1. National R&E networking infrastructure
AAMC GIR MEETING
WASHINGTON, DC
Steve Corbató, Director of Backbone Network Infrastructure
This is a general overview presentation about Internet2. Internet2 is a consortium, led by US universities, which is recreating the partnership among academia, industry and government that fostered today’s Internet in its infancy.
10 March 2001

2. Key points
An overview of the evolving national R&E network infrastructure
Why isn’t high performance networking plug-and-play yet and what can we do abut this?
Going optical – exposing the core of telecommunications
Watch out for genomics!
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3. Advanced U.S. research university connectivity requirements
Research testbed
configurable, breakable, measurable infrastructure
serving computer science research and advanced engineering
traditional province of DARPA
Advanced service/application deployment net
standards based, 7x24 operation expectation (NSFnet  vBNS  Abilene)
National education intranet
interconnecting all K-20 educational institutions/networks to enable applications and services unavailable over the commercial Internet
Commercial entities (high perf. connectivity)
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4. Unique features of Internet2 environment
Per capita available bandwidth O(10-100) higher than over the commercial Internet
TCP flows of 0.5 Gbps possible
Active advanced service deployment efforts
Native multicast most widely deployed
Commitment to open network management and active measurement
Collaborative relationship with GigaPoPs and research university campus technical communities
Commitment to the original end-to-end architecture and performance visions
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5. Abilene – February, 2001 Inflection point in network development
OC-48c (2.5 Gbps) IP-over-SONET backbone
53 current and pending connections in 32 states
175+ participants in 47 states and D.C.
Ongoing strong partnership
Cisco, Nortel, Qwest, Indiana Univ., ITECs (NC and OH)
Increasing backbone utilization
Characteristic exponential growth
O(OC-12c) peak utilization on some links
Traffic doubling time: 7 months
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6. 4/28/2019

7. A new perspective on utilization
“Why worry? Abilene only has 10-25% utilization on an OC-48c (2.5 Gbps) backbone”
But we have exponential growth!
“September surprise” in academic nets
Excess capacity is needed to motivate and to enable paradigmatic apps & services
Last week’s Nisqually earthquake reminded me that outside of the Richter scale, we don’t think exponentially on a daily basis
4/28/2019

8. “Postel scale”
A means to stop thinking linearly about Internet bandwidth utilization
P = 3 + log10(Utilization/Capacity)
Typical values (range: 3  -infinity)
100% (saturation) P=3
10% P=2 …
0.1% P=0 (floor?)
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9. Two years later… A backbone is exceeding 30% utilization
Network manager: “Yikes, our backbone is now running at 2.5 out of a possible 3 on the Postel Scale”
CIO: “Wow, thanks for catching this. Let’s get that upgrade started now.”
4/28/2019

10. Abilene annual connection fees
Previous
New
OC-3c
$110,000
($110,000) SONET & ATM
OC-12c
$320,000
$270,000 SONET
$280,000 ATM/1 PVC & 1 BGP peering
$290,000 ATM
OC-48c
$495,000
$430,000 SONET
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11. End-to-End (e2e) Performance Initiative
Human to Human Collaboration Experience
User perception EYEBALL
Application CORE APP
Operating system
Host IP stack STACK
Host network card
Local Area Network (LAN) JACK
Campus backbone network
Campus connection to regional network/GigaPoP
GigaPoP connection to Internet2 national backbone
International connections
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12. New telecom business models
Kudos to Bandwidth Pricing Group
Carriers - two emerging service models
 providers
Network host (dim fiber/condominium)
Traders
Bandwidth as the new fungible unit
Should accelerate provisioning - velocity
Basis for a national testbed?
Little altruism (cf. Calif. energy crisis)
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13. Gigapop Transport Options: Topics for future discussion
RoW, conduit, dark & dim fiber, ’s
IRU arrangements
Optical technologies (amps, repeaters, DWDM, optical switching)
DWDM interoperability 
10 Gigabit Ethernet vs. OC-192c
Strategic carrier hotel development
Collocation for interconnection, peering (not data centers)
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14. 4/28/2019

15. Next steps for Abilene Continuing advanced service deployment
Playing our part in E2E Performance Initiative
Ongoing planning for Network of the Future
Close collaboration with the Gigapops and new fiber intiatives
Expanding access to broader education community in support of advanced networking
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16. For more information corbato@internet2.edu www.internet2.edu/abilene
4/28/2019