The Abilene Network and Internet2 (not 2.0)
A friend of mine works closely with the Abilene network and after talking with him I became aware that not many people know about this “super-network” that silently criss-crosses the nation to connect learning institution’s of all kinds.
What is the Abilene Network?
“The Abilene network is a project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), home of the Internet2 project. In partnership with Qwest Communications, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and Indiana University, UCAID is deploying Abilene as the most advanced and far-reaching research and education network in the United States. A primary goal of Abilene is to support the efforts of the Internet2 project.”
It is a high-performance internet backbone that enlists the help of Tier 1 providers like Level3 to provide unparalleled bandwidth (100Gbs node to node) for use by universities and research institution’s. The Network Operations Center (NOC) for the Abilene Network has made its home at Indiana University since its inception.
What is Internet2?
First and foremost, it has nothing to do with Internet 2.0 you hear everyone talking about. From the official source, “Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions of its members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development, deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies.”
What They Do
“Internet2 members leverage our high-performance network infrastructure and extensive worldwide partnerships to support and enhance their educational and research missions. Beyond just providing network capacity, Internet2 actively engages our community in the development of important new technology including middleware, security, network research and performance measurement capabilities which are critical to the progress of the Internet.”
If you are interested in viewing the amount of traffic that travels through this network you can view these live maps that the friend mentioned above initially created a few years ago. (They are now maintaned by one of his colleagues)
