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Internet2 and National LambdaRail To Merge
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has the story on the rapproachment of the two main US providers of high-speed networks to academic and research institutions: Internet2 and National LambdaRail have agreed to merge. And they're moving quickly, after tussling over the details of such an agreement for more than a year. The two groups have decided to put final merger documents before their respective boards by April 20, with merger completion to take place by June 29."
Who gives a **ck about either of these networks?
Now they can share Kingship of a very, very small pond.
Wake me in 924329992349 years when this merger is relevant to me.
I think it's likely that someone said exactly the same thing in 1969 when Arpanet was created. Look at what it morphed into in a mere 38 years. Given that Internet2 isn't radically innovative like the Arpanet was, I think the merger could become very relevant to you n 10/15 years.
However, the real question is, how will it grow? meaning, at which point various money-hungry telcos, ISPs and **AAs will attempt to put their greasy paws on the thing and take control of the content and/or delivery methods? Internet1 is more or less free by design, something the aformentioned organization lament over, and you can bet they won't make the same mistake twice if they can with Internet2. That's the real issue, not how fast it will go when.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Err, I seem to be confused about what the Internet2 is. I had thought it was merely a large, non-profit run, high-speed network among universities. I do not know of any major technical differences that evil organizations could take proprietary ownership and force everyone in the future to use it. What are these differences you seem to imply? How would they keep ahold of it? Really, how 'free by design' is the Internet1 anyways?
Demented But Determined.
I think it's more likely that the telcos will wait for innovation in Internet2 and commercialize it in Internet1 in some form or another. The days of huge network capacity spending, unless it's backed by heavy subsidies and tax breaks, are nearly over. The Telcos in America have little incentive to provide continually higher bandwidth. Their impending defeat with Net Neutrality will hurt their feelings too much and they will punish consumers and the market.
The Telcos want to scream "I told you so!" regarding Net Neutrality more than any 5 year old could ever want to scream it.
Unfortunately, there's not a corner big enough to scold them in, or a newspaper heavy enough.
Here's a huge hint for you. Internet1 used to be a large non-profit run, high speed (for the times) network among universities and military bases. In a few decades time it now under the looming threat of major telco's who want you to have to pay for both incoming and outgoing traffic, based on who is serving or receiving it, and how much they paid that telco in particular for the service of allowing traffic in/out of their network.
As far as I know, what most people call "internet2" is actually the Abilene network, which is a university/corporate cooperation to build a large backbone network between all of the universities for use with data transfer. this gives the added benefit to students at those universities, because they can transfer data over the abilene network at the same high speeds. it's a standard internet backbone using IP. the reason why people get internet2 and abilene confused is due to the file sharing that students were doing (RIAA got involved, shit met fan).
national lambdarail is slightly different. it's an ethernet network connecting all of the universities. and by ethernet, i mean OSI layer 1/2 are defined, the rest is up in the air. this means it CAN be used as an IP backbone, but its main purpose is to experiment in large scale networks (researching replacements for IP, for example, or experimenting with WDM over fiber).
now, internet2 and national lambdarail are kind of intertwined, which is why this merger is rather unexciting. internet2 (the creators of the abilene network) are a part of the national lambdarail project. not only that, national lambdarail and abilene intersect at regional university interconnects such as the front range gigapop (where the university of colorado and UCAR link in) and CENIC/CalREN (where places like stanford, berkeley, and cal-tech link in).
so really, to joe sixpack, who thinks internet2 is some kind of secret research network, and has never heard of national lambdarail, this seems like some kind of mysterious and intellectual coup on the intertubes, when in truth it's barely newsworthy.
Monopoly? Maybe you might remember that "Internet" thing from a few years back. I think that might still be around too. Maybe that's an option.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Ummm.... no. This network is for research and education, and for those purposes only. Notice how the first one was also originally for research and education, but that it got swamped by porn, spam, and torrents when the masses came online. Keeping the two networks separate ensures a decent level of service on the research network for the people who actually rely on it.