Internet2 and You

eldavojohn writes "With a name like Internet2 and such high press coverage, you might think that's the future of the Internet servicing our homes. But Ars Technica looks more closely at what the odds actually are for it to become mainstream. When will you see the effects of the software, planning and hardware that went into Internet2 in your home? The odds are the very distant future — if at all. From the article: 'The Internet as we now know it is anything but obsolete. The amount of dedicated hardware and personal attention required to get networks like Internet2 and DANTE working simply makes them uneconomical for most common uses. And, unless a majority of networked content moves onto these dedicated networks, then having access to them may not do users much good. If the academic networks change the commercial ones, they'll do it in an evolutionary way, by providing improved hardware and better software for running traffic within the constraints of the existing economic structure.'"

Misconception

[realjd]

It seems that there is a common misconception that the internet2 is this great, new internet. It's not. It's just a set of private, high speed network links connecting research institutes that operates transparently with the regular internet. They configure their routers to route traffic onto the faster, internet2 backbone if the destination is also on the internet2 backbone. If a student at Purdue, for instance, types "mit.edu" into Firefox, the website will be served over the internet2 backbone instead of the regular, slower internet. It made for some excellent P2P downloads when I was in school. There was even a DC++ hub restricted to IP addresses at internet2 schools so as to guarantee crazy fast downloads.

Re:Some care to explain

[skiingyac]

I think your question has mostly been answered by the replies already, but also wanted to further point out that Internet2 is not necessarily faster than the Internet, it is more about studying the a new/different architecture.

Last I knew my university's regular Internet connection, which is used at something like 1/4 of its capacity at peak times by the 25k or so users, was several times times faster than the university's Internet2 connection.

Re:Remember when the Internet was like that.

[blankinthefill]

I've said it before and will say it again: I don't think that the common person will ever have access to I2. It was designed and built to provided high quality, high bandwidth connections for research purposes. Any piggy backing by other applications and uses is incidental, and if it were to interfere with the academic work that I2 is used for, I'm reasonably sure it would be stopped. Now, I'm not saying that everything that makes I2 so great WON'T come to the general consumer... but it won't come in the form of I2. The academics will never give up the highly regulated, and quite frankly, incredibly important tool that they have in I2, nor should they.