March 1, 1999 NYTimes
New Data Pipeline Holds Promise of a Better Internet
By JERI CLAUSING
WASHINGTON -- The promise of a super-fast, highly reliable Internet moved a step closer to reality last week when three dozen universities across the United States were linked to a new national research network that moves data 1,600 times faster than the T-1 lines that universities and businesses use today.
The benefits of the new data pipeline, known as the Abilene Network, were highlighted Wednesday night in a ceremony at Washington's Union Station that included a demonstration of remote surgery in which doctors collaborated over the network while hundreds of miles apart.
In addition to telemedicine, applications that require huge data pipelines include interactive distance learning, digital libraries, multimedia entertainment and even tornado forecasting.
"It's the difference between motion pictures and flipping through the pages of a book," said Guy K. Cook, vice president of Internet services for Qwest Communications of Denver, one of the companies that helped develop the network.
Spanning more than 10,000 miles, the $500 million Abilene Network links 37 universities at 2.4 billion bits, or gigabits, per second. One of a half dozen next-generation Internet networks developed by the privately financed Internet 2 consortium and the federal government in recent years, Abilene is faster than all but a few highly experimental government networks. By the end of 1999, it is expected to link more than 60 research institutions.
For now, access to Abilene is limited to academics and other professionals, but experts believe that consumers will begin realizing its benefits in a few years. Professional and research applications demonstrated Wednesday night will open the way for technologies that will, for example, enable home computer users to rent and view films online.
But the most important long-term impact is the promise of a thoroughly reliable Internet, said Douglas Van Houweling of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, which oversees Internet 2 projects.
"Right now, since the Internet is a best-effort network, you can't be sure when you log on and use it whether or not it's going to work very well," he said. "If the Internet is going to fulfill its promises for the future, you have to be able to count on it."
Named after a seminal railroad founded in the 1860s, the Abilene Network was developed with a total investment of $500 million in equipment and services from Qwest, Cisco Systems Inc., Nortel Networks and Indiana University.
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