Internet2 and Abilene: Decoding the Hype

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An End to the World Wide Wait?

Er, if you’re not a major research university, you can’t connect.

One of the original goals of Internet2 is to foster basic research in networking and in networked applications, so that you'll see better Internet technologies come to your neighborhood ISP as well. Research areas include:

• Bandwidth reservation
• Multiple levels of service on one network
• Applications that "tune" themselves to available end-to-end bandwidth
• Intelligent, automatic, network-based caching

Presumably you also benefit if the nation’s universities perform more efficiently.

Good question! It’s hard to say how the bandwidth reservations scheme will know "serious" and "scholarly" applications from more playful ones.

That’s because there have been a lot of overlapping announcements. Here’s a breakdown:

• The Internet2 project, announced in October 1996, is a research project consortium of over 100 US universities. Before Abilene, Internet2 wasn’t really a network, but rather a project. Internet2 is funded by university funds and private donations.
• UCAID, the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, is the corporation that manages the Internet2 effort. Dr. Doug Van Houweling heads UCAID.
• The vBNS is the National Science Foundation’s high-speed network for connecting research universities. The vBNS was, in essence, a high-speed, university-only network to replace the NSFnet, which was decommissioned in 1995.
• The Next Generation Internet initiative is probably the closest thing to Al Gore’s dream of an Information Superhighway. Its goals are in many ways similar to the goals of Internet2. NGI was also announced in October 1996. The Clinton Administration is calling for $100M for NGI projects this year.

Before the April 14 announcement, it seemed that these initiatives overlapped as to goals but without co-ordination. The good news is it appears the major players in all these initiatives appear to be moving in concert.

This is one of the most confusing aspects of all announcements surrounding Internet2 and now Abilene. It’s probably best to think of Abilene as part of the Internet from Day One. It will be the fastest large IP network on the planet. Because it will have connection points to the greater Internet, it will be part of the Internet. After all, what do we call the Internet?

All right, all right. The Internet is a "network of networks." Abilene will be restricted to a certain set of institutions, but it’ll still be part of the global Internet.

Qwest says their network will be completed in the second quarter of 1999. They say that 3500 miles out of an eventual 16,000 are already functional. Presumably Abilene and other Qwest users will begin using part of the network this year.

Related Sites

• Internet2 and UCAID
• Qwest Corp.
• Next Generation Internet