What is Internet2?

Internet2 is a non-profit consortium, led by over 200 U.S universities, government researchers and high-tech companies that collaborate to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technology to create the next version of the Internet. Their efforts are coordinated by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID, www.ucaid.org) in Washington, D.C.

For more information on Internet2®, click here.

What is NGI?

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a multi-agency Federal research and development (R&D) program that is developing advanced networking technologies, developing revolutionary applications that require advanced networking, and demonstrating these capabilities on testbeds that are 100 to 1,000 times faster end-to-end than today's Internet.
The NGI initiative began October 1, 1997, with the following participating agencies:

• DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• NIH - National Institutes of Health
• NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
• NSF - National Science Foundation

For more information on NGI, click here.

What is vBNS+?

The very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS+) is a high-speed network backbone developed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and MCI WorldCom. It was the first Internet2 network backbone.

What is Abilene?

Named after a pioneering railroad outpost in the American West, Abilene is an advanced high-speed backbone network that connects regional network aggregation points, called GigaPoPs. It was developed by UCAID in partnership with Qwest Communications, Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Cisco Systems. An important goal of the Abilene project is to provide a backbone network for Internet2.

For more information on Abilene, click here.

Is Internet2 a separate Network?

Internet2 is not a separate physical network and will not replace the Internet. Internet2 brings together institutions and resources from academia, industry and government to develop new technologies and capabilities that can then be deployed in the global Internet.

What is a GigaPoP?

Gigabit Point of Presence (GigaPoP) is a high-speed switching point being developed by universities across the U.S. as part of the Internet2 project. The first GigaPoP was deployed in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina in late 1997. For the Internet2 GigaPoP List, click here.

Photo courtesy of UCAID

What is middleware?

The term middleware is used to describe a diverse and broad range of products, tools, and data that help applications use networked resources and services. It can refer to software that functions as a conversion or translation layer between an application and a control program.

For more information on middle, click here.

What is H.320? H.323?

H.320 is the standard for wide area (WAN) videoconferencing over ISDN, switched 56, and T1 lines. It defines the communications protocol and the compression algorithm for reducing the digital video into a smaller bandwidth.

H.323 is a standard that regulates the transmission of real-time audio, video, and data communications over an IP network such as the Internet or a LAN. It is designed to promote interoperability with other multimedia-services networks and also between competing commercial applications by different vendors. The connection between two dissimilar networks is achieved through the use of a gateway which performs the network or signaling translation required for interoperability.

For more information on H.323, click here.

What is Multicast? What is Mbone?

Multicast is a suite of protocols designed to form a specialized network capability to efficiently transmit data streams to multiple receivers across a network.

There are three types of traffic on the Internet: Unicast, one source to one receiver; Broadcast, one source to all receivers; and Multicast, one source to select receivers.

IP Multicast (Internet-based Multicast Backbone or "Mbone") is used to stream audio and video over a TCP/IP network by relying on the existing network resources to perform the complex data replication and routing. It saves network bandwidth by transmitting files as one data stream over the backbone and only duplicating them to the target stations by the router at the end of the path.

For a whitepaper on IP Multicast, click here.
For the Cisco IP Multicast Group, click there.
For the IP Multicast Group, click here.

What is QBone?

Launched in October 1998, the QBone is an Internet2 initiative to build a testbed for new IP quality of service (QoS) technologies. New advanced network applications like remote instrument control, scientific collaboratories, and virtual classrooms will give our universities the tools that they need to fulfill their teaching and research missions in the coming century ­ but only if the demands that these new applications place on the network can be met.

The name "QBone" is not an abbreviation for anything! In particular, since the QBone is not a backbone network or an overlay network, "QBone" does not stand for "QoS Backbone". However, "QBone" is meant to suggest a QoS testbed in the spirit of the MBone (an IP native multicast testbed) and the 6Bone (an IPv6 testbed).

For more information on QBone, click here.

What is diffserve?

Today Internet transmissions are "best effort"—packets get there when they get there. That's not a problem with e-mail messages, which don't have to be delivered instantaneously. But packets in a videoconference stream need to reach their destination without even a millisecond break. Diffserve would take care of the issue by assigning levels of priority to different types of packets.

What is IPv6?

Internet Protocol version 6, once referred to as IP Next Generation (IPng), is the next generation IP protocol. Its specifications was completed in 1997 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

IPv6 is designed to correct some of the shortcomings of IPv4 such as data security and maximum number of Internet addresses. IPv6 increases the address space from 32 to 128 bits and also supports quality of service (QoS) parameters for realtime audio and video.

For more information on IPv6, click here.
For more information on the IETF, click here.

What does Binghamton University have to do with Internet2?

Binghamton University is a member of the Internet2 consortium, as well as a participant in the Abilene network. Everyone on campus has access to the Internet2 network (although only certain connection sites take full advantage of Internet2's increased bandwidth).

What kind of research is BU doing with Internet2?

For more information on the research being conducted at BU with Internet2, click here.