What are the goals of Internet II?
A. I am on the Presidential Advisory Committee. What we’re looking for is for a general upscaling of the capabilities of corporate America, academic America and home America to have better access to the Internet information that’s out there. The network serves really two purposes. It gives you information. And it gives you the ability to communicate with others. And those two things are valuable. What we’d like to do is get wide-scale improvements (in speed) in the infrastructure. The big question is a what do you do with it, and how do you make it widespread and get the support structure in place. Internet II is one part of this Next Generation Internet (NGI) activity. This is a federal program. It has all the agencies involved. It has budgeted probably this year in excess of $150 million. What we’d like to do is make it less expensive by building a customer base for it, but more importantly by understanding how it can be used. Q. You mean it already exists? A. Pieces of it have exist
