A Network for Wild Experimentation – Technology Review.

Dark fibers: Researchers will use dormant networking resources—which extend through the areas indicated on this map—to perform a variety of experiments. ESNet (image and caption from the quoted article)

Quote from the article: “ESNet and Internet2 have built a networking test bed for ideas that are too disruptive for the networks that people actually use.

“In a few unused back alleys of the Internet, researchers are testing radical new ways of transferring information, often at speeds almost unimaginable to the home Internet user.

“Internet2, a consortium devoted to developing advanced networking applications and technologies, and the Energy Sciences Network (ESNet), which provides powerful data connections for scientists at national laboratories, universities, and research institutes, are putting together experimental networks on top of dormant networking resources known as “dark fiber.” While the researchers say it will be years before the advances reach individuals and businesses, they think the work will ultimately ensure that the Internet functions smoothly in the future. For example, the experimental networks could allow researchers to update protocols, anticipate security needs, try out better hardware, and look at ways of making networks more energy-efficient.”

Read the full article.

Image by net_efekt via Flickr

100 Gbit/s is blindingly fast. Today we are happy if we can get 100 Gbit in 5–10 hours. So what we are expecting here is a ~20.000 × increase in speed.

Now I have to admit that we are discussing the backbone speed here, not the consumer’s end point. But today often the backbone is the speed limiting bottleneck.

Will this be when we will finally switch to IPv6?

This will open up new opportunities — especially in the Cloud — since many services today are limited by network speed (and the kids downloading movies . . .).

What application do you see to emerge with such bandwidth capacity in the backbone?