Monday, July 29, 2002		Feature

New superhighway on cards
Rajiv Kapoor

TRAFFIC! We all deal with it on the roadway and the Internet. And we all get frustrated when too much traffic slows us down - in our cars or in cyberspace. But did you know a new information superhighway is under construction? It is called Internet II. The university community has joined hands with the government and industry to accelerate the Internet development for research.

The mission of Internet II is to bring into focus, energy, and resources in developing advanced applications for research, teaching, and learning. Internet II is a consortium being led by 180 universities working in partnership with the industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet. Internet II is recreating the partnership among academia and government that fostered today’s Internet in its infancy.

The primary goals of Internet II are to:

• Create a leading edge network capability for the national research community.

• Enable revolutionary Internet applications.

• Ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community.

Internet II is not a separate physical network and will not replace the existing network; rather its goal is to develop technology that will enhance the current Internet. It brings together institutions and resources from academia, industry and government to develop new technologies and capabilities that can be deployed in the global Internet.

Internet II members are developing and testing new technologies such as multicasting and Quality of Service (QOS) that will enable to develop revolutionary Internet applications. However, these applications require performance of the application on the Internet that is not possible on today’s Internet. More than a faster Web or e-mail, these new technologies will enable completely new applications such as digital libraries, virtual laboratories, distance-independent learning and tele-immersion.

A primary goal of Internet II is to ensure the transfer of new working technology and applications to the broader education and networking. This is for the various communities to understand that Internet II is not for profitable research and development, consortium and does not have publicly traded stock, university research and similar education and education missions increasingly require the collaboration of personnel and hardware located at campuses throughout the country in ways which are not possible over today’s Internet.

Moreover, universities are a principal source of both demand for advanced networking technologies and that needed to implement them. Researchers, instructors and students at Internet II universities are able to explore capabilities beyond today’s Internet as they teach and learn and conduct research in disciplines ranging from the fine arts to physics.

Participation in Internet II is open to any university that commits to providing on-campus facilities that will allow advanced application development. This requires investment that may be more than what many institutions can manage right now. However, Internet II also supports collaboration by Internet II universities with non-member institutions.

Fifteen years ago, connecting to the Internet could be as expensive as participating in Internet II today. As the technology dropped in price, the entire academic community benefited from the efforts of the initial research participants. Deployment of Internet II technology will follow a similar pattern.

Next Generation development of the Internet is well underway and Internet II carries with it a great potential and exciting opportunities for the delivery of rich multimedia content on the WWW. Commercial application are likely to appear in the near future.