University of Washington, Computing & Communications

Last updated at 16:10:12 PST on Saturday, February 8, 1997.

[UW] [COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS]

Internet2: Pragmatic Views from Higher Education

NANOG-San Francisco
February 10, 1997

Steve Corbató
corbato@cac.washington.edu

Networks and Distributed Computing
Computing & Communications
University of Washington

http://weber.u.washington.edu/~corbato/nanog-sf

Disclaimer:

I am not an official spokesperson for the Internet2 project, but have participated in a number of planning meetings and on the initial architecture committee.

Assertion:

U.S. higher education historically has played a leading role in several stages of Internet development:

ARPANET (1967-1987): Computer Science departments
NSFNET (1987-1994): Central computing organizations

Observation:

In the wake of the NSFNET transition, U.S. higher education is merely a loud customer of the commodity Internet.

Higher Education Internet objectives

Three Internet challenges facing higher education
- Variable performance over the commodity Internet
- No excess bandwidth for advanced application development
- No ubiquitous 1-10 Mbps yet
Internet2 is not a panacea for higher ed
- intra-higher ed/federal lab connectivity
- advanced application testbed
Internet2 does not obviate need for commodity Internet connectivity

Evolving UW Internet strategy

Zeroth-order CoS/QoS via BGP-4

Commodity Internet
- NWNet (MCI, Sprint, UUNET)
Local exchange
- Washington K-20 Telecommunications Network
- Local exchange point - SNNAP
Next Generation Internet initiatives
- vBNS
- Internet2

UW Connectivity Overview

[UW CONNECTIVITY SCHEMATIC]

Postscript version of this schematic

SNNAP Overview

UW as provider-neutral organizer/operator
Emphasis on local interconnectivity
Distributed, redundant, scalable exchange point (EP) in Seattle
Frame based - dedicated 10 and 100 Mbps attachments
Selection of full-duplex Fast Ethernet over FDDI and ATM
Minimal rule set for connectees
Bilateral peerings

SNNAP Architecture

[SNNAP SCHEMATIC]

Postscript version of this schematic

Next generation Internet initiatives at the UW

Premise: SMTP, HTTP, and MBONE fail the sufficiency tests for packet-based remote collaboration and distance education applications.

Objectives:

cooperation on statistics and operations
Testbed for CoS/QoS-dependent applications
IPv6 deployment platform?

Internet2 planning

Process driven by higher ed CIOs (EDUCOM, FARNET)
UW has been at the I2 table since 1995
I2 reached critical mass in October, 1996
Development of Seattle Gigapop

[GIGAPOP SCHEMATIC]

Postscript version of this schematic

Next generation Internet initiatives at the UW (continued)

vBNS
- Critical events in 1996
  - NSF 96-64
  - Modified AUP
  - Interconnectivity with other federal nets
- UW role
  - received NSF grant as part of the class of 7/31/96
  - attachments: DS3 first year, OC-3c second year
  - vBNS viewed as the first manifestation of I2
Next Generation Internet Initiative
- White House initiative
- Encompasses vBNS and other federal nets (NASA, DoE, ARPA)

corbato@cac.washington.edu
February 8, 1997
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