The Creating Internet2 Virtual Seminar is brought to you jointly by CREN, the Corporation for Research and Educational networking and UCAID, the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development. Read on to learn more about the specific topics and presenters featured in this exciting new seminar.

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Creating Internet2

The Launching of UCAID and Internet2



Internet2 Basics and Beginnings



Internet2 Architecture and GigaPoPs



Why Higher Education Needs Internet2



What Makes an Internet2 Application?



Internet2 Applications: Samples



Internet2 Technical Challenges



What Does Internet2 Mean for My Institution?



Meeting the Technological Challenges of Internet2:
The Working Groups



Internet2 Industry Partners and Affiliates



Keeping Up with Internet2...

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The Launching of UCAID and Internet2
Doug Van Houweling
In a nutshell, the Internet is about connection -- not just electronic connection and data transfer, but about human connection and the sharing of ideas. The first Internet showed us that when you provide a medium that connects people and their ideas, you create an atmosphere of excitement fueled by the possibilities of change. One of the luxuries of building the next Internet is that we have some foresight not available the first time. At the very initial stages of its creation, we have the opportunity to organize and focus our ideas about change around specific applications and distinct goals.

UCAID, the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, provides ongoing leadership and direction for developing an advanced network that meets the research and education needs of higher education. In this presentation, Doug Van Houweling, president and CEO of UCAID, describes some of the history, vision and goals behind his organization and its first project, Internet2. He explains the organizational structure of UCAID, including the types of membership open to university, government and corporate organizations.

Also included in this presentation are links to websites that provide more information about becoming a member of UCAID and the Internet2 project.

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Internet2 Basics and Beginnings
Doug Gale
The conceptualization and implementation of Internet2 cannot take place in a vacuum. The choices we make and the ideas we develop are shaped not only by future needs and applications, but also by past decisions and existing network technology. In order to understand where Internet2 may go, you need to understand the historical and technical context within which it is currently being developed.

This presentation provides the basic technical and historical background necessary to understand concepts discussed in other parts of this Virtual Seminar. Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, explains the difference between packet switching and circuit switching, and the difference between connection-oriented and connectionless-oriented transmission. He also defines Quality of Service (QoS) and spells out its importance to high-performance audio and video transmissions. Finally, he gives a brief introduction to the different networking technologies capable of supporting true Quality of Service transmissions, including IPv6, ATM, SONET and fiber optics.

This presentation also provides a brief history of the origins of the Internet2 project, from the Monterey Conference of September 1995, which concluded that the current Internet would not be able to keep up with the needs of higher education, to the Cheyenne Mountain meeting of August 1996, in which the gigaPoP was adopted as part of a new networking infrastructure.

The presentation concludes with a description of the key architectural components of an advanced network capable of meeting the requirements of the virtual university.

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Internet2 Architecture and GigaPoPs
Doug Gale
The impetus for Internet2 is not just to meet the demands of increased network traffic. The Internet2 project is designed to accommodate the networking demands of advanced applications -- both those that are currently being designed and implemented, and those that haven't even been thought of yet. At this time we don't know what all of these applications are going to look like, but we do know that they will need a network capable of supporting functions like real-time audio and video, real-time and delayed collaboration, distributed computing, and tele-immersion.

This presentation describes the components of high-performance networks capable of supporting these high-performance applications. Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, addresses the advanced technological needs of the next Internet, then provides a conceptual overview of how the Internet2 architecture can meet those needs. A key element of the Internet2 architecture is the "gigaPoP," which serves as a regional aggregation point for traffic from both high-performance networks and traditional ISPs. Doug defines the typical gigaPoP, then explains its role within the larger Internet2 infrastructure.

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Why Higher Education Needs Internet2
Judith Boettcher
Higher education is facing some significant challenges. Growth both in population and in industry demand for more information workers is producing a much larger pool of students seeking our services. These students bring more diverse needs and demands to higher education, however, at a time when college costs already are soaring. To make matters worse, non-traditional providers from the private sector are beginning to pull students from traditional providers by offering credit for high-demand courses at much lower prices. How can higher education stay competitive? How can we accommodate more students with more diverse needs, yet keep tuition costs down?

An advanced network like Internet2 could help higher education meet these challenges. In this presentation, Judith Boettcher, the Executive Director of the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN), explains how support for real-time video and audio, multicasting, and Quality of Service could broaden communication and collaboration between faculty, students, and researchers over the Net. These tools will not only augment traditional teaching and research methods; in some cases, they can be part of a "virtual university" capable of meeting the diverse needs of an expanding and varied student body.

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What Makes an Internet2 Application?
Ted Hanss
One thing that sets the Internet2 project apart is its early focus on the advanced applications that justify an advanced network. In the past, Internet projects have concentrated on the engineering challenges of building an infrastructure capable of supporting a national or global network. Within the Internet2 project, however, commitment to the development of specific types of applications informs and shapes these engineering decisions.

There is no strict technical definition of an Internet2 application, however. Ted Hanss, the Director of Applications Development for Internet2, explains that two common attributes of Internet2 applications are that they enhance the research and educational activities of higher education, and they require an advanced network. This includes a broad range of applications which employ features like interactive collaboration across multiple sites, real-time modeling and sensing, remote access both to technical instruments and to databases, and tele-immersion. This presentation describes some of the middleware tools and infrastructure components needed to support these types of applications.

The Internet2 project hopes to involve as many researchers and educators as possible in the development of applications. This presentation also describes the type of information that we need to disseminate to potential developers, the type of technical information we need to collect from our developers so that we can pass it on to our networking engineers, and the types of Internet2 working groups set up to ease this collaboration.

This presentation complements the presentation "Internet2 Applications: Samples," which describes in more detail specific Internet2 applications currently under development.

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Internet2 Applications: Samples
Ted Hanss
In this presentation, Ted Hanss, the Director of Applications Development for Internet2, describes in detail some specific Internet2 applications currently under development. These include an application developed at the University of Indiana that provides remote access to high-fidelity audio recordings, an application developed at UC San Diego and Cornell University that employs telemicroscopy, an application developed at the University of Michigan that allows the remote manipulation of scientific instruments, an application developed at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center that uses 3-dimensional brain mapping, and an application developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago that employs tele-immersion.

Also included in this presentation is a link to a website that provides the most current updates on Internet2 applications.

This presentation complements the presentation "What Makes an Internet2 Application?" which describes in more detail the characteristics and demands of these advanced applications.

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Internet2 Technical Challenges
Doug Gale
One advantage of Internet2 is that it is designed to augment rather than directly replace the existing Internet. Of course, this feature also can produce some headaches. Once users see what is technically possible with an advanced Internet, they expect consistent, seamless service from end-to-end, no matter what. This is much easier said than done -- especially when transmissions must travel thousands of miles across multiple and varied service points to desktops that, in the end, may or may not support a particular function.

In this presentation, Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, identifies and briefly describes some of the key technical challenges facing the implementation of Internet2. These include the challenges of dealing with large delay-bandwidth products, of introducing Quality of Service across a network, of expanding multicast support, and of introducing IP version 6 as the next Internet Protocol. He concludes this presentation with a brief description of some Internet2 challenges already met.

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What Does Internet2 Mean for My Institution?
Doug Gale
Many universities are already taking advantage of some of the capabilities Internet2 has to offer. As we saw with the first Internet, however, different institutions have different needs and will develop their own schedules for connecting to the next Internet. Three key questions currently face administrators at institutions of higher education: What does the launching of Internet2 mean for my institution? What factors determine when my institution should join Internet2? And perhaps the most pressing question, how much is it going to cost?

In this presentation, Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, addresses these concerns and outlines the context in which institutions must make their own decisions about when to join Internet2.

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Meeting the Technological Challenges of Internet2: The Working Groups
Doug Gale
The Internet2 project is designed to take advantage of the synergy between network engineering and advanced applications. New applications provide the motivation for advancing engineering, and in turn, the engineering of new network capabilities motivates and enables the development of new applications. Developing a network that recognizes this relationship can create some specific technological challenges associated either with network engineering, applications development, or joint applications/engineering functions.

This presentation describes the Internet2 working groups designed to address these challenges. Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, describes the goals and objectives both of the working groups in general, and of the three main categories of working groups. The specific focus of the various working groups mirror the specific types of technical challenges facing Internet2 and include applications working groups, engineering working groups, and joint applications/engineering working groups.

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Internet2 Industry Partners and Affiliates
Doug Gale
The success of the first Internet would not have had such far reaching effects without collaboration between higher education, government agencies, and the corporate sector. One goal of the Internet2 project is to establish and facilitate this sort of inter-organizational participation early on.

In this presentation, Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, explains the mutual benefits of industry and affiliate participation in the Internet2 project. Also included are links to websites that provide more information on partner involvement in the Internet2 project.

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Keeping Up with Internet2...
Doug Gale
The first Internet had an enormous impact on the way we teach and conduct research. Internet2 promises to continue to influence the evolution of higher education. In this brief presentation, Doug Gale, Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services at George Washington University, provides some tips for staying abreast of Internet2 technological innovations so that you can assess any potential impact on your own institution.

This presentation also includes a list of links to Web resources that have the most up-to-date information on different aspects of the Internet2 project.