All stops out for next-generation internet

If an advanced internet network can be considered a measuring stick for a country's technological development, then Fiji, Malta and Bulgaria are just three of 40 nations ranking ahead of New Zealand.

It's another indicator of the country's sad technological standing, internationally speaking, but it's luckily one that will soon improve with the long-awaited construction of a next-generation internet.

The advanced network, to be used primarily for research and education, should be operational by the end of the year, says Charles Jarvie, its implementation manager for the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. And it's about time.

"We as a country have fallen behind," Jarvie said. "The danger from a research and education point of view is not so much that we're in a backwater, but we just continue steering by our wake and continue to do what we did.

"We haven't been able to use some of the tools that others now have available to them."

A final proposal on setting up a company to run the network will be put to the Cabinet soon, Jarvie says, and approval is expected by the end of next month or early July.

Completing contracts with suppliers and constructing the network, which will involve setting up the connections, should be quick, he says.

"International connectivity and some of the connectivity around the Auckland area could be done quite quickly, irrespective of supplier."

From there, New Zealand will be able to hook up with advanced networks in countries such as Fiji and Bulgaria, but also the United States, Britain and Australia, that already have them.

Advanced networks elsewhere are being used by researchers to transfer huge amounts of data in fields such as astronomical observation, seismic monitoring and archeological work.

Researchers in connected countries are able to share their data repositories with one another.

Scientific disciplines such as biocomputing, environmental science and genome research rely on this co-operational ability.

New Zealand, Jarvie says, is falling farther and farther behind by not being able to connect to these international data pools.

The networks elsewhere move terabytes of data quickly. A typical New Zealand university can at present deliver a transfer rate to an individual researcher of about 1 megabit a second. At that speed, at least 22 hours are needed to transfer 10 gigabytes of data.

The advanced network aims to give the individual a rate of 100 megabits a second, which would cut that same transfer time to about 13 minutes. Jarvie also expects the speed to increase dramatically over the next few years.

Apart from moving data, the enormous speed will allow for high-quality voice, video and media transmission and, in one example, will allow New Zealand geologists and geophysicists access to the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, which monitors fault lines off the Californian coast.

The speed has made headlines overseas. In the US, Hollywood studios have taken legal action against students using Internet2 - the name of the US advanced network - to swap movies.

But, proponents say, file-sharing was one of the intended designs of the first internet, and it's going to be a reality of next-generation internets.

"It's a glimpse into how we're going to be doing things in the future," says Simon Reilly, chief executive of the Next-Generation Internet New Zealand (NGI-NZ) society, and counsellor with InternetNZ. "Obviously, Hollywood doesn't like that view."

File-sharing is just one of the commercial applications of the advanced networks, Reilly says. More uses, such as videoconferencing and broadcasting of high-resolution video, will become more apparent in the next five to 10 years.

NGI-NZ is sharing the steering of the advanced network with the ministry, New Zealand's Vice-Chancellor Committee and the Association of Crown Research Institutes.

The NGI society - a combination of university and corporate members - has been pushing the advanced network since its formation three years ago, and is pleased its efforts will soon be realised.

The reason New Zealand is behind, says NGI chairman Neil James, is because of a disconnection in market forces here.

"I don't think there's any doubt we have suffered from a lack of investment in the private infrastructure," he says.

"We don't have an effective market at the level that we need it."

Reilly agrees. "You have to point to the lack of a truly competitive marketplace, which would have allowed the opportunity for the institutions [universities] themselves to create these networks, which is how it evolved in most other countries."

Jarvie says the ball was dropped around 12 years ago, when Waikato University - the first peering point for academic internet services - had to step back from running it because the costs had grown so large.

Private interests then stepped in to run the network, which eventually became New Zealand's internet.

And private interests, he says, don't always match up with what's good for the public.

James says that for the good of the country, such fundamental infrastructure should be kept in public hands.

"We've learned that lesson on things like railway lines. They're natural monopolies and they shouldn't be in the hands of commercial companies to hold the country to ransom."

Catching up to the world

* The final proposal to set up a company to run a new advanced internet is going to the Cabinet within the next month.

* The new advanced network will benefit scientific research, significantly boosting connectivity speeds at universities and allowing access to similar networks around the world.

* Commercial benefits expected to filter down over the next few years include high-quality voice, video and media transmission.