A New Internet2

A New Internet2:
The Internet2 high-speed-networking consortium announced today that its new nationwide fiber-optic network will be built by Level 3 Communications Inc. and will be operational in about a year.

Internet2 decided earlier this year not to renew a contract with the telecommunications company Qwest to lease high-speed lines for use in Abilene, the conventional network that Internet2 now provides to colleges. The contract will be allowed to expire in 2007.

The new network, which has the working name of NewNet, would be a competitor to National LambdaRail, a national fiber-optic network operated by a consortium of research-oriented institutions. Merger talks between the two groups collapsed this spring.

NewNet would significantly expand the networking capacity available to scholars and would enable them to set up temporary, high-capacity networking links with ease. (The Chronicle)

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actually to say that it will be a competitor of lamdarail is false. Lambdarail is for experimentation and testing. I2 is the university-research internet. the difference is that occasionally you won’t be able to use lamdarail because someone will be using it for other things. I2 though is generally less research oriented these days and never seems to have experiments outside of normal operations.