Currently, over 200 universities are participating in Internet2. With a collaborative spirit, these members are attempting to expand the current technological boundaries of high performance networking by creating innovations for which universities are well known.

The initial goals of Internet2 are to provide a leading edge network capability for the national research community; to encourage and facilitate innovative Internet applications; and to ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community. Internet2 is being designed to improve networking for educational and research purposes, such as creating protocols for better and faster audio and video transmission and vastly improving network performance. Ultimately, it is expected that these advances will filter down to the general public, much like the development of the original Internet.

Internet2 members are collaborating in many areas of applications, engineering, and middleware, through Internet2 Working Groups.

What does Internet2 mean for Temple?

The entire Temple community benefits from the high-speed connection offered by Internet2. Internet2 provides a high performance network for communication between all Temple students, faculty, and staff and their colleagues at other Internet2 member institutions for access to research and educational resources. With a connection to the national high-speed backbone, known as Abilene, messages that pass over Internet2 now move much faster—probably about 2 to 5 times faster—than if they go over the commodity Internet. Speed, however, is just one benefit of Internet2.

Internet2 encourages and supports collaborative efforts in designing applications for advanced networking and also promotes and organizes research and creative activities using the advanced networking capabilities and applications. With the high-speed connection and membership in the Internet2 organization, the Temple community has a unique opportunity to collaborate in developing new applications and methods that will have a direct impact on our own research and education programs.

Temple faculty and students are invited and encouraged to participate in Internet2 Working Groups.