Internet2 Fall Meeting - 2006

I am in Chicago now from 2nd - 7th December to attend the Fall - 2006 meeting of Internet2.
(http://events.internet2.edu/2006/fall-mm/)


There is a huge gathering here and I am writing this blog sitting through one of the sessions - a presentation by GEANT2 (http://www.geant2.net/) on their activities. My association with the Next Generation Networks dates back to C-DAC days and since last 2 years I am learning new things, meeting people in this domain. A leading wave is coming in this direction in India with almost all policy makers now realizing that there should be a High Speed Research and Education Network (NREN) in India to the capacity of 2-10 Gbps for the scientific and research community.

This was not the same way back in January 2006. I remember Anil Srivastava calling me from US and we had arguments about why India needs this. With the Garuda Grid Computing framework taking the initial shape, and with S. Ramkrishnan (Ramki, Director General of C-DAC) providing his full support for this activity; we took a full throttle. The result was the February 2006 workshop (http://garudaindia.in/chep06_workshop.asp). It was a success in demonstrating the capacity of high speed networks and the experimental international connection with US-India provided a good platform for the applications demonstration.

After that a lot of activities has taken place in this domain. With the support form Sam Pitroda (Chairman, National Knowledge Commission of India) and few others, the policy framework has moved in India towards realisation of this goal. Don Riley, Hervey Newman, Parvati Dev, and many others from USA are providing the background support to enable this infrastructure in India. The pace is much better than the previous few years, but it is very slow in comparison to the international peers.

My involvement and the research aspect with it has been supported by Internet2. As a consultant to Internet2 and as I am attending this Fall meeting today, I am just revisiting the work of past two years and in retrospect, giving a look at the way we did it, and shaping a future track for it...I will write more in this space about this .......