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Encyclopedia >ÊAbilene Network
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 megabit 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.     


 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.



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Results from FactBites:
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Abilene Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (408Êwords)
 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.
 Abilene, although a private network used for education and research, is not entirely an isolated network, since its members usually provide alternative access to many of their resources through the public Internet.
 Abilene is not technically part of the Internet since it does not peer with the public Internet networks.
The Chronicle: Daily news: 10/01/2001 -- 01 (1165Êwords)
Abilene, the high-speed network backbone built for the Internet2 project by the nation's largest research universities, is being opened up for use by thousands of public and independent colleges, community colleges, libraries, museums, and elementary and secondary schools.
 Abilene itself is a gateway to the worldwide infrastructure of high-speed research and education networks.
 Networking officials anticipate that the most common research use of Abilene among newly connected institutions will be among distant colleagues and research groups using high-quality, high-speed, interactive videoconferencing.
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