Abilene Network

Internet history timeline

Early research and development: 1960–4 (1960–4): RAND networking concepts developed 1962–4 (1962–4): ARPA networking ideas 1965 (1965): NPL network concepts conceived 1966 (1966): Merit Network founded 1967 (1967): ARPANET planning begins 1967 (1967): Symposium on Operating Systems Principles 1969 (1969): NPL followed by the ARPANET carry their first packets 1970 (1970): Network Information Center (NIC) 1971 (1971): Tymnet switched-circuit network 1972 (1972): Merit Network's packet-switched network operational 1972 (1972): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established 1973 (1973): CYCLADES network demonstrated 1973 (1973): PARC Universal Packet development begins 1974 (1974): Transmission Control Program specification published 1975 (1975): Telenet commercial packet-switched network 1976 (1976): X.25 protocol approved and deployed on public data networks 1978 (1978): Minitel introduced 1979 (1979): Internet Activities Board (IAB) 1980 (1980): USENET news using UUCP 1980 (1980): Ethernet standard introduced 1981 (1981): BITNET established Merging the networks and creating the Internet: 1981 (1981): Computer Science Network (CSNET) 1982 (1982): TCP/IP protocol suite formalized 1982 (1982): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 1983 (1983): Domain Name System (DNS) 1983 (1983): MILNET split off from ARPANET 1984 (1984): OSI Reference Model released 1985 (1985): First .COM domain name registered 1986 (1986): NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links 1986 (1986): Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 1987 (1987): UUNET founded 1988 (1988): NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1) 1988 (1988): Morris worm 1988 (1988): Complete Internet protocol suite 1989 (1989): Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) 1989 (1989): PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic 1989 (1989): Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX East|FIXes) 1990 (1990): GOSIP (without TCP/IP) 1990 (1990): ARPANET decommissioned 1990 (1990): Advanced Network and Services (ANS) 1990 (1990): UUNET/Alternet allows commercial traffic 1990 (1990): Archie search engine 1991 (1991): Wide area information server (WAIS) 1991 (1991): Gopher 1991 (1991): Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) 1991 (1991): ANS CO+RE allows commercial traffic 1991 (1991): World Wide Web (WWW) 1992 (1992): NSFNET upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3) 1992 (1992): Internet Society (ISOC) established 1993 (1993): Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) 1993 (1993): InterNIC established 1993 (1993): AOL added USENET access 1993 (1993): Mosaic web browser released 1994 (1994): Full text web search engines 1994 (1994): North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) established Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: 1995 (1995): New Internet architecture with commercial ISPs connected at NAPs 1995 (1995): NSFNET decommissioned 1995 (1995): GOSIP updated to allow TCP/IP 1995 (1995): very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) 1995 (1995): IPv6 proposed 1996 (1996): AOL changes pricing model from hourly to monthly 1998 (1998): Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 1999 (1999): IEEE 802.11b wireless networking 1999 (1999): Internet2/Abilene Network 1999 (1999): vBNS+ allows broader access 2000 (2000): Dot-com bubble bursts 2001 (2001): New top-level domain names activated 2001 (2001): Code Red I, Code Red II, and Nimda worms 2003 (2003): UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) phase I 2003 (2003): National LambdaRail founded 2004 (2004): UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) 2005 (2005): UN WSIS phase II 2006 (2006): First meeting of the Internet Governance Forum 2010 (2010): First internationalized country code top-level domains registered 2012 (2012): ICANN begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names 2013 (2013): Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation 2014 (2014): NetMundial international Internet governance proposal 2016 (2016): ICANN contract with U.S. Dept. of Commerce ends, IANA oversight passes to the global Internet community on October 1st Examples of Internet services: 1989 (1989): AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser 1990 (1990): IMDb Internet movie database 1994 (1994): Yahoo! web directory 1995 (1995): Amazon online retailer 1995 (1995): eBay online auction and shopping 1995 (1995): Craigslist classified advertisements 1995 (1995): AltaVista search engine 1996 (1996): Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail 1996 (1996): RankDex search engine 1997 (1997): Google Search 1997 (1997): Babel Fish automatic translation 1998 (1998): Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs) 1998 (1998): PayPal Internet payment system 1998 (1998): Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator 1999 (1999): 2ch Anonymous textboard 1999 (1999): i-mode mobile internet service 1999 (1999): Napster peer-to-peer file sharing 2000 (2000): Baidu search engine 2001 (2001): 2chan Anonymous imageboard 2001 (2001): BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing 2001 (2001): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2003 (2003): LinkedIn business networking 2003 (2003): Myspace social networking site 2003 (2003): Skype Internet voice calls 2003 (2003): iTunes Store 2003 (2003): 4chan Anonymous imageboard 2003 (2003): The Pirate Bay, torrent file host 2004 (2004): Facebook social networking site 2004 (2004): Podcast media file series 2004 (2004): Flickr image hosting 2005 (2005): YouTube video sharing 2005 (2005): Reddit link voting 2005 (2005): Google Earth virtual globe 2006 (2006): Twitter microblogging 2007 (2007): WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks 2007 (2007): Google Street View 2007 (2007): Kindle, e-reader and virtual bookshop 2008 (2008): Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) 2008 (2008): Dropbox cloud-based file hosting 2008 (2008): Encyclopedia of Life, a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species 2008 (2008): Spotify, a DRM-based music streaming service 2009 (2009): Bing search engine 2009 (2009): Google Docs, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service 2009 (2009): Kickstarter, a threshold pledge system 2009 (2009): Bitcoin, a digital currency 2010 (2010): Instagram, photo sharing and social networking 2011 (2011): Google+, social networking 2011 (2011): Snapchat, photo sharing 2012 (2012): Coursera, massive open online courses 2016 (2016): TikTok, video sharing and social networking

Abilene Network was a high-performance backbone network created by the Internet2 community in the late 1990s. In 2007 the Abilene Network was retired and the upgraded network became known as the "Internet2 Network".

History

One of the aims of the Abilene project was to achieve 10 Gbit/s connectivity between every node by the end of 2006. Over 230 member institutions participated in Abilene, mostly universities and some corporate and affiliate institutions, in all of the US states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. It connected to European research networks NORDUnet and SURFnet. The legal entity behind the network was the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development.

When it was established in 1999, the network backbone had a capacity of 2.5 Gbit/s. An upgrade to 10 Gbit/s began in 2003 and was completed on February 4, 2004.

The name Abilene was chosen because of the project's resemblance, in ambition and scope, to the railhead in Abilene, Kansas, which in the 1860s represented the frontier of the United States for the nation's railroad infrastructure.

Abilene and Internet2 and the Internet2 Network

The media often incorrectly used the term "Internet2 Network" when referring to the "Abilene Network". Some sources even suggest that Internet2 is a network wholly separate from the Internet. This is misleading, since, at the time of the Abilene Network, Internet2 was the consortium and not a computer network. It is possible that many news sources adopted the term Internet2 because it seems like a logical name for a next-generation Internet backbone. Articles that reference Internet2 as a network were in fact referring to the Abilene Network. Internet2 adopted the name Internet2 Network for its entire network infrastructure.

Abilene formed a high-speed backbone by deploying cutting edge technologies not yet generally available on the scale of a national network backbone. Abilene was a private network used for education and research, but was not entirely isolated, since its members usually provide alternative access to many of their resources through the public Internet.

Operations Center (NOC)

Abilene's Network Operations Center (NOC) was hosted at Indiana University since its inception. "The cross-country backbone is 10 gigabits per second, with the goal of offering 100 megabits per second of connectivity between every Abilene connected desktop."

2006/2007 Upgrade

The Abilene project had used optical fiber networks donated by Qwest Communications. In March 2006, Internet2 announced its upgrade plans and migration to Level 3 Communications. Internet2's Abilene transport agreement with Qwest expired in October 2007. Unlike the previous architecture, Level 3 manages and operated an Infinera Networks based DWDM system devoted to Internet2. Internet2 has control over provisioning and uses the 40 wavelength capacity to provide IP backbone connectivity as well as transport for a new SONET-based dynamic provisioning network based on the Ciena Corporation CoreDirector platform. The IP network was based on the Juniper Networks T640 routing platform.

When the transition to the new Level3-based infrastructure was complete, the name Abilene ceased to be used in favor of The Internet2 Network.

External links

• Internet2 Network
• Qwest Abilene and Internet2 FAQ Archived 2013-06-27 at the Wayback Machine