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February 15, 2002

Internet2: Building a Better Net

By Judy Salpeter

The high-tech research and development community behind the Net's invention is hoping to make history again with Internet2. Although sometimes used generically to refer to next-generation, high-speed connectivity, Internet2 is actually a proprietary name of a not-for-profit consortium, led by nearly 200 American universities who have come together to "recreate the partnership of academia, industry, and government that helped foster today's Internet in its infancy." Member universities pay a hefty annual fee to connect to the high-speed Internet2 network and collaborate with nonprofit partners and corporate sponsors on developing new applications and network services for research and education.

Their purpose is not to replace or compete with the current "commercial Internet" but to live side-by-side with it, pursuing educational projects that take advantage of the lower-traffic, higher-bandwidth Internet2 backbone, known as Abilene. At the same time, the consortium's goal is to develop new technologies and capabilities that can be used for education and research, and eventually be deployed in the global Internet. These innovations will involve transforming the Internet into a multimedia environment in which high-quality video and audio flow freely and rich new collaborative environments allow people to share resources and exchange ideas, in real time, with partners at remote sites.

K-12 Schools Join In

With their K20 Initiative, the Internet2 consortium has invited K-12 education to join the research and development community as "Sponsored Education Group Participants" (SEGPs). Essentially, this means that a state or regional education network that offers Internet connectivity to K-12 schools teams up with one or more member universities to become part of the consortium. Through partnerships with educational networks in other countries as well, Internet2 promises to enable global as well as national collaboration.

Although SEGPs and other consortium members connect to one another via the Internet2 backbone, Abilene is not what provides K-12 participants with local high-bandwidth connectivity. That comes from the state network. All of the states joining Internet2 have connected, or have plans for connecting, K-12 schools to high-performance fiber-optic networks. For example, the Digital California Project (www.cenic.org/DCP.html) is extending California's two existing higher-education networks to include the K-12 community. The state is currently installing DCP access nodes in every county, each of which connects back to one of several California-based hubs and, from there, to the larger Internet2 community.

Similar initiatives are underway in 16 states throughout the country, and eleven other states are expected to join before the end of the 2001-02 school year. (See Internet@'s updated list of SEGPs.)

The Benefits of High-Performance Networking

The Abilene network runs at a mind-boggling 2.4 gigabits-or 2.4 billion bits-per second, and plans have been announced to quadruple Abilene's bandwidth by 2003. Perhaps more relevant, from the user's point of view, is the fact that the minimum speed at which university or state-based networks currently connect with the Internet2 infrastructure is at 155 megabits-or 155 million bits-per second. This is 100 times more bandwidth than the typical T-1 line, whose 1.5-megabit-per-second speeds were, until recently, perceived as fast. Following is what this means in terms of functionality.

Broadcast-Quality Video. The Internet2's high network speeds, along with new "multicasting" technologies, make it possible for realistic, broadcast-quality video and audio to travel over the network. This means that, in addition to all the text, still images, music, and small-screen video clips now available to Internet users, full-motion video footage should soon be easy to obtain using a Web browser. Such capabilities will allow virtual field trips and quests to come alive in a new way as students see where explorers are trekking or watch as NASA astronauts talk to them from outer space. Easy access to video case studies showing lessons by master teachers is yet another example of the ways in which Internet-delivered multimedia can help in K-12 education.

Interactivity. Even more exciting is the interactivity offered by network-based videoconferencing. With camera-equipped computers and high-speed connections, we will be able to interact, in real time, with those NASA astronauts or master teachers, interviewing them or showing them what's happening in our own classrooms. Various interesting videoconferencing projects are already taking place in schools, using ISDN lines and other specialized equipment, to enable collaborations and cultural exchanges between students in different communities and countries. With high-bandwidth Internet, it will soon be possible to conduct such valuable exchanges in a more seamless way.

A more futuristic extension of this sort of interactive environment, in development at Internet2 test sites today, is tele-immersion. Like today's virtual reality arcade games, tomorrow's tele-immersive environment will allow students to navigate through a realistic, 3-D simulated environment, interacting with others as they do so.

Collaboration. Yet another application of high-performance networking is the sharing of documents and devices with colleagues, peers, and experts at remote locations. New collaborative tools developed by consortium members will even make it possible for next-generation Internet users to "touch" and manipulate objects from a distance. Although some of the most obvious examples relate to medicine, where doctors may soon be conducting medical tests or even performing surgery remotely in settings where no alternative exists, one can imagine K-12 applications as well. With remote access offered by a university, for example, a class might use a high-powered telescope or electron microscope to conduct experiments. Or groups of students from several sites might collaborate on a joint construction project in which they manipulate virtual building elements, discussing and modifying the results as they work together.

Robust Data Exchanges. An important, though less than glamorous, aspect of high-bandwidth connectivity is that it allows large quantities of data to be accessed quickly. In addition, Internet2 researchers are working hard on a variety of "Quality of Service" measures designed to prevent data loss and minimize delays. All of this holds great potential for the secure transmission of data such as student records and multimedia portfolios.

Looking Forward

There is no doubt that these innovations, and other Internet2 breakthroughs still to come, have the potential to make a great difference to schools. And by accepting the invitation to collaborate with universities and their partners, today's K-12 educators and students have a tremendous opportunity to help shape tomorrow's Internet.

Judy Salpeter is program chair for Technology & Learning Events and consulting editor for T&L.

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