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."
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.
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.
Hmmm... Pie...
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.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
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...