Summer 1999
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The cable, thick as a pencil and the color of a pumpkin, doesn’t look any more heavy-duty than the wire connecting a television and a VCR. But when this particular fiber-optic line was plugged into equipment at the University of Oregon earlier this year, the state of Oregon suddenly had its own "GigaPoP" site. In simple terms, this means that Oregon researchers can now access a new members-only lane on the information superhighway that makes the current Internet feel like a traffic jam.
That lane, a fiber-optic network called Abilene, is the avenue a broad-based scientific effort is roaring down to create the next-generation Internet, or Internet2. More than 150 U.S. research universities–in partnership with industry leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, and Intel and with U.S. federal agencies–are collaborating on the Internet2 project.
"Internet2 is an effort to create the Internet of the future, and Abilene is a vastly important network over which much of that creative effort will flow," says Joanne Hugi, director of the UO Computing Center.
The Oregon GigaPoP consists of two links, one going to Sacramento, California, and the other to Denver, Colorado. This double connection will serve to protect the system from disruptions that are more likely with a single avenue of access. The two new circuits operate at 155 megabits per second. This is 100 times the speed of the typical T1 connection used by local Internet service providers (ISPs) and thousands of times faster than a standard home modem.
While the Oregon GigaPoP is located in Eugene, the access it provides is not limited to the UO. Scientists at Portland State University, Oregon State University, and other institutions in the state can zoom onto Abilene through the UO connection by way of Oregon’s existing high-speed network called OWEN. Using the Owen-to-Abilene connection, Oregon scientists can collaborate with colleagues across the country or link to distant instruments and data. The new connection will provide the link for heretofore-impossible high-performance computing projects. The University of Washington is the only other GigaPoP site in the Pacific Northwest.
"This new network has primarily two functions," Hugi explains. "First, it gives researchers a high-speed proving ground on which to test out the technologies that will dramatically surpass the capabilities of the current Internet."
Many of the technological advances that will someday speed service on commercial Internet service providers–from small, local providers to giants such as America Online–are likely to be developed by academic researchers using Abilene.
"A second important benefit of Abilene is to open the door to university researchers in many fields to access the complementary tools of high-performance computing and advanced networking," Hugi says. "These days high-performance connections are an important tool in a large and rapidly growing number of scientific explorations–in physics, biology, earth science, to name just a few. This tool is taking scientists where their imaginations lead them."
Examples of the uses of Abilene include UO researchers accessing vast data sets from distant particle accelerators, making astronomical observations through telescopes in Arizona or Hawaii, and accessing the country’s regional supercomputing centers.
Hugi emphasizes that the connection to the Abilene network means more to the state than just cost-effective access to a superfast network.
"It is vital for the state of Oregon be represented as Internet2 develops," she says. "This project is where the next generation of the Internet will be created, and we want to be a part of that–as large a part as possible. This is a monumental effort, and it is to the state’s advantage both educationally and economically to participate in a big way."