Why build Internet2?
Increasing the capacity of the high-performance backbones is critical to researchers who must gather and send vast amounts of data. It’s also essential to address the anticipated increase in Internet use by the general public, which will make the recent yearly doubling of traffic seem modest, Foster says. Moreover, Internet2 researchers need greater computing power to test new methods and protocols for streaming, or transmitting data in real time, and to accommodate nomadic computing. Currently, the Internet uses a transfer protocol, which breaks apart a body of data such as a message and then reassembles it upon delivery. The strategy efficiently maximizes the network’s capacity. But, it wouldn’t support the transmission of a lecture or a symphony concert, which the user would want to hear just as it would be performed, in real time. Internet2 researchers want to multicast these performances. Unlike a broadcast, which would transmit the concert to every point on the network, a multica
