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The Internet that we know today had a humble but
noble beginning in the form of ARPANET, which
was created by the US Defense Advanced Research
Project Agency (ARPA) in 1969. It served as a
test bed for linking universities and research
centers on a wide area network.
Recently, a similar non-profit consortium of academia,
industry and government started an initiative
to develop and deploy advanced networking applications
and technology. The consortium consisting of over
200 universities and over 60 leading companies
is working on what is now called Internet2. (Another
such initiative is the federal-led Next Generation
Internet: NGI, which works towards the same goals).
Internet2 is testing new technologies like IPv6,
multicasting and quality of service (QoS) for
a multitude of research applications related to
nuclear sciences and bio-technology. Even mathematicians
using it to tap distant super computers.
How fast is Internet2?
Well, a look at some records tells us it is really
fast! The record for the IPv6 category is currently
held by a data transfer done by teams from the
California Institute of Technology and CERN, who
transferred approximately 357 gigabytes of data
across 14,134 kilometers of network in approximately
10 minutes at an average speed of 5.11 gigabits
per second! A similar effort in the IPv4 category
achieved an average transfer rate of 7.21 gigabits
per second, this one being affected between Japan
and US over 30,000 kilometers!
Today, Internet2 is a separate network. Will Internet2
merge with what we now call Internet (1), the
Internet that we know today? Unlikely. However,
technologies developed and perfected in due course
under Internet2 would be adapted to and deployed
on the public Internet. That said, commercial
interets have already forced the Recording Industry
Association of America, the music industry trade
group, to sue more than 400 college students for
allegedly swapping pirated music files over their
university sponsored Internet2! In the meanwhile,
a new buzz word is making rounds amongst the service
providers in the US, which is aiming to provide
fast, cheap and convenient connectivity to the
customers. This is what is called Triple50, which
stands for 50mbps bandwidth at 50 dollars per
month up to a distance of 50 kilometers. This
metric could be measured over any medium like
DSL, Wimax etc. So while the academia in the US
can dabble with gigabits of speed, the masses
there can experience real life speeds of a few
ten's of megabits. I will refrain from making
any comments about the kilobit speeds in India.
Rahul Swarup
President
Sify Enterprise Solution
We
welcome your comments and suggestions.
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