As co-inventor and first major user of the Internet, the academic community is almost 30 years into a transformation enabled by new technology, and has developed many compelling visions of what can be accomplished with broadband networks that support multimedia applications, real-time collaboration and resource sharing.
Internet2 is an effort to realize those visions, especially in the areas of research and education, by networking on campus, among universities, and by networking our institutions with the rest of the world.
Higher education needs advanced Internet technology, not just for research into grand scientific challenges, but to accomplish 21st century educational missions. Internet2 is an effort to meet those needs.
We can all imagine capabilities not yet available over the public Internet because of the current state of that technology. Too often though, discussions about advanced networks (and not just Internet2) focus simply on the plumbing. Internet2 will result in intercampus connections over multiple backbone networks that are faster by two or three orders of magnitude. That leap in raw speed is necessary, but it's not sufficient. The growth in demand for Internet-based services will continue to outstrip the Internet industry's ability to provide high quality service. Higher education, indeed, all users of the Internet, need additional capabilities that will allow high-performance applications to function well even when portions of the network path are congested.
The Internet2 project is focused on the development and implementation of new network capabilities that will enable its member institutions to support reliable operation of advanced applications years before such capabilities will be available in the global public Internet. Internet2's fundamentally new technology (see sidebar at end) will provide users with end-to-end (workstation-to-workstation) application performance, quality of service guarantees, multicasting, authentication and security in a multi-vendor, multi-protocol environment.
As a result, Internet2 members will provide leadership in accessing and using advanced applications, enabling their faculty and students the benefits of early use while simultaneously developing an experience base required for broad adoption of the resulting technology throughout the rest of the Internet environment.
Internet2 also involves significant campus network upgrades led by university CIOs, who along with faculty researchers, carry most of the responsibility for implementing the project. Internet2 will continue to develop vendor partnerships, which assist the member institutions in these major investments and assure access to the required cutting edge technology.
To be truly successful, the technology developed to build Internet2 must migrate to commercial networks, just as technology developed for the NSFnet in the 1980s now serves as the basis for the commercial Internet. Only 10 to 20 percent of the data that flows from universities goes to other schools; the rest, over eighty percent, flows out into the global Internet because universities need to communicate with off-campus businesses, research organizations and students.
Rather than simply being an extranet for universities, Internet2 is a university-led effort to transform the global Internet by developing and sharing new technology in partnership with industry and government.
UCAID and Internet2
Only a few months into the Internet2 effort, it became obvious that the informal structure that had supported the work of researchers at a handful of universities was inadequate to support the requirements of a project involving nearly 120 universities, 30 corporations, major federal efforts, and a total budget of over $60 million per year.
An overwhelming majority of participants wanted to interact with a legal entity, and that is one reason the nonprofit University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) was created.
UCAID also has a broader mission and a more ambitious set of goals. Acting essentially as an enabling organization, UCAID will provide the leadership and direction for advanced networking development. That involves coordinating federal and academic research efforts, encouraging participation by university presidents in network issues, and building a foundation for continuing participation of the academic community in Internet R&D.
UCAID serves as neutral territory where all members, including commercial enterprises, can interact with one another. UCAID will also run other programs devoted to network research, technology transfer, and applications development activities in related fields such as collaboration technology and distance-independent learning environments.
Though it is less than eight months old, UCAID has already successfully encouraged contributions by corporate partners to member institutions, assisted in the formation of gigaPoPs (Points of Presence), hosted applications demonstrations, organized engineering workshops concerning gigaPoP operations and campus LANs, worked to strengthen relations between the academic community and NSF, and helped to forge consensus among members and corporate partners regarding the next steps for Internet2.
UCAID has also been staffing up its engineering and applications teams which will be working with member universities and corporate partners to solve the tough technical issues (such as Quality of Service-see sidebar) facing the project. In addition, UCAID has begun to enter into cooperative agreements with other national research efforts. In October 1997, UCAID signed an agreement with the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry, & Education Inc. (CANARIE) that will allow Internet2 and CANARIE participants to work together on an equal basis. Similar agreements are likely to follow, and the installation of the StarTap in Chicago should make international interconnections simpler to accomplish.
Corporate Involvement in Internet2
One of Internet2's key goals is transferring the capabilities it develops into the global Internet.
Since UCAID itself will not be serving organizations outside the higher education and research community, corporate partnerships will be crucial to Internet2's success. For corporate partners, Internet2 offers the opportunity to collaborate with an unparalleled intellectual resource base, and to be a part of pre-commercial research and development. Many corporate partners believe that the applications enabled by Internet2 will open new markets in areas such as collaborative computing and broadband multimedia networking.
Participation in Internet2 offers national recognition, and access to a wide variety of test environments, sophisticated beta users, and potential recruits. Internet2's corporate partners, sponsors, and members participate in working groups, workshops, member meetings, interface with member institutions, and participate in applications demonstrations.
In April 1997, Cisco became Internet2's first Corporate Partner, committing more than $1 million of support over the course of the project. Since then, 26 companies have enrolled as members, and several (3Com, Advanced Network & Services, Bay Networks, Cabletron, Cisco Systems, FORE Systems, IBM, Newbridge, Nortel, and StarBurst Communications) have committed as partners to provide more than $1 million to the project.
Internet2 is now in the process of developing partnerships with content providers and other application developers, the cable industry, and companies in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries. This will create new opportunities for corporate partners to cross-collaborate, and further Internet2's goal of transferring technology to the global Internet.
The NGI Tie-In
UCAID has focused a substantial effort on building a mutually beneficial relationship with the federal government's Next Generation Internet (NGI) program. NGI and Internet2 are parallel and complementary efforts. The NGI initiative is focused on the needs and capabilities of the federal mission agencies, and will help keep the U.S. information technology industry in a leading position in the global economy. NGI will play an important role in catalyzing partnerships between federal agencies, the private sector and the academic community while serving the mission requirements of federal agencies.
Collaboration between Internet2 and NGI is already well-advanced. The National Science Foundation's Advanced Networking Program is assisting many Internet2 member institutions connect to the vBNS (very high speed backbone network), which today serves as Internet2's national interconnect. By working in concert, Internet2 and NGI will gain synergy, minimize duplication, and maximize compatibility and interoperability among the resulting networks and applications.
Part of the reason for this close collaboration is cultural. Many of the persons involved from both sides have worked together for a number of years. For example, Internet2 engineers are currently participating on the Joint Engineering Team that will ensure interoperability between federal agencies involved in NGI and Internet2.
Like all partnerships, there are areas of NGI and Internet2 that reflect the specific needs of their constituencies-the federal government and the universities. These activities will be conducted separately from each other. But on the joint goal of ensuring that a developmental high-performance network is made available to the academic and research community at the earliest opportunity, there is compelling unanimity of purpose and direction.
The Future
During 1998, the Internet2 project will focus on getting the gigaPoPs in place and its members connected. That will allow experimentation with applications in a high-bandwidth, uncongested network. By the end of the year, UCAID and Internet2 expect to have most member universities connected, and all of the planned gigaPoPs operational. Further, we will have determined the network requirements of advanced applications so we can design the protocols and middleware to enable those applications.
At the same time, UCAID will focus on assuring a smooth transition for inter-gigaPoP connectivity as the vBNS cooperative agreement approaches the end of its five-year term, and developing the corporate support and collaboration required to insure the poject's success.
Though UCAID is not a policy organization, maintaining and extending relations between the academic community and the federal government will be a top priority, and UCAID will be working closely with Educom's National Telecommunications Task Force in this regard. UCAID also will continue to pursue new partner agreements with networking companies, carriers, application developers, industry associations, and other national research networks.
Internet2 member meetings and project demonstrations will be held in Washington in April, and San Francisco in October, and there will be an ongoing series of campus-based workshops and events. UCAID will also continue to pursue its mission of leadership in networking for higher education.
The longer term prospects for Internet2, UCAID, and NGI are tremendously exciting. Opening new horizons in education, re-inventing campus networks, transforming the global Internet, and re-affirming the partnership between academia, industry and government that has been so tremendously effective in advancing the state of the Net over the last three decades all are ambitious goals, but clearly within our reach.
SIDEBAR
Internet2 Applications, Engineering and Technology
Internet2 is an applications-driven project that will use advanced networks to transform the practice of research, teaching and learning.
Applications that demand advanced Internet capabilities fall into two categories: those requiring very high speed computer-to-computer communication and those requiring human/computer interaction in real time. Data mining and large-scale multi-site computation are examples of the first category, while tele-immersion is the most demanding example of the second. Internet2 will encourage the development and deployment of these advanced applications and the broadband network infrastructure and services that support them.
Many of these applications have already been demonstrated at Internet2's member meetings. Often based on work done in conjunction with NSF's vBNS program, they include interactive network-based research and instruction; real-time sensor-based modeling; large scale multi-site computation and database processing; and shared virtual realities (tele-immersion).
These new applications require making a rich set of tools and middleware broadly available. Application designers will also be looking at issues such as:
At its most basic level, Internet2 engineering involves networking on member campuses, at shared regional facilities called gigaPoPs (gigabit points of presence), and between gigaPoPs, utilizing enhanced Internet protocols supporting capabilities such as Quality of Service, multicast and IPv6.
Internet2's applications also require a layer of services on top of the network layer - security (authentication and authorization); directory, time, accounting; file systems and web caching; and network operations.
So Internet2's engineering work groups are wrestling with profound questions. What network Quality of Service levels are really needed for advanced real-time multimedia applications? What protocols are best for delivering different Quality of Service levels? What are the administrative implications of a multi-Quality of Service network, especially from network-management and cost-allocation perspectives? What about cost recovery-how can authorization and attribution for Quality of Service requests be handled efficiently in a "stateless" communications service?
Because Quality of Service technologies are not yet well defined or widely deployed, Internet2 is relying on high capacity networks, especially the National Science Foundation's very high speed backbone network provided by MCI, and a "best efforts" approach to supporting applications. But as Quality of Service technologies mature, they will be adopted by Internet2 engineers, and by UCAID members.
Finally, the work done by the Internet2 team, by NGI participants, by corporate partners, and not least by university researchers, will need to be shared and coordinated, both within the Internet2 community and with the broader community supporting the global Internet. Much of this sharing will occur through key team members playing multiple roles, i.e., participating in the Internet Engineering Task Force, leading product design and implementation efforts in partner corporations, and working directly as researchers in discipline-specific applications areas. As the project proceeds, UCAID will create the specific organizational capabilities and alliances needed to support these interactions and to manage the implementation of the new capabilities produced by the Internet2 project.
Douglas E. Van Houweling is president & CEO of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID). dvh@Internet2.edu