Internet2 Wins from Decades of Govt.-Backed Innovation, Lawmakers Hear
Internet2 -- charged with developing and deploying advanced network applications for faster data transfer -- has benefited from U.S. investments in high-performance computing, the Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation & Competitiveness heard Wed. Level 3 Exec. Vp Jack Waters cited a recent partnership between his company and Internet2, a 200-plus university consortium, to create a new 100 Gbps network for key research centers, 10 times as fast as the group’s current backbone.
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Level 3 will provide optical services that will let researchers and scientists get dedicated 1 Gbps subwavelengths or entire 10 Gbps wavelengths and make the network to suit the information-sharing needs of the researchers, Waters said. “Achieving efficient utilization of the network is critical to ensuring that researchers have the bandwidth they need when they need it,” he said. Work with Internet2 is “an essential component of the nation’s cyber-infrastructure” and crucial in achieving advanced R&D objectives in the U.S. and abroad, Waters said.
The federal govt. has played a vital role in high- performance computing and networking for decades, Waters said. After the successful deployment of the ARPAnet, the National Science Foundation (NSF) saw the need to link researchers across the country and funded a basic network called CSnet in the late 1970s. Several years later, computing advances led to agency funding of 5 supercomputer centers and a network to connect them called NSFnet, he said. Those investments, paired with subsequent govt.-financed efforts, helped create today’s consumer innovations, Waters said.
NSFnet -- which connected 5 centers in 1985 and 50,000 networks by 1995, when the project was put out of commission -- was a crucial piece of the early infrastructure that led to the commercial Web, he said. Another important piece of Internet technology came from one of the 5 NSF centers. While Tim Berners-Lee is rightly credited with the idea for the World Wide Web, the first widely used browser was developed at the U. of Ill. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, he said. The browser, Mosaic, became an overnight success. This all occurred “many years before the world really understood what the Internet would be, through our government’s foresight and financial support,” Waters said.
Preserving U.S. leadership in high-performance computing requires a federal policy that “achieves a balance of investment and focus” on computing power, software and networking, he told lawmakers. Such a balanced approach supports the goals of the American Innovation & Competitiveness Act (S-2802), which the full Commerce committee marked up in May, and works to ensure that “all of the essential elements of the nation’s ‘innovation infrastructure’ are available to facilitate advanced research,” he said.
The bottom line is that high-performance computing will keep aiding U.S.-based innovation, improvements in research capabilities and enhancements in national security, said Subcommittee Chmn. Ensign (R-Nev.). Simon Szykman, dir. of the National Coordination Office for Networking & Information Technology Research & Development, told lawmakers that despite international challengers, the U.S. continues to lead the pack. About 60% of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers are in the U.S., and American vendors are the dominant suppliers of supercomputing systems, Szykman said. - - Andrew Noyes