting at the router, or rushes on through. From the article...
I-2 is researching what it calls "quality of service," some way to guarantee seamless delivery of priority transmissions. A collaborative medical procedure, for instance, should not be interrupted by e-mail traffic. One thought is to create a premium service, where critical data would be tagged so that routers would pass it through first, much the way railroads clear the tracks for express trains.
The way the article makes it sound, there will be a purely technical reasoning behind which packets will be given a priority. Bzzzz, wrong answer folks. What is being sold to corporate IT managers out there (based on some IPv6 seminars I've been to) is that you'll be able to buy higher priority for your packets.
Stop and really think about this. You're an ISP that can assign a different priority to packets going to and from your various customers. Are you really going to ignore the billing potential of selling higher packet priority to different folks? For that matter, as the demand goes up for higher packet priority, so does the cost.
There are some truly frightening scenarios that can come to play here with the standard as it is presently being presented. What we're really looking at here is that live medical procedure waiting at the router for a CEO's E-Mail to get through.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Which is, in fact, a part of the problem, but not when separated from the whole view, namely urban development as an entirety. Take a step back to Portland, to San Diego, to Toronto. All of these cities have large urban populations and busy downtown cores, with major potential for traffic...but the cities in question have alleviated the problems by favoring inmprovements to transit rather than road infrastructure. portland took things one step further, drawing on traffic calming projects in germany (they know cars). What followed was a a series of laws that eliminated free parking for company employees, and large subsidies for transit and carpooling (either monetary, or physical allowances. In all three cities, one can find car lanes that are only for use by cars with three or more passengers, or buses).
What followed was a "the establishment of an urban growth boundary adopted in 1980, middle-class neighborhoods continue to grow and thrive close to the downtown instead of engaging in a suburban exodus, while more distant, exurban communities remain undeveloped, leaving the people there in therir pastoral splendour...this contrasts sharply with cities such as Detroit where 30% of the downtown core remains empty and the only people who live there are either the very rich who inhabit 'fortress' areas which are access controlled and patrolled by private police, or the very poor who live in run down areas with a decayed infrastructure...the stabilizing (emphasis mine) middle-class having fled to the suburbs long ago." [Namir Khan, Healthy Cities Report]
The pattern is cyclical...roads --> people --> traffic --> roads --> people...you can add elements to the cycle ad infinitum, as guaranteed by the butterfly effect. Pointedly, the statement worth making is not "roads cause cars", but instead "roads do not cause less cars, only more traffic".
It's interesting to think about the middle-class as the stabilizing factor in urban development (and by extension, traffic use). If we were to categorize a hierarchy of internet users, what would be the defining parameter? In the urban case, it's clearly money...on the web, i would argue that the class system of internet usage revolves around bandwidth speed (the obvious conclusion), but rather the wealth of knowledge and information in transfer. The premium is web space, just as in cities the premium is land. The purchasing power is in the value of your information...large multinational companies constitute wealthy, gated communities with private intranet policing and limited access, whereas the 'poor' netizens spend their time chained to useless IRC events and porn surfing. in this case, the stabilizing factor happens to be people with legitimate interests in technology and even a hand in the process. The stabilizing factor is Slashdot.
Anyone else out there remember the "September Syndrome" when all the freshmen at college/university first got their accounts. They would test the waters and often would be quick to flame or troll. This would be quickly corrected by the existing community members and the freshmen would be put in their place. In about a month and things would calm down untill the next September. Well the net has been looking like September for the last couple of years now. Every day of every month, September. Oh well. :)
He has a point, though. It would be nice if there was some way to ensure that the people on the net respect the net. If you have to have a license for hunting, fishing, and driving, why not for I2? Admittedly, the above examples are threats to life, limb, and environment, but there's no reason we shouldn't try to protect our information sources too. If net access was seen as a privilege rather than a right...
Just a few random thoughts.
Visit the
"Indiana University music students can now hear the performances associated with their course work on computer. IU, which has the largest music school in the nation, has digitised its entire music library. "
Hehe, so it is already being used for sharing music.
Jilles
The question is, will they ever "roll it out" to beyond what it is now? I mean, sure, they use IPv6, sure, their backbones are probably an order of magnitude fatter on a per-host basis, but would "they" ever roll it out, or would the current IPv4-based Internet just migrate to IPv6 when the specs are "done", tunnelling some legacy IPv4-based traffic in a "4-bone", or doing some sort of weird IPv6-IPv4 NAT? Or will the current IPv4-based Internet plod on, NAT-ting everywhere (dear lord, I hope not)?
Then again, when I run traceroute(1) everywhere, I almost always see a 10.x.y.z somewhere :-)
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;-)
Crap, don't let the RIAA and MPAA hear about this.
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The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Please, this is not Flamebait... but,
How many of you think this will really evolve as an autonomous Network not connected to Internet(1)? MS gave this a try with their MSN and failed. Isn't it better to Keep replacing old HW/cables with new gradually and 'eternaly'? After all ArpaNETs original total bandwith is said to have been 56k. Theoretically we're still using it but the bandwith has increased.... a lot.. :)
Anonyumous Howard
Internet 1 was created by government employees and academics. Only after sufficient trial was it handed over to the public "hackers" (that is, if you accept the definition of hackers as public software commanders, and not the academics who put the system together). Now, it's been almost completely taken over by big business ($850 billion total sales last year).
Internet 2 is again being created by academics in a much more open atmosphere. True, they are focusing more on broadband video and voice transfer, but nearly every protocol and standard they are using is available to the public and open-sourced (just not the hardware).
If you're an academic, this has to be. You can't be researching something and have another professor across country say "I already shelled out an algorhythm for high-speed video streaming but I... uh... don't know if I want it getting out." (Corporate secrecy may penetrate the upper layers at some institutions with grants, but most pure academics will cite the simple pride of research as key.)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Perhaps the advantage isn't intended for you, but your university. After all, if there are 10 of you pulling mp3s from napster at 10Mbps, the link to the outside world will need to be 100Mbps to deal with it. I had assumed I2 was a technology intended to strengthen the backbone, not provide ultra fast connectivity to the client.
More than 30 years ago, an author by the name of Helen Leavitt argued that expanding roads led to MORE traffic, not less. The argument was fairly simple...sure, you may get a little more breathing room for a while, but that doesn't address the real problem: too many people are driving on this road. Having more space leads to, well, more people driving on the road. (Leavitt, Superhighway-Superhoax. Must reading for the next generation of civil engineers...some of the fluffier tree-hugging ones have taken the cause to heart at this site).
If you stop to think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
Now i'm going to continue my line of thought, asuming you follow with the whole "more road = more road rage" theorem. (For those of you who still aren't convinced, either you're an old-school civil engineer in which case there's no hope for you, or you're not, in which case you'll be swayed by case studies like the city of Portland. In the 60-70s, Portland was having huge traffic problems. to solve the situation, they demolished a downtown freeway.) the question is: does the same logic apply to the internet?
Obviously, with a larger backbone you're going to see both a decrease in transfer time and an increase in usage. But is the decrease a temporary effect? I have a lot of friends who have seen their broadband service deteriorate to the point where they can get their kicks faster on a free isp. I'm sure you do too. Coincidence? Hardly...
The key difference between real traffic and internet traffic is that physical space is not at a premium. In the real world, land is the bottleneck factor. On the Web, the difference between 5 lanes and 50 lanes is also real, just not in the same way it is in your suburb. What does that mean? There is a greater allowance for 'lane width' patches on the Net...this still doesn't change the fact that to solve information transfer problems, we need to come up with better ways to shift packets, with better cars if you will, rather than expanding the avenues for that data infinitely (a solution doomed to failure because there will always be more data than road. How many of you thought your X-gigabyte hard drve was enough space, only to find it filled yet again).
What are these solutions? I don't know, i'm (almost) an electrical engineer not a magician...try sifting through Jane Jacobs or Peter Calthorpe or some other engineering conceptualists for answers...it's more likely that a new wave of net design theorists will need to stpep forward and shed some light on the rampant growth, kind of like hacking through jungle foliage with a machete so we can actually aget somewhere.
-j
Septem ber that never ended
<O
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Will I retire or break 10K?
Actually not all of Internet2 is IPv6 - Abilene is, I think, but some of the other testing e.g. the Qbone for QoS is still on IPv4, for logistical reasons.
There's been lots of work on migration of IPv4 to IPv6 - or more correctly, coexistence, since it's quite possible IPv4 will never disappeare completely, just like DOS... The details are fairly complex, but there are various tunnelling schemes (some including automatic tunnel setup as required) as well as protocol translators that let an IPv6 domain talk to IPv4 land via (you guessed it) something like a NAT.
In time, hopefully, the IPv6 domains will get larger and larger and gateway directly to each other - the 6bone, which is an international IPv6 network, is currently a mixture of tunnels over IPv4, and some 'real' links that are native IPv6. There are even ISPs that have rolled out native IPv6 service, e.g. NTT is one that has done quite a lot in this area.
IPv6 is particularly useful to Asia and other non-US/European regions, which didn't get much IPv4 address allocation and now really need the address space. It's also important for the massive mobile Internet roll-outs that are happening over the next few years. Just as soon as Microsoft, Cisco and others start shipping IPv6 as standard (quite soon now) it will have a chance of taking over, though it will take anywhere from 5-10 years IMO.
Is "replacing" the Internet a good idea? You can bet that if the Internet is going to be "completely overhauled" then they're going to "correct" the "mistakes" that were made with Internet 1 -- namely, that pesky little de-centralization "bug" that prevents Big Government and Big Business from exercising tight control over the end-user experience. Internet 2 will have wiretapping and censorship hooks installed at every router and gateway. Internet 2 will require a registered, privileged connection if you want to run a server of any type. Internet 2 will have draconian TOS that ensures that all users will be the tame sheep that Big Government and Big Business wants us to be.
Don't moderate this as 'funny' -- I'm dead serious.
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According to an article I read a couple of years ago, the Internet-2 network wasn't ever destined to become a public network - access would be restricted to academic bodies and such, partially in order to restrict the bloating and commercialisation that happened to the existing Internet. As such, it's not really necessary for it to be connected to the Internet(1) in order for it to flourish, as an earlier comment suggested - it would flourish in its own way, quality rather than quantity.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)