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Internet2 Gets a New Backbone
wrong_fuel writes "A few of you know that Internet2 and NLR (National Lambda Rail) have been in talks for some time regarding a merger of the two networks. Those talks have fallen apart and Internet2's contracts with Qwest communications had already been allowed to lapse. Internet2 has now reached an agreement with an unnamed carrier for its next generation backbone. The new network will likely be named later this year (the old one was referred to as "Abilene") and current member Universities will be migrated off of Abilene by September 2007."
Whats the odds it's google with all that dark fiber?
More backbone capacity is needed for all the spam and porn.
I read a paper on the justification of high bandwidth systems recently. It outlined as one point, how society has always managed to fill the extra bandiwdth with data, reguardless of what that data may be, increasing the rate of dissemination of data amoung people all over the world. I can only imagine the same applies for scientists.
e r) being built by CERN, which is expected to produce data in quantities thousands of times greater then previous accelerator experiements. The need to disseminate this data to locations around the world is critical to its analysis.
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The article gave the example of the Large Hadron Collider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collid
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to produce fairly large quantities of data also.
Along with these are that thousands upon thousands of experiments and measurmeents being taken every moment around the globe. All this data requires storage, transmission and compution. Weather simulations, aerodynamics, radiotelescope data, biochemical simulation, the list goes on.
Of course, if the sheer number of information producing tasks arn't enough, the definitive agument to why so much data is being generated is that with the increase of bandwidth and the power of computer, so too has the accuracy and speed of data collection increased. The micosecond is slow for todays chemical, physical and biological science.
Overall, its the number of experiments, the accuracy, resolution and speed of data generation, and the need for that data to be analysed around the globe that has created the mutual need, and provision of huge bandwidths such as those being investigated and used by I2.
For everyday folk like you and me, just go down to your accounting deparment and ask them how large their largest database is, you'll be suprised how unbelieveably data and bandwidth consuming financeal data has become since the revolution of the internet.
I work for a University and we used to be a member of Internet2. While it was nice to have high-speed connections to other members of the Internet2, we quit because of the high costs and we could not justify the costs for a small University with less than 5,000 students.
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It costs at least $300,000 minimum per year to join Internet2. The fees are as follows:
$30,000 Internet2 Membership fee (http://members.internet2.edu/Member-Dues.html)
$220,000 Abilene Membership fee for OC-12 (http://abilene.internet2.edu/community/fees/inde
Additional fees are assessed depending on which GigaPop you would be connected to (http://eng.internet2.edu/gigapoplist.html). The quote I had to become a member with one Gigapop was approximately $75,000 an year, plus local loop costs.
It's very difficult for us, and probably most Universities, to justify spending over $300,000 a year to become a member of Internet2. Until Internet2 can be better managed and lower costs, I do not foresee Internet2 becoming popular anytime soon.