Slashdot Mirror
Internet2 and You
eldavojohn writes "With a name like Internet2 and such high press coverage, you might think that's the future of the Internet servicing our homes. But Ars Technica looks more closely at what the odds actually are for it to become mainstream. When will you see the effects of the software, planning and hardware that went into Internet2 in your home? The odds are the very distant future — if at all. From the article: 'The Internet as we now know it is anything but obsolete. The amount of dedicated hardware and personal attention required to get networks like Internet2 and DANTE working simply makes them uneconomical for most common uses. And, unless a majority of networked content moves onto these dedicated networks, then having access to them may not do users much good. If the academic networks change the commercial ones, they'll do it in an evolutionary way, by providing improved hardware and better software for running traffic within the constraints of the existing economic structure.'"
Internet2: I hear you've been having some problems with your tubes, can you direct me to the back door?
which is totally what she said
The amount of dedicated hardware and personal attention required to get networks like Internet2 and DANTE working simply makes them uneconomical for most common uses.
Before the world wide web, when the internet was mainly news groups, uucp and email (with pling addresses, because there was no dns for routing. I used to think how great it would be if ordinary people could afford to connect, not just academic institutions and large technology companies. The cost ad difficulty of configuration was prohibitive.
This is where internet2 is currently. It doesn't mean it will be in a couple of decades.
I don't get the point of the article, except to point out this is exactly why Internet2 was created. It's a combination of a research vehicle for advanced internetworking, as well as a "series of tubes" to skip traffic around "commodity IP services" for the participants.
The "Internet" isn't your "broadband" provider. It's the interconnects between networks. Just like the interstates and all the developments in building/maintaining those have very little to do with the street and driveway you use daily, Internet2 has very little to do with the IP connection to your home.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
They may well build links between the internet and internet2, and ideas ill undoubtedly osmose across, but did people really expect internet2 to be rolled out to replace the internet? And if so, how did they expect it to happen?
My Journal
I've heard the odd internets are better. Only one sample so far though.
Keep in mind if you bought a domain name in the past 10 years you paid for this.
Back when domains were $100 for two years, 30% went into an "intellectual infrastructure fund". This was set up by Don Mitchell of the National Science Foundation who has aegis over domains and administered the NSI contract.
Don felt the internet did well because of the IETF process (not the IETF per se) and created this fund to keep that "pure". Ie it wouldn't need corporate sponsors. He though the money wouold be used for workshops, research grants what have you.
When ICANN reared it's ugly head Mike Roberts convinced congress to give him the money to build internet2 in the US. Never mind that people all over the world paid into that fund.
It's an overpriced testbed that has absolutely nothing to do with reality or what the next version of the Internet will be.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I'll skip Internet2. I'm waiting for Internet3.11 for Workgroups.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Would someone like to explain, for the benefit of us still in the dark, why internet 2 can't just be connected to the rest of the internet? I mean, if I have a machine whose hardware and software enable it to accept incoming connections and push data in and out super fast, why does it matter who connects to it? If someone who old gear connects, they're going to run at the limits of their gear. If someone with new gear like mine connects, they're going to achieve higher performance. What's the big deal?
A-Bomb
All of this Web 2.0 stuff I keep hearing about: will I have to get this Internet2 to use it?
It seems that there is a common misconception that the internet2 is this great, new internet. It's not. It's just a set of private, high speed network links connecting research institutes that operates transparently with the regular internet. They configure their routers to route traffic onto the faster, internet2 backbone if the destination is also on the internet2 backbone. If a student at Purdue, for instance, types "mit.edu" into Firefox, the website will be served over the internet2 backbone instead of the regular, slower internet. It made for some excellent P2P downloads when I was in school. There was even a DC++ hub restricted to IP addresses at internet2 schools so as to guarantee crazy fast downloads.
Just imagine a world where websites worked on every browser, where websites and URLs are a bit more logical, where you don't need 5 different techniologies to do one thing. Imagine an internet was designed to work properly.
Now look at what we have. A dozen groups trying to do their own thing a dozen different ways with a dozen different technologies. Some say the way the internet evolved is its greatest feature while i say it is its worst.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The reason internet2 won't pick up is because it is stuck in a catch 22.0 No one will upgrade internet2 to web 2.0 until enough people come from internet1 to internet2. But why would anyone leave internet1 with web 2.0 to go to internet2 with web 1.0? It doesn't make sense.
Disclaimer: I've worked with Internet2 for about 8 years. Now I work with the LHC guys, too.
Internet2 has been on Slashdot a number of times. Each time people focus on the network. To me be fair the networking stuff is kind of cool. They're doing some interesting things; tackling some hard problems, providing feedback to hardware vendors that makes their products a bit better, dealing with various political aspects of international networking. All nice things.
However, the networking group is only one of 5 areas within the Internet2 group. Some of the areas are real stinkers and, as best as I've ever been able to tell, produce nothing of value. Others though do. Years ago I saw a presentation from the engineering group about various TCP/IP projects they were working on. Some dealt with intelligent back-off algorithms, some with various aspects of IPv6, a few with QoS that actually worked. The Middleware group, with which I work, has produced some nice work to help educational institutions record basic person information in a standard way (doesn't sound very exciting but it can sure help if you're an app writer). The Shibboleth project, and the related OpenSAML project, deal with making user data available in a secure and privacy preserving way (in theory it wold preclude any more lost laptops with millions of user records). It has seen adoption by various schools, governments, realtor software vendors, and others.
So, the point, I guess, is that it's not just about the network. Another point is that I doubt I2 will be around much longer. The recent failure to merge with NLR, a process that was like watching two of the greasiest used car salemens try to screw each other over, was probably the death toll.