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Internet2 Marks 10th Anniversary with Tenfold Speed IncreaseSome 700 Internet2 members gathered December 4–7 in Chicago to mark the 10th anniversary of the data network that connects nearly two-thirds of college campuses and one-third of high schools in the United States. The meeting included the unveiling of a tenfold increase in the network’s already ultra-fast connectivity.Internet2 went live with the first segment of the advanced network December 5 when NYSERNet, the research and education network consortium serving New York State, became the first regional network to connect to the new infrastructure. With its 100-gigabit-per-second capacity between Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., Internet2 expects to increase the capacity and flexibility of nationwide networking to serve the increasing needs of researchers and educators. “The Internet2 community today celebrates both its 10-year history and an important moment in our future,” said Douglas Van Houweling, Internet2 president and CEO. “The advanced network our community is creating through collaboration and partnership will serve as a new and even greater platform for discovery, learning, and understanding.” Meeting attendees reviewed the technological progress Internet2 made during a decade in which it became a major source of innovation at colleges and universities. Some 10 million university students across the country use Internet2, so it provides a testing ground not just for new technology but also for the popularity and economic feasibility of new products, said Mort Rahimi, Northwestern University’s chief technology officer and one of Internet2’s founders, in the December 6 Chicago Tribune. It enabled the young people who start companies like Google and YouTube to think of the internet in terms of truly high-speed connectivity, he added. ”Commercial networks don’t want a lot of excess capacity,” said Van Houweling on the Internet2 website. “They try to run at 75%. But we want to run about 25% to 30% full so there’s always headroom to try something new. We don’t think of it as excess capacity. We think of it as room to innovate.” Rick Weingarten, director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, attended the meeting and supported the idea that increased capacity and flexibility of nationwide networking is essential. “Libraries are increasingly asked to provide bandwidth-consuming internet services, such as Web 2.0 applications, and connectivity with the kind of advanced networking Internet2 offers is becoming critical,” he told American Libraries. Internet2 was established in 1996 in Chicago as an academic-based digital alternative by three dozen universities and now has more than 300 universities as well as numerous community colleges, K-12 schools, libraries, museums, laboratories, and commercial affiliates. Computers on Internet2 perform at higher capacity when communicating with each other, but they also connect to the regular internet at ordinary performance levels. Posted December 8, 2006. |
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