Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 09:15:17 -0400 From: STISSERVE - NSF E-mail Server To: "stewart@CS.SDSU.EDU" Subject: nsfmci.txt (complete) ascii ------ begin of nsfmci.txt -- ascii -- complete ------ Title : NSF-MCI - BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET/NSFNET Type : News NSF Org: OD / LPA Date : April 26, 1995 File : nsfmci For More Information contact: Beth Gaston, (703) 306-1070 e-mail: egaston@nsf.gov FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS With the new architecture, will I have to pay more for my Internet connection? Most likely, no. Institutions most affected are the approximately 2,000 universities, research organizations and governmental agencies who have been the primary beneficiaries of NSF provision of the NSFNET. These institutions, which currently pay between $10,000 and $60,000 for links to the Internet, will see an average increase of $1,500 per year, which is being provided to their Regional Network Providers by NSF on a declining scale: 100 percent the first year; 75 the second; 50 the third; 25 the fourth; and zero the fifth. However, many people believe that fierce private competition and the economies of scale will drive the price for Internet hookups down. Will the new architecture affect how I use the Internet? No. In the past, traffic between individuals traveled over a combination of government and commercial networks -- the only change is that the NSFNET is no longer one of those networks as it has been replaced by commercial networks. Can I use the vBNS instead of a regular network? No. The vBNS is a research network available only for meritorious high bandwidth activities. It will not carry regular, commodity-level Internet traffic. What is the Internet? The Internet is a collection of more than 46,000 networks, public and private, worldwide that have agreed to use common protocols and exchange traffic. Who is in charge of the Internet? There is no single person or agency in charge of the Internet -- it is unofficially coordinated by the Internet Society (ISOC), a voluntary membership organization whose purpose is to promote global information exchange through Internet technology. A group of volunteers makes up the Internet Architecture Board, which meets regularly to approve standards and allocate resources. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) consists of volunteers and determines solutions to nearterm technical problems of the Internet. What will the NSF's involvement in the Internet be? The NSF will continue to support the InterNIC, which provides limited information services for the research and education community, and directory and database and registration services to the non-military Internet community. The NSF will also continue to support the connections program which links up to 200 new institutions to the Internet each year; existing International Connections Management Services; and CNIDR, the Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery and Retrieval, which looks for, promotes the compatibility of and, occasionally develops software tools for the discovery and retrieval of information from the distributed databases on the Internet. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET/NSFNET HISTORY The concept of the Internet is extremely confusing to many because it is not a single entity with a single person or company incharge. Instead it is more than 46,000 networks, both public and private, world wide that have agreed to use common protocols and exchange traffic. The precursor to the Internet began about 20 years ago with the U.S. Defense Department's ARPAnet. The network was designed to operate in the event of partial outages -- so if a nuclear blast obliterated part of the network, the rest of the system would still work. In the mid 1980s, as a part of its effort to provide the US scientific research community with access to supercomputers, the National Science Foundation provided funding to establish several national supercomputer centers. To allow researchers to use the computer centers, NSF had to either physically transport the scientists to the centers or give researchers a way to access the computers remotely from their home institutions. In response, the NSF determined to use both methods. Because the supercomputer centers are broadly shared by the research community, with particular projects changing with each funding cycle, a dedicated network to a small number of specific sites was not a viable solution -- broad access is necessary. In 1985, the NSF created the NSFNET, which is actually a hierarchical series of networks for research and education traffic within the US. The NSFNET was based on ARPAnet protocols. The "crown jewel" of the NSFNET was a national backbone service which provided free carriage for any US research and education traffic that could reach it. Additional components were supporting the development of regional networks to bring electronic traffic from individual institutions to the national backbone service as well as a connections program to help individual institutions connect to the regional networks. The national backbone service was to be used both as an infrastructural network for the research and education community and also as a testbed for network-related research. A great intellectual leap occurred when people realized the network could be used for more than simply the transfer of data between computers. The popularity of data networking grew wildly and the NSFNET became an essential infrastructure for the US research and education community. Commercial firms, noting the popularity and effectiveness of this technology, built their own national networks and firms like PSI, Alternet and Sprint began providing network services like those available on the NSFNET. To the extent that customers of commercial firms were a part of or operated in support of the research and education community, traffic was exchanged between the commercial networks and the NSFNET. But the NSF's role is changing. The NSF is withdrawing from providing commodity-level network service (since these services can now be competitively obtained in the marketplace) and has awarded a cooperative agreement for a very high speed network service (vBNS) to serve as a research network. The vBNS will connect the supercomputer centers and other competitively selected high-bandwidth applications to push the limits of networking technology. The government no longer needs to support the infrastructure of the Internet -- identical capability is currently available from private firms. The "new architecture of the NSFNET" will consist of the regional network providers (who have historically provided access for individual campuses to the NSF-provided national service) obtaining their interregional connectivity from competitively selected Network Service Providers (NSPs). NSPs must agree: 1-to connect to hubs called network access points, where the NSPs will exchange traffic; 2-to route and carry all traffic to or from any research and education location; and 3- to make the routes to a routing arbiter. The routing arbiter services will provide an inventory of all available routes for electronic "traffic" and will make them available to network service providers. ----------------- REGIONAL NETWORK PROVIDERS Approximately twenty cooperative agreements for regional network providers (RNP) have been awarded. Under these agreements, the providers are initially receiving funds approximating any increase in costs caused by having to obtain their interregional connectivity from a commercial Network Service Provider rather than using the NSF-provided network. The amount received by each RNP will decrease with regionals expected to cover the full cost of their commercial connectivity beyond the fourth year. NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS Network Service Providers such as Sprintlink, MCI and ANS provide connectivity on a national basis. Regional networks connect to NSPs for interregional (national) connectivity and connection to interexchange points called Network Access Points (NAPs). NSPs connect these NAPs and agree to carry all traffic to or from research and education locations. NETWORK ACCESS POINTS Four Network Access Points (central hubs for regional networks) have been awarded: o New York NAP to Sprint o San Francisco NAP to Bellcore with Pacific Bell as the operator o Chicago NAP to Bellcore with Ameritech as the operator o Washington DC NAP to Metropolitan Fiber systems Inc. The organizations establishing Network Access Points will each receive about $800,000 from NSF over a five year period. (This funding is for research related to their NAP activity.) The organizations will capitalize the NAPs themselves and anticipate they will profit by seeking customers for their interconnectivity services. ROUTING ARBITERS Two five-year collaborative cooperative agreements have been made to offer routing arbiter services. The routing arbiter offers routing and other services to facilitate logical interconnection of attached networks. Routing Arbiter activities include: promoting Internet routing and stability, establishing the network framework and policy databases, developing procedures to resolve problems between network entities, developing advanced routing technologies, providing simplified routing strategies and promoting distributed operation and management of the Internet. Merit Network, Inc. and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute have each received 5year cooperative agreements for approximately $10 million each to collaborate and provide routing arbiter services. At midnight on April 30, 1995, the NSFNET should no longer be needed and the National Backbone Service which has been provided by NSF will be turned off. (It will not be turned off unless all necessary new infrastructure is operating successfully to ensure the uninterrupted availability of services to the research and education community.) Most Internet users will see no change as the result of the turnover. Institutions most likely affected by the turn over are the 2,000 universities, research organizations and governmental agencies who have been the primary beneficiaries of NSF provision of the NSFNET. Interregional connectivity, formerly provided by the NSFNET, will be replaced by that obtained by regional network providers from commercial network service providers. Any increase in the cost of the services (as a result of the regional providers now having to pay for what was formerly provided by the NSF network) will be subsidized on a declining scale: 100 percent the first year; 75 percent the second; 50 percent the third; 25 percent the fourth; and zero the fifth. Based on the figures received from the regional network providers, it appears that the total increase in costs carried by those networks as a result of the changed architecture will be $23 million per year, or an average of $1,500 per year per institution. The average institution currently pays between $10,000 and $60,000 per year for connectivity and related services. However, many believe that the fierce private competition will drive down costs even as the demand for bandwidth increases. vBNS CONNECTING SUPERCOMPUTER CENTERS MCI has been selected for a cooperative agreement with the NSF to provide a very high speed experimental network service (vBNS) connecting the NSF-funded supercomputer centers, and allowing for research on high-speed networking. This network is not an operating infrastructure; regular Internet traffic will not travel over this virtual network. Research using the vBNS may later be developed into technology for use by the various commercial service providers. CONTINUED SUPPORT The NSF will continue to support InterNIC, which provides limited information services for the research and education community, and directory and database and registration available to the non-military Internet community. InterNIC was established in December of 1992 The NSF is also continuing to support: o The connections program which links up to 200 new institutions to the Internet each year. o Existing International Connections Management Services, provided by U.S. Sprint Corp., in effect through the spring of 1996. o CNIDR, the Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery and Retrieval will continue to research and promote the compatibility of software tools for the use of the Internet. CONCLUSION While developing the NSFNET and guiding its early growth, the NSFNET Program was concerned primarily with provision of the physical infrastructure necessary to allow the US research and education community to use data communication and networking technology as a working tool. Now that commercial Internet services have grown sufficiently to provide the necessary infrastructure to allow this basic physical infrastructure to be purchased in the market place, the NSFNET Program is refocusing its efforts on high levels of connectivity, function and use for the research and education community. A GLOSSARY OF NSFNET TERMS backbone - a top-level network, one that provides continental- scale interconnectivity to several regional networks and/or other backbones. bit - acronym for binary digit byte - a group of adjacent binary digits seen by the computer as a "word." (A byte usually contains either seven or eight bits.) broadband - a multi-frequency transmission channel. CNIDR - Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery and Retrieval--NSF supported program to research and promote the compatibility of software tools for the use of the Internet. gigabit - one billion bits of information. Research testbeds, including the new vBNS, are currently striving to develop effective networks that can transmit a gigabit of data per second. High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) initiative - a program to foster the full range of advanced computing technologies, including existing supercomputer systems, and special-purpose and experimental systems. It includes, among other elements, high-speed networks that transmit billions of data bits per second, large-scale parallel processing to solve immensely complex problems by approaching them on several tracks simultaneously, advanced algorithms and visualization displays to depict phenomena ranging from the molecular to the meteorological. Internet - a worldwide collection of more than 46,000 interconnected computer networks. In the U.S., it consists of NSF- sponsored networks that link thousands of university, government and industrial research sites; networks sponsored by the defense department's Advance Research projects Agency (ARPA), NASA and the Department of Energy; and numerous privately operated networks serving primarily individuals and businesses. Based on the defense department's now-decommissioned ARPAnet, its use has expanded rapidly in recent years as more people use it for sharing resources and information through remote logins, file transfer, electronic mail and interest-group mailing lists. InterNIC - Internet Network Information Center; provides limited information services for the research and education community, and directory and database and registration to the non-military Internet community. LAN - Local Area Network, a network that connects multiple computers at a single site. megabit - one million bits of information. Metacenter - The organization of computer centers into a proactive, coordinated federation of centers, with greater collaboration and less duplication. national information infrastructure (NII) - Yet to be deployed, it is a notion of an infrastructure consisting of a network of communications systems and computer systems and trained personnel supporting the exchange of information among all citizens and residents of the US. National Research and Education Network (NREN) program - a component of the High-Performance Computing and communications program that supports the development of high-speed research network and support programs to provide a high-speed (gigabit-per- second) research network with distributed computing capability. It will link government, industry and higher education communities. It will serve as a prototype for future commercial networks. It will consist of two complementary components: the Interagency Internet, an evolving, operating network which will enhance existing federally funded research networks as it serves as a medium for the deployment of advanced technologies in the near future; and the Gigabit Research and Development effort for broadband networks. NSF Supercomputer Centers - Five centers partially funded by NSF which provide supercomputer resources to researchers across a range of disciplines, for both state-of-the-art research in computer science and for complex scientific and engineering problems which require their level of computing power. Four centers were established in the mid-1980's: San Diego Supercomputer Center and the University of California, San Diego; Cornell Theory Center at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in boulder, Colo., was established in 1960 and later upgraded with supercomputer equipment. network access point (NAP) - Part of the new architecture for the NSFNET-- a high speed network or switch to which a number of networks can be connected via routers for the purpose of traffic exchange and interoperation with the Internet. NAPs will serve as hubs connecting network service providers and regional network providers. network service provider - Part of the new architecture for the NSFNET -- network service providers offer connection on a national scale. Regional networks hook into network service providers for inter-regional (national) connection and for connection to Network Access Points. NSPs connect the network access points and agree to carry all traffic to or from research and education locations. NSF - National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the federal government that provides support for research and education in the sciences and engineering. NSFNET backbone service - With the new architecture, the NSFNET backbone no longer exists. It has been turned over to a variety of commercial concerns, with government support decreasing on a sliding scale over five years. Now, regional network providers obtain interregional connectivity from Network Service Providers with traffic exchanged at Network Access Points and governed by Routing Arbiters. NSFNET program - A computer networking program established by NSF chiefly to allow exchange of information and access to remote resources within the research and education community. The NSF continues to support the connections program, promoting research and educational institutions to hook into the Internet; international connections management services; the Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR); and the InterNIC, which provides directory and database, registration of domain names and information services. NSFNET program solicitation (1993) - A document (NSF 93-52) that describes new services and architecture for the NSFNET program. it invites proposals for four separate projects: regional network providers, network access point managers, routing arbiters, and very high-speed backbone network services. OC-3 - Fiber optic network standard. Transmission rate of 155 Megabits per second. OC-12 - Fiber optic network running at 622 Megabits per second. parallel computing (or parallel processing) - The simultaneous application of more than one processing unit to a single computational problem. It approaches a complex problem by addressing its individual components simultaneously and integrating the results. Parallel processing is the focus of much research because it holds promise for immensely improving the ability to solve complex algorithms and to quickly evaluate vast amounts of data. regional network providers - local networks. These networks formerly provided the local links between universities and the NSFNET backbone--the regional network providers now have national access through Network Service Providers. routing arbiters - promote Internet routing and stability, establish network topology and policy databases, develop procedures to resolve problems between network entities, develop advance routing technologies, provide simplified routing strategies, and promote distributed operation and management of the Internet. The Routing Arbiters offer routing and other services to facilitate the logical interconnection of networks. Two five-year collaborative cooperative agreements have been made to offer routing arbiter services: Merit Network, Inc. and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. T1 circuits - transmission circuits introduced to the NSFNET backbone in 1988 which transmit data at a rate of 1.544 megabits per second (Mbps). T3 circuits - transmission circuits that superseded the T1 circuits in 1991, providing the NSFNET backbone with a 45-Mbps capacity for data transmission. very high speed backbone network services (vBNS) - An advanced experimental network provided for through a cooperative agreement with MCI (initially 155 Mbps and anticipated to grow to gigabit- per-second transmission) connecting the NSF-funded supercomputer centers, and allowing for research on high-speed networking. this network is not an operating infrastructure; regular Internet traffic will not travel over this virtual network. Research using the vBNS may later be developed into technology for use by the various commercial service providers. ------ end of nsfmci.txt -- ascii -- complete ------