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Abstract -- Future Prospects for NSF's International Connections Program Activities
P6: Government Services
Future Prospects for NSF's International Connections Program Activities
- Goldstein, Steven N.
( goldste@nsf.gov)
Abstract
In 1991, the National Science Foundation awarded a five-year cooperative
agreement with Sprint for International Connections Management to NSFNET
(ICM). The purpose was to consolidate the management and engineering of
connections between the U.S. research and education (R&E;) communities and
similar communities abroad. From the initial two links of 128 kbps each to
Stockholm and southern France, the project has grown along with the Global
Internet to the point that the two E1 links to Stockholm, 2 E1 links to
London and T1 and E1 to Paris that will exist in early 1995 are not likely
to be sufficient for more than a few months to meet capacity demands. In
addition, the ICM project has made it easy for other countries to connect
to the Global Internet by providing an infrastructure for interconnection
and by making modest "port management fee" payments on behalf of the
connecting countries. Latin American and Caribbean countries (in
partnership with the Organization of American States) are connected to the
ICM infrastructure, as are a growing number of Asian and Pacific countries.
As an indication of the growth in demand for such countries Malaysia's
initial 64 kbps connection is to be replaced with a T1; South Africa
struggles to keep up with its demand as it looks toward 256 kbps and seeks
ways to fund T1 bandwidth, and Costa Rica is on the verge of an upgrade
from 64 kbps to 128 kbps for its R&E; network, and a possible tie-in with
RACSA's (the PTT) own international service for a 256 kbps link.
Meanwhile, the domestic NSFNET backbone service is transitioning to service
provision by several general purpose ("commercial") Network Service
Providers (NSPs) that interconnect at Network Access Points (NAPs). The
NSFNET regional networks are themselves undergoing transitions to more
general purpose service provision, especially as some are being purchased
by commercial interests. So, as the demand continues to grow at a furious
pace for intercontinental connectivity (in some cases, doubling every few
months!), NSF anticipates a future in which every-day ("commodity")
networking will be provided by general purpose service organizations, and
the international links will be similarly provisioned. Our strategy is to
attempt to "ratchet" the busiest intercontinental link capacities to the 34
- 45 Mbps range in the near term with an eye toward SONET/SDH capacities of
155 Mbps and higher in the longer range, while at the same time minimizing
NSF's role in direct service provision. At this writing, the precise path
to those ends is far from clear, but more insight will be presented to the
point that it will have been clarified at the time of INET'95.