NewsFactor Network | What Internet2 Researchers Are Dreaming Up

What Internet2 Researchers Are Dreaming Up
By Ellen Powell

June 5, 2003 4:00AM

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Say there are only a handful of doctors capable of performing a new procedure. I2 allows them to share their knowledge. In fact, their precise hand movements can be captured by a computer so that students can retrace them as though they are putting on a magic glove.

There is a parallel universe, and a lucky group of academics and corporate R&D types are lucky enough to live there. It is known as Internet2, or I2, and it is a place where speeds are up to 1,000 times faster, vast datasets can be moved like virtual feathers, and there are no pop-up ads.

Internet2 is actually two things. Specifically, it is an organization -- a not-for-profit consortium of more than 200 U.S. universities and scores of big-name companies that are working together on the development of a faster, cooler information superhighway. Internet2 is also the name of the network itself -- a virtual land where activities that seem incredible to most people are taking place every day.

Last month, for example, a group of poets scattered across the U.S. joined via I2 videoconferencing to perform a live, 90-minute poetry reading as a dedication to Columbia University professor and poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002). Internet2 has enabled a Washington, D.C., surgeon to direct a gall bladder operation in Columbus, Ohio. And symphony orchestras in Miami and Atlanta have been able to practice together in real-time.

Touch Me, Heal Me

Remember the Star Trek holodeck? Internet2 creates a similar collaborative experience through the use of "haptics," a remote feedback technology that lets participants "touch" things that might be on the other side of the globe. They get the shape, texture and density of the object through the computer. This nifty feature is useful for things like distance learning and telemedicine.

Some of the new technologies that I2 researchers are playing with include IPv6, or Internet Protocol Version 6; multicasting; and quality of service (QoS) -- all of which provide a level of efficiency that will enable radical new advances in applications. Imagine an entire library housed online. Or a virtual laboratory where a scientific team in Australia could work on a nuclear-physics experiment shoulder-to-shoulder with its counterparts in the U.S. Those are no longer science-fiction concepts -- the future is here.

The Long Horizon

The Internet2 consortium started out in 1996 as an effort among 34 universities and numerous corporate research labs. Internet2-connected universities have committed more than US$80 million per year in new investments on campuses since then, and corporate members have committed upwards of $30 million so far. Internet2 institutions also receive funding via grants from the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. (continued...)

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