General

Internet2—Window on the Future

Blazingly fast speeds, screaming video streams, killer apps, and graphics galore—a geek's drug induced hallucination? No! It's Internet2 and it's here now! The question is: are you ready for it?

by Jim Thompson [July 5, 2005]

Launched as a test bed for new applications nearly a decade ago, Internet2 is accelerating the creation of the Internet of tomorrow. This underground network encompasses over 300 members, which includes more than 200 universities, dozens of government agencies, and scores of major corporations. It is, in many ways, an updated version of the same group that gave birth to the Internet we know and love today.

Internet2's lofty goals include providing a leading-edge network (it runs at 10 Gigabits per second!) for the national research community and providing a testing environment for the next generation of applications.

Operating on several networks, including the national IP backbone network called Abilene, Internet2 is built for speed. It's large-capacity fiber cables enhanced by the latest in hardware, software, and constant tweeks by the world's top geeks, it blows the socks off the commercial Internet—a mishmash of computers and networks cobbled together with old copper phone lines. With speeds that are 100 to 1,000 times faster than the typical home broadband connection, Internet2 is the Ferrari of the nerd world.

Among the hot properties already operating on the network are IP multicasting; new Internet protocols like IPv6; enhanced data storage and data mining applications; large-scale,multi-site computation systems; real-time access to remote resources; dynamic datavisualization, and shared virtual reality.

For the user, it means the roll-out of spectacular programs and projects that make Star Trek and Star Wars seem woefully behind the times.

Killer apps for everyone
Working with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Dr. Bob Ballard's Institute For Exploration at the Mystic Aquarium is using Internet2 to allow school children to explore underwater National Marine Sanctuaries via interactive, DVD-quality IP video right from their classrooms.

With the system, students can interact in real time with a diver as he explores undersea locations in Monterey Bay or experience a live exploration of the Titanic wreckage.

NOAA is also using Internet2 for high-resolution, real-time analysis of Doppler radar readings and to remotely access the Gemini Observatory telescopes in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and on Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes.

But it's not just the scientists who are taking a joy ride on the super data highway. Art students from around the world are studying with world-renowned musicians and artists via DVD quality video conferencing technology. The quality of the audio and video is so close to a live performance, that users claim it's as if the teacher is in the same room.

In the area of health sciences, the promises seem more like science fiction than science fact. Haptic technology allows surgical instructors and students to simultaneously grasp body organs, cut tissue, and, at the same time, feel the actions and forces provided by each other. Instructors can actually grasp a scalpel or other medical instrument at the same time as a student and guide it during an operation.

For the computer industry, the Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) initiative is looking at packet and circuit switched optical infrastructures that will be the building blocks of the scalable networks of the future.

Testing of middleware technologies (a layer of software between the network and the applications) are leading to more robust identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security services. One of these is Shibboleth—a technology which would enable organizations to make attribute-based decisions—not identity-based decisions—when determining access privileges for protected online resources.

For the corporate community, features like high bandwidth, low latency, and DVD quality videoconferencing are bridging the gag between research and the commercial roll-out of next-generation products and services.

For the user, this means digital libraries, virtual laboratories, distance-independent learning, and a wide range of video technologies sometimes called 'tele-immersion.'

All this is possible because of one thing: speed—Blazingly fast speed. We're talking about 10-Gigabits per second. At that rate you could transfer a feature-length, DVD quality movie in just 30 seconds!

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