Monday, June 19, 2006

Internet2 advances

(PR and details)

Level 3 will be providing circuits for Internet2's next-generation network. The backbone will be 100 Gbps and be upgradeable to 800 Gbps(!) - about 5 mLoC/s.

They expect up to multiple 10 Gbps circuits for [certain] participating academic institutions, with the ability to reserve up to 1 Gbps for an individual user (!) or up to 10 Gbps depending on scheduling issues.

And the "new Internet2 network will provide production IP capabilities and bundled access to the Internet". This is quite a change from the current policy of not allowing commodity IP through Abilene - the current network (there's a rather detailed Cisco paper on complex routing at GigaPoPs). Especially when you consider the AUP (aka Conditions of Use)

"Abilene does not carry traffic originating at or destined for organizations other than Abilene participants."
and

A. Principles
2.Except as a reasonably unavoidable and very marginal by-product of its core activities, Abilene does not compete intentionally with the commodity Internet or other telecommunications services, which are readily and affordably available from other Internet service providers.
Also, how will the current so-called Network participants in the present Internet2 network connect through Level3-provided circuits without introducing at least some conflict-of-interest?

Still, 800 Gbps!

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