Enabling mass collaboration on an ultra fast scale.

The promise of the "information superhighway" was long the call of the original internet. As we have come to learn the internet has clearly changed business. Today Internet2, an advanced network has further enhanced the "highway" to new levels of speed and scale. In 2007 Internet2's backbone was upgraded to run at speeds of 100Gigabits/second.

Celebrating ten years of research, this network is connected to over 200 universities, corporate partners, sponsors and members. Corporate partners include Cisco, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Sun. Corporate members include Caterpillar, Google, Lucent, Johnson & Johnson and Steelcase. Affiliate members include CERN, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jet Propulsion Lab, the Library of Congress, NASA and the World Bank.

Organizations that engage collaboration with Internet2 members can attack new massive amounts of data analysis and transfer extremely large amounts of data without the blink of an eye on this network. At the same time the opportunity to engage educators and researchers in high-definition video conferencing will change the way massive amounts of visual data are shared and reported. It will also alter how groups of people can connect and engage in research and education -- possibly collaborating on the next big advance to the internet. Internet2 is providing new models researchers and scientists could only have dreamed about just ten years ago.

Internet2 Network Map overview:

As the globalization of technologies continues to accelerate the impact of even faster networks will impact how wikinomics can truly thrive. It will open doors that even today business, researchers and educators see as hurdles. Examples of advances with Internet2 networks in education:

• K-12 schools in the state of Missouri video-conference to Museums in London

• Michigan's Virtual High School empowers students to choose meeting their foreign language requirement with classes to learn Chinese from a teacher in China in real-time connected to Internet2. Students wanted to bypass languages taught at their schools that no longer have the impact (or interest) they did in their colonial past.

• Tapping into a rich collection of digitized art, The Cleveland Museum of Art has been teaching semester-long classes (A Survey of Non-Western Art for example) over Internet2 to students at Bradley University in Peoria Illinois.

• WiscNet (a Internet2 research and education network member in Madison Wisconsin) connected to Queensland Australia to view the Great Barrier Reef live over High Definition video-streaming.

The use of high speed networks has changed the way people engage research opportunities and opens up new business models for very complex tasks to be undertaken by scientists and researchers who need powerful computational systems to gain understanding of new business opportunities.

As the internet continues to gain in acceptance, the physical network connections will continue extend beyond the Internet2 backbone. Throughout the country many Regional Optical Networks (RONs) have emerged to further extend the reach of advanced networks in a regional academic and economic geographic areas thereby extending the reach of mass collaboration and increased participation to many more schools, business, government and health care systems.

RON Network Map:

Remote instrumentation

The power of Internet2, IPv6 and software can permit researchers to collaborate on powerful computing servers from remote locations around the globe. Its fair to say that many computing facilities sit idle and the end of the work day and even overnight. But by engaging global collaboration with access to hardware over the internet is quite a new opportunity. Recent educational examples just begin to scratch the surface regarding business driven collaboration:

• Project Neptune at the University of Washington permits students in K12 schools around the globe to log in and control underwater devices while recording their use with HD video.
• Project Gemini in Hawaii permits the sharing of telescopes around the globe.

By opening access to idle workstations, researchers and sources of needed computational power can begin to establish new business opportunities. When its 2:30pm in Chicago -- its 10:30pm in Cairo and 1:30am in New Delhi.