CityU is Now Connected to Internet2

by Raymond Poon

CityU is now connected to Internet2 through a 45 Mbps HARNET connection to Abilene via the STAR TAP (Science, Technology And Research Transit Access Point) interconnection exchange.

What is Internet2?

Internet2 is a collaborative effort of over 200 U.S. university members working in partnership with industry and government to support the development and deployment of advanced Internet technologies and applications for high-end academic experiment and research. Currently there are over 60 Internet2 corporate members and over 30 affiliate members participating in the Internet2 project. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is coordinated by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), with the following primary goals:

  • Create a leading edge network capability for the national research community
  • Enable revolutionary Internet applications
  • Ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community

International Reach of Internet2

The Internet2 is extended to other countries with over 30 international partners all over the world through dedicated high-speed network links. Such scale of international reach targets to ensure global interoperability in the next generation of networking technologies and to enable research and education through advanced applications on a worldwide scale. With Internet2, it is now possible to exchange data in real-time and to support high-performance academic research applications to enable the development and deployment of the revolutionary Internet applications such as digital libraries, virtual laboratories, distance-independent learning and tele-immersion etc.

The development of Internet2 will foster international collaborations leveraging the state-of-the-art emerging Internet applications and networking researches by a high-bandwidth connection to the US Internet2 backbone and Next Generation Internet (NGI). At present, there are a number of high-performance networks participating in the Internet2 project, providing an environment in which new network applications and capabilities can be deployed and tested.

CityU Connectivity to Internet2

As our routers have already been configured to automatically take advantage of the connectivity to Internet2, therefore some Internet traffic previously transit through the HARNET Internet link may now transit through the HARNET Internet2 link in a user-transparent manner.