Internet2 becoming a big net on campus

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"Servers are set up to send large flows of traffic, on the order of a gigabit," Corbato says. This lets universities use about 10% of their bandwidth to be sure the network is performing as it should before scientists begin application or network experiments.

The group also now has the ability to capture and examine each flow across the network. While the ability to examine traffic closely from all universities has raised security and privacy concerns, Corbato says the group is "very careful with this data. We're looking to see what's happening over the network in real-time, what applications are most popular and the average duration of a data flow."

The group also is dedicated to advancing Internet security. In February, Internet2's Research and Education Network Information Sharing Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) joined the Department of Homeland Security's national information sharing and analysis center group.

"REN-ISAC is a higher-education-sponsored center designed to help universities and colleges improve their security," says Mark Bruhn, acting director of REN-ISAC at Indiana University. The program also lets higher education do its part in securing the national cyberinfrastructure, he says.

Indiana University operates REN-ISAC to monitor security threats and events, such as denial-of-service attacks, in real time. The center not only immediately notifies victims and sources, but it also shares this information with other universities to help them better secure their networks.

REN-ISAC, now that it's part of the national ISAC program, can exchange findings with other centers. When the federal government initially formed the national sharing program, higher education was not included, which was a mistake, as far as the Internet2 people were concerned.

Essentials on Internet2 A few fast facts on the Internet2 project: • The educational and experimental network began in 1996. • 203 universities participate. • This group spends at least $100 million annually on the project. • There are 50 corporate members that have invested more than $30 million since 1996. • Network upgrade to 10G bit/sec is nearly complete. • The movie “The Matrix” can be downloaded in 30 seconds, according to Internet2’s land speed record test. • It takes 25 hours for the same movie to be downloaded over a DSL.

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"An estimated 15% of the assigned Internet network addresses are held by higher education," Bruhn says. "And, because of what we do and how we approach things with technology, higher education generally experiences security events before other sectors."

Analysis of the information gathered by REN-ISAC and the other centers is expected to lead to the development of detection and defense tools that could be used throughout the Internet, Bruhn says. He says many of those developments likely will come from the Indiana University Advanced Network Management Lab.

Getting into MPLS

Although REN-ISAC is at the cutting edge of intrusion detection and security, Internet2 just now is testing MPLS.

But that's because the need for the technology is just arising for some Internet2 users. Internet2 recently began MPLS testing primarily because the Internet2 is not looking to marry multiple, legacy networks. The majority of MPLS offerings that businesses are buying from service providers meld together IP with legacy frame relay and ATM networks.

The group started experimenting with MPLS because some Internet2 members were looking to support VPNs over Abilene.

"In our view, MPLS is not a replacement for IP. We are using it as an experimental tool to support secure tunnels," Corbato says. Some Internet2 users want to set up secure tunnels between multiple sites for specific projects or experiments. MPLS seems to be a good fit for these applications.

"One of the other reasons we're looking at MPLS is because it is one of the leading protocols on the table to provision and control lambdas in a dynamic sense," he says. "And more universities are acquiring optical networking assets."

Over the next five years, the industry will need to manage native IP over optical, Corbato says. How those technologies are fully meshed will be critical to how the networks are managed, he says.

Internet2 recognizes that MPLS is an important technology that could help to integrate IP and optical networks, Corbato says. The group is not interested in arguing whether MPLS is the best technology for telecom providers to manage their networks. Some service providers, such as Sprint, are not using MPLS, while others, such as AT&T, are betting on the technology and using it throughout their data networks.

Instead, Internet2 is focusing on the future of IP networks, as has been its charter since its inception seven years ago.