Internet2 and What it Means to You
The Internet and the World Wide Web were the fastest technology ever penetrating into our daily lives. Over 50% of the U.S. population has a computer and Web access into their homes. This rapid adoption and use of technology certainly has its advantages. But if you've been using the Internet for the past decade, you can't help but notice the slow down due to increased network traffic.
The nations largest research institutions recognized the growing problem a few years back and began to discuss how to design a new Internet, labeled appropriately enough, Internet2. 
This second generation Internet is already in use by more than 179 universities, 18 corporations and 32 international members. Participation is open to others who contribute an annual fee and have the proper infrastructure to take advantage of the enormous increase in speed.
You may be thinking, "OK, that's great, faster speed = less wait, and that's a good thing. But is that all it means?" Definitely not. At its start, Internet2 was planned to, "recreate and sustain a leading edge network capability for the national research community."1 Pretty straight forward, but shortly after Internet2 was underway, faculty really began to take advantage of the Internet's potential for supporting and increasing learning. The scope of the overall goals for Internet2 quickly began to increase as other researchers added their hopes for the future Internet. One from William H. Graves speaks directly to our use as faculty. Internet2 will be able to support "the educational environment envisioned by many academic leaders and frequently captured in the phrase 'virtual university'. The main feature of this environment are the integrated networked delivery of multimedia learning materials, and asynchronous and synchronous conversations within learning communities of students and their mentors."2
Perhaps one of the best analogies of how to imagine Internet2 is to picture a merging of our current cable or satellite entertainment choices with our desktop computers. Internet2 will be able to carry broadcast quality, or better, full-screen, full-motion video on demand (live or stored.) Those small, short QuickTime video's we live with now will be history. Faculty and researchers will be able to videoconference over Internet2 without looking like Max Headroom. (Apologies to those too young to remember Max, let's just say it wasn't pretty.) Students will not have to wait for images or sound files to download; the response time should be nearly instantaneous.
"The technologies of Internet2 are being designed specifically to support the core processes of research, teaching, learning and service. These processes are fundamental to a university's mission."3
I will close with a final example provided by Ted Hanss from CREN. Mr Hanss' example is particularly important to our interests in medicine.
