Internet2 Turns 10 and Upgrades

An anonymous reader writes "As an update to a previous story, Internet2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Chicago this week at it's fall conference. In addition, they're announcing the initial stages of their second significant network upgrade of their backbone network. Engineers are providing daily blog updates on the network install process as the old network is transitioned to the new. In addition to changing to a Level3-managed and Internet2-provisioned DWDM transport system for backbone capacity, I2 is implementing a new connection-oriented backbone network based on the Ciena CoreDirector platform in concert with the routed IP network."

Comments

browser

[arifirefox]

What I would be interested is: what capabilities a browser should have to fully take advantage of Internet2. You've got the bandwith, what about the client end?

Internet2 Primer Needed

[Kadin2048]

So can anyone fill me in on what Internet2 actually does? The WP entry on the topic suggests that there is no network known as Internet2 per se, but one called Abilene, which I assume is what the Slashdot articles are mostly talking about. The Internet2 about page is mostly buzzword-laden fluff ("Internet2 members leverage our high-performance network infrastructure and extensive worldwide partnerships to support and enhance their educational and research missions").

What does the Internet2 consortium actually do? And what can users actually do with the networks they've built? Do they work transparently, just providing higher-speed IP data service between certain institutions that are in the network, for their normal Internet traffic? Or do they use new protcols/applications completely?

From a user's perspective, what does Internet2 (or Abilene) "look" like?