Public Interest Networks

Wed Nov 24 22:17:16 UTC 2004

> you raise some interesting points from bw standpoint.
> 
> what really got me scratching my head is the fact that throwing bw to
> conserve computing power. in this cat and mouse game, mouse always wins :-)
> 
> "The OptiPuter project aims at learning how to 'waste' bandwidth and
> storage in order to conserve 'scarce' computing in this new world of
> inverted values," said Smarr.
> 
> i'm not even sure why even implement mpls where latency/congestion is
> not an issue specially in this case or even talking about I2 for that
> matter.

Hmmm. Maybe I need to be a little more explicit in my concerns....

I am not concerned with the applications of the bandwidth that research 
folks are doing. Of course,  research for research's sake has a value. I 
guess I meant... what is this interest in building a new network from 
scratch when all they are doing is using commercially available 
equipment provided by Cisco, and perhaps other vendors, etc? Regen is 
probably handled by the fiber vendors too... so where is the research in 
running a network?? Its trying to use the network as a service, of 
which, I am not sure there are many research interests that have more 
experience than the commercial folks.

By mentioning MPLS or another tunneling technology, I didn't mean to 
imply IPV4. Indeed, I meant that you can encapsulate whatever you want 
on an underlying network, or if you need raw access to the optics, you 
can always order wavelengths... The idea of building a network like this 
seemed like reinventing a dirt road next to an existing superhighway.

Likewise, with the Internet2 stuff, the underlying network is provided 
by commercial carriers... End equipment may be different, and that's the 
way it is with all commercial circuits today for standards-based 
communications/protocols..

So what is the value in dedicated research networks when the same 
facility can be provided by existing lit capacities by commercial 
networks? Is it a price delta? Or is it belief that the commercial folks 
don't meet the needs of the underlying applications? (if its the latter, 
I'd love to know what is being done).

To hash this out even more.... In regards to regional academic networks, 
I completely understand that there are significant economies by 
operating as a single entity. The complexity of running dark fiber in a 
regional network isn't really bad at all, and capacity can be added in 
pretty dynamic increments. However, once you start expanding to connect 
regional networks to each, it seems that the complexity increases far 
faster than the benefits -- and where universal/commercial carriers seem 
to have the greatest value offering.

What am I missing?

(P.S. have a nice holiday).

DJ