California Colleges Building Own Net (1997)

California Colleges Building Own Net

Calif. colleges building own Net - May 24, 1997
A group of universities in California are building their own information highway to exchange data from libraries and laboratories at least 100 times faster than the Internet.
The project, announced yesterday, will form a sort of virtual university in which students can read books from distant libraries and take classes at other campuses. Along with expanding such resources, the new network could help schools save money by avoiding the duplication of resources.
They said the network, which will be up and running next year, will also be more reliable than today's Internet.
"The electronic highway is faced with rush-hour traffic most of the day. We need reliable service delivery," said M. Stuart Lynn, University of California associate vice president and the principal investigator for the project.
The network will be designed to connect campuses at speeds of over 600 million bits per second. At that rate, a 30-volume encyclopedia could be transmitted in less than one second.
Participating schools include seven campuses of the University of California, along with the California Institute of Technology, the California State University, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California.
The schools are members of the Consortium for Education Network Initiatives in California, which earlier this week won a $3.8 million grant for the project from the National Science Foundation.
In addition to the statewide effort, major universities in California are also participating in a similar project to link more than 100 research universities across the country, an initiative known as Internet 2 . They said they decided to separately link schools within California to ensure the state has the best technology to support its research and educational needs.
The network will also give more students virtual access to state-of-the art research tools, such as a sophisticated electron microscope at the UC's Riverside campus or an advanced telescope in Hawaii that some California schools help manage. Medical researchers will be able to transmit images over the network for diagnosis and teaching purposes.
"Some of these schools are already sharing research journals, and we expect to do more of that in the future," Lynn said. "The cost of many of these journals is rising exponentially, and there is a strong incentive to make sure we are not duplicating our resources unnecessarily."
Asked whether this digital information-sharing would do away with the schools' need to maintain their own resources, Lynn replied: "When's the future? Is it 100 years from now, 1,000, or two years?" "I think there will be a lot of water under the bridge before schools do away with their print libraries."

:: About placing and receiving Internet2 video calls via your CENIC connection ::

For K-12 :

Alan Phillips, Imperial COE

CalREN Video Services (CVS) transitioned to the new CVS Scheduling Desk during the summer of 2006. Powered by the Polycom Conference Suite (version 7.5.1), the CVS Scheduling Desk gives campus videoconference administrators the ability to schedule their own videoconferences directly. Videoconference administrators are able to select videoconference facilities from a list, create recurring conferences, and manage existing conferences, including changing conference dates, times, and participant sites.

We recommend all videoconference administrators take advantage of CENIC's online training, which can be found at http://training.cenic.org/ . You'll need a userid and password to access the training courses. To obtain a userid, please contact CENIC at your earliest convenience by sending email to SchedDesk@cenic.org .

Project Oxygen: Plans for a Super-Internet Undersea Cable

Project Oxygen Plans Super-Internet undersea cable.

Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997
Subject: Group Plans Super-Internet By Larry Lange, Electronic Engineering Times
http://www.techweb.com/wire/News/1997/11/1128oxygen.html

Representatives of more than 250 telecommunications carriers and regulators from 175 countries will gather in Las Vegas on December 7 for the first official technical meeting on an ambitious plan to deploy an alternative "super-Internet" over the next three to six years.
New Jersey telecom startup CTR Group has issued a set of specifications and an invitation to submit technical proposals for the marine survey, installation, and maintenance of the proposed network under an initiative called Project Oxygen. CTR is expected to unveil a model for buying and pricing international bandwidth at the Vegas meeting.
The plan is for the first phase to be operational by 2000 and the entire network by 2003. Estimated to cost $14 billion, Project Oxygen's mostly undersea cable would extend 275,000 kilometers and transmit data at a minimum of 100 Gbits a second, with speeds eventually reaching one terabit a second.

Oxygen s promoters claim the global fiber-optic network could erase the boundaries between Internet and traditional telecommunications, allow true connectivity from anywhere in the world, open doors to smaller carriers that could buy capacity "on the fly", and shift the profit model from voice service to data and video.

"Today, the Internet is a voice and data-driven phenomenon" that cannot meet the business and consumer needs of the near future, said Neil Tagare, CTR's president and author of the initiative. "What we are proposing here is the network of the future; a video-based Internet, which requires greater bandwidth."

"You could almost call it breathtaking," said Graham Finnie, a research director at Yankee Group Europe in Watford, England. " If built, it would transform international telecommunications more rapidly and more completely than any previous innovation in the field."

With Project Oxygen in place, said Tagare, bandwidth will be so abundant that international voice-phone calls will eventually become a free service, with international carriers instead deriving revenue from video and data traffic and from such applications as "telemedicine" and "tel-education."

"The cost of trivial amounts of bandwidth for individual switched international phone calls will fall so low that it won't be worth billing end users for it," said Finnie of Yankee Group Europe. The current market for international phone calls is around $90 billion. If Project Oxygen takes off, Finnie said, "this revenue stream may dry up altogether in five to seven years' time."

Six unidentified multinational companies, from the United States, Europe and Japan, have provided capital to launch the project. CTR has signed up the former chairman of Egypt's national telephone company as the Oxygen project's rep in the Middle East and Africa. Other recruits include a former AT&T submarine-systems director and a former telecom adviser to President Bush.

One plus for the project in the international arena is that it would break the United States' dominance of Internet connectivity.

Currently, more than half of intra-European and intra-Asian traffic is funneled through the United States. With Oxygen, the capacity available to countries such as Russia and India would increase dramatically.

In contrast to Oxygen, such initiatives as the proposed Internet 2 and so-called Overnet solutions would yield an even more U.S.-centric Internet backbone infrastructure over the next few years. " The Internet today is a hub-and-spoke system , with the U.S. at the center of the entire world. That's not right, technologically or politically," said Tagare.

But Oxygen will not be without its problems however. It would cost a daunting $14 billion, and would require a fleet of 60 cable-maintenance ships to deal with faults -- more than double the world's current submarine-cable-maintenance fleet. Industry analysts have estimated that such a fleet would cost $100,000 each day to run.

But the worst of the problems are political. "The risk is that it's a new, untested model that Tagare is trying to impose on the international telecommunications community," said the Yankee Group's Finnie. "He has to win support, or it won't go anywhere."

Internet II and K-12: GigaPoP Access

Open participation in the project to include K-12 schools starting in the Fall of 1999. Each member university will be allowed to partner with one or more K-12 school systems to offer connectivity through a regional switching center called a gigaPoP. To take advantage of the ultra high-speed access, participating K-12 schools must have at least category-5 cable with switched 100 megabit (MB) Ethernet connections inside their buildings and at least a 50 MB pipeline running into the school. Until now, I2 has been solely the province of the higher education community, though its high-speed access and applications eventually will be made available commercially.

There will be:

1. Digital libraries.
2. 'Virtual laboratories' and collaborative research.
3. 'Tele-immersion' (shared virtual reality).
4. High-definition television (HDTV).
   

In September, ResearchTV, a consortium of leading research institutions working to create greater access to research information, teamed with Sony Electronics to demonstrate the first-ever streaming of HDTV over the internet.

To enable these high-bandwidth applications over the second-generation internet, the I2 project incorporates the following new features:

1. Quality of service.
2. Multicasting (as opposed to broadcasting)
3. Distributed storage.

Member universities and K-12 districts will be responsible for setting the terms and conditions of their partnerships to bring I2 applications and connectivity speeds to K-12 students.

Currently, 163 member universities—representing all 50 U.S. states—are involved in the I2 initiative, and there are about 30 gigaPoPs nationwide for connecting to the high-speed network. A complete list of members and a map of gigaPoP sites are available on the Internet2 web site (see link below).

Internet2 Project http://www.internet2.edu
Carnegie Mellon University http://www.cmu.edu
Indiana University's Variations Project http://www.music.indiana.edu/variations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.unc.edu
University of Illinois at Chicago http://www.uic.edu

Intro to Front Range Gigapop

Colorado

----------------------------

Internet2 Will Expand to K-12 by Katie Dean 2:00 a.m. Mar. 5, 2001 PST
WAS http://www.wired.com/News/culture/0,1284,42112,00.html

The high-speed network Internet2, previously reserved for research institutions, is expanding to include additional colleges and K-12 schools. That could mean a national education network connecting thousands of schools around the country.

Internet2 was initially created to develop advanced applications and networking for research and education. The backbone network, called Abilene, supports high-quality audio and video, and does not include the extraneous sites of the so-called commodity Internet.

According to several educators, opening Abilene to the larger education community holds tremendous possibilities. Potential applications for the project include a digital video archive of best practices for teacher training, videoconferencing that would enable schoolchildren to take a virtual tour of the Smithsonian, and allow for musical collaborations between musicians in different geographic locations, to name a few.

Currently, almost 200 universities pay to subscribe to Abilene.

A number of states have expressed an interest in connecting their statewide education networks to Abilene. About 30 to 40 states have such networks that, depending on the state, can connect K-12 schools, universities, museums and libraries.

There has been no official announcement made about the project, "just a series of discussions going on among a number of organizations in education and networking," said Greg Wood, a spokesman for University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, one of the groups involved in the planning process.

"A lot of other steps need to take place before teachers and students can use advanced applications," Wood said.

The International Society for Technology in Education, the Consortium for School Networking, and Educause are a few of the groups involved in the partnership.

The organization will release more details of the initiative in months to come, and there is no set date when the project will launch.

Internet2 Gurus Deploy VoIPv6

Internet ll Gurus Deploy New Protocol; VoIPv6 is Born

Internet2 Gurus Deploy New Protocol; VoIPv6 is Born by Jim Thompson [October 4, 2002]
<http://isp-planet.com/Technology/2002/ipv6_internet2.html>

If the tunnel is Internet2, then the light at the end of the tunnel is IPv6. New land speed record proves that native IPv6 service stands ready to meet current and emerging needs of high performance networking.

When the brain trust behind the Internet2 program speaks, anybody who sees the Internet as part of their future, better listen. These are the people who are laying the groundwork for tomorrow's Internet today-right now, they're talking about Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The group's latest innovations include deploying IPv6 across the Abilene backbone network and developing what may become the killer app for the next generation protocol-Voice over IPv6 (VoIPv6).

Led by more than 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and government, Internet2 engineers are developing and deploying advanced network applications and technologies that will be the foundation of the public data highway of tomorrow. It was many of these same people who fostered the Internet as we know it today from its infancy. If anyone knows what's hot for the future, it's these people. According to members of the Internet2 group, IPv6 is not only the wave of the future-it's the only way for new networks to fly.

Abilene deployment
The deployment of IPv6 over the nationwide Abilene backbone networks makes high-performance IPv6 service available to Internet2 member institutions and thousands of other research and education institutions across the country that have access to Abilene. Abilene's native IPv6 service also complements existing IPv6 deployment over other research and education networks around the world, such as the Energy Sciences Network in the U.S., knows as Esnet, Renater in France, and SURFnet in the Netherlands.

"We believe the deployment of IPv6 could be critical to sustaining the scalable growth and innovation that has distinguished the Internet's development over the past 30 years," said Steve Corbató, director of backbone network initiatives for Internet2.

Running on Cisco System's premier Internet router, the 12000 series, the Abilene experiment marks the first large scale deployment of native IPv6 in the U.S.

IPv6 provides a number of significant improvements over IPv4, including 128-bit long Internet addresses instead of the 32-bit addresses of IPv4 which vastly increases the number of available addresses and paves the way for a large range of new applications.

It also opens the door to higher speeds, as evidenced by a new Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) set this month using IPv6 by the
University of Oregon, the Oregon Gigapop and NYSERNet working with the staff of Abilene.

Land speed record
In the open competition, 3.47 gigabytes of information was transferred over 3,000 miles (4,810 km) of network from Eugene, Oregon to Syracuse, New York in one hour. This established a new I2-LSR IPv6 category record of 39.81 terabit meters per second.

"There's no question that routine delivery of real-world production information services of this sort is the best tangible proof that native IPv6 service stands ready to meet the current and emerging needs of the higher education high performance networking community," noted Joanne Hugi, associate vice president, Information Services at the University of Oregon.

<snip>

Schools Seek Internet 2 Funding

Internet II Story

Date: 15 Apr 1997 15:25:13 -0400
SCHOOLS SEEK INTERNET 2 FUNDING
By Courtney Macavinta
Full Story http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9536,00.html?dtn.head

• Internet 2 was launched last October 1996 by 34 universities, part of the Clinton administration's $100 million Internet initiative, called Next Generation Internet. http://www.hpcc.gov/ -- WAS http://www.hpcc.gov/white-house/Internet/background.html
• U.S. university representatives urged Congress to cough up millions of dollars to help them build a new, speedier Net, Internet 2. It is supposed to solve problems with congestion of private academic networks, and the unreliability of the public More than 100 universities have agreed to build Internet 2, so students and faculty can have access to high-speed transmissions for voice, video, and data. Internet 2 project pledges to connect universities and laboratories to the Net at speeds 1,000 faster than what is now available
• In testimony before the House Science Subcommittee on Basic Research, Pennsylvania State University president Graham Spanier pushed the government to approve funding for the project to beef up the academic community's commitment of $50 million a year to the project over the next five years. Spanier testified on behalf of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges' WAS http://www.nasulgc.nche.edu/. He chairs the organization's Commission on Information Technology. The universities will use the money to deploying a broadband backbone for participating colleges that will allow researchers to design applications like virtual laboratories, digital libraries, and teleconferencing. He tried to convince the Congressional committee that Internet 2 will not only assist scholars in organizing, storing, and passing knowledge on to students and the academic community, but that it will benefit the entire country. Spanier's testimony was endorsed by the American Association of Community Colleges, American Council on Education, American Association of State Colleges and Universities , Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries , Educom, and the University Continuing Education Association.
• Internet 2 coordinators are not only hitting up the government: They are also courting corporate America. Cisco Systems announced today that over time it will contribute goods and services worth more than a $1 million to Internet 2. The project will also direct the development of a new application to employ the capabilities of broadband networks-media integration, both interactively and in real-time. The project will share its creations with the broader Internet community, he said.

Links:

Internet 2: http://www.internet2.edu/
House Science Sub-Committee on Basic Research http://www.house.gov/science/
Next Generation Internet: http://www.hpcc.gov/white-house/Internet/background.html
American Association of Community Colleges http://www.aacc.nche.edu/deptmnts/aaccinfo.htm
American Council on Education http://www.ACENET.edu/
American Association of State Colleges and Universities http://www.aacu-edu.org/
Association of Research Libraries http://arl.cni.org/

IPv6, MissionMoonv6, and the Evolution of Internet2

Internet II

Dear Free-Market Thinker,
GOVERNMENTS INTERNET2 SEEN AS NEXT NET BATTLEFIELD by Chris Mack FMNN Technology and New Media Correspondent

You didnt know the government was working on a new Internet? Actually, its already being tested in the defense department and a number of universities, but its so thoroughly redesigned it might as well have been built from scratch. And its so complicated it has been compared to the effort to put a man on the moon.

Its called variously IPv6 (the current Net protocol is known as Pv4), Mission Moonv6 and Internet2. Details have long been available to the Net community, but the status and use of the IPv6 protocol has not yet seemingly penetrated the general consciousness of the on-line population. That may change as wider implementation looms and various power players attempt to sort out their differences, and cement advantageous positions in advance of Internet2.

Mission Moonv6 Ipv6 - is going to be sold to the public by virtue of its bells and whistles, its speed, ease of use and the availability of private computer identifiers - static Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, a kind of phone number available to each and every individual computer - that will vastly increase the possibility and practicality of customized Net services.

Sounds good but its this last point that causes trouble. The current Internet was not built with the idea of every machine in the world using static IP addresses. Most computers arent individually identifiable unless the user makes a special effort. In fact, businesses charge extra fees for consumers to use static IP addresses.

All that will change with the next-generation Internet, which is being built so that each user can, and probably will, receive his or her own static IP address.

What are the ramifications of individual computer addresses? Basically, every single computer-based activity could be subject to surveillance. Cars with computers may be rendered immediately identifiable. Phone conversations running through the Internet and most will do so sooner or later should be available for timely surveillance. Email (of course), and also bill paying, banking, investing.

In the brave, new world of IPv6, almost every single conceivable personal or financial activity could be rendered transparent to authorities and appropriate corporate personnel at the flick of a switch or the touch of a button.

Why Now?

While the IPv6 effort has been ongoing since 1996, its implementation has apparently been given a boost by the War on Terror. The government recently revived the effort when in June 2003 the Defense Department mandated that all government agencies become IPv6-ready by 2008 according to a March 20004 article, Next Net moves Forward by Marguerite Reardon at CNET news.

Sensing increased governmental urgency, Microsoft has predictably charged back into the fray, battling to gain control of the Internet communication standards by claiming the intellectual property to be its own. According to Larry J. Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at a non-profit corporation named Merit Network Inc, Microsoft as recently as November 04 - filed claims to intellectual property rights of more than 130 protocols including but not limited to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications. Microsoft wants to license these specifications and control their use.

If IPv6 protocol implementations are built into every Microsoft operating system, and thats what may well happen with or without Microsoft winning its legal battle, there will be little any end user can do but hope that Microsoft keeps consumers best interests in mind. Unfortunately, the history of Microsoft and privacy concerns is not entirely comforting.

In How Reg Reader Outrage Prompted Microsoft's Passport volte-farce, Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco explained how some Internet users had to pressure Microsoft into changing its privacy policies. In 2001 outrage over Microsofts Passport Terms of Use forced the company to backtrack and rewrite its policy for users.

Passports Terms of Use had originally given Microsoft unlimited rights to use any content or information a user sent through Passport websites such as hotmail. A screenwriter led a group of people to boycott hotmail because if an author sent a manuscript through hotmail, Microsoft could claim it as theirs. Microsoft eventually reversed course but it took the boycott and a good deal of negative press to push it there. What will it take this time even if the blocking of static IPs is a realistic goal at all.

4.29 Billion Unique, Static IP Addresses - Not Enough?

The biggest reason the government gives for why IPv4 should be replaced is that it only supports 4.29 billion unique static IP addresses because they are 32 bits long. IPv6 uses a 128-bit IP address that supports a virtually limitless number (3.4 1038) of unique addresses according to its specifications.

However, it is difficult to see why 4.29 billion unique static IP addresses arent enough in that most Internet users dont gain any benefit from them now and wouldnt miss them if they disappeared.

Most Internet users dont actively utilize static IP addresses because they are connected to an ISP that uses DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and NAT (network address translation). This acts as a buffer to translate information and pass it to the right machine allowing many users to share the same static IP address as well as preventing direct access to the Internet.

As privacy activists have started to complain about the complete absence of privacy using IPv6, the official response has been the following: Users can use protocols like DHCP to hide their real address just as people do with IPv4. But in the brave new world of IPv6, pressure on vendors of all stripes to utilize individual static identifiers will doubtless grow stronger.

It is also ironic that the governments only solution to privacy concerns is advice against the use of static IP address this at a time when increased availability of static IP addresses is cited, among other important reasons, as to why users should upgrade to IPv6.

Ipv6 certainly provides Net stakeholders with a terrific cover. No one needs to fret about making individual computers instantly identifiable since static IP tags are part of the protocol. To write them out of the software would take effort, one that most Net gatekeepers could justify avoiding on any number of technological grounds.

Its all so delightfully above-board has been so for years - but the end result is an opportunity for government and corporate America to use IPv6 to track a limitless number of activities by Internet users.

Given that it is such a large undertaking, and one run by government, does much of IPv6 possibly remain vaporware? This isnt merely a government project; and universities and private corporations are said to be using versions of IPv6 already. Sometime in 2008 all governmental agencies will apparently start adopting the news standards. Once thats accomplished, its not hard to imagine that private vendors doing business with the government will also be targeted with a mandate for adoption.

Other western governments as well as China and India, countries said to be currently cooperating with the next-generation effort will use many of the same tactics. With so much political muscle, as well a spredictable media acclaim and much celebrating of the new richer and speedier features, the IPv6, like the flu, will spread.

Calling Zion

In the popular Matrix movie trilogy, denizens of humanitys last earthly, urban outpost Zion fight back against intelligent machines and a complex, 22nd-century Internet reality the Matrix that has ensnared everyone else in a waking dream.

Whether the Net can summon a Zion-like fraternity of users determined to confront the most worrisome aspects of the new protocols is as yet unclear. Certainly, comprehension is growing. One Internet user recently posted the following response the CNET article Next Net Moves Forward: OK, so why do they want IPv6? Because in IPv6's design are multiple bug-a-boos that make it really easy to track and filter every packet, which service[s] it's destined for, where it came from and going to and a bunch more invasive information collecting. It's probably the largest privacy hack around.

In his InternetWeek op-ed column on IPv6 Privacy Issues author Bill Frezza pointed out: At the end of the day, what matters to the average Netizen is not the menu of possible alternatives described in IETF standards, but the actual default implementation in popular products, e.g. Windows. Just because an educated and motivated geek can get into the plumbing of his machine and find a way to solve hisown privacy problem doesn't mean the problem has been solved for the bulk of average users. If the folks at Microsoft don't properly address this in their future products, I can positively, absolutely guarantee that it will blow up in their face.

According to sources at BeHidden.com, Net users are becoming increasingly savvy about privacy. We get number of emails inquiring about our architecture, says one exec. They ask questions like: Do you log the websites that I visit? Or do you store my IP address? There will likely be a big movement against more Internet regulation and Microsoft technologies by users.

And the BeHidden executive adds, If new regulations and IPv6 will provide an easier way to track user's activities on the Internet, then I think there will definitely be a big movement against it. We feel like many of the Internet users are already on the edge with current state of industry, and if it gets even easier for people to track what others do, then there will be a lot of very unhappy people.

BeHidden.com is almost ready to deploy some new services that will enhance and compliment existing services. Execs with the firm can't release many of the details at this time but say that other privacy- oriented Net vendors will find their new features fairly revolutionary.

Of course, there are plenty of protective solutions already in place. Some savvy users host web services at companies like havenco.com, an offshore hosting company based off of a small island called the Principality of Sealand where there are no registration requirements and information is secure. Others are using services such as anonymizer.com in order to prevent IP-address tracking when they surf the web.

Peer-to-peer network services such as Freenet copy files to multiple locations making them harder to block, and SafeWebs Triangle-Boy product allows people to create proxy servers rerouting blocked Internet traffic so that other users can find it.

An example of Net users increasing concern about privacy can be seen in the adoption of the latest Mozilla Firefox browser. It has new features to allow users to better protect their surfing experience.

Users can disable image loading from non-originating websites and also have more control over cookies that are getting set. Ad banners can now be disabled. Through such features users can better protect their identities.

Ramifications

The ramifications of static IPs continue to trouble. Once computers are identified as a matter of course, whats to stop the government from starting to single out privacy providers as rogue players in the Internet arena? Equate IPs with, say, auto licenses and the logic becomes clear.

Ubiquitous IPs will be justified on numerous grounds safety, responsibility, even a way to track criminals and those who seek to circumvent them may well find themselves outmaneuvered not by technology but by legislation. Peer down this road and you may see a point in time when computer privacy becomes socially questionable, even illegal.

For civil libertarians, its a fairly grim scenario. Leslie Reis is a professor of law and Director for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law at the John Marshall Law School. She is also a member of the federal Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board whose mission is to advise Congress and the U.S. Department on security issues.

Reis is worried about the implications of technology such as IPv6. The biggest risk in this environment, she says, is that people become uninformed about the privacy issues related to the technologies that they use.

And Reis adds, The best defense for privacy is to educate people about the perils involved and teach them how they can prevent their information from being abused. If people are informed about the technologies that they may use, then they can make the decision whether they want to use it, and become active in trying to change things that they dont like.

Reis fears that the increasing sophistication of online technology, coupled with increased recent use of the Patriot Act outside the domain of national security may create a cocktail lethal to domestic privacy. The Patriot Act has become an umbrella of opportunity to infringe upon peoples privacy, she points out. The scariest thing about the Patriot Act is that it has been used in issues clearly outside the realm of national security. This is called Patriot Act creep in which the Patriot Act is used by prosecutors to get around any privacy protection for any reason. For example prosecutors used it to bust Vegas strip clubs in Operation G-Sting. Most of the Patriot Act has been left unchallenged.

Reis concludes, People need to become informed about privacy issues, especially as they relate to technology, in order to protect themselves.

The Matrix stirs.

And Zion?

Sincerely, Your Free-Market Friends

Internet II News Articles

INTERNET II

Internet 11 now knows how to make the money.

National LambdaRail, Partners Awarded $62 Million BTOP Grant to Interconnect Community Anchors with Advanced Broadband
Research and Education to Benefit from 100 Gbps Upgrade to NLR Backbone, Additional Fiber Routes .
Today the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded $62 million in federal stimulus funding to National LambdaRail (NLR), Internet2, the Northern Tier Network Consortium and the Indiana University Global Research Network Operations Center (GRNOC) to interconnect schools, libraries, healthcare providers, public safety agencies and other "community anchors" across the country with advanced broadband.
"National LambdaRail and our members and partners in the research and education networking community already have 15 years collective experience serving community anchors, as well as an extensive, advanced network footprint and expertise managing next-generation broadband applications like telepresence," said Glenn Ricart, president and CEO, National LambdaRail. "U.S. UCAN is an historic opportunity for the research and education community to work together and to extend broadband capabilities beyond the 66,000 anchors we are already serving, to all interested anchor organizations coast to coast."
Cisco also made a significant contribution to the success of the proposal and will be providing state of the art networking equipment and other assistance to help ensure leading-edge capabilities are in place to support the most advanced needs of the community anchors.
The grant, awarded under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), will enable NLR to upgrade its infrastructure with a new, 100Gbps backbone to serve research and education (R&E) as well as the broader anchor community. In addition, all routers on NLRs Layer 3, PacketNet network will be upgraded, reducing the costs of connecting to NLRs network as well as doubling the number of places where NLR can connect to its members and customers. Access to additional fiber optic routes will enable greater participation by the R&E community and other community anchors in NLR services; the routes will also provide additional alternate routes to help minimize downtime. For example, a new Dallas to Nashville route will provide in-land fiber optic connectivity in the South that is not as prone to possible hurricane damage. New fiber optic paths in the Northeast will give NLR greater capacity to serve institutions in that part of the country.
To extend the reach of R&E networks to all approximately 200,000 community anchors in the country while ensuring that R&E governance remains focused on R&E, NLR and its partners will be forming a non-profit organization, the U.S. Unified Community Anchor Network (U.S. UCAN), to provide the coordination needed, in collaboration with community anchor organizations, to serve the expanded set of anchor institutions. NLRs member regional optical networks (RONs) will continue to play the role they have so successfully in the past, as the local connectors, under U.S. UCAN.
With regard to timeframe, the NTIA requires infrastructure projects to be substantially completed in the first two years of funding (2nd half 2010 through 1st half of 2012), with some work allowed in to the third year. With NTIA funding being awarded in July, 2010, major elements of the upgrade could be online by late 2010, with completion of final components in 2013.
More information on U.S. UCAN can be found at www.usucan.org
Questions specific to NLR may be sent to info@nlr.net
U.S. UCAN release: http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=62
Contact NLR
We welcome your questions and feedback. Contact us at editor@nlr.net.
To learn more about National LambdaRail, visit www.nlr.net .
National LambdaRail (NLR)
P.O. Box 1610, Cypress, CA 90630 www.nlr.net

4/2007 data-transfer rate to 9.08 gigabits per second. That figure comes pretty close to Abilene's theoretical limit of 10 gigabits per second. A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has broken Internet speed records — twice in two days. Operators of the high-speed Internet2 network announced Tuesday that the researchers on Dec. 30 sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard communications protocols.The next day, using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps. That likely represents the current network's final record because rules require a 10 percent improvement for recognition, a percentage that would bring the next record right at the Internet2's current theoretical limit of 10 Gbps. However, the Internet2 consortium is planning to build a new network with a capacity of 100 Gbps. With the 10-fold increase, a high-quality version of the movie "The Matrix" could be sent in a few seconds rather than half a minute over the current Internet2 and two days over a typical home broadband line. [ 1 ]

2007 The latest twist in this soap opera between the two organizations issued an update on merger talks that were apparently and very quietly rekindled last month after an acrimonious split late last year.

" After Breaking Off Talks, 2 High-Speed Networking Consortia Now Say They Will Merge "
Almost a year ago two consortia that run high-speed computer networks for researchers scotched plans to merge, announcing that they were unable to find common ground on a host of organizational issues. But now the two groups -- Internet2 and National LambdaRail -- say the merger is back on. The governing boards of both groups agreed earlier this month to a complete a "definitive agreement to merge" by April 20, according to a
statement signed by Jeffrey S. Lehman, the chair of Internet2, and Tracy Futhey, the chair of LambdaRail. If all goes as planned, the two consortia will become one by the end of June.

IPv6 hasn't exactly caught on - even with v6 IP space around and available for the asking. Ask your ISP for it, lots of ISPs offer it - or get it from a tunnel provider like sixxs.net or tunnelbroker.net .. or if you need a rather larger block of v6 addresses - though a /48 has a huge number of IPs all by itself - ask APNIC, RIPE, ARIN etc - you'll get it. Without much trouble at all. Though v6 is - again - available for the asking, and just about every modern operating system from Windows XP on, has a ipv6 stack, does hotmail, or yahoo, have a v6 address? Do their chinese equivalents like (say) sina.com, have v6 addresses? NO.

2006

National LambdaRail is dead. Abilene shuts down in October 2007. Internet2's will replace Abilene high-speed network with "Newnet" in 1 year which will carry data on 10 different wavelengths of light, each of which could handle 10 gigabits of data per second.Faulkner and Van Houweling said that academe would benefit if a single organization were to provide high-speed networking to colleges and called upon university presidents to use "presidential power to forge a consensus with consequences." Internet2 would not own the fiber-optic links in Newnet but the consortium's contract with the telecommunications company would give Internet2 the right to "operational control" of the network. That arrangement would make sure that the network was run in researchers' interest while freeing Internet2 from tending to more-mundane matters such as repairs of broken fiber cables. Institutions connected to the new network would have access to one light wavelength that, like Abilene, would carry conventional Internet traffic, he said. Each institution also would have access to a second wavelength that could be used however the institution desired, or even subdivided for multiple uses, he said. Douglas E. Van Houweling , the president of Internet2, declined to describe the sticking point in the negotiations. Houweling was also associated with Educause / Educom

2006 RUCKUS MOVES TO NEW BUSINESS MODEL - Music and video download company Ruckus Network is dropping its subscription model for an ad-based model and has announced a deal with Internet2 to distribute content over its high-speed network. Ruckus was not able to attract significant numbers of subscribers under its old plan. Campuses that sign up for Ruckus's new service will pay only minor marketing fees, rather than a per-student subscription fee. Officials at Ruckus hope that by partnering with Internet2, the company will be seen as a provider of academic materials rather than just entertainment, similar to a change made at Cdigix , another company created to provide legal downloads to college students. Nearly 30 institutions are currently clients of Ruckus and members of Internet2 . Faculty at those institutions will be able to use the Internet2 network to share course materials with students. Ruckus, which has joined Internet2 as a corporate member, will also use Internet2's network to develop "new content-distribution and authentication technologies," according to Lauren Rotman, media-relations manager for Internet2.

David Galper 29 , the co-founder of Ruckus Network Brett Goldberg 27 runs Englewood, Colo.-based Cdigix.

Napster, Ruckus and Cdigix

William M. Mahon III, a spokesman for Pennsylvania State University , said the court's ruling would have no impact there. Penn State was one of the first universities to sign a deal with Napster, enabling students to listen to a large selection of music legally and at no cost. They must pay per-song fees, however, to download music permanently. Penn State students will have access to Napster as part of tuition. Normal subscription rates are $9.99 a month.

Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 September 2005
The Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA ) and the Motion Picture Association of America ( MPA A) have become corporate members of Internet2, joining companies including the Ford Motor Company and C-Span. " Internet2 is a stepping stone between the research lab and the commercial sector," said Lauren Kallens, a spokesperson for the organization. Earlier this year, the entertainment groups sued hundreds of Abilene users for using the network to illegally trade files, but, according to Gayle Osterberg, a spokesperson for the MPAA , the groups' membership in Internet2 is unrelated to their antipiracy efforts. "This particular partnership," she said, "is more of an opportunity for us to have a technology testing ground." The groups plan to collaborate with the Internet2 community to study distribution and digital rights management technologies for networks faster than today's commercial Internet.

(notice the ® being used - it's the first time I've seen this 5/05)
U.S. and Foreign Universities Use Internet2's Advanced Network and Real Time Video-Conferencing to Form an Online, Global Classroom
http://tinyurl.com/brst9
Using Internet2®'s advanced high-performance network and Apple technology with Access Grid video software, a team of Drexel University students is sharing virtual classroom space with student teams at eight universities in four countries and five states. The teams are working together to create media files for Descent to the Underworld, a new Game-Film ® project created and produced by Druid Media. The bleeding-edge project models the next generation of collaboration, not only for education, but also for the corporate sector. The Internet2 community's high-performance network provides users 100 to 1,000 times more bandwidth than traditional broadband; the Access Grid software enables real-time, TV-quality video and audio on multiple screens. Together the two technologies create an immersive “in-the-same-room” environment. <snip>

RIAA to Sue Internet2 Users http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111332296709604743,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us Hundreds of College Students Accused
Of Using Research Network to Swap Songs
Associated Press April 12, 2005 12:57 p.m.
The recording industry intends to sue hundreds of college students accused of illegally distributing music and movies across Internet2 , the super-fast computer network connecting leading universities for researching the next generation of the Internet, industry officials said Tuesday.
The Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the largest labels, said it will file federal copyright lawsuits Wednesday against 405 students at 18 colleges with access to the Internet2 network, which boasts speeds hundreds of times faster than the Internet.
Researchers at Internet2 once demonstrated they can download a DVD-quality copy of the popular movie "The Matrix" in 30 seconds over their network, a feat they said would take roughly 25 hours over the Internet.
Internet2 is used by several million university students, researchers and professionals around the world but is generally inaccessible to the public.
"We don't condone or support illegal file-sharing," said Internet2 's chief executive, Doug Van Houweling. "We've always understood that just like there is a lot of file-sharing going on on the public Internet, there's also some file-sharing going on on Internet2 ."
The recording industry said some students were illegally sharing across Internet2 as many as 13,600 music files -- far more than most Internet users -- and that the average number of songs offered illegally by the students was 2,300 each. It said it found evidence of more illegal file-sharing at 140 more schools in 41 states and sent warning letters to university presidents.
"We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply," said Cary Sherman, president of the recording association.
The Motion Picture Association of America also was expected to file federal copyright lawsuits Wednesday against college students with access to Internet2 .
"The high performance of Internet2 makes it attractive for a lot of applications, not just file-sharing," Mr. Van Houweling said. He cautioned universities against filtering data to block illegal activity in ways that would slow the research network's performance.
"It's possible to attack this problem in ways that do compromise the performance," he said.<snip>

Penn State and Internet2 Announce Release of Academic File-sharing Open Source Code

AUSTIN, TX - September 28, 2004 - Plans for secure, high-powered, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology for academia has come one big step closer to fruition when today Penn State and Internet2(R) announced the release of open source code for their collaborative software project, LionShare.
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LionShare merges electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools into one dynamic application.
Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology said, This is a technology that promises to significantly improve the way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic endeavors, while simultaneously ensuring a secure authenticated computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing capabilities."
This week's LionShare source code release will provide all interested programmers and developers with the opportunity to contribute valuable feedback and suggestions. At the same time, Lionshare partners including: Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will continue to fine-tune the project software which is slated for official beta release for universities and institutions this upcoming January.
"We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated, commented Michael Halm, the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations from around the world have contacted us with questions about the technology and requests for the open source code release date, and many groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the code is now available."
Several educational and research institutions have expressed interest in Lionshares unique capabilities for resource exchange - including its ability to transfer audio, video, scientific simulations, text, documents, research papers, Web resources and a variety of other learning activities.
LionShare has enormous potential," remarked Loukas Kalisperis, professor of architecture at Penn State. "With this single application, collaborating faculty can build digital repositories such as 3-D architectural image collections, Web-based video archives and art collections. Faculty will also have a range of tools at their fingertips for managing and exchanging their own personal collections, in addition to having access to large-scale data repositories throughout the United States and Europe."
Kalisperis is among a number of scholars and scientists who have offered their suggestions to team members as project plans unfolded this past year. Feedback from faculty at Penn State and other institutions is enabling developers to enhance the software's features with cutting-edge security, authentication, and password handling capabilities - plus a high performance text search engine and a technology (developed by Simon Fraser) that will make secure, single-search inquiries of certain worldwide digital repositories possible.
The continual dialogue with developers and potential network users has significantly furthered the development of the technology.
"With the source code release on September 30, interested programmers and application developers can now access the code to use and/or modify for their needs and specifications, added Halm. Feedback from programmers, as well as our peer institutions, will be essential in our efforts to further the development of the software. These efforts will culminate in the launch of an academic file-sharing network that researchers will be able to test and use this January."
To learn more about LionShare and to access the new open source code - or to join the developers community, go to http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/ .
About LionShare
The LionShare project, funded by Andrew W. Mellon, is a collaboration between Penn State and partner organizations including Internet2 ; Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The LionShare project grew out of VIUS (Visual Image User Study), an experimental software development project designed to assist Penn State University faculty with digital file management.

LambdaRail Fiber-Optic Network Gains 6 New Members, Enough to Go National
http://chronicle.com/free/2004/06/2004060301n.htm
A consortium of research universities that is creating an $80-million fiber-optic computer network announced on Wednesday that it had added six members, enough to extend the network to most portions of the country.
The system, called the National LambdaRail, initially will operate four separate national computer networks, each with a capacity equal to the most powerful national research network now in operation, the Abilene network operated by the Internet2 organization. LambdaRail will accomplish that feat by transmitting data over four different wavelengths of light. Each wavelength will be able to carry as much data as Abilene, and the fiber-optic network eventually could offer 40 such wavelengths.
The consortium of research universities owns the LambaRail network. Other research networks, like Abilene, instead have used leased telecommunications lines. Thomas W. West, president and chief executive of National LambdaRail, said groups of scholars -- like physicists around the world who want to collaborate with one another -- eventually may be able to lease wavelengths for their own use.
LambdaRail is being constructed from unused fiber-optic lines sold or donated by telecommunications companies and network equipment sold to the consortium at a steep discount by Cisco Systems Inc., an Internet-network company.
The consortium is selecting its network links according to the locations of its members, which must each pay $5-million over five years. "We're sort of following the money," said Mr. West.
Since the first segment of the network, running from Pittsburgh to Chicago, became operational, in November, the network has added service to several other cities, including Atlanta; Portland, Ore.; Raleigh, N.C.; Seattle; Sunnyvale, Calif.; and Washington. The network is scheduled to be completed by the spring of 2005.
Four of the new members are consortia or state education bodies: the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Oklahoma State Board of Regents, the Texas Lonestar Education and Research Network, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. The latter group will provide connections for institutions in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
The other two new members are individual institutions: Cornell University and the University of New Mexico.
Officials at Cornell hope to share their connection -- and its cost -- with other institutions. Other colleges in New York and New England, and computer networks serving those regions, were unable to find the funds to join LambdaRail on their own, said Polley Ann McClure, Cornell's chief information officer. But with Cornell's having made the upfront commitment, the others avoid having to commit the full $5-million, making it cheaper for them to join, she said.
With enough partners, Cornell's cost could drop to $100,000 annually, she said. Cornell will save at least that amount from other savings on its network costs, made possible by routing some of its Internet traffic along the same fiber-optic line that will connect the Ithaca campus with National LambdaRail's facility in New York City.

STUDENT FILE-SWAPPERS GO INTO OVERDRIVE ON INTERNET2
(CNet News.com 29 Apr 2004) <http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5202107.html
Internet2, the high-speed network designed to facilitate scholarly collaboration among university researchers, has spawned a new turbo-charged file-trading network dubbed i2hub. The network has drawn rave reviews from students dazzled by its blazing speed, but some Internet2 denizens see trouble brewing ahead. And while students maintain they're only making use of bandwidth that otherwise would go begging, some also see it as a way to circumvent the limitations that some universities have imposed on peer-to-peer networking. "Some universities put a restriction on commodity Internet line speeds but don't put any restriction on Internet2," says one i2hub manager, who estimates students at about 100 universities are making use of the network. Officials at Internet2 say theoretically they have no objection to the students' use of the network, providing no copyright violations are occurring, but some university network administrators have expressed concern that that's exactly what is happening. "Internet2 is for research. It's not for downloading music. The fact is, (the network) cost a lot of money and downloading games and music should be the last priority on any campus network. I think it's borderline taking advantage of the system," says a computer support specialist at Florida State University.

Internet2: File Swapping Haven? 2004 -- http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?&story_id=23903
In response to the music industry's efforts to curb digital piracy on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, many college students have begun trading files over Internet2, also known as i2hub, the high-speed network used by universities and technology companies to transmit data at speeds up to 10,000 times faster than the typical broadband connection. Universities have started working with music and movie companies to limit trading over campus networks, whether by limiting bandwidth or denying access to individual students. Internet2 uses advanced network technology to provide such services as television quality video-conferencing and access to grid computing and supercomputers, which the Internet cannot support. NeoModus has developed Direct Connect, a P2P system designed to exploit Internet2's high capacity. However, Internet2' s Greg Wood notes that the architecture of i2hub would allow colleges to restrict P2P traffic on the campus level.

Internet2 Spin is required to show some token effort at the public school level July 10, 2001 see: http://www.internet2.edu/ and http://www.technologyreview.com/web/tynan/tynan071001.asp
"To join Internet2 , you must be an educational institution or private firm willing to use the network to collaborate and support the development of new applications. Annual costs run between $500,000 and $1 million per university, according to Internet2 spokesperson Greg Wood, most of it going toward upgrading campus networks. " "We're not in it for altruism," says Stephen Wolff, manager of business development for Cisco in Washington, DC. "It costs us something to participate in Internet2 , and we hope to regain that and more by translating the technology into products people will want to buy."

CAMPUSES MAKING ADVANCES WITH INTERNET2 (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2000 July 13)
Universities involved in the Internet2 project, a test-bed for advanced applications, are experimenting with technologies such as virtual reality and distance medicine that would be impossible on the commercial Internet. The University of Pennsylvania, is creating an integrated database for digital mammograms allowing doctors to view a patient's mammogram taken years earlier in a different city. At Northwestern, researchers this summer expect to launch a technology that will allow students to view high-quality videos of professors' lectures from PCs in their dorm rooms. Meanwhile, several Internet2 universities have teamed with the National Tele-Immersion Initiative to develop virtual reality tools that would allow professors wearing 3D goggles to take part in roundtable discussions with colleagues around the world.

INTERNET2 TEAM SEEKS SPEEDY APPS From Edupage, 23 February 2000 (PC World Online, 22 Feb 2000)
The Internet2 consortium is hosting a Land Speed Record competition "for the most demanding end-to-end, bandwidth intensive Internet applications in the world," with winners to be announced March 29. The winning application will transmit the most bits the greatest distance, says Internet2's Greg Wood. Data-intensive applications, such as programs that transmit terabytes of data or HDTV, are likely winners. Eventually, Internet2 might enable tele-immersion applications that would let holographic images of people interact in a virtual space, Wood says. Four universities have formed the National Tele-Immersion Initiative to help make this technology a reality, and the group is now working on a way to send 3D data over two-way Internet links. Another university group called the Research Channel has already used Internet2 to send high-quality video. Last November the Research Channel used Internet2 to transmit five simultaneous
HDTV streams that totaled 1 Gbps, says the group's Amy Philipson.

Firm to Give Research Schools Super-Fast Computer Services April 1998
Source: Washington Post (C5) <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-04/14/078l-041498-idx.html>
Author: Rajiv Chandrasekaran Issue: Corporate Philanthropy
Description: Qwest Communications will provide $500 million worth of transmission services to a computer network that is to connect a consortium of research universities working on a project called "Internet2" at 1,000 times faster than commercial Internet, according to senior White House and academic officials familiar with the plan. The consortium's project is a component of the Clinton administration's Next Generation Internet Initiative, which aims to connect several national labs and universities with a super-fast network by the year 2000. Qwest said it has completed a third of a $1.8 billion, 16,000-mile national data network on which it will carry commercial customers and Internet2.

Va. to Offer 1st Access to Internet2 Source: Washington Post 5/5/98 (D12) Author: Frank Swoboda
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-05/05/063l-050598-idx.html
Officials announced Monday that the nation's first access point to Internet2 , a high-speed computer network, will be opened in theWashington area this fall by a consortium of local universities and corporations. The project, to be formally announced tomorrow, will be called Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX).

Universities at work to build faster Internet 2 http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/100597/info15_23638_noframes.html
Nando.net Mon, 6 Oct 1997 The Associated Press
Victor Sparrow makes sound waves dance on a computer screen to teach acoustics engineering to his Pennsylvania State University students, but he can't splash his fancy images beyond his office. Today's congested and outdated Internet also gives Sparrow trouble bringing in teaching tools developed by his peers at other campuses. So like other researchers eager to find better ways to share their knowledge, he looks forward to Internet 2, a faster computer network that 112 universities are working on. Internet 2's enhanced voice, video and data capabilities are being unveiled at a demonstration this week in Washington. "In acoustics, many things have to do with (sound) waves," Sparrow said from Penn State. "Waves move, and ... currently with the Internet, it's hard to do real-time animation." The problems stem largely from the very nature of the Internet and its growing commercial popularity. Computer files travel across the Internet as equals. A video clip needed in a classroom right now commands the same attention as an electronic message likely to languish in the recipient's mailbox for hours or days. Back when Internet use was limited primarily to government and academia, the network had plenty of capacity to go around. Handling information that way was fine. These days, with more business and residential users connected, researchers face delays that affect their work. "Universities which were at the heart of the original Internet now are finding themselves competing for space on this network," said David Katz, global education industry manager at 3Com Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif., company helping schools develop Internet 2. The Internet restricts Sparrow's demonstrations of wave properties to simple computer drawings akin to stick figures. Connections are not good enough to produce complex teaching aides without unpredictable delays, Sparrow said. Internet 2 seeks to fix that by improving computer connections among and within campuses and by developing ways to sort and prioritize information to allow real-time video presentations to cruise past less-urgent e-mail on the information superhighway. The ultimate goal is to create a network that researchers could rely on to obtain the high-volume computer files they need when they need them . Professors could effectively reserve network capacity. With blazing connections, capable of transmitting the contents of the Library of Congress in half a day instead of a month as now, researchers on opposite coasts could observe a computer simulation or a medical chart together and discuss on-screen changes as they happened. The same connections could let the most powerful computers at different locations work together to solve a single problem, such as predicting the behavior of advanced rocket engines. Such complex calculations would eliminate some of the trial-and-error experimentation now required. The Indiana University Music Library is eyeing Internet 2 to broaden its music collection. With the current network, six or seven people listening to music at once would consume the school's entire capacity, said Jon Dunn, a technical director at the library. "There are recordings unique to a particular library, and making those (electronically) available" expands the number of people who can listen to them at once, Dunn said. Each participating university has committed at least $2.5 million over five years to upgrade their equipment. The National Science Foundation is financing much of the major intercampus wiring. About two dozen schools are to be linked by year's end, with the remaining connections expected within five years. Organizers say Internet 2 would help fulfill President Clinton's $100 million-a-year initiative to improve Internet links for government agencies, national laboratories and research institutions. Eventually, concepts developed by Internet 2 could become commercially viable, at which point universities would begin working on a successor, said J. Gary Augustson, a computer director at Penn State and chairman of the Internet 2 steering committee. "If we're successful," Augustson said, "Internet 2 will be cluttered, and we'll probably go to Internet 3.