Internet2 is an organization made up of approximately 200 universities and a
handful of vendor affiliates (
http://members.internet2.edu/ ). One of the organization's projects is the
operation of a high speed network that connects member universities - that
network's name is Abilene. A great deal of information about Internet2 and
Abilene can be found at
http://www.internet2.edu .
Here is some excellent detail provided by the Senior Director of Academic
Services and Emerging Technologies
Information Technology Services, Kevin M. Morooney.
http://its.psu.edu.
Penn State operates something we internally call the integrated backbone (
http://tns.its.psu.edu ). That backbone
connects all Penn State locations. This backbone is connected to the "commodity"
internet and Abilene at the same time. Traffic originating on the Penn State
backbone destined for another Abilene connected university will traverse on
Abilene - otherwise it will traverse the commodity internet. For example, when a
faculty member
downloads a large data set from another university or just visits that
university's web site, those bits and bytes use Abilene. Or, for example, if a
student was looking for a new computer at Apple's or Dell's web site, that
network traffic will travel over the commodity internet.
Further questions can be directed to Robert Brinkley. Mr. Brinkley is the
Director of Information and Instructional Technologies at Penn State Harrisburg.
This page is
maintained by Robert C. Brinkley
Updated 12/12/2005
