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Networking Education IT

Internet2 Turns 10 and Upgrades 84

Posted by Zonk from the something-new-gets-old dept.
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 Turns 10 and Upgrades More

Internet2 Turns 10 and Upgrades

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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.
        • Jokes aside, I wonder if they're prioritizing traffic using some sort of WAN performance solution. And is the traffic on that HD video UDP or TCP? If it's UDP, I'll bet you it's taking up the whole pipe and nothing else is traveling on the network at that time.
          • 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.
            • But - and trying not to be snarky - if the network is practically empty all the time, what's the point of the network?

              • 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.

                • Isn't that the point of QoS? To prioritize traffic so that it becomes used more effectively before you are required to upgrade your bandwidth?

                  Don't get me wrong - I realize that, on the Internet, traffic needs to be neutral. But on a business or academic network, some traffic - the business or academically critical traffic - is simply more important than other traffic.

                  I would say that bandwidth is cheap if you're talking about connecting to the 'net, but if you're talking about a private network, bandwidth
                  • 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.
                    • I don't know if you've got full QoS; degrading P2P traffic can usually be done straight in the Cisco router. QoS tends to have a couple more applications; for example, when you have UDP and TCP on the same network at the same time (which is what prompted my original comment.) UDP is designed to expand it's use of bandwidth to the amount available, and dropped packets are just dropped. This is why UDP is usually used for VoIP or videoconferencing; if you're using a VoIP app, having the dropped packet half

                    • 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

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by cllajoie ( 82163 )
        Most people think of Internet2 as Abilene, the lower latency, higher bandwidth network that connects universities and some of our partners. In addition to that Internet2 funds a number of research and software development projects in partnership with the universities. Some of these research projects are focused on the network (TCP/IP stacks, network management, end-to-end diagnostics, etc.), other projects focus on "middleware" software (identity management, federated identity system, privilege management
      • Abilene: Prettiest network that I've ever seen. People there don't treat you mean on Abilene. My Abilene.
    • 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.

  • Internet 2 is 10 already? (Score:4, Funny)

    by VitrosChemistryAnaly ( 616952 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @11:26AM (#17114312) Journal
    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.

  • The INTERNETS! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ah-ha! Now I see what President Bush meant by the term 'internets'! He was referring to the regular internet, and internet2!

  • IIRC, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has a connection to this network. Does anyone from UIC have any information about what's going on with it? I attended classes in the college of Engineering (EECS) from '94 till '98, but I can't recall anyone ever mentioning it.

    I would assume labs like the Electronic Visualization Lab [uic.edu] would have had a connection to this network, but perhaps only the medical campus is using it?

  • caught up with Web2.0!

  • no not really.
    • Ten years and still irrelevant to regular internet users. Nice work, guys.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gordyf ( 23004 )
        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?

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