Internet2 is a national and international collection of interconnected high performance networks which permit members to interact and create network applications in ways that are not possible on the commodity Internet. Internet2 supports significant advances in networking capability for the research and education community, connecting hundreds of member research universities, affiliated organizations (such as Merit), and corporate partners.
Connections
The University of Michigan has the following Internet2 attachments on its campuses:
- Ann Arbor: Two 100 Gbps network attachments
- Dearborn: 10 Gbps attachment
- Flint: 10 Gbps attachment
Benefits
The quality and speed of Internet2 is what network experts expect future networks will deliver. Benefits of Internet2 use today include:
- Ability to move large amounts of research data in reasonable and predictable amounts of time.
- Real-time control of remote scientific instruments.
- Operation of remote computer clusters as a grid, such that they appear to be a single device to users.
- Collaborative creation of music, dance, or other performance art.
- Access to high quality interactive video resources and the ability to interact real-time via video.
- Shared distributed file storage.
- Access to high performance computational systems.
- Ability to perform data mining.
- Access to digital library resources, including high quality graphics, audio, and video.
- Partnership opportunities with researchers, faculty, staff, and students using Interent2 at other member institutions.
Several university projects currently using Internet2 in their work include the U-M Visible Human Project and the ATLAS Experiment.