NZ missing the bus on Internet2 connection

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Concern is mounting that New Zealand will be left behind in the development of high bandwidth data services unless it participates in Internet2.

Internet2 is a high-speed network being developed by a coalition of 170 United States universities as well as research networks in Canada, Europe and Australia and a few dozen corporations, which is being used to research a variety of high-bandwidth applications.

At a symposium held in Auckland last month, Dr Neil James, assistant director of information services at the University of Otago, warned that NZ's information technology industry would suffer unless a link with Internet2 was established.

"My main interest with Internet2 at the moment is where NZ isn't," he said.

Dr James said the country's research community was already being hindered by a lack of affordable high-speed bandwidth, whereas the Internet2 backbone network known as Abilene allowed US universities to transmit data at typical speeds of 2.4 gigabits per second.

"In round terms that's about 1000 times faster than the normal links between universities in NZ."

Dr James suggested one way New Zealand could participate in Internet2 development would be by collaborating with the Australian Research and Education network (AARNet).

This month AARNet, which provides internet services to all 37 Australian universities, deployed dual 155Mb per second internet traffic circuits between Sydney and Seattle using the Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN).

The link will allow AARNet to communicate with the Abilene backbone network in the United States, and participate in the International Transit Network, making 24 other regional and national advanced networks available to and from AARNet.

"A lot of the work in this involves the negotiations to administer the network, and AARNet has already done the hard miles on that," Dr James said. "It has not been easy but they have indicated they would be sympathetic to a New Zealand link."

While such a link would involve the purchase of international bandwidth, Dr James said it would be well within the capacity of the Southern Cross cable.

"The fascinating thing about this technology is that the capacity of fibre has been increased by three-fold over the last year with technologies like WDM [Wave Division Multiplexing] and DWDM [Dense Wave Division Multiplexing]."

Within NZ, Dr James said there was plenty of "dark fibre" - or optical fibre, which had been connected but was lying idle.

"The potential is there. The technology exists but it's not happening through the market. We are paying a lot more [for high-speed data links] than researchers working in other countries."

Dr James said Internet2 participation would give local information technology firms invaluable experience in high-speed networking techniques.

"It's not just about providing astronomical amounts of bandwidth, it's about middleware and how you organise things to guarantee quality of service as well.

"If we don't get involved, local software companies will lose out on these opportunities as we are looking towards a world where everything that can be is transported over IP [internet protocol] networks in the foreseeable future."

Symposium organiser John Houlker said that in some ways the event had been "a ripple from the past" as he recognised many faces who were involved in the early development of what could be called internet 1.

Mr Houlker, who has recently joined Industry New Zealand as an information and communications (ICT) sector specialist, was responsible for negotiating New Zealand's original 19.2 kilobit internet link to Hawaii in 1989.

He said Industry New Zealand was keen to promote discussion of the Internet2 issue between the research and education community and telcos.

" While Australia, Singapore, Japan, Korea, North America, the UK, and Europe all have Internet2 projects underway, we are notable by our absence."

Links


Internet2

Australian Research and Education network

Internet2 seminar report