IP: A National Information Infrastructure for the near future

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

The following was created as input to the Farnet (Federation of Academic
Research Networks) Planning meeting held in Colorado Springs this past week.
It is an attempt to focus that academic networking community past it's
immediate concerns and to those of the nation.


Comments are very welcome.


Dave




A National Information Infrastructure for the near future -- NII2000


Professor David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems 
University of Pennsylvania
July 20 1996




I believe we need to focus at the next stage of academic networking  at
developing the US infrastructure and to base it on the emerging new
technologies for distribution rather than just speeding up today's internet.
I also believe that we should stop one dimensional thinking of wired IP land
nets and attack with vigor the newly arriving wireless, digital satellite
along with things like cable and XDSL technology. From the corporate and
university perspective, I believe it is time to focus first on complete
campus communication solutions which will include the merging of the
telephone, computer and video structures into one common secure robust
system which will utilize a variety of access mechanisms including wireless
personal communication modules (modular multimedia PDAs) to allow the
community to more fully utilize the capabilities of the  infrastructure.
Classes, video and supporting data components,  will be sent to the extended
campus community (which may include other Universities, colleges, industry
and people's homes) via XDSL and Cable Modems in the local environment and
DBS channels in the wider and international arena. 


I believe that the following statements are true and should form the guiding
principles on which the NII2000 is based. They are:


0. The main reason for the poor performance of the current internet for
researchers is usually due to congestion in the core of the net not the
campus. Creating another separate network for the R1 and R2 schools will for
a while alleviate that problem (at a high cost) but in the short long run,
non-academic traffic will route over the new network since history has shown
that academia and the rest of the nation are not separable. My belief is
that the bottlenecks in the core of the network will cause problems for the
new technology access providers such as cable or xdsl and slow down their
introduction. Creating an immediate reason to build up the core internet
will in the long run payoff with a faster adaptation of the new technology
with it's attendant benefits to the nation.


1. the University community can not exist in isolation. It is an error to
create a unique isolated network for it's use. That is not to say that it
does not need mechanisms to insure bandwidth-latency requirements for
research can be  achieved. However similar mechanisms are needed  in
industrial research environments as well as future consumer services.


2. the NII2000 should not attempt to bypass commercial internet service
suppliers but should create a marketplace for advanced network services to
be offered by such organizations. Only at the bleeding edge of research
should the government support the provisioning of technological R&D and the
establishment of test beds. 


3. Service criteria including availability, quality of service (QOS),
security etc should be a basic part of the engineering of NII2000. Any RFPs
and resultant contracts should incorporate such criteria and demand that
they be passed onto subcontracts. The aim is to insure end to end
performance given an environment where no single contractor will be
responsible for everything. The research community should be tasked to
develop criteria, possible technical ways of insuring performance as well as
methodology for the measurement and reporting during operation.


4 An operational framework should be planned and implemented to oversee the
evolution and performance of the NII2000. I would strongly suggest that we
ask leaders in from industry, who have "been there" and who know how to
organize and manager large communication systems such as one finds in
banking and industry, and how to deal with suppliers and operators, to help
plan this framework. 


5. The Universities would form a critical force in NII2000. They would be
the intellectual focus of the NII2000 in their communities and would  be the
technology transfer vehicle for the deployment of NII2000 in the communities
they service. In many cases this might entail the Universities being the
hosting center of the communications systems allowing the community to have
the use of a part of the external bandwidth while in other situations a
community hub will become the connection point for all the aspects of the
community with quarantined segments of bandwidth and services sold to all
comers. In this case the University would be the intellectual focus of new
and interesting applications as well as a supplier of educational services
for part of the community.


6 the role of the federal government is to establish the rules of item 3
above and to provide lubrication by the funding  of Model Cyber Communities
(MCC2000) where all aspects of NII2000 are deployed in a community with the
support of all aspects of the community life. The MCC2000 would provide the
opportunity for the business world to support NII2000 by taking part in the
planning for and provisioning of communities and the industry's willingness
to take an active part would be a basis on which awards would be made by the
Federal Government to support the MCC2000.