Follow Internet2's Upgrade

An anonymous reader writes "This is a follow-up to this story posted several months back. Abilene, the backbone for Internet2, is starting its upgrade and has a webpage up to follow the installation. Looks like quite a few interestesting documents and photos. The first Juniper T640 router was installed in Indianapolis on Friday. Anyone who's interested in what goes into a nation-wide network deployment should check it out."

Comments

Alright

[Com2Kid]

I say that we all try our hardest to /. this baby and show those foo's that the old skool 'net ain't down for the count yet!

Re:Alright

[danny256]

Yes, good luck slashdotting a backbone.

Re:Alright

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you're not on i2. You're on the
old net. How do you propose the
old net direct its traffic to i2?

Re:Alright

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck dude, it was a joke.

Re:Alright

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have just as much success as trying to /. Akamai.

Hi Res

[borgasm]

From the looks of the hi-res pictures on their website, Internet2 is going to need the extra bandwidth. Viva la Slashdot Effect!

Re:Hi Res

[Anonymous Coward]

they are taunting the slashdot effect!
i most surely wouldn't post an index of some 20+ pictures and have each picture go to a 1536x2048 1.5 meg file if i was trying to conserve bandwidth...

but considering they can transmit an entire cd across several thousand miles faster than it takes me to run outside from my computer room... i don't think the 'effect' will happen...

Re:Hi Res

[Schik]

Although the pics are very high-rs, apparently Internet2 is very blurry.

Re:Hi Res

[Openadvocate]

I'd rather say that people on Internet2 must be used to fast high quality lines where you don't really think about the size of the files.
Ah, to work directly connected to the backbone, and here I am on my slow 2mbit line

Re:Hi Res

[norwoodites]

If you look again, you will see that it was not focused on the left side but on the right, so the right side is not blurry.

Hurray!

[xenocide2]

Now all my intercollegiate... "transfers" will procede faster than I can burn them to CD!

Re:Hurray!

[ramzak2k]

"procede" ? you can spall better with this check it oat. http://www.iespell.com/

Qwest's Abilene donation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be interested to see if a detailed accounting of Qwest's financial statements reveal that their donation of the Abilene backbone to the I2 group was counted as a few to many millions of dollars in revenue.

Re:Qwest's Abilene donation

[Anonymous Coward]

Billions

Re:Qwest's Abilene donation

[wik]

It's probably a tax writeoff.

yeah, this isnt nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

now when we reach the internet420..thats a time for celebration.

One thing's for sure.

[Deal-a-Neil]

If the link to their site gets slashdotted, Internet2 isn't all its whooped up to be. :-) [j/k]

"Installation Practice and Drills". Damn. When we install at a new co-lo, I usually have this down on a dinner (White Castle) napkin two hours previous, lose it, and do our practice-and-drill in production-real-time. There's definitely something to be learned about build-out and deployment just from looking at their pictures. 8-/

Re:Wouldn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? OMFGYGTBSM....

What isn't funny about a beowulf cluster of high bandwidth routers? :P

all your Internet2

[ramzak2k]

allright , regular lames like the slash dot effect , beowulf cluster have been posted. so, all your internet2 is belong to us !

Internet2 rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, faster porn!

money$

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of my tax dollars have been wasted on this project.........and for what, so a bunch of scientists can download pr0n faster?

Inet2

[Anonymous Coward]

w00t! the college i go to just got hooked up with a DS3 to the main lines, and then an additional DS3 to Internet2. dunno what it looks like since they installed the Visa systems and i cant hang out in the server farm anymore :( oh yeah, i go to ISU Indiana State University. Not the best, but hey, it works ;) man, those pics are nice! I have also noticed a significant speed increase doing usual day-to-day stuff there, and a large boost goin to hemos.iu.edu. I believe IU and Purdue are both hooked up to Internet2. yay! /. effect!

Re:Inet2

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have went to Purdue, we have a gigabit link to Internet2, plus an extra DS-3 "just in case"

Re:Inet2

[Anonymous Coward]

Not correct, I'm afraid. Purdue has a gigabit link to The Indiana Gigapop. The Gigapop has an OC-12 to Abilene. And you're sharing it with IU and all the other folks at the Gigapop. Don't worry, it's not close to saturation levels yet. We keep a very close eye on it.

Lets get something usefull going...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I don't want faster pr0n... pichunter_com is as good as it gets. What I want are my MRI or XRay scans after a hospital visit. I want Video Conference that works as smoothly as a telephone does today. "Can you *see* me now? Good!" Getting rid of lag on RTCW multiplayer is good, but MEDICAL, RESEARCH, and other life changing, usefull applications must take advantage of this.

And does anyone see the general public being denied access to this, because a DVD can be shared as easily as an MP3 today? I bet the RIAA would try to stop us slashdoters et. al. from using it. If they are starting to sue backbone providers, it's not above their heads to try it.

Either way, I hope geeks and others who love progress get it up and running. Good luck, Internet v2.0, because Internet v1.0 sure has turned into a pile of crap (and by crap, I mean DeCSS linking being illegal, anything to do with RIAA, and PopUp adds).

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[phaxkolumbo]

Good luck, Internet v2.0, because Internet v1.0 sure has turned into a pile of crap (and by crap, I mean DeCSS linking being illegal, anything to do with RIAA, and PopUp adds).

...and what makes you think those won't affect Internet v2? I'm sure it's under the same vein legislation-wise

But, yeah, you're right, let's use for something useful this time...

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[ramzak2k]

I don't want faster pr0n... pichunter_com is as good as it gets. and you can almost be sure that pr0n0s will be there well before others get their fingers on them. Good luck, Internet v2.0, because Internet v1.0 sure has turned into a pile of crap stand back and enjoy the all new "faster crap"

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[alexburke]

Good luck, Internet v2.0, because Internet v1.0 sure has turned into a pile of crap (and by crap, I mean DeCSS linking being illegal, anything to do with RIAA, and PopUp adds).

That's because the government of the country where most of the Internet is located has turned into a pile of crap -- or at least has been sufficiently monetarily lubricated to allow the laws which govern the citizens of that country (and therefore many of the Internet's users) to turn into a pile of crap (as far as those citizens/users are concerned).

The whole fucking situation really sucks. I wish people in charge would just see what's right instead of seeing what's greenest.

Fuckers.

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole fucking situation really sucks. I wish people in charge would just see what's right instead of seeing what's greenest.

That's a cute sentiment. Stupidly naive, but cute. You're the prime reason why the people in charge do what they do. You're whining resonates about as much as a piece of shit. They'll just flush your inane and weak thoughts down the crapper.

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is marked insightfull?! The only thing insightfull about this is the fact that the dude has *NO* clue what he is talking about. There are no 'people in charge'. The thing is a bunch of cross linked networks and the only reason the thing works is because by LAW they have to share the data between networks. The companies that do anything on the net use it for one thing. MONEY. The rest of us get a free ride. And as momma always said you get what you pay for.

If you pay for crap you'll get crap. If you pay for quality, you might get crap. But you do not have to keep buying... Go somewhere ELSE and buy something.

If you do not like popup ad's do not goto the sites that use them. E-mail them and tell them why you are no longer using their product.

The internet was never the great thing everyone made it out to be. Its JUST a network. What people do on there will be the same sorts of things they do in life. Share things, advertise, buy things, sell things, write stories, read news, steal, look at pics, etc... I think all you have realized is that most people can be scumbags if you let them.

As a friend at work says about his kids 'oh I dont have to teach them to be bad. They know how to do that. I have to teach them to be good.' Responsiblity on the net starts with me and you. Dont like something on the web. DONT GO THERE. Eventually no one will care enough about it. Someone is not magicaly going to come in and wave the fix-the-net-wand +8. Then poof there are no advertisments. All the web pages make sense. All the porn doesnt exist. And stupid remarks are at least well thought out and backed up by evidence.

Re:Lets get something usefull going...

[alexburke]

The "people in charge" that I'm referring to are the people responsible for making the laws which have allowed the Internet to turn into such a pile of shit (spam, DMCA, SSSCA, etc.).

If shit laws were repealed and decent ones enacted, the Internet would be a much better place.

However, this probably won't happen if the media cartels etc. are allowed to continue on their way (Senator Disney, for example).

look at all that space

[farnsworth]

I think that this picture was actually taken at Exodus in San Jose, CA. or possibly AboveNet.

"is there an echo in here?"

Re:look at all that space

[ramzak2k]

and i think this picture is more interesting !

Re:look at all that space

[netsharc]

Not very... but yuck, hairy armpit!! if I wanted to see that I would've gone too www.hairyarmpitsfetish.com ..

Someone should sue them

[ikekrull]

Since the Internet2's huge amount of available bandwidth is surely grounds for a contributory copyright infringment case.

Might as well nip these new developments in piracy-enabling technologies in the bud.

slashdotted?

[farnsworth]

what does it mean if this site gets slashdotted?

Re:slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

...all their bandwidth are belong to us...

Re:slashdotted?

[ramzak2k]

it works like this , a link gets posted on slashdot. every filthy animal here - including me , you look at pictures instead of reading the article. Suck up all the bandwidth of the server and all your bandwidth are belong to us. its a lame way of doing DOS

very usefull

[nzru.()]

Already the plethora of useful and public applications can become a reality. Real time video conferencing, news streams, medical surgery with full 3d video even with VR enhancement to get that "effect" of real life. Imagine medical procedures being done REMOTELY with this kind of bandwidth, provided it's reliability is in fact, a reality. Double-Plus Good! The talk about the **AA's is irrelivent. Anything that's produced for the common good of the people will always, in some way or another, be used for bad/illegal pourpeses. It's a fact, get over it. __ It's not trolling, it's my honest opinion!

Re:very usefull

[nzru.()]

why do i get _instantly_ modded to zero at every turn? does some idiot have it out for me or what?

Re:very usefull

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you have bad karma. Check out your user page to find out. If you have bad karma, you post at zero.

Indy?

[ImaLamer]

Heck that's close enough that I could drive up and hand them the data almost as quickly.

I'm glad though that it's close, hopefully our local 'bones (TimeWarner, UUNet, etc) can get on this when done.

A Student

[jjonte]

I'm a senior undergrad in New Media at IU Indianapolis. The University is always quick to show all this fancy equipment and high technology stuff (Internet2, CAVE)...but the students never see it or use it. We fund it, but we're not allowed to touch.

Re:A Student

[Gaurang]

I am at a university in california. Same thing here, the students are not allowed access to the high-tech stuff at the Univ.
But its correct since the the faculty and research assistant students who do research using that stuff are allowed to use it, and that makes for a proper use of it. If you let all access it, it will turn into a pile of junk soon.

Re:A Student

[David Price]

I'm not sure how it's architected at your school, but at mine, everyone with an on-campus network connection transparently gets benefit from Internet2. It's very simple: If your packets are going to an institution connected to Internet2, then they get routed over Internet2. The routing decision is made at the campus border. No problem, everyone gets to use it. All Internet2 is is a new, fast backbone that a select group of research institutions gets to use.

I've gotten faster transfers from machines at MIT than ones 400 yards away from my dorm room as a result of this hookup.

Isn't this how most institutions are using Internet2? Just put another card in the border router and let everyone at it. It doesn't seem to make sense to pay all that money for a high-speed network connection and not integrate it with your campus network.

(Incidentally, a traceroute to the webserver you linked in your post passes through Abilene.)

Re:A Student

[wsloand]

Georgia Tech is the same as Rice is according to the other poster. Traffic is automatically routed through the Internet2 if you are going to a connected institute.

I also know that if you have readon to need access, we have the ability to get access to any technology on campus. Just with two e-mails I have access to at least 5 supercomputers on campus, and if I need more access I can e-mail.

I'd bet that if you actually need access to the systems, then you can probably get it, but giving access to a CAVE system to all students just so that they can play Quake3 on it would be stupid on the part of the IT department.

Re:A Student

[pfoster2000]

The guys who responded already are on the money.
So here's a response from someone on your campus. any packets you send that go to a sight on abilene will get routed through there automatically. (so if you have a choice between a download off of commodity or .edu site, take the .edu site. as a rule of thumb.) On the cave, I don't know the vr lab's specific policies. But if you do have a valid use for it they are happy to work with you. When I last toured it, they offered to work with anyone who had a glimmer of needing to use the tech there.

Re:A Student

[espo812]

If you let all access it, it will turn into a pile of junk soon.

You've never been accused of being an elitist have you?

Re:A Student

[clifyt]

Ummm....yer on it from the university. Yer touching it all the time. Not sure what the problem is? Can ya go down to the NOC and screw with the routers? No.

Its sad being on I2. I used 512k at home and it feels slow. I can't even tell you what 56k feels like these days because I give up after about 2 minutes and stay off line. At my Indianapolis office, connecting to other I2 sites is a breeze...I love being able to complain that it takes all of 3 minutes to download an ISO from California or otherwise. Try it sometime and you will realize how fast ya are...hell, or even set up a QuakeIII server and only allow low pings on it and you'll see how transparent it is.

As for the CAVE, find a project that can utilize it and submit it to the folks and they may let you play with it. You DON'T fund it...these are purchased through grants. Get a project that if grant worthy and you'd be suprised what the university allows ya to play with.

Clif Marsiglio
IUPUI Testing Center

Re:A Student

[Large Green Mallard]

Have you asked nicely to see something in action when next it's being used? Don't try to get to do whatever you want with $50k worth of equipment, it ain't gonna work. Talk to the people responsible for the equipment, find out more about it, then nicely ask if there's a time you could have a look at it being used.

Yes you pay a lot of money, but so does everyone else. Your department doesn't get all the money you pay. They have to fight with every other department for your money. And a "senior undergrad" is about as important as "head janitor" in the university food chain :) There's thousands and thousands of you. If you ever get into post-grad studies, it's a different story :)

Re:A Student

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, my school (new mexico tech) is hooked up to internet2, and we saw killer bandwidth for about a month. Now the average ping during mid-day can easily go over 2,000 -- transparent my ass, packet-scanning sucks.

Re: A Student

[shalunov]

The University is always quick to show all this fancy equipment and high technology stuff (Internet2, CAVE)...but the students never see it or use it.

I would venture to say that you use it daily. Have you ever transferred a file to or from another university in the US? The packets went over Abilene (the Internet2 backbone).

Re:A Student

[jjonte]

Students fund it. A university would be just a bunch of people talking to themselves and not getting paidif it weren't for the students. Don't forget who butters your bread.

Re:A Student

[clifyt]

Actually, no students pay very little for this stuff. Most of the money comes from grants and other subsudies. The university system is just another state sponsored R&D site.

Students don't and have never buttered the bread. I've learned this first hand experience as my position gets very little in the way of support lately because we've decided to turn our attention away from research and onto supporting students. In doing so, we've shot ourselves in the foot and can barely keep our budget in line now. Research is the lifeblood of the university. Without it, you'd be paying $1000 a credit hour (like most private institutions) instead of the $150 you do now.

Its a shame...I started employment at the university to stay closer to where I was going to school. If I didn't have the experience I do now, I'd probably be thinking the same thing you do. Its hypocritical, yes...but no different than having a bunch of idiots throwing a ball into a hoop and the school thinking it has anything to do with education.

Higher Ed is everything but Higher Ed.

Re:A Student

[clintonogamy]

Actually, no students pay very little for this stuff. Most of the money comes from grants and other subsudies. The university system is just another state sponsored R&D site.

I would disagree. Students ARE very important. Many private universities are not at all state funded, they are more of a business. If there is sufficient focus on the students, those students will eventually become weathy alumni who fondly remember their college days, and with a substantial gift.

we've shot ourselves in the foot and can barely keep our budget in line now. Research is the lifeblood of the university. Without it, you'd be paying $1000 a credit hour (like most private institutions) instead of the $150 you do now.

It is good policy, and very forward looking of the institution, to focus on the students for this reason. Alumni money is vital.

HOwever, I DO agree that some schools are completely off focus a\nd need to evaluate the balance between students, research, and making money off side businesses. Not that I've never enjoyed a good football game, but anyway, I'm off topic as it is.

Re:A Student

[Anonymous Coward]

dass da way Brizown wizzerks too.

Headline should have read

[unsinged int]

from the unable-to-slashdot dept.

Re:Headline should have read

[Anonymous Coward]

They linked directly to a page with lots of pictures. We'll see.

What would make me happiest...

[tlambert]

What would make me happiest is if they would turn off IPv4 on the damn thing, and force everyone to use IPv6, or not be able to connect.

It will truly suck to have all this shiny new equipment deployed and talking to its peers at incredible speed... without a shiny new address space to go with it.

-- Terry

Re:What would make me happiest...

[Paranoid]

Uhh, ipv6 is kinda the point of it anyway. The "Internet2" (also known as the "6Bone") _is_ the global ipv6 test network, after all. IPv6 is all it runs. Around my neck of the woods, its implemented as a mesh of SIT and GRE tunnels, but the backbone runs native.

I wonder how many hops off of this shiny new hardware my poor little ipv6 GRE-tunnel sits...

Re:What would make me happiest...

[kryonD]

I'm not affiliated with Internet2, but reading the docs indicates that it is routing both IPv4 and IPv6. The former done over BGP and the latter over IS-IS. It goes into how the BGP is encrypted via MD5 and that the IS-IS only shares info via a plain text authentication. I imagine it will eventually migrate to just IPv6, but prolly is waiting on support from M$. ...

Re:What would make me happiest...

[¡]

I think you're confused.

The 6bone was (probably still is!) just a ipv6-in-ipv4 tunnelled network; there was never much of an actual physical infrastructure that ran it. Internet2 is a US-wide really-blazingly-holy-fuck-fast network between educational institutions. It's implemented just as a network that sits beside the Internet; institutions that are connected to it simply use BGP to prefer the prefixes they learn from their I2 link.

that said, the pictures on that site make me feel somewhat shameful about how I've done installs...

and yarr, my gf just got out of the shower and said "you're on slashdot already?" that makes me feel horrible because i'm actually posting. and i never post. dammit.

whee.

Re:What would make me happiest...

[noahm]

Uhh, ipv6 is kinda the point of it anyway. The "Internet2" (also known as the "6Bone") _is_ the global ipv6 test network, after all. IPv6 is all it runs. Around my neck of the woods, its implemented as a mesh of SIT and GRE tunnels, but the backbone runs native.

No, that is simply untrue. There is no connection between the 6bone and Internet2. They are certainly not the same thing. It's perfectly normal to speak IPv4 on Internet2. I do it all the time, as do most people who send packets between major .edu sites. Internet2 is the testbed for not only new software networking technologies, but new hardware technologies as well. There is no hardware involved in the 6bone.

Here is a traceroute that goes over Internet2:

traceroute to infopath.ucsd.edu (132.239.50.184), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 anacreon (18.24.4.1) 0.854 ms 0.510 ms 0.506 ms
2 radole (18.24.10.3) 1.505 ms 1.167 ms 1.547 ms
3 B24-RTR-1-LCS-LINK.MIT.EDU (18.201.1.1) 1.997 ms 1.409 ms 2.448 ms
4 EXTERNAL-RTR-2-BACKBONE.MIT.EDU (18.168.0.27) 1.140 ms 1.274 ms 1.366 ms
5 192.5.89.89 (192.5.89.89) 1.768 ms 1.718 ms 1.191 ms
6 ABILENE-GIGAPOPNE.NOX.ORG (192.5.89.102) 7.337 ms 6.181 ms 6.647 ms
7 clev-nycm.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.29) 20.210 ms 18.777 ms 19.306 ms
8 ipls-clev.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.25) 26.019 ms 24.682 ms 26.679 ms
9 kscy-ipls.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.5) 34.042 ms 35.163 ms 34.527 ms
10 dnvr-kscy.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.13) 46.358 ms 45.230 ms 44.955 ms
11 snva-dnvr.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.1) 69.201 ms 70.373 ms 69.657 ms
12 losa-snva.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.18) 77.485 ms 78.125 ms 77.248 ms
13 USC--abilene.ATM.calren2.net (198.32.248.85) 78.248 ms 77.353 ms 79.467 ms
14 UCSD--USC.POS.calren2.net (198.32.248.34) 81.871 ms 81.249 ms 81.188 ms
15 198.32.248.186 (198.32.248.186) 80.856 ms 81.965 ms 81.400 ms
16 node-b-msfc--ucsd-gw.ucsd.edu (132.239.255.141) 83.473 ms 82.277 ms 80.897 ms
17 muir-rsm--node-b-msfc.ucsd.edu (132.239.255.161) 82.902 ms 82.777 ms 81.225 ms
18 infopath-1.ucsd.edu (132.239.50.182) 83.200 ms * 84.386 ms

Hop 6 is where my packets enter Internet2, and hop 15 is where it leaves it. There is no IPv6 spoken along the way. Now here, just for fun, is an IPv6 traceroute going over the 6bone:

traceroute to 6bone.net (3ffe:b00:c18:1::10) from 2002:121a:12:1804:2a0:ccff:fe57:ccd9, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets
1 3ffe:1ce1:2:1804::2 (3ffe:1ce1:2:1804::2) 1.697 ms 0.391 ms 0.36 ms
2 sipbv6-rtr-sipb-ether.ipv6.mit.edu (3ffe:1ce1:0:b5::1) 509.888 ms 304.953 ms 305.882 ms
3 6bone.merit.edu (3ffe:1c00::3) 306.205 ms 305.879 ms 305.286 ms
4 rap.ipv6.viagenie.qc.ca (3ffe:b00:c18:1:290:27ff:fe17:fc0f) 306.464 ms 306.109 ms 304.732 ms
5 www.6bone.net (3ffe:b00:c18:1::10) 306.389 ms 308.274 ms 307.396 ms

Let me repeat that: Internet2 and 6bone are unrelated!

noah

Re:What would make me happiest...

[noahm]

What would make me happiest is if they would turn off IPv4 on the damn thing, and force everyone to use IPv6, or not be able to connect.

I don't see much point in that. Most people today are (or should be!) writing address family independent code (note1, note2). Applications should be able to speak IPv4 and v6 natively with little trouble. So you should be able to speak IPv4 or v6 over I2; there's no reason that you need to prefer one over the other.

Also, I2 access is completely transparent for most sites. All it really involves is a new interface on a router and the software configuration to send I2-destined bits over it. This makes it really really easy for researchers to use I2. Since IPv6 is still an experimental protocol, it wouldn't really make sense to force research not directly related to IPv6 to use it.

noah

Re:What would make me happiest...

[noahm]

Silly to reply to my own comment, but...

If you take a look at www.internet2.edu you'll see that they've just (as of August 5) announced native support for IPv6. That certainly is cool, as it's a major step towards getting IPv6 some more mainstream use. Provided that the sites on I2 have the ability to route IPv6, this means that users at the sites will be able to get real IPv6 connectivity to other I2 sites without tunneling. Way cool.

(Of course, anybody can get IPv6 Internet access using tunnels. See freenet6.net and some 6-to-4 information.)

But I2 still isn't the 6bone. ;^)

noah

Re: What would make me happiest...

[shalunov]

The "Internet2" (also known as the "6Bone") [...]

Internet2 and the 6bone aren't related at all.

Incidentally, we run both IPv4 and IPv6 on our Abilene backbone.

Re:What would make me happiest...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the v6 address of your tunnel?

http://loadrunner.uits.iu.edu/%7Erouterproxy/abi le ne/ [IU]

Re:What would make me happiest...

[tlambert]

"I don't see much point in [making Internet2 IPv6-only]".

The main problem is that if people can use IPv4, there is no incentive for them to change over to IPv6. What this really means is that there's no incentive for Microsoft to include it be default in their desktop OS's. IPSec is languishing because Microsoft has not included it until very recently. Even so, the IPv4 IPSec they've included does not include cryptogrpahy, it only include authentication and non-repudiation.

That's great if you want evidence to accuse someone of a crime, but without the third part of the IPSec specification being implemented, it doesn't provide privacy... for things like credit card numbers.

"Applications should be able to speak IPv4 and v6 natively with little trouble."

And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Not only is it easier to implement IPv4-only code ("just do what you've always done, instead of learning a new way to carefully code"), and impossible to test non-IPv4 operations without a lot of effort, given the non-deployment of IPv6, doing otherwise damages your code portability to platforms which have not implemented IPv6 interfaces and transport agnostic resolver and other code. As long as this is true, and there's no overriding incentive for IPv6, IPv6 will not be widely deployed.

Personally, I fully expect my analog television to have signals to receive for the next decade, rather than the 2004 date that's been pushed back to 2006, when analog broadcasts were scheduled to cease.

I also fully expect to have incredible difficulty getting a static IP, as long as the IPv4 address space is the primary address space.

While apparently dissimilar, there is a common cause for both of these issues: there is a good reason that the phrase "backward compatability" has the word "backward" in it.

"Since IPv6 is still an experimental protocol[...]"

Wrong. RFC 240 is standards track, and has been since December of 1998. All Cisco equipment has had IPv6 capable software loads available since June 24th, 2000.

What good is Internet 2 going to

-- Terry

Re:What would make me happiest...

[t0qer]

start>run>cmd (if you're using 2k and above)

ipv6 install

at the command prompt

Time to change that cell number.

[gr]

Whoops.

Re:Time to change that cell number.

[Fred Ferrigno]

I can make out the number, but I can't read the message -- once again proving that digital cameras can't make up for bad photography.

Re:Time to change that cell number.

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone number has been /.

Re:Time to change that cell number.

[webmaestro]

Look's like they edited the image. The cell number is gone.

Re:Time to change that cell number.

[Anonymous Coward]

It says something to the effect of: They screwed up putting in the power last night. We'll make the cables look neat tonight.

Juniper

[Cally]

It's good to see vendor J getting more exposure (go go BSD!) but I don't see anything in the docs about the choice of routing platform. Does J support something vital that vendor C does not yet provide? Or is it just a preference for clean code over crufty ol' IOS?

Re:Juniper

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they got tired of their GSR OC48 cards moving at ... well ... OC24.

Re:Juniper

[GLX]

It's actually kind of interesting - notice while you're looking at it that the switch is a Cisco Catalyst and their termserver is a 2511... So, they must not be overly biased against Cisco, but Junier does have some good things going for it in it's high end routers that the C12000's still can't touch.

Truly More Bandwidth?

[Nazmun]

I don't really see how this would increase our bandwidth in a revolutionary way. Maybe latency will improve with a better network infastruction but the same thing that prevent large bandwidth usage in the internet will probably plague internet2.

One of the highest cost backbone providers suffer comes from laying down fiber. This has caused many to declare bankruptcy. Equipment (not talking about those home linksys routers) are crazily expensive as well. I don't see how internet2 will magically bring down the prices of either of the two dramatically. Equipment like this will always be expensive to ISPs and laying down fiber isn't going to get cheaper either.

I admit I am not an expert in this arena but that doesn't change the cold hard facts that I'm seeing. Money seems to be the major factor that is preventing the current internet from utilizing higher bandwidth applications.

Re:Truly More Bandwidth?

[dopolon]

Well, the real issue, now that the people who paid for laying fiber down went bankrupt, is not a matter of investment...
There is actually a bandwidth overcapacity and miles of unused dark fiber. The problem is to find a major operator that can come up with a successful business model / pricing scheme for that bandwidth :
- if it's too expensive, people won't buy it
- if it's too cheap, they go bankrupt, and we are back where we started
It's not really a matter of equipment and investment but rather a matter of maintenance cost and business models.

Re:Truly More Bandwidth?

[timeOday]

Fiber? You've got to be joking. There's tons of it looping the earth, completely unused. Connecting two cities is pretty cheap and easy. It's connecting every house to every other house in both cities where you run into problems.

Anyways, I don't think the point of Internet2 is to increase bandwidth so much as to provide protocol improvements for security, roaming, etc and to alleviate any shortage of IP addresses.

Re:Truly More Bandwidth?

[Nazmun]

I'm not disagreeing with you at all... I just don't see internet2 as something that will solve our bandwidth issues. This is true... but alot of the hype that internet2 is generating are things like video phones and other high bandwidth applications. Currently the average user is on a 56k modem but most of the hyped applications use at least 10x that bandwidth. If the average user at least 500 kb/s of bandwidth and the number of users increase then I can easily see all that dark fiber being lit and still not be enough.

Re:Truly More Bandwidth?

[Nazmun]

This is true... but most of the unused bandwidth is here in the U.S. (I wouldn't say earth). But the applications the internet two are hyping and the applications most slashdotters are concerned with require far more bandwidth then the average net user is using now. In the short term fiber isn't a problem but the same bandwidth problems that plagued the current net will also affect net2. If you go to their site you'll see in their presentations a lot of stuff related to high bandwidth applications. It is true that if you look at their work it's really just infastruction/protocol improvements but that is not what they are hyping.

Re:Truly More Bandwidth?

[Firehawk]

- if it's too cheap, they go bankrupt, and we are back where we started

Well, if the company goes bankrupt, the next guy will buy the assets for even less money and the service will become even cheaper.

The fiber is already in the ground. The debt restructuring will continue until the market determines the price at which it will operate... presumably at much cheaper prices, eventually......

Connection

[tom1974]

In Japan we get 8Mbps adsl service for less than $50 and they're testing a 12Mbps service, which is slated for service pretty soon. Damn awesome, like nowhere else in the world :) with that who needs internet2? ;)

Re:Connection

[Anonymous Coward]

if it works to everywhere like that..

grrr. damn ****** are raising our internet fees, like do i really want to pay 12$ for 10mbit connected to 12MBYTES backbone.....

Re:Connection

[Richard_at_work]

with that who needs internet2?

I guess with consumers eating bandwidth like that, your isp and its carriers would :)

Re:Connection

[forkboy]

If all 40 million people (or however many Japan is up to these days) get 8-12 Mbps service, you're going to NEED Internet2 caliber backbones in place. All the bandwidth in the world at your house does you no good if the infrastructure can't support it.

Re:Connection

[Twisted Mind]

I have 100Mbit 8-) at my home, for 10,--, excluding the money I pay for going to the university.

Re:Connection

[tom1974]

Fat pipes don't make a difference surfing the net. Its broadband applications that can use the xtra flow that need it e.g video chat, on-demand video , fat downloads etc., and for that traffic usually stays local here.

Plus almost everyone I know runs some kind of server and mirrors content and downloads. Like, think of p2p, first few downloads come from the outside, then the rest gets distributed locally.

Re:Connection

[sketerpot]

My internet connection isn't near that, but it's still pretty cool. There is an internal speed (to all computers on our ISP's network) of 2-11 Mbps, and a 128 Kbps connection to everything else. It is on one end of a balance: price vs. speed. I can't do stuff that internet2 can, nor could I even if I had a connection of twice your speed. But I do get it cheap: $25 per month, you only pay extra if you exceed 4 GB in a month. And you can get a low-end computer for $150.

It is a trade-off. Although I sit at one end, I can still look happily to the other, and know that in a few years I'll be going to a college with internet2.

Re:Connection

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay $25 (CAD) for the same connection in Canada.

Another network to block sites on?

[Richard_at_work]

I wonder if RIAA will be asking carriers to block sites on this network as well.......

Shiny Junipers!

[decarelbitter]

Nice to see they're switching to Juniper equipment. Our 'internet2' (being Gigaport is still built upon Cisco 12k's.

On a more relevant note: I saw a demonstration of some of the capabilities, where a 2GB MRI scan was transmitted from a hospital to a university where it was examined in a CAVE. Very neat and useful stuff.

GEANT, the european counterpart, is up and ok

[Anonymous Coward]

We, in a european university, have noted some time ago a big increase of speed, just since our network get connected to GEANT (the european counterpart for Abilene).

At least, I thank our goverments for putting our taxes to work for "all" of us and not only for corporations...

Re:GEANT, the european counterpart, is up and ok

[Anonymous Coward]

At least, I thank our goverments for putting our taxes to work for "all" of us and not only for corporations...

Yeah, those lousy corporations. Never doing anything for anyone besides their governing board, CEO, and president. Fuck, they never give anything to anyone.

When those government subsidies end up supporting weak and failing businesses, watch in vain as capital flight accelerates.

OC42 is lame...

[Chexsum]

We have OC192 between .au and .jp. ;)

Security Risks

[linuxislandsucks]

ah ahem why post port assignments of the routers.. don't they want hackers to stay out?

Of course what else can you expect from IU? We all know when you need something done right you call Purdue!

Re:Security Risks

[EchelonZero]

Those aren't ports ala TCP/IP...they are the physical ports on the line cards.

Re:Security Risks

[Anonymous Coward]

I went ahead and changed this since I got a few e-mails about it. We run a very open network, which has been a good thing. The port assignments are available through other means already and this is simply an aggregation of those means.

Pron for geeks.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how many of you out there are looking at those pictures, thinking, I'd like to wrap my hands, connect to one of these babys, look at that server farm or there's a great looking switch.

Damn good thing I still can get excited about hardware. And lets leave it at that.

Wimps!

[FyRE666]

From the photos:

Each crate weighed around 400 lbs, which is why you'll see three people moving one box.

Now I know that geeks aren't exactly renowned for their great physical strength, but does it really take 3 of them to move a 400lb box on a pallet trolley?

In my local supermarket I've seen young girls moving pallets full of new stuff for the shelves on these trolleys where the load is up to 1 tonne! (that's one girl moving the trolley, BTW).

Re:Wimps!

[Mac Degger]

Yeah, but no-one really cares that much when it's just bottles of milk crashing to the floor...

Re:Wimps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you said it yourself, crates.

Having a body on 4 wheels, no matter how much it weighs, is something anyone can do. Why do you think you see girls who are 5'0 and weigh 90 pounds pushing their cars if it ran out of gas?

Lifting 400 pound crates is a completely different story. And they are kind of strong, I don't know many geeks who can lift 133 pounds each.

Re:Wimps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wimp speaking. They were heavy. It took one to wheel it on the dolly and three to lift it: two to tip it back and one to tip it back toward them.

Re:Wimps!

[FyRE666]

If you bothered looking at the pictures, you'd notice they were using a pallet trolley. The crate couldn't "fall over", and could have been moved with 1 finger...

Re:Wimps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was more like 600lbs (for the crate), and the dolly only fit under two of the skids, leaving the entire package very unbalanced.

Re:Wimps!

[FyRE666]

Sigh, you see, this is why I don't usually bother reading below "1" - too many brainless ACs.

Now, looking at the pictures (which I assume you haven't), what do we have here then? Hmm? Why it's a palette trolley. Moving right along we can see the three strong men pulling a... why it's a palette trolley. Well I'll be gosh darned.

Next time, try looking before arguing, idiot. /me changes threshhold back to +1...

PWA for the 21st century?

[Quixote]

In the 1930s, the Public Works Administration started building lots of highways, interstates, etc. to keep the people occupied, and to pull the US out of the Great Depression (when unemployment reached 25%).

Could a similar thing be done with the Tech world today? Building and rolling out lots of infrastructure (after all, the Internet is the "highway" of the 'net), could the tech economy be pulled out of the doldrums?
I'm just musing aloud here...

Re:PWA for the 21st century?

[GLX]

Unfortunately, we already had it, it was called 1997-2000, the dot-com boom. Lots of free money for everybody for projects noone needed.

Re:PWA for the 21st century?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the interstates were built in the 1950s under the Eisenhower administration. As far as I can tell, the PWA mostly built sidewalks.

Re:PWA for the 21st century?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and that should be WPA (Works Progress Administration), not 'PWA'. They built mostly sidewalks and public buildings. The program came to an end with World War II, which was what really brought the US out of the depression.

That's in Indiana brother.

[Deal-a-Neil]

Every freakin' co-lo facility looks just about the same. That could be Level3, Switch & Data, or any ole' "raised floor big AC cage rack" facility. But now we know where farnsworth houses his equipment (and you mine). ;-)

Why follow it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like saying, "Follow the progress of this new road being built in New Zealand!" for the vast majority of people who don't live there.

If they fail, it doesn't affect me, other than I can learn from their mistakes.

If they succeed, I can't use it.

hostnames?

[bobbyt]

Is ICANN and Verisign going to take over and run a monopoly on Internet2 also?

hehehe....

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

ROTF LOL...

stand back and enjoy the all new "faster crap"

Thanks dude... "faster crap" had be laughing for 20 minuntes. I needed that today. :)

The pics need Internet2 alright

[Anonymous Coward]

From the sight of it each picture starts from 500K and go all the way upto more than 1 MB.

WTF???

I get 5K on my dialup connection???

wait for 5 minutes to see a pic??

Guess I'll have to move to this place ASAP

Not just Universities on I2

[amemily]

Washington State's K-20 network is also connected to I2. Run a traceroute to the border router at my workplace (colville-k12.wa-k20.net) and if you're on I2, your packets will go through Abilene before they get routed to K-20 at the Westin Building in Seattle.

It is nice to be able to download a ISO of the latest distro in 10 minutes (we only have 2 T-1's at work).

Same thing at the University of Arizona

[Sycraft-fu]

I2 is given priority in the routers over I1. If you want to get at anything on any other I2 site, it will travel over the Abline link. This is good as it provides an average of about 15mbps relief on our main links (which cost a whole lot more) and that number is growing.

The particular setup we have is there are three seperate border routers, each has an OC-3, one goes to Abline, the other two to our two I1 providers. Those than connect to two other routers that deal with traffic distribution.

It works very well and we've been very happy with the I2 link so far.

So *that*'s why my connection is screwed

[one-egg]

All day I've been wondering why my connection to the world is messed up. Can't get to ebay, can't get to Slashdot. I finally pulled out the modem card I use when traveling and dialed in through an ISP. Poof, everything works.

Moral: never install big new things on Friday.

that's bullshit

[neilsly]

go to unixfest... you can play around with the CAVE, tour the i2/abilene noc, even do lots of hands on stuff. Anyway... come on down to Bloomington, where the big boys are.