Internet II is coming...

Tue Oct 8 23:23:47 UTC 1996

On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Sean Doran wrote:

> Come on, Vadim, this is a great idea.  They should build this
> cheaper faster better network to be used exclusively for meritorious
> traffic because it's in the national interests of the USA.
> 
> Moreover, the the members of the Internet II consortium (hi University
> MIS types and management!) and any governmental funding body involved
> should mandate that any meritorious traffic use IPv6 *only* and set an
> end-to-end IPv6 option to indicate which traffic should go across
> Internet II and which should go across whatever IPv6 Internet exists
> as provided by Evil Commercial Interests at the ridiculously high
> prices which are being charged universities and research labs.
> 
> Moreover, they should also mandate that Internet II be built on
> ATM, use ABR, and also use RSVP to guarantee the kinds of qualities
> of service that the R&E community requires.

Sean, isn't this excessive cruelty to those that have to deal with this
in the end?

This sort of proposal, i.e. building a Higher Ed private network for
research, is in and of itself not such a bad thing.

The grow of Internet since NSFNet shut down has put serious strains on the
infrastructure that researchy folks used to use to do(and still do) their
various work on.

Given that the exponential growth of the net is projected to continue, it's
not completely baseless to think that the problems we've seen over the last 12
months or so will continue. So if you follow that train of thought, building
a private net for "important/meritorious" traffic makes some amount of sense.

Now, it must be pointed out that a large part of the problem is in the
way overloaded access pipe many of these universities have to various ISPs,
placing a fair amount of culpability to the universities themselves.

It should also be pointed out that while the basic idea might have some merit,
it's highly debatable whether this private network will be worth the
investment once this idea goes through the normal academic politics (way too
many cooks), ATM-mania, bureaucracy, delays, normal academic shoe-string
budget, etc.

Hey, at the very least, shoe-string budget network strung together with
bubblegums and built-in cumbersome bureaucratic rules and progress
decelerator should make it a very interesting thing in a researchy academic
sort of a way.

-dorian, speaking strictly for himself.