IBM pushes development of Internet2

By Steven E. Brier
InfoWorld Electric

Internet2, the test bed for the next-generation Internet, got a boost on Thursday when IBM disbursed part of its $3.5-million commitment to the project to seven universities.

The donations will be in the form of hardware, software, switches, and other pieces of network infrastructure. The recipients also will have access to the technological expertise of IBM personnel.

The recipients -- Clemson University in South Carolina, Duke University in North Carolina, Indiana University, Northwestern University in Illinois, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and the University of South Carolina -- are part of the Internet2 consortium. An eighth university, the University of North Carolina, received a grant in 1997.

"Universities need to do research, collaborate, and educate over distances, and the current Internet does not have the fundamental capability to handle it," said Greg Wood, communications director for Internet2.

The Internet2 project is one of two initiatives designed to focus resources on the development of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching, and learning, and is being led by universities. The other project, Next Generation Internet, or NGI, is being led by the federal government.

"The idea is to push the development of the applications that researchers know they need but at the same time make sure the networking capabilities are there to support it," Wood said. "We're talking about end-to-end broadband service, quality of service, IPv6 [Version 6 of IP] and the like."

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager at IBM's Internet Division, says that businesses need to pay attention to Internet2 now, even though it is still in development.

"We expect the universities will help develop the advanced infrastructure and, more importantly, start piloting the kinds of new applications you can use once you have an Internet2 kind of infrastructure," Wladawsky-Berger said. "Things such as the heavy use of video, advanced digital-library applications, more multimedia capabilities, and better user interfaces will come because you can make everything more human."

Duke University is to receive four ATM switches that will be used to create a campus ATM backbone as well as tie in to the North Carolina Giganet, a high-speed ATM backbone connecting several universities in the state.

"We hope to provide our faculty with advanced applications and systems for research," said Cabel Smith, director of communications at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. "What we will most immediately realize from this is support for our Global Executive MBA program, which has a major distance-learning component. This should advance our capabilities for off-campus connectivity."

Indiana University's grant will go to the continued development of its Variations Digital Library Project, said Jon Dunn, manager of digital library operations.

"We want to scale up the size of the collection and access to the collection," Dunn said.

The changes in technology and increasing use of the Internet are pushing the Internet in new directions and further influencing how it is used.

"This is bringing the Internet into social sciences and humanities departments," Wladawsky-Berger said. "As the Internet permeates all of society, then all of a sudden, the social sciences and humanities become extremely involved.

"Our brains are wired for video, for visual images, and interacting with visual images is going to be more and more important," Wladawsky-Berger said.

Indiana University, in Bloomington, has digitized about 3,500 recordings, which music students can listen to at dedicated workstations in the School of Music Library.

"We want to take this collection and provide it to a broader audience, provide it to students elsewhere on campus, other computing libraries, and dorm rooms," Dunn said. "Eventually, we would provide it to other campuses and to music scholars at other institutions. To do that, you need bandwidth and quality of service."

"We think this is going to impact businesses considerably," Wladawsky-Berger said. "The Internet2 promises to push the state of the art by a couple of orders of magnitude, providing qualities of service that are far better than what we have today."