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Internet2 Update
fm6 writes "The MIT Technology Review has done a status report on Internet2, the bandwidth-intensive sequel to the Internet. What's really exciting is the way people are already using this technology: virtual nanomanipulation, online surgical procedures, even telepresence opera. Lots of interesting links."
Nanomanipulation? Virtual surgery? The only thing that could keep I2 alive is pr0n. And lots of it.
WHat I really want to know is how many Rocket Arena 3 servers are on it?
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Oh, that's really great! I've been at that site three times (the NOT), and the net connection from the mountain is really bad. It sure needs a lot of improvement. I know they've had some tests where the NOT has been remotely controlled, but it is not for mainstream use. The problem is that you sometimes need to download the picture at once after readout to decide what you should do for the next exposure, but on a slow connection, you will waste a lot of very valuable observing time waiting for an image to download. A typical image is 2048x2048 pixels, 16 bits, pluss header information. Hope we get a bit of that bandwidth the GTC is getting... :-) I've been on the construction site when it was just being dug out.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Just look - Internet2 is restricted to academics and researchers, just like the old Internet was restricted to universities and government researchers. It's being used for collaboration and "what-if" scenarios, and most that are currently involved have a good idea who the others are. They are even practicing high culture, trying out live colaborative opera.
And in a few years, it will be opened up to the public. It will become 3-D Porn, obnoxious teenagers who can't spell, bad music being traded all around, pop-up adds with full symphonic sound, and all the original users will complain about all the newbies...
But they also have the lessons learned over the last 15 years or so of the commercial internet...
The folks that turned the web over to the world probably had no idea what would happen. Who would have thought that pretty pictures and design would be more important than content? That marketers would plague the web with spam, banner ads, and pop-ups? Who would have guessed that it would eventually have to carry live video? Who would have predicted the backlash against blinking text?
They can watch the original Internet, and plan a little to make sure they encourage good uses and discourage bad ones. For instance, they are optimizing it so "important" things get transfered more reliably than "unimportant" things, and are trying to make it work before the world gets it's hands on it.
Just a few of the possible areas for improvement:
Smarter IP addressing, both for increased number space and to help out routers (geographically based top-level numbers?)
Basic Protocols that are written assuming hacking attempts rather than optimized for sharing information
Priority transmission for time-critical applications (such as surgery).
Low-level broadcast protocols.
Micro- or Macro-payment support.
Better business models by design.
Your favorite extension here
I, for one, think it's a good thing - develop the next generation, in a real prototype state, get it 95% there, then unleash the world on it. When that's done, start on the next next-generation Internet.
We need reasons to buy more expensive hardware, anyway...
That's a pretty good firewall, it prevents evil h4x0rs from damaging the equipment by overheating with those dangerous infrared files.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Of course that doesn't take into account the geographical separation of the human species and that the chromatic dispersion increases dramatically over even short distances. All 6.5B of us would have to live within a few kilometers of each other. Too crowded for my taste. More can be found at SciAm and at a previous Slashdot story
You've got to be kidding me. There's an astronomer named "Telesco"? I'm surprised they didn't interview a chemist named Fred Hydrocarbo.
RW
Though these backbones are similar to those on the commercial Internet, only about three million users can access Internet2, versus several hundred million on the public Net.
Almost all the benefit (including the workability of QOS) comes from the fact that they have limited who has access to the network and thus have a much higher signal-to-noise ratio. It's the internet culture of the late nineteen eighties, running on the hardware of the early two thousand naughts.
-- MarkusQ
I hope that the Internet2 is to the Internet what ESPN2 is to ESPN... More Xtreme!
But then again, sequels usually suck.
I wonder, will the new set of protocols governing this new network allow for more security protection than is current in today's world of TCP and UDP?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Internet2 is great and I have no doubt that it'll have a serious impact on daily life, but the cost to roll out something like that to the general public is outrageous. We, John.Q.Public, will be using the plain old Internet for a while. That's why I have more interest in technologies like Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, that help us out in our current infrastructure and consequently will impact us in the home much sooner than the UberNet this article talks about.
Oh, fyi, since I mention it, here's where you can find more about DWDM:
http://www.ericsson.com/technology/DWDM.shtml
http://www.atmdigest.com/WDMResources.htm
http://www.iec.org/tutorials/dwdm/
Tom
-Tom