Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Great news. So what sort of tubes will they be going forward with in this joint venture?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Internet2? Psshhh... I'm not buying into that. Everyone knows Internet3.0 will be out in 6 months.
So they're setting up a monopoly. Who did they pay off to get this through the FCC and the "Justice Department"?
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.
SunSITE/iBiblio has been connected to the National Lambda Rail since moving to the MCNC data centre;
In addition to giving warp speed access to research sites, the National Rail also allows traffic for the regular Internet to be routed via providers in Atlanta at much local cost than could be obtained directly from North Carolina, making it possible for iBiblio to increase the amount of bandwidth to commercial sites to 1/2Gbps.
When NLR and Abeline combine there networks far more campuses will be able to get to iBiblio without having to bother the real world.
Simon
Let us know when you finish your quest to locate and tag every piece of information on the internet that doesn't interest you.
I think the same can be said about your statement.
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.
When DARPA and NSF put together what became the Internet (merger of NSF-net and ARPA-net) in the National Research and Education Network (NREN) Act -- a.k.a. the "Gore Bill" -- Bob Kahn and Anita Jones (DARPA) and Bill Wolfe (NSF) had the bright idea of setting down some rules (really, "standards") that if other, existing commercial and educational networks (i.e., CompuServe, AOL, MERIT, etc.) played by, they could be part of the NREN as well. Even though the "big networks" at the time used slow, dialup networks, they joined. An the Internet spread with a rapidity that no one involved in the process ever anticipated. Fortunately, the TELCOs were not paying attention at the time and the genie was out of the bottle. This time, the fears that the big, rich guys will try to "divide and conquer" and control is a real threat that I for one hope is resisted. I hope the merger between these two "academic leaders" is followed quickly by appropriate legislation that guarantees open access to bigger, better pipes (bandwidth). The reluctance of the Telcos to give up their highly subsidized analog switches and twisted copper is why the U.S. is 16th in the world (per capita) in terms of broadband connections and is falling behind in networking technology. As to what this greater bandwidth will be used for? Does it really matter? It is impossible to forecast -- but you can bet it will be interesting if it isn't taken over by the advertising/marketing industry in search of more "face time."
Perhaps the internet is actually composed of a series of rails?
How can you tell if you have a moron computer operator working for you? Answer: Find the computer operator using white out on the monitor trying to erase the mistakes.
all these different internets will merge into just one internet. To stop the confusing situation where you never know which of the internets you should connect to. My modem is always connecting to the wrong internet and I have to keep hitting it until it finds the right one. I think I need to upgrade to a rooter. Maybe a radio one.
Actually, they just started rolling out commercial services in some cities (including mine!).
:/
Fear my fat 10Gb Ether uplink!
Fear my empty bank account for the next 8 years...
Jesus Christ! You have no idea what Internet2 is, do you?
Internet2 is a bunch of universities who go together to negotiate a bunch of bandwidth from a single Telco (Level 3, used to be Quest) for a low price. Otherwise, a university wouldn't be able to afford a dedicated 10Gbps line.
It is then used to research network technologies and to carry experimental data. Sometimes it's used for distance education classes in high-def. Most often, it sits unused and is a penis-measurement between universities (although that will hopefully change significantly when the LHC experiments come online)
There's nothing to commercialize, unless you are thinking about raw datastreams from particle detectors or improved TCP tuning algorithms like FAST.
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).
At it's lowest level, it's a WDM network. They can provide layer 1, 2 or 3 connections to members. Each member has connection to the layer 3 IP network, which looks similar to Abilene. Members also have a separate physical port onto a layer 2 network. Using this option, you can get a VLAN directly between your site and another members site to do whatever you want on. Finally, members have the option of purchasing dedicated lambda's as well. That costs extra of course, since there is a fair amount of dedicated hardware required to provide a dedicated lambda. I2 was headed in a similar direction with the next build-out of their network, so I'm sure whatever merged entity results will provide similar functionality.
I am pretty clueless about what internet2 really is and how it works, and I have a few questions about it. Maybe some fellow slashdotter can enlighten me.
- There is no such thing as anonymity on internet2 is there?
- There is a central control that can yank sites they don't approve of, isn't there?
- Are there any powerful entities that are seeking to replace internet1 with internet2 for regular people?
- Why could we just not add more bandwidth (as is already being done), use the good old internet1 and hopefully eventually ipv6, and be happy with that?
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
What's that, the choo choo ride at the nerds' amusement park?
I didn't necessarily mean anything from Internet2 in the short term. There's nothing of major note even for educational use yet, other than as you said, some classroom stuff and experimental data.
/. even if no one will ever use it or see it outside of a few penis-comparing universities.
I would imagine (and hope?) that will change at some point in the future, either the new stream formats or something new entirely. If nothing else, something fun to read on