Net Buzz with Richard Wiggins | 8


Volume 1, Number 21	April 15, 1998

`East Lansing, Michigan`
Internet2 and Abilene: Decoding the Hype

By Richard Wiggins

ice President Gore, and the head of the National Science Foundation, and the head of the Internet2 project, and officials from Cisco, Nortel, and Qwest announced a "major national networking initiative" on April 14. We explore what it all means in question-and-answer format.

Just what did they announce?

They announced a new high-speed fiber optic network for higher education. The network will run through cities in the United States that have major universities. (See map.) The network will operate at speeds from several hundred megabits per second up to 10 gigabits per second.

What is the name of the new network?

Abilene.

Abilene? Where'd they get that name?

It's named after a railroad between Texas and Kansas that opened up new forms of commerce in the 19^th century.

Does the new network pass through Abilene?

Don't be so literal. It's a metaphor, not the name of the headquarters. If you must know, the closest node to Abilene, Texas appears to be Dallas; the closest one to Abilene, Kansas appears to be Topeka.

The new network also doesn't pass through Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and a big chunk of the sparsely-populated West.

So as a result of the White House announcement, people are going to start leasing right-of-way and laying fiber across the populous parts of the Lower 48?

No, not at all. Qwest Corporation is contributing for university applications a share of the fiber they're already laying. Quest was already building a fiber ring that "will span 16,000 miles in 125 cities, representing over 80 percent of the originating data and voice traffic in the U.S." This announcement means that universities that previously had committed to other high-speed networking projects (such as Internet2) now have a very fat pipe available to them.

Wow, isn't Qwest giving away something that's worth a great deal?

The Administration estimates the value of their contribution at $500 million over five years.

Whew! That's mighty generous, isn't it?

Maybe, or maybe it's cheap advertising. Had you ever heard of Qwest before April 14, 1998?

OK, can they afford to spare the bandwidth?

Qwest says their network will ultimately have terabit capacity:

The Qwest Network consists of 48 fibers, with the capability of adding ten times as many fibers through additional in-place conduits. Each fiber currently carries 8 wave division multiplexing (WDM) windows, where each WDM window has a bandwidth of 10 gigabits per second.

You know, folks, that's a serious amount of bandwidth. Most college campuses don't have anywhere near that kind of bandwidth between buildings. And this is a new long-haul network we're talking about.

With that kind of capacity, they can afford to share some with universities.

It's hard to imagine networks that fast. Can you give examples of how fast it will be?

Sure. Qwest estimates you could send the entire contents of the Library of Congress across the network in 20 seconds coast-to-coast.

More...

Comments are welcome