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Internet2

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The Internet as we know it today, first started out in 1969 as a US defense project connecting geographically remote computers. By 1983, it had moved under the care of the National Science Foundation, from where it was finally made commercially available to the world in the year 1991. 

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History is all set to repeat itself, save for a bigger better Internet. 

First some starters. 



The latest (as on Jan 20, 2003) ‘land speed record’ set over ‘Internet2’ is at, hold your breath, a blazing, absolutely amazing–923 Mbps! That’s over 3,500 times faster than broadband connects. And way faster than ordinary dial-up modem connections. 

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The ‘land speed record’ is a competition held from time to time to work the super-high speed network developed and deployed by Internet2. Internet2 is a not-for-profit consortium of 200 US Universities and over 60 corporations, (yes, familiar biggies Microsoft, Nortel, IBM, Cisco, AT&T are all there). It’s been around since 1996 and was started mainly to solve issues like the Quality of Service problem with the Internet you and I use. 

GÉANT and TransPAC

GÉANT a pan-European Gigabit research network, is a four-year project set up by a consortium of 27 European NRENs (national research and education networks), with DANTE as its coordinating partner. DANTE (the Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe Limited) is a not-for-profit company established by the national research networks in Europe. (via NYCM) 



TransPAC provides high performance international Internet service connecting the APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network) to the vBNS and other global networks for the purpose of international collaborations in research and education (via Pacific Wave, STAR TAP). 

Some history first. There is a protocol called the RSVP (Resource Reservation Protocol, RFC 2205), which describes how Quality of Service can be achieved in a probabilistic network by reserving bandwidth in advance for data transfer between two known hosts. Internet2s QoS (Quality of Service) workgroup does not work on this protocol as is, citing many issues with such a system, like difficulties in scaling etc. It has found an elegant solution called the QBSS (QBone Scavenger Service) under which applications mark themselves low-priority so that they can be routed through a separate queue, which ends up benefiting both the unmarked (hence considered high-priority) data packets as well as the low-priority ones.

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But this is just the tip of the iceberg. QoS is one area among many advanced technologies being developed and deployed over Internet2. IPv6, multicasting, high-performance middleware technologies, and high-end applications like digital libraries, virtual laboratories, space research, even teaching performing arts–all these and more such, figure amongst the focus area of the Internet2 consortium. 

Unlike commodity Internet (that you and I use), Internet2 is not a separate physical network (or network of networks), it is just the name given to the consortium by the UCAID (University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development). UCAID has also developed Abilene–which is a high-performance backbone network, in collaboration with Qwest Communications, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Juniper Networks and Indiana University. 

Abilene is currently used purely for education and research purposes. It peers with other research networks but not with the Internet. So if you connect with Abilene, you will still need your Internet connection for access to things like the World Wide Web and e-mail. 

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Abilene is equipped with top of the line IP Routers providing networking speeds from 3.4 Gbps up to 10 Gbps. This backbone network gives access to what are called gigaPoPs (gigabit points of presence). These are nothing but regional inter-networking aggregation points from where the last mile connection is provided to the end-user’s desktop at speeds of upto 100 Mbps. The key here is Gigabit. Since the speed of the network depends on the backbone, the Points of Presence (or network aggregation points) as well as the last mile connection, each of these has to be geared to high speeds, or else the higher speeds on the backbone get wasted. 

Internet2 international

partner networks

To connect to Abilene, a Research and/or Education organization first has to become an Internet2 member and then an Abilene Participant. The two are different and entail separate annual fees. An Abilene Participant has the right to send and receive traffic over Abilene, unlike a plain Internet2 member, but only an Internet2 member can be an Abilene Participant. The total costs, including membership fee, participation fee and connection charges go up to $1 million a year in the US. 



An Abilene Participant gets connected through a Connector–the ones with the actual physical resources to provide the connection. There are about 50 such Connectors or gigaPoPs listed on the Abilene site as of January 2003.

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(http://abilene.internet2.edu/html/connectors.html)



Non-US National Research and Education Networks called NRENs can peer with Abilene in one or more of these ways:

l via an International Interconnection Point like AMPATH (http://ampath.fiu.edu/), Pacific Wave(http://pacificwave.net/), STARTAP(http://www.startap.net/) and

STARNET(http://www. startap.net/starlight/) 

l Directly via an Abilene CORE router (located in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Sunnyvale in the US)

l And/or through other international advanced networks such as GÉANT or TransPAC (see box). 

There is another US-wide backbone network called the very high-speed backbone service, vBNS+ (very high speed backbone services) that was co-developed by WorldCom and the US National Science Foundation. It is now used commercially. 

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Internationally Internet2 has presence in education and research networks in quite a few European countries like Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, South American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Australia of course. In Asia, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Thai and Singaporean networks are onto Internet2. 

India has still some way to go before our Education and Research Networks are connected by high-speed networks like Internet2. 

Shruti Pareek

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