Internet II is coming...

Tue Oct 8 22:09:32 UTC 1996

On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Paul J. Zawada wrote:

> It's a way for Universities to talk to _each_other_ at higher speeds without
> having to pay for the *ahem* value "added" by the Internet.  Higher-Ed
> institutions want to talk to each other at higher speeds but don't
> necessarily want pay for their undergrads' (or professors' for that matter)
> ability to download nudie-GIFs 20x faster.  So while there's no more money
> in the budget for faster Internet connectivity, many university provosts
> would be willing to spend more money for bandwidth if it were used for
> "nobler" pursuits.  Basically, they want the Internet they had 6 years ago
> only faster.

Even with "recreational" use of the Internet, the Internet today is much
faster then it was 6 years ago (T1 national backbone (singular)). MAE East
and West traffic stats bear this out operating at around %30 capacity. The
problem is ISP's who oversell backbones, Universities who overuse T1/T3
links. Given this, it would behove the Universities to form a private
"intranet" and become thier own ISP. Of course, this model is an old one
allready done by Suranet, etc.. who eventually went commercial for lack of
funding when the next wave of technolgy arrived. In the end the benifit
went to the equipment manufactures and the likes of AOL.   

Hopefully students will find new and fun ways to use Internet II -
Then we can have Internet III?? Im very excited :)

/stb

---
Stephen Balbach  "Driving the Internet To Work"
VP, ClarkNet     due to the high volume of mail I receive please quote
info at clark.net   the full original message in your reply.