Another view on Internet2
Blogware is apparently routinely blocking comments - sorry.
Oren Sreebny, who is Director of Emerging Technology at the University of Washington, tried to post this comment:
I think you've got the intent of at least the historical
context of Internet 2 almost exactly backwards.
When the NSF got out of the business of running the backbone network
of the Internet in the mid-90s, major research universities who
already depended very heavily on the net for not only common
communications functions like email but also for increasingly high
bandwidth research applications started to get very nervous,
especially when the telcos who took over running the backbone
networks started talking about charging by the bit instead of by
capacity of hookups.
Internet 2 was formed as a consortial effort, initially among those
top research institutions, to have a strategy of providing some level
of guaranteed, consistent connectivity among the institutions that
would provide for a safer haven in an uncertain world. It turns out
that the Abilene network that Internet 2 has operated has been very
successful at providing that consistency, and provided very high
bandwidths at far better pricing than individual institutions
could've gotten by themselves.
But, of course, it turns out that in the end Internet 2 still is, at
least theoretically, at the mercy of the telcos, as the bandwidth
provided is, in the end, leased from the telcos.
To that end, there is a newer consortial effort among some research
institutions that has actually bought its own fiber and is operating
a new backbone network - this effort is called National Lambda Rail,
which is attempting to provide a national scale infrastructure for
research and experimentation in networking technologies and
applications. (see www.nlr.net).
So I wouldn't read too much into the term “commodity Internet” - it
was merely meant as a way of distinguishing the at-that-time-new
commercialized Internet backbone from what the research institutions
saw they needed, which was a way to get some dedicated connectivity
among themselves to support research efforts.
Thanks, Oren. Avoiding telco control of fiber seems to be a constant sphere of activity.