Abilene Network
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Abilene Network is the U.S. high-performance backbone network created by the Internet2 community.
Over 220 member institutions participate in Abilene, mostly universities with some corporate and affiliate institutions, in all of the US states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Overview
When established in 1999, the Abilene network backbone had a capacity of 2.5 gigabits per second. In 2003 an upgrade to 10 gigabits per second commenced and the completion of this was announced on February 4, 2004.
The name Abilene was chosen because of the network's resemblance, in ambition and scope, to the Abilene railhead in Abilene, Kansas, which in the 1860s represented the frontier of the United States in the context of the Nation's railroad infrastructure. The project's aim is to achieve 100 Gigabit connectivity between every node by the end of 2006. In keeping with the railroading analogy, the term LambdaRail is applied to Regional Optical Networks providing OC-192 connectivity in Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) Testbeds.
Controversy
In April 2005, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) accused college students of "hijacking" the Abilene network and "turning it into an illegal file-swapping vehicle." The RIAA filed suit against 405 students for copyright infringement for apparently copying songs illegally over the network with students at other member universities, using i2hub, a peer-to-peer file sharing application especially created for the high-speed network. The MPAA filed a similar suit for illegally traded digital versions of movies. The MPAA's suit was against an undisclosed number of students.
Most news items listed that these suits were against users of Internet2, which is incorrect. Internet2 is a consortium, not a network. The suit is actually against users of the Abilene network.
External links
- Abilene Backbone Network (http://abilene.internet2.edu/)
- Internet2 Abilene Backbone Network Upgrade Passes Transcontinental Milestone (http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/cpo/abilene021703/)