ICFA Report

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Appendix 2. Internet2 Report to ICFA

January 2008

http://www.internet2.edu

Submitted by Heather Boyles (heather@internet2.edu) with Eric Boyd

(eboyd@internet2.edu), Rich Carlson (rcarlson@internet2.edu), Lauren Rotman

(lauren@internet2.edu) and Rick Summerhill (rrsum@internet2.edu)

Introduction:

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.

Internet2 provides the U.S. research and education community with a dynamic, innovative and

cost-effective hybrid optical and packet network. The network was designed to provide next-

generation production services as well as a platform for the development of new networking ideas

and protocols. With community control of the fundamental networking infrastructure, the

Internet2 Network provides the necessary scalability for member institutions to efficiently

provision resources to address bandwidth-intensive requirements of their campuses such as,

collaborative applications, distributed research experiments, grid-based data analysis and social

networking.

The Internet2 Network interconnects 210 U.S. research university members, numerous corporate

and government research laboratories, and many other institutions in the research, education and

clinical communities. The nationwide backbone network interconnects regional and state

networks which, in turn provide access to these institutions. In addition, the Internet2 Network

has a broad set of interconnections with U.S. government national research networks and over 80

non-US National Research and Education networks (NRENs) around the world providing truly

global connectivity to Internet2 Network users.

Network Developments 2007:

The year 2007 marked the completion of the current Internet2 Network. The previous Internet2

national backbone network (Abilene) was officially decommissioned in September 2007. The

Internet2 Network has a national footprint across the United States built on more than 13,000

miles of dedicated fiber provided by Level 3 Communications. Level 3 has deployed Infinera's

Digital Optical Networking equipment across the dedicated high capacity backbone to enable

dynamic optical circuit provisioning by Internet2. Internet2 has also partnered with Ciena

Corporation to deploy the CoreDirector Multiservice Switch for switching and sub-wavelength

grooming services. Additionally, Internet2 has deployed its existing Juniper T640 routers to

provide the enhanced IP capabilities on the new network. Currently, ten 10 Gbps links are

provisioned on each segment of the network, but this can be scaled to 20 or 40 or 100 or more

wavelengths as required by the community.

ESnet also completed the build out of its next generation network ESnet4 in 2007. The

ESNet4 network is managed by ESnet and built across Internet2's optical backbone infrastructure.

The ESnet4 network is configured as five interconnected rings, each consisting of one or more

10-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) wavelengths that form a coast-to-coast network.