I've bookmarked a new site:
compaq.com
Sponsored by Compaq, this week's issue has an article that's worth reading, if for no other reason than to understand where government research is headed.
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Everyone knows that the World Wide Web can often be the World Wide Wait. But is anyone doing anything about it? In addition to various private companies working furiously to shore up the Internet infrastructure, recent government and university initiatives show the potential for major leaps forward in the not-too-distant future.
efore the Internet was the online behemoth we know today, it began life as a research and education tool funded by the government. The U.S. Defense Department's ARPANet in the 1960s laid the foundation for future growth and was followed by other major initiatives like the U.S. National Science Foundation's NSFNet in the 1980s. But as recently as 1994, the Net was still mainly the private playground of universities, government and the companies that did business with them.
It was that year that the Internet blew wide open. The World Wide Web finally came into its own, ushered in by new browsers like Mosaic and Netscape. In 1994, the National Science Foundation (NSF) also turned its government-funded backbone over to private owners like Sprint and MCI, then stepped aside as commercial companies flooded into the .com domain. Other nations worldwide began to join the fray, plugging their own public and private sectors into the global network.
But the educators and researchers who started it all got squeezed out in the process. The system that was good enough to carry their data in the past became gorged on its own success. Even though the NSF's once-adequate 45 Mbps backbone has been enhanced by gigabit technologies, the growth in bandwidth-choking web, e-mail and multimedia services still threatens to make the Net an increasingly congested information highway for everyone. Clearly, incremental improvement will not be enough - the future Internet will require a vast technological leap to stay ahead of the curve.
With all this in mind, it makes sense to take a look at what government and universities are cooking up now. Interestingly, the original innovators have been busy launching new research initiatives to expand the Net's capabilities so everyone can eventually get the most out of the Web.
Internet2. Next Generation Internet. The Abilene Project. These are just some of the research initiatives currently involved in the design and development of technologies that will spill over to the Internet and move users into the 21st century.
Internet2 (I2) is a private, non-profit project spearheaded by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), a research consortium of 122 North American universities and several top high-tech companies that contribute membership fees of $10,000 a year. I2's goal is to develop advanced network applications in the areas of research, education and health care. In exchange for their fees, which cover all research costs, the high-tech companies participating in UCAID will benefit from the results of that research and development.
The Abilene Project is a joint effort of UCAID, Qwest, Nortel, and Cisco, where Qwest is donating a backbone for I2 in exchange for future participation in whatever the project yields. Abilene was announced with great fanfare at a White House press conference in April and is expected to be up and running by the end of 1999, signaling the full-throttle launch of applications and network testing for I2.
The project uses the National Science Foundation's Very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) that currently connects 46 universities through high-speed points commonly referred to as POPs (for point-of-presence). Abilene intends to connect 30 gigaPOPs, or regional networking aggregation points already being formed by Internet2 universities, into one faster, more advanced network while still connected to the vBNS. Abilene will use high-speed Sonet facilities and IP-over-Sonet routers and is expected to begin operation with OC48 (2.4 gigabits per second) backbone links while the partners develop additional links running at least at OC192 (9.6 gigabits per second). The goal is to create a smarter, lightning-fast secondary test-bed network.
Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a U.S. government-funded initiative described as a "multi-agency Federal research and development program to develop, test and demonstrate advanced networking technologies and applications." The initiative intends to produce government and research test-bed networks that run at speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than the Internet. Specifically, NGI is developing advanced technologies for multicasting and video and, in line with I2, new technologies and applications that will serve advanced research, education and health care needs.
Aside from the obvious technological leaps that these projects will achieve, what are the long-term benefits of these initiatives? For the educational and research industries, real-time applications - such as telemedicine and distance learning - are the big goals. Imagine three surgeons collaborating on an operation when only one is physically present. Global digital libraries that are open all day, every day of the year. An international classroom comprised of students in desks or at home around the world. Though each of these applications are already in practice or being tested, next-generation Internet technology will make it increasingly feasible to route these applications through public data channels.
The long-term benefits for business aren't as concrete yet. For now, developers in the field expect more reliable end-to-end quality of service across distant networks, better real-time applications, such as tele-immersion (shared virtual reality), and an increase in Net speed. Not surprisingly, some industry naysayers feel that the high-tech business can take care of its own. The braintrust behind I2 and NGI is quick to point out that the Internet didn't reach its current state through private efforts, but through government/private joint initiatives.
Certainly, the participation of public and private sectors means a greater dispersion of research results - no one company will hold all the cards on a single technology. If private industry were to plow ahead in a vacuum, it's less likely that any type of consortium or shared knowledge would evolve.
Another business benefit could be a melding of entertainment and utilities into the Web as a side effect of the increased bandwidth and speed. Imagine telephone and electrical service grids controlled via a web connection, or a further evolution of Web TV with programming on demand. The possibilities are intriguing.
It is, however, a two-sided partnership: university researchers need the high-tech dollars to really delve into the research, and the high-tech companies benefit from that research, even though some are forging ahead on their own. This is nothing new - industry-funded research has been handled by universities for decades. In addition to the I2 and NGI projects in the U.S., similar projects are underway around the globe: CA*net II in Canada, Ten-34 in Europe, and the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), a project linking nine countries across Asia.
These forward-looking Internet initiatives are expected to spawn technology on a par with our standard e-mail, web browser and ATM systems. With the new speed and bandwidth, end-users will likely upgrade their equipment to get the best results out of those changes - greater memory and faster processors are just the basics. ISPs may eventually upgrade to handle the evolving forms and increased speed of data transfer across their lines.
Although the growth of the Internet from government test-bed to online commerce mecca took well over a decade, I2 and NGI results should be quicker in coming to the mainstream. When the Abilene Project fires up in 1999, UCAID is hoping that it will live up to its namesake and spawn a technological gusher from which all Internet users can benefit.
Heather McLatchie is Associate Editor of Clip.>>>> |
