Slashdot Mirror
Research Scientists To Use Network Much Faster Than Internet
nickweller writes with this story from the Times about the Pacific Research Platform, an ultra-high-speed fiber-optic research infrastructure that will link together dozens of top research institutions. The National Science Foundation has just awarded a five-year $5 million dollar grant for the project. The story reports:The network is meant to keep pace with the vast acceleration of data collection in fields such as physics, astronomy and genetics. It will not be directly connected to the Internet, but will make it possible to move data at speeds of 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits among 10 University of California campuses and 10 other universities and research institutions in several states, tens or hundreds of times faster than is typical now.
All they need next is connect radio telescopes in that and they run out of bandwidth again...
Or is this just really slow news about Internet 2?
No, it's here.. We'll always have it. Some people are still on dialup. I don't know if I like the idea of computer 'islands'. We're just going back to old fashion isolation.
Are we in the future? How can you be on the internet but be faster than the internet? Oh, you mean not the internet. I have a 10 Gbps network right here. That's 10x faster than even Billion Dollar Google Babies can do.
'nuf said
Canada did it first, And it's country-wide. It can also do speeds as high as 100 Gbit/s but generally operated at 10 Gbit/s.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Fucking KKK site, or cop-pig convention. Time to remind Dice's buyers this place is fucking worthless. You may now eat a gun and kill yourselves, fuckers. Die.
Throw millions of tax dollars at ISPs to upgrade their systems, what do we get: dead fiber.
Throw millions of tax dollars into creating a faster 'research internet' (internet2), what do we get: dead fiber.
Forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical about throwing more millions of tax dollars to make the next faster internet.
It's Sunday night, so let's be picky:
1) 10 or 100 gigabits is not a measure of speed.
2) the "current" internet could very well exhibit the same capabilities if it didn't have to carry all the porn streaming left and right for millions of clients. A conventional network connection rated at xxx could run at that rate if you didn't have any sort of congestion, something this new network will likely not suffer because it doesn't have porn (yet). Any dedicated link will give you that. Heck, any 100Gb/s optical channel will give you 100Gb/s to play with.
3) "designed with hardware security features to protect it from the attacks" from the "internet" - by not having a direct connection to the internet in the first place? Fancy words, but it'll do.
4) $5 million to weave a cluster of fibers? Sounds too cheap.
Finally, the article says that "the new network will also serve as a model for future computer networks", but doesn't say anything about protocols, routing, etc. Nothing.
Sounds a lot like Internet 2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In 2006, Internet2 announced a partnership with Level 3 Communications to launch a brand new nationwide network, boosting its capacity from 10 Gbit/s to 100 Gbit/s. In October, 2007, Internet2 officially retired Abilene and now refers to its new, higher capacity network as the Internet2 Network.
Dan
Welcome to the 100-Gb/s club California...
OARnet in Ohio has had this for a while now...
He's actually a perfect example of how well slashdot's moderation system typically works. Oddly enough, he's demonstrating the exact opposite of what he's intending, especially since no one is joining him in his angry little crusade.
Anyhow, back on topic. It seems like we might as well expand the regular internet's capacity to transfer this much data. Streaming video has a practical limitation beyond which there's no point in increasing resolution or fidelity. There's also finite amount of video you'd need to stream or download (essentially, one 24-hour HD stream per person), beyond which you're going to venture into a fairly extreme outlier. So, I think the notion that capacity needs to increase forever seems flawed. Just like most computers are far more powerful than needed, at some point, bandwidth will far exceed what a typical user needs in day to day life. At that point, occasional transfers of very large amounts of data by researchers, universities, or corporations won't be a problem, because there will be a lot of headroom for those sorts of burst transfers.
Still, for the short term, this seems like a smart idea for universities. Until consumer pressure or competition forces expansion of the national network, I think this makes sense. I'd imagine the investment is largely a one-time cost, with maintenance being far less expensive over the long term. The only question is whether the investment will pay off before the commercial internet capacity and costs are equivalent. Given how sluggishly things have been evolving (compared to other regions), I'd say they're probably making the right decision.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Imagine what 100 gig end point routers, switches and even NICs are going to cost them. Then imagine what the same devices would cost if the "scientists" were not greedy and said others could play too. But I guess they'll feel a lot more important this way playing with exclusive toys. It isn't their money anyway, most or all of it comes from the taxpayers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Internet 2 was already supposed to be faster than the regular Internet.
This announcement of 10Gbits to 100Gbits is not impressive .. that is a typical server connection these days.
What would be impressive? Multiple terabits or even petabit network, dedicated to the schools, allowing each connected device maximum throughput simutaneously.
Isn't this really just a multi-campus intranet? A research organization needs to deal with data coming in at a rate of Library of Congresses per second (LoC/s) and they simply need to have devoted pipes to handle it. Piping it through the normal campus servers sharing bandwidth with 20,000 students streaming music and porn wasn't working for them.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Internet isn't a speed, it's a concept. The Internet can have connections at any speed.
... before someone bridges their fancy network with the outside world. By accident, on purpose, doesn't matter. It'll happen.
Very nice, but hardly new. Both ESnet (U.S. DOE research network) and Internet2, the national collegiate research network have been running at Nx100G to major research sites and the rest of the Internet for at least two years. They provide Internet service places like CalTech, MIT, the University of Califorrnia, Berkeley Lab and Fermilab. These are full production networks with ESnet already moving vast amounts of data from the LHC to the US for storage and dissemination to many public and private research facilities.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Just take a look at their load map.
Those aren't rates, those are quantities.
So much data collected in the past 15 years, but the average person's lot is worse.
I assume no lessons will be learned from 'Internet 1', with security - if any at all - slapped on after the fact.
Why didn't they just wait for a bid from a competitive corporation to build such a network in our wonderful and glorious free market and capitalist America?
Isn't this pretty much how the Internet originally got started?