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

I'll pass...

[Rastignac]

I'm waiting for Internet3 before upgrading. ;)

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?

Re:browser

[grommit]

Not much. I'm at an I2 site and when I do big downloads from other I2 sites, they're noticably faster than from places like Redhat, Novell, etc. Sure, there's some technology in I2 that allows for more reliably low latency connections but you'd be hard pressed to find a web based application that would need that tech that I1 doesn't already serve (provided you're willing to spend the money for your last mile connection of course).

Internet 2:

[rehtonAesoohC]

Not to be confused with Web 2.0.

Internet 2 is 10 already?

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

Alright, that means only 8 more years until I can get some of her nude photos!

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?

Re:Internet2 Primer Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

It lets college students quickly transfer MP3 files to other Abilene network members.

I presume there might be other uses too. Like videos, I guess.

Re:Internet2 Primer Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bigger series of tubes.

Re:Internet2 Primer Needed

[JumboMessiah]

I2 from a connectivity standpoint really isn't anything different from I1. It's still an IP routed network and all your normal IP routed toys (www, ftp, home brew app) still work as advertised. The term Abilene is actually the name of the I2 backbone network. It was spawned as a second generation IP network (and yes it can route IPV6 natively) to connect research institutions. Allowing them to utilize the network for research and high speed data transfers. What kind of research? Well anything really, hear about those doctors doing remote robotic surgery? That data probably was traversing the Abilene backbone. Grid computing in acedemia? Probably connected via Abilene .

Just like the I1 backbone, Abilene, being a backbone network, peers and eventually splits off to regional controlled networks. The one I am familiar with is OARNet (Ohio Acedemic Research Network). OARNet provides high speed connectivity to Ohio campuses and peers with the Abilene I2 backbone in Indianapolis (from OARNet's POP in Cleveland).

From an I2 connected campus (meaning you have access to the Abilene backbone at somepoint), there really isn't anything special to connect over the Abilene core. The network gurus had the IPV4 routing setup in such a way that if you connected to an IP address that was available via Abilene, the data would go that path. Otherwise, it would route out over the standard I1 connection. Most of the time when I would have to download some big ISO images, I would specifically look for an Abilene (I2) connected peer. Downloads over 10MBit weren't uncommon (mostly limited by the load on at the server on the other end). Pretty cool really. I'm sure others around are using it for more important stuff other than downloading ISOs :).

Re:Internet2 Primer Needed

[protohiro1]

Wow...that is a lot of words that totally don't say anything.

Re:Internet2 Primer Needed

[bockelboy]

The Internet2 is the research network that universities use for high-bandwidth needs. Universities formed a consortium so there would be a fancy organization that NSF would fund network connections and that they could leverage their size to get cheaper bandwidth.

Buying a 10Gbps line from I2 that travels over Level3's network is about 10x cheaper than buying that bandwidth through L3 directly. Of course, it can be damned expensive to buy up the fiber from your university to one of the I2 hubs. Further, I2 doesn't like you to connect directly to their hubs - they prefer to connect through a "regional network". So, the Great Plains region, for example, set up a regional network called the GPN, and then the GPN buys the connection to Abilene (the name of the current I2 network).

There's some money available for research into networking technologies such as the connection-oriented software mentioned above, but most of the traffic is simple IPV4 (and some IPV6).

So, for some people, the I2 means that they can turn over 200 TB of disk cache every 2 weeks or so (which are the requirements for some sites associated with the Large Hadron Collider, like us). For others, it means that they can stream classes in HDTV across the United States.

For another good chunk of users, it means that they can trade movies/songs at gigabit speeds, if the p2p application can support that. Most can't. It still takes a bit of networking black-magic to get line-speed for gigabit ports, but not nearly as much as it used to.

The best thing about Internet2

[dave420]

Porn2.

Re:10 Years old

[4D6963]

Internet 2 is but a couple of years younger than its older sibling

Oh god, when will people (even on Slashdot!) realize that Internet != the Web? It's just plain aweful to see apparently computer-savvy people like you making the confusion. Oh well, not quite as bad as my sister who calls "Google" both Firefox and the Web.

The Internet is a network, the Web is a service that happens to use this network.

.