I2I Communications

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Internet2 : A Primer for California Public Libraries by Dan Theobald Principal Consultant i2i Communications Toward the end of the 1990s, a consortium of US universities and corporations began to develop a new, more reliable, and faster data transport network in response to congestion on the Internet. This next-generation, ultra-broadband network is known as Internet2 . The California segment of Internet2 is called CalREN-2, and is operated by CENIC (the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California), a not-for profit corporation. CalREN-2 is a Wide-Area Network (WAN) linking the University of California and other research and higher education institutions, and is interconnected with 4Cnet, a similar network serving the California State University and the California Community Colleges systems. In addition to offering access to advanced services exclusive to the network, CalREN-2 links its customers to the commercial Internet. CENIC is now in the process of expanding CalREN-2 access beyond the higher education community. One of its initiatives, the Digital California Project , is extending California’s Internet2 infrastructure to link up K-12 schools in every county. Further down the road – and the focus of this backgrounder – is the goal of opening California’s Internet2 network to access by public libraries. The purpose of this backgrounder is to provide an overview of Internet2 ’s ultra-broadband capabilities, possible applications for public libraries, and some of the cost and connectivity issues. What’s so special about Internet2 ? Internet2 offers two primary advantages over the commercial Internet: • Higher bandwidth, offering data transfer speeds up to 1000 times faster than the commercial Internet • Bandwidth reservation, meaning applications that require large transfers of data can be assured a smooth path through the network with very low latency (i.e., delays imposed on data bits en route) The area that will provide the widest benefit and largest aggregate usage of Internet2 network capacity is digital video, which requires too much dedicated bandwidth for high quality transmission over the regular Internet. Video-based applications cover everything from videoconferencing to on-demand content to remote control of microscopes and other optical instruments. Multimedia Archives Come Online The regular Internet is adequate for digital library systems providing access to online catalogs, abstracting and indexing databases, and primary content such as journals in electronic formats. However, Internet2 offers important opportunities to move the digital library into new areas. Very high bandwidth and bandwidth reservation will allow currently exotic materials such as continuous digital video and audio to move from research use to much broader availability. Graphic images, audio, and video can move into the mainstream occupied almost exclusively by textual materials. Because many already have access to Internet2 networks, academic libraries are paving the way for public libraries in the arena of online multimedia archiving.

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