Internet2

Internet2 is a “community of U.S. and international leaders in research, academia, industry and government who create and collaborate via innovative technologies.” The organization offers a broad variety of application services with a robust high performance network to support them. The Internet2 consortium connects over 250 international research universities, affiliated organizations, and corporate partners.

As a network, Internet2 is a national and international collection of interconnected high performance networks that allow sites attached to these networks to interact in ways that are not possible using the commodity Internet. The Internet2 networks are a significant advance in networking capability for the research and education community. The development of Internet2 was partly driven by the shortcomings of the commodity Internet, but also by a desire to allow the creation of new network applications that are not possible on the regular Internet.

Washington University in St. Louis campuses has a 10G Ethernet connection to Internet2.

Why Washington University in St. Louis participates in Internet2?

Washington University in St. Louis participates in Internet2 as part of the University’s commitment to research and academic communication. Internet2 gives researchers the ability to move massive amounts of data in a reasonable and predictable amount of time.  WUSTL’s membership both supports the development of the Internet2 network infrastructure and provides immediate access for its faculty, staff, and students to a broad scope of computing and communication applications.

How does Washington University in St. Louis use Internet2?

No special user action is needed to take advantage of this service. By default, all connections to an Internet2 member will traverse the Campus network and out to Internet2. Commonly accessed sites include but are not limited to Amazon Web Services, Box.com online storage, and Hathi Trust digital library. Below are some of the notable WUSTL research projects taking advantage of this network capacity:

Washington University in St. Louis is always exploring new products and services available via Internet2.

For information on the Internet2 organization and general information about the Internet2 national network, see Internet2.