Internet II is coming...

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1

Come on, Vadim, this is a great idea. They should build this
cheaper faster better network to be used exclusively for meritorious
traffic because it's in the national interests of the USA.

Moreover, the the members of the Internet II consortium (hi University
MIS types and management!) and any governmental funding body involved
should mandate that any meritorious traffic use IPv6 *only* and set an
end-to-end IPv6 option to indicate which traffic should go across
Internet II and which should go across whatever IPv6 Internet exists
as provided by Evil Commercial Interests at the ridiculously high
prices which are being charged universities and research labs.

Moreover, they should also mandate that Internet II be built on
ATM, use ABR, and also use RSVP to guarantee the kinds of qualities
of service that the R&E community requires.

This would be a boon to network researchers throughout the USA.

You can bet that I (not a U.S. national, and an Evil Greedy Commercial Bastard)
also will be singing the praises of the folks from PSU, Stanford
and Chicago, and their EDUCOM ally Mike Roberts and their
representative George Strawn, the NSF's chief proponent of
Internet II-like initiatives, because it's a fantastic idea,
and the implication that it is either pork or a bad or unworkable
idea is one that is beneath you, Vadim, even if the proposers
leave the other requirements out of the final solicitation, award, or both.

I mean, you can't possibly believe that the industry will solve
or even wants to solve the issues most of the folks at University
campuses have been complaining about, just as you shouldn't believe
that it can't use a push to deploy ATM, ABR, RSVP and IPv6.
A group of some thirty-four or so high-power customers is exactly
the sort of push that will finally just get this stuff done.

I can't wait until other countries jump on the bandwagon.
Maybe the EU will ressurect its similar ideas, or the G7 will
keep going with their talks, or maybe this could end up right
in the lap of the U.N. That would be way cool.

  Sean.

2

Sean, isn't this excessive cruelty to those that have to deal with this
in the end?

This sort of proposal, i.e. building a Higher Ed private network for
research, is in and of itself not such a bad thing.

The grow of Internet since NSFNet shut down has put serious strains on the
infrastructure that researchy folks used to use to do(and still do) their
various work on.

Given that the exponential growth of the net is projected to continue, it's
not completely baseless to think that the problems we've seen over the last 12
months or so will continue. So if you follow that train of thought, building
a private net for "important/meritorious" traffic makes some amount of sense.

Now, it must be pointed out that a large part of the problem is in the
way overloaded access pipe many of these universities have to various ISPs,
placing a fair amount of culpability to the universities themselves.

It should also be pointed out that while the basic idea might have some merit,
it's highly debatable whether this private network will be worth the
investment once this idea goes through the normal academic politics (way too
many cooks), ATM-mania, bureaucracy, delays, normal academic shoe-string
budget, etc.

Hey, at the very least, shoe-string budget network strung together with
bubblegums and built-in cumbersome bureaucratic rules and progress
decelerator should make it a very interesting thing in a researchy academic
sort of a way.

-dorian, speaking strictly for himself.