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Article In The Guardian On Internet2
Sam Halter writes: "The Guardian carries this story about the future of the Internet and the expermental Super high-speed academic networks that are being built in Europe and the U.S."
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I'm on the "blazing" internet 2 now. This office is part of the main connection. But guess what! There's 1 connection coming in. And interstate workers have cut the line like 3 times in the last week.
How am I supposed to keep productivity up with this internet 2 thing?!
(As I post to slashdot, click refresh, see what my karma is, refresh,
wash, rinse, repeat if necessary)
Does internet 2 use IPv6? v4 is getting very limiting.
IMO the only way to get v6 adopted is (was?) to build a new internet. One of those chicken-and-egg problems, no incentive to upgrade the routers because the endpoints don't use it yet, endpoints don't use it because the routers can't route it.
Having done some good looking-into for this...a lot of these comments are irrelevant.
Commercialism: The Internet(1) is plenty good for this. Internet2 is for research. In fact "Internet2" isn't a network, but a group of people, much like "open source" isn't a company but a movement. Abilene is the network the people who are Internet2 memebers connect to, and it's pretty much only research traffic. You can connect to the internet (commodity traffic) over your I2/Abiline link, but that is not routed over the Abiline backbone you have to pay for an ISP for that as well.
Controlled? Not really. Once you are in, you can do just about whatever you want with other orgs that are in as well.
Get this in your room? Not likely, unless you can get through the application process (stating that you are a research university, nonprofit research group, or a corporation doing research with at least $25,000 to spare for dues. You then have to buy an OC3 to a local "gigapop", who will connect you (and then probably pay more if you want to use any of this bandwith to get to the Internet(1)). I would skipp all the paperwork and extra fees and just get the OC3 if I were condiering this. I mean $2000/month is better than $4000/month and a lot of red tape.
What they are getting in return? They are doing research in middleware, networks, video, you name it...that is on the leading edge. Enough research in these areas and you're going to come up with some pretty neat ideas: product ideas, service ideas, etc.
However I2 isn't just supposed to set FTP speed records. Connecting educational institutions was designed to advance research in high speed network and practical applications. Some mentioned were interactive video applications, multicast HDTV and the like. It will be great when we start to see these apps, but unfortunately this will be some time coming.
While I2 now provides the theoretical playground for researchers and some developers to start generating next generation applications and protocols, these applications and protocols will most likely depend on the bandwidth of I2. Right now there are like 200 universities that are on I2. However the technology that is produced by them will stay theoretical until thousands of companies gain access, and those companies will have to wait until millions of homes are wired before they can ship their products.
I see I2 as being a lot like IPV6. A needed improvement, and a good thing. However something that will take time to permiate into our daily lives. Here's hoping it doesn't actually take that long to hit the market.
-- Stanislav Shalunov