IP: an apology to the administration

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

After re-reading the White House announcement of the President's speech ..
namely:


"    Connect universities and national labs with high-speed 
     networks that are 100 - 1000 times faster than today's 
     Internet:  These networks will connect at least 100 
     universities and national labs at speeds that are 100 times 
     faster than today's Internet, and a smaller number of 
     institutions at speeds that are 1,000 times faster.  These 
     networks will eventually be able to transmit the contents of 
"


If indeed the average data rate of a campus is now 1.44  per
second, then it is proposed to increase that at a minimum to 144 (155)
megabits per second up to 1.5 gigabits/sec (my guess is that  is that means
650 mega bits per second).




The second part of this implies gigabit speeds in the range of 1.2
gigabits per second. I assume that also means a program in and a focus on
networking research on the issues of architecture, software and  hardware,
that are raised by speeds like this. One of the lessons from the Gigabit
testbed effort is that even at 620 there are real difficulties interfacing
to our workstations and their operating systems.


With those goals -- namely competitive VBNS level connectivity to 100
(hopefully plus)  campuses and a research program to explore the higher
speed domains, a  number of my concerns vanish. 




But I still have concerns about organization, funding (short and long term),
campus infrastructure (can most campuses afford to rebuild their
infrastructure), the AUP issue and many others (including competitive
procurement  for supplying the facilities) but at least from the political
perspective the  track is right.