i2hub supercharged file trading network appears on Internet2

April 30, 2004

The Internet2 system is a high
performance network for sharing information that is presently limited to about
200 universities. A couple years ago, a team from California and the
Netherlands transferred the equivilent of two full-length DVD-quality
movies a quarter of the way around the Earth in less than one
minute. It didn't take long for the temptation of instant file swapping to
begin popping up as you can imagine. Lately, it seems a direct connect type
program is being invoked and as many as 2000 users are logged in having a
hey day. Why not, they say there is plenty of unused bandwidth, which we all
know should not be wasted.

Cooler heads however, are beginning to become
concerned. They say, this is not the purpose for the network, it was designed to
transfer large files that's true, but not movies or Rap. It is for "educational
purposes only".

Some students are beginning to see it as a
way to sidestep the ever increasing, imposed limitations of the standard
Internet at their schools. They can log on to the Internet2 right from the dorm
room. In fact, they may be using Kazaa and have been routed over to the newer
network without even realising it. Oh darn, I hate it when that
happens.

Bringing
this process to Internet2 could conceivably raise the stakes for the
content industries, particularly the movie studios. Using ordinary
broadband connections, movies can take many hours to download,
particularly if a network is congested.

Internet2 was developed by a
consortium of universities and technology companies to provide vast
improvements in connections speeds. Researchers use it to exchange large
data files, experiments with high-definition video and other applications.
But the same speed could make traditional file-swapping happen in the
blink of an eye.

The i2hub network is based on
a piece of open-source software called Direct Connect, which connects
users and allows them to search each other's hard drives, using technology
similar to the original Napster. Unlike most recent file-swapping
networks, it routes search requests through a central server, which can be
operated on an ordinary PC in a dorm room.

This version of Direct
Connect links only students at universities with access to Internet2.
While this keeps all traffic on the fast network, it's probably not the
first time that Internet2 has seen file-swapping incursions. Some schools
automatically route students' data traffic over Internet2, if the
destination is another participating university. Thus, some students even
using older tools such as Kazaa might already be using the fast academic
network without knowing it.

Well, it seems to me if you are smart enough to be
in college, you are on the dorm computer using Kazaa and you download a 9
gigabyte version of "The Matrix Reloaded" in 60 seconds or so, that would
be a tip off. You can read the whole story here.

Source: C|Net