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Internet2®

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Internet2® is a consortium of over 200 universities working in co-operation with business and government to find way of making the Internet more efficient and accelerate the growth of the next generation Internet by developing new applications and technologies.

The main goals of Internet2 are:

• Create a leading edge network capability for the national research community
• Enable revolutionary Internet applications
• Ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community.

So what exactly is the Internet2 consortium doing?

Advanced Applications

Applications being planned include digital libraries, and virtual laboratories, and other ways of sharing knowledge. One of the main goals though is to enhance the sending of multimedia to callow the creation of more interesting documents.

Digital Libraries

Digital Libraries are something that will depend on having faster access times, the hope is that distribution of applications will be done by ASPs (Application Service Providers), with people deciding to rent software rather then buy it, by paying a regular subscription.

Some people say that this is already happening, and that if you read Microsoft Eulas you will find that you are only renting Windows. They even suggest that MS's licensing options where businesses have to pay a subscription to get updates and register software with MS before it can be used are there to get people to think of software as something you rent rather then something you buy and install. I can't confirm this as like many people reading this I just click the 'Yes, I have read the License Agreement button when installing Windows or Office.

I think the reasons behind digital libraries are actually to help prevent privacy. It will allow companies who make applications that are very expensive (like 3D Studio MAX, Photoshop or Maya), or perceived by the public to be expensive for what you get (like games) to rent software to users at a more affordable price. On demand video will also benefit from such libraries.

Distance Learning and Digital video/teleconferencing

Internet2 will make it possible to learn without being in the class room using future video networks. In fact the quality of digital video will be better the broadcast quality video (the level of quality considered the minimum level that can be broadcast on television).

Tele-immersion is a new idea merging virtual reality with video conferencing. Tele-immersion is designed to aid the development of visual projects such as CALVIN at the university of Illinois, Chicago who are testing an application that will allow architectural design to be conducted by both the client and the architects over high speed networks in a virtual world.

M-Commerce Applications

M-Commerce applications are to do with mobile communications, and are one of the few areas where America is lagging behind Europe in terms of technology, usually Europe is about 4-10 years behind the US but with mobile communications it is the other way round, Europe is the heart of M-commerce development. High speed transfer rates will allow voice, data, audio and video to be received by just one device instead of a dedicated device for each medium and Internet2 is working on the next generation of mobile communications software.

Middleware

New middleware is being developed that will aid in the development of applications, increase robustness, aid data management, and increase efficiency. The idea is that the new middleware will incorporate security, directories and authentication services that today are often carried out at the application level.

Advanced Network Infrastructure

Everything that Internet2 test is carried out on it's own infrastructure, a test bed for what will be the structure behind the next generation of the Internet. As they are using a separate structure testing can be done without impacting on today's net.

Several new networks have been constructed such as vBNS (very high performance Backbone Network Service) which have bandwidths ranging from 2.5 Gbps to 9.6 Gbps!These new networks interconnect with GigaPoPs, a regional Gigabit Point of Presence, which can be thought of as access points to the Internet2 supporting transfer rates of 1Gbps+.

Internet2 will depend on fast bandwidths and this will require better fibre-optic cable infrastructures. Photonics (communicating with light waves) has the answer, it's called DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing).

Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing

This is an optical technology that allows the bandwidth over existing fibre-optic backbones to be increased by transmitting multiple signals at the same time but at different wavelengths along the same fibre. This transforms a single fibre in to multiple 'virtual' fibres.

DWDM when combined with other photonic advances like Passive Optical Networks (PON), optical switches and transmission equipment, Gigabit Ethernet over fibre switches, and optical ciruits will move the Internet from narrowband to broadband, and then on to Big Band which will be able to carry upwards of 10 Gbps.

New networking Capabilities

Internet2 is looking at improving network capabilities and testing new Quality of Service models that tomorrow's applications will need if they are to function. New network improvements include multicasting, more effective routing, and IP6 protocol. Other areas looked at are how the interconnection of the infrastructure (backbones, GigaPoPs, Campus LANs and exchange points) is to be achieved.

Multicasting

IP Multicasting is away of optimising data delivery with a one-to-many methodology, currently Unicasting is used which is one-to-one. The benefits of multicasting are that when a streamed film for example is requested by several people a single stream is started for all users requesting the film, as the packets travel past routers on their way to their destinations the routers make copies of the data. Thus the only time the data is sent individually to each user is when the path to the user is different, this saves on bandwidth as most of the time paths to users will be pretty much the same.

Compare with Unicasting

QoS

Latency issues will be solved by the use of Diffserve, differentiated quality of service, this technology prioritises packets according to their destination and content. This means that once Internet2 is here live TV broadcasts and video conferences will be possible in real time without any stuttering or delay as these packets will have a higher priority assigned to them then e-mail for example which are self contained and don't need to arrive instantly at their destination.

You will also be able to guarantee the speed at which your data arrives, with Internet2 you will be able to pay for guaranteed transfer rates allowing businesses to deliver their pages to you much more quickly then is possible with today's Internet.

IP6

Will create one quadrillion (10 to the 15th power) IP addresses, this is required because under IP4 the number of IP addresses is limited to 4 billion addresses, and this limit will stagnate growth as they run out.

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This is an unofficial guide, the information expressed here may differ from Agnitum's. There is a support forum (no longer run by Agnitum, but by users) if you need more help this is a good place to start. Where information here conflicts with what Agnitum have told you always go with the information given to you by Agnitum.

Guide/site and images ©Stephen Cox