That "something under the library" is the Abilene call center. IU (and, accordingly, IUPUI) manages the Internet2 backbone. See my other post entitled "Response from an Internet2 Engineer" for more details.
I sent this directly to the poster to make sure he didn't miss it, but I thought other's might benefit from my response:
"I know this was an old question for you, but I thought you might be interested in a response from someone who operates the Abilene backbone. There's a lot of other bits and pieces to "Internet2", but it sound like you're primarily interested in the traffic management aspects. This is all managed on a day to day basis at Indiana University by 7 Global NOC engineers and 2 sysadmins. Of course, there are many many other people at Internet2 (formerly known as UCAID - University Corporation for Advanced Internet Design) and within the higher ed community that make up what is collectively known as Internet2. The day to day traffic management, problem resolution, and router management happens at IU.
There are 7 engineers (http://www.abilene.iu.edu/engineers.html), coming from a few different backgrounds. Three of us have run-of-the-mill CS degrees. Three others have English degree backgrounds. One I'm not sure of. (Guess I should ask him.)
Some of us fell into the jobs through our previous affiliation with the University and a little bit of luck. I started working for the campus network folks when I was 21, a Junior. Within a year and a half, I was promoted to a Global NOC engineer, working on the TransPAC network (www.transpac.org). I was hired in with little interdomain routing experience to start, but I picked it up pretty quickly. None of this stuff is particularily hard, there's just a lot of it. Nothing in this area will be particularuly challenging for a CS major- especially one from CMU.
If you're still interested in getting involved, the best area to start looking is at your local campus level. CMU comes into Abilene via the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's connection to Washington.
Internet2 is, at it's core, an *application* research community. They do things like figure out how to make large amounts of data get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. Or figure out how to coordinate authentication amongst different sites. Or security. Or video. Etc. Etc. There aren't really any "network research" testbeds active in the US today except for those at the private level. And none of those are on a national scale. The next big thing is the rollout of the National Lambda Rail (NLR) network, which will provide different optical channels for different network infrastructure experiments. (e.g. "What will happen to the network if I introduce RIPv5.6a using multicast IPv6 as my IGP on the backbone? Will the routers explode?") I'm happy to say that IU will probably play a large role in this network as well. We've been awarded the call-center contract and have been picked to figure out what a layer2 and layer3 support infrastructure needs to be like and what the community needs. We're hopeful that we'll also get the final L2 and L3 support contract. Fortunately, it's looking pretty likely. CENIC (www.cenic.org) is going to manage the layer1 portion of the network, with North Carolina managing the interface to the researchers. (No one really knows what that means yet, exactly. Ideas are flying)
Hopefully that gives you a bit of useful background on where the US R&E networks are going. Remember, there's quite a bit of good work being done outside the US as well. GEANT and SURFNET in Europe are working toward similar goals. CA*Net4 in Canada is also on the cutting edge. APAN is bringing the Asian Pacific countries together. It's a fun world, with a lot of diverse players. Being in the right place at the right time counts, but it also pays to start small, gain some experience, and then go for the larger pie. "
One can imagine another similar wrapper that allows users to change the bitrate and frequency to associate files. A "porn channel" could be one pairing of bitrate and freq, while the "term papers channel" could be another.
By the way. Have a look at http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/cpo/netdraf t Indiana University has worked with Napster to create a more efficient way of distributing search results. When a user searches for "Not_Illegal.mp3", the results are displayed based on the proximity to the user. Local networks are preferred over further away ones.
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That "something under the library" is the Abilene call center. IU (and, accordingly, IUPUI) manages the Internet2 backbone. See my other post entitled "Response from an Internet2 Engineer" for more details.
I sent this directly to the poster to make sure he didn't miss it, but I thought other's might benefit from my response:
"I know this was an old question for you, but I thought you might be interested in a response from someone who operates the Abilene backbone. There's a lot of other bits and pieces to "Internet2", but it sound like you're primarily interested in the traffic management aspects. This is all managed on a day to day basis at Indiana University by 7 Global NOC engineers and 2 sysadmins. Of course, there are many many other people at Internet2 (formerly known as UCAID - University Corporation for Advanced Internet Design) and within the higher ed community that make up what is collectively known as Internet2. The day to day traffic management, problem resolution, and router management happens at IU.
There are 7 engineers (http://www.abilene.iu.edu/engineers.html), coming from a few different backgrounds. Three of us have run-of-the-mill CS degrees. Three others have English degree backgrounds. One I'm not sure of. (Guess I should ask him.)
Some of us fell into the jobs through our previous affiliation with the University and a little bit of luck. I started working for the campus network folks when I was 21, a Junior. Within a year and a half, I was promoted to a Global NOC engineer, working on the TransPAC network (www.transpac.org). I was hired in with little interdomain routing experience to start, but I picked it up pretty quickly. None of this stuff is particularily hard, there's just a lot of it. Nothing in this area will be particularuly challenging for a CS major- especially one from CMU.
If you're still interested in getting involved, the best area to start looking is at your local campus level. CMU comes into Abilene via the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's connection to Washington.
Internet2 is, at it's core, an *application* research community. They do things like figure out how to make large amounts of data get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. Or figure out how to coordinate authentication amongst different sites. Or security. Or video. Etc. Etc. There aren't really any "network research" testbeds active in the US today except for those at the private level. And none of those are on a national scale. The next big thing is the rollout of the National Lambda Rail (NLR) network, which will provide different optical channels for different network infrastructure experiments. (e.g. "What will happen to the network if I introduce RIPv5.6a using multicast IPv6 as my IGP on the backbone? Will the routers explode?") I'm happy to say that IU will probably play a large role in this network as well. We've been awarded the call-center contract and have been picked to figure out what a layer2 and layer3 support infrastructure needs to be like and what the community needs. We're hopeful that we'll also get the final L2 and L3 support contract. Fortunately, it's looking pretty likely. CENIC (www.cenic.org) is going to manage the layer1 portion of the network, with North Carolina managing the interface to the researchers. (No one really knows what that means yet, exactly. Ideas are flying)
Hopefully that gives you a bit of useful background on where the US R&E networks are going. Remember, there's quite a bit of good work being done outside the US as well. GEANT and SURFNET in Europe are working toward similar goals. CA*Net4 in Canada is also on the cutting edge. APAN is bringing the Asian Pacific countries together. It's a fun world, with a lot of diverse players. Being in the right place at the right time counts, but it also pays to start small, gain some experience, and then go for the larger pie. "
One can imagine another similar wrapper that allows users to change the bitrate and frequency to associate files. A "porn channel" could be one pairing of bitrate and freq, while the "term papers channel" could be another.
By the way. Have a look at http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/cpo/netdraf t
Indiana University has worked with Napster to create a more efficient way of distributing search results. When a user searches for "Not_Illegal.mp3", the results are displayed based on the proximity to the user. Local networks are preferred over further away ones.