World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
Two colleagues working together to develop a new device examine their latest prototype. It is an everyday occurrence in academia, except that these colleagues are thousands of miles apart. The collaborators are taking part in the Tele-Immersion Initiative of the Central Laboratories unit of Internet 2, a consortium of universities and corporations developing applications for the next-generation Internet.
Tele-Immersion is a bit like virtual reality, in that participants experience an alternative three-dimensional world. But while virtual reality has traditionally presented preprogrammed events, Tele-Immersion lets people in remote locations see real-time, three-dimensional representations of one another. They can even hand each other a three-dimensional object.
''You can touch it, but you can't feel it,'' says Jaron Lanier, lead scientist for the Tele-Immersion Initiative. Participants use visual cues to experience an object, says Mr. Lanier, who first pioneered virtual reality in the 1980s. The experience is made possible by an environmental scanner - an array of cameras in specially outfitted Tele-cubicles that collect and transmit three-dimensional images across the United States via a next-generation multimedia network dubbed Project Abilene.
The Tele-cubicle, which eventually may have practical applications in computer-aided design, remote medical diagnosis and other areas, is just one of the high-bandwidth real-time applications that are made possible by Project Abilene, the brainchild of the 160 universities and 55 corporate members that constitute the Internet 2 consortium.
New applications
Internet 2 has three goals, says Doug Van Houweling, president and chief executive officer of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, the nonprofit organization that leads Internet 2 efforts. ''The first goal was to make it possible for higher education and the Internet community to develop an advanced set of applications that can't be executed in today's Internet. The second was to build the new Internet structure required to support it, and the third was to transfer these applications to private industry.''
The Abilene network, which has been up and running since early this year, was made possible by several key equipment donations. Nortel Networks supplied optical networking devices and Cisco Systems supplied routers, while long-distance carrier Qwest Communications provided fiber across the United States and operates the network. All three companies also provide human resources to the project and have agreed to continue their support for at least four more years.
In addition to supporting new tools for collaborative work, Internet 2 participants are pioneering video and audio library applications.
Vanderbilt University hopes to use the Abilene network as a platform for delivering its huge archives of television network news broadcasts. Since 1968, Vanderbilt has recorded the news every night from each of the major U.S. networks. Academic researchers can browse abstracts and order a tape copy of a specific broadcast, which can take up to six weeks. About 500 academics currently make use of the archives, says Chip Cox, Vanderbilt's coordinator of Internet 2 initiatives.
By tapping into a high-performance network like Project Abilene, Vanderbilt's archives could be instantly available to a million students and faculty at 120 high-performance sites, says Mr. Cox. The university has digitized 10 hours of material to demonstrate the project's feasibility and hopes to soon announce a corporate partner that will help develop a delivery mechanism.
''Our goal is to begin this fall,'' says Mr. Cox, adding that the project could be completed in as little as two and a half years.
Window on the Net
Initially, the plan would make the archives available only to university libraries, each of which would be responsible for restricting access to academic users. Future commercial use will hinge on how digital copyright laws are resolved.
Copyright laws may also determine the commercial feasibility of Indiana University's digital music library initiative. Currently, the university makes a library of digitized audio content available to selected locations on its campus network. It hopes to obtain funding so that it can make a subset of that material available to other institutions via the Abilene network.
''The reason we need high bandwidth is that we're talking about delivering music to students and scholars, so quality is very important,'' says Jon Dunne, manager of digital library operations and development for Indiana University's library. ''You could do this over the regular Internet, but you would have to download the material and then stream it. With Abilene, you won't have to wait to download the file.''
Applications like the Tele-cubicle and Vanderbilt's TV news archives also consume more bandwidth than the conventional Internet can support. Unlike e-mail or Web browsing, these advanced applications also require that all digitized bits arrive without more than a few milliseconds of delay. Internet 2 consortium members work in committees to develop methods to support these requirements. Key committees include quality of service, routing and Internet Protocol version 6 - the next version of the Internet data format. Another initiative is to ensure high performance levels across the regional academic networks and individual campus networks to which Abilene is linked.
Corporate partners see their participation in Internet 2 as an edge in developing equipment to support applications that eventually will have commercial uses. ''It's important to create an environment where the best and brightest have the opportunity to try things they couldn't try on the regular Internet,'' says Brian McFadden, vice president and general manager for Optera Solutions for Nortel. ''We use it as a window on what the Internet could be and will be so we can get our product and service offerings right for the future. If you had more bandwidth than you think you need, what would you do? You can't tell until you have it what people will do with it.''
Joan Engebretson