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Internet2 Turns 10 and Upgrades

Posted by Zonk on Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:11 AM
from the something-new-gets-old dept.
Networking Education IT
An anonymous reader writes "As an update to a previous story, Internet2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Chicago this week at it's fall conference. In addition, they're announcing the initial stages of their second significant network upgrade of their backbone network. Engineers are providing daily blog updates on the network install process as the old network is transitioned to the new. In addition to changing to a Level3-managed and Internet2-provisioned DWDM transport system for backbone capacity, I2 is implementing a new connection-oriented backbone network based on the Ciena CoreDirector platform in concert with the routed IP network."
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[+] Internet2 Gets a New Backbone 175 comments
wrong_fuel writes "A few of you know that Internet2 and NLR (National Lambda Rail) have been in talks for some time regarding a merger of the two networks. Those talks have fallen apart and Internet2's contracts with Qwest communications had already been allowed to lapse. Internet2 has now reached an agreement with an unnamed carrier for its next generation backbone. The new network will likely be named later this year (the old one was referred to as "Abilene") and current member Universities will be migrated off of Abilene by September 2007."
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  • I'll pass... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rastignac (1014569) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:18AM (#17114190)
    I'm waiting for Internet3 before upgrading. ;)
  • And I wasn't even done with the first one!

  • browser (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arifirefox (1031488) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:18AM (#17114202) Homepage
    What I would be interested is: what capabilities a browser should have to fully take advantage of Internet2. You've got the bandwith, what about the client end?

    • Re:browser (Score:5, Informative)

      by grommit (97148) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:26AM (#17114308)
      Not much. I'm at an I2 site and when I do big downloads from other I2 sites, they're noticably faster than from places like Redhat, Novell, etc. Sure, there's some technology in I2 that allows for more reliably low latency connections but you'd be hard pressed to find a web based application that would need that tech that I1 doesn't already serve (provided you're willing to spend the money for your last mile connection of course).

    • Internet2 Primer Needed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot@kadin.xoxy@net> on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:36AM (#17114470) Homepage Journal
      So can anyone fill me in on what Internet2 actually does? The WP entry on the topic [wikipedia.org] suggests that there is no network known as Internet2 per se, but one called Abilene, which I assume is what the Slashdot articles are mostly talking about. The Internet2 about page [internet2.edu] is mostly buzzword-laden fluff ("Internet2 members leverage our high-performance network infrastructure and extensive worldwide partnerships to support and enhance their educational and research missions").

      What does the Internet2 consortium actually do? And what can users actually do with the networks they've built? Do they work transparently, just providing higher-speed IP data service between certain institutions that are in the network, for their normal Internet traffic? Or do they use new protcols/applications completely?

      From a user's perspective, what does Internet2 (or Abilene) "look" like?

      • Re:Internet2 Primer Needed (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:43AM (#17114556)
        It lets college students quickly transfer MP3 files to other Abilene network members.

        I presume there might be other uses too. Like videos, I guess.
          • No, they don't have any fancy Quality of Service software, they've just got plenty of bandwidth in their core network. You don't need Quality of Service if the network is practically empty all the time; there's no congestion.

              • The point is that it isn't empty, and the other point is that bandwidth is dirt cheap.

                Actually QOS schemes ultimately rely on having plenty of bandwidth. As soon as you run out, all QOS does for you is degrade your service slightly more 'gracefully', but the network becomes rapidly less neutral.

                  • Well, the network I'm on right now has QOS. So far as I can tell they mainly use it to degrade P2P traffic during peak times. They still need to deliver the contention ratio that we buy though, so I don't think it saves them that much money.

                    • UDP is designed to expand it's use of bandwidth to the amount available, and dropped packets are just dropped.

                      No, dude, get a clue. It's designed to do no such thing. A moronically written application sitting on top of UDP might try to pull crap like that, and there's nothing in UDP to stop it, but equally there's nothing in UDP to encourage it either. And if your Isp finds you running an application like that, with no sensible congestion strategy you'd be history and rightly so.

                      So, riddle me this. Wha

      • Re:Internet2 Primer Needed (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2006, @12:16PM (#17115054)
        It's a bigger series of tubes.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This is the successor to Abilene.

        http://www.internet2.edu/network/ [internet2.edu]

        or, more specifically:

        http://www.internet2.edu/network/library/Networksl ides2_files/frame.htm [internet2.edu]

      • What does the Internet2 consortium actually do?

        From http://www.internet2.edu/about/ [internet2.edu]:

        What We Do:
        Internet2 members leverage our high-performance network infrastructure and extensive worldwide partnerships to support and enhance their educational and research missions. Beyond just providing network capacity, Internet2 actively engages our community in the development of important new technology including middleware, security, network research and performance measurement capabilities which are critical to the progress of the Internet.

      • Re:Internet2 Primer Needed (Score:5, Informative)

        by JumboMessiah (316083) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @12:23PM (#17115148)
        I2 from a connectivity standpoint really isn't anything different from I1. It's still an IP routed network and all your normal IP routed toys (www, ftp, home brew app) still work as advertised. The term Abilene is actually the name of the I2 backbone network. It was spawned as a second generation IP network (and yes it can route IPV6 natively) to connect research institutions. Allowing them to utilize the network for research and high speed data transfers. What kind of research? Well anything really, hear about those doctors doing remote robotic surgery? That data probably was traversing the Abilene backbone. Grid computing in acedemia? Probably connected via Abilene [upenn.edu].

        Just like the I1 backbone, Abilene, being a backbone network [iu.edu], peers and eventually splits off to regional controlled networks [internet2.edu]. The one I am familiar with is OARNet (Ohio Acedemic Research Network). OARNet provides high speed connectivity to Ohio campuses and peers with the Abilene I2 backbone in Indianapolis (from OARNet's POP in Cleveland).

        From an I2 connected campus (meaning you have access to the Abilene backbone at somepoint), there really isn't anything special to connect over the Abilene core. The network gurus had the IPV4 routing setup in such a way that if you connected to an IP address that was available via Abilene, the data would go that path. Otherwise, it would route out over the standard I1 connection. Most of the time when I would have to download some big ISO images, I would specifically look for an Abilene (I2) connected peer. Downloads over 10MBit weren't uncommon (mostly limited by the load on at the server on the other end). Pretty cool really. I'm sure others around are using it for more important stuff other than downloading ISOs :).

        • The network gurus had the IPV4 routing setup in such a way that if you connected to an IP address that was available via Abilene, the data would go that path.

          Interesting.

          I guess, in my mind, if a network is using the same address space as the public Internet, than it basically "is" the Internet; it's just a high-speed portion of it. When I heard people talking about Internet2/Abilene as if it were a separate network, I assumed it used a totally separate addressing scheme or at least separate address space.

          I

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by gid13 (620803)
            I think it would be better viewed as "another Internet". Unless I misunderstand it, the Internet and Internet2 aren't connected at high levels, they only get connected in some sense because of "customers" like the one mentioned above that have a network that will route some of its traffic to Internet2 and some of it to the Internet. Think of it like having cable TV from two different companies, and having a switch that controls which one you're watching at any given time. The two cable companies aren't real

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by minus_273 (174041)
        "From a user's perspective, what does Internet2 (or Abilene) "look" like?

        As a person who's been on internet2 for 6-7 years now (and currently posting from a machine on Internet2) we get great stuff like I2hub to share huge files really fast and fantastic speeds( practically no lag) on online games with other I2 users on a private server on I2.

        After that, day to day browsing is the same since the sites are almost always hosted on the slow internet.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by bockelboy (824282)
        The Internet2 is the research network that universities use for high-bandwidth needs. Universities formed a consortium so there would be a fancy organization that NSF would fund network connections and that they could leverage their size to get cheaper bandwidth.

        Buying a 10Gbps line from I2 that travels over Level3's network is about 10x cheaper than buying that bandwidth through L3 directly. Of course, it can be damned expensive to buy up the fiber from your university to one of the I2 hubs. Further, I2
    • It's just a fast global network that is currently exclusive to research institutions.

  • Internet 2: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rehtonAesoohC (954490) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:22AM (#17114250) Journal
    Not to be confused with Web 2.0.
    • Not to be confused with Web 2.0.

      That's easy, it just Web 2.0 that I am confused about.
    • I'm with Midnight Thunder. Internet2 is easy. There's no good definition as to what makes Web 2.0 and not. The version number doesn't apply either because different parts are available before others.
  • Alright, that means only 8 more years until I can get some of her nude photos!
    • Not really. Because Technology grows so much faster, we measure it much like we measure dogs in dog years. In reality, Internet 2 is almost 35 already and well past her prime. If you wait 8 more years, Internet2 will be a mature woman of nearly 65, and not that pretty to look at.

  • 10 Years old (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine ... Internet 2 is but a couple of years younger than its older sibling. But, whereas its sibling has left home and become productive, Internet2 has somehow managed to never get out of college.

    Sounds like my brother. Lots of potential, but can't leave the nest.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by stiggle (649614)
      Only 27 years difference. 'Internet1' is 37 years old now.

    • Re:10 Years old (Score:4, Informative)

      by 4D6963 (933028) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @01:14PM (#17115862)

      Internet 2 is but a couple of years younger than its older sibling

      Oh god, when will people (even on Slashdot!) realize that Internet != the Web? It's just plain aweful to see apparently computer-savvy people like you making the confusion. Oh well, not quite as bad as my sister who calls "Google" both Firefox and the Web.

      The Internet is a network, the Web is a service that happens to use this network.

      .

  • Internet2 Turns 10 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @11:37AM (#17114486)
    Over One Billion Files shared.
  • I bet Microsoft didn't even send Internet2 a cake....Those bastards....

  • The best thing about Internet2 (Score:4, Funny)

    by dave420 (699308) on Tuesday December 05 2006, @12:24PM (#17115170)
    Porn2.
  • caught up with Web2.0!

    • Ten years and still irrelevant to regular internet users. Nice work, guys.

      • It wasn't meant to be relevant to regular internet users. It's a high speed data network connecting major universities and research organizations.

        Making it relevant to regular internet users would defeat the purpose of having a dedicated research network.

  • Introducing Internet 2!

    Now, with BIGGER tubes, on a BIGGER truck!
  • The one that screws you?
      • I do agree with you on that Gore did make that final push while he was VP which makes him the "inventor" although I belive something similar would have passed and the net would have just been created a few years later
        • http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp [snopes.com]

          never said inventor.
          "...Took the intiative in creating the Internet.."

          In context this is 100% true.

          Would someother politician done it at a later date? maybe. OTOH maybe they would of opened for commercial use ONLY. who know. One thing is certian, the politician who did the work that Al Gore did wouold have said the same thing.

          This misquote highlights how ignorant the slashdot crowd can be about politics.. Really, if people are as smart as they think they are they wou

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