CalREN-2 will connect to the National Science Foundation's Very High Performance Backbone Network System, which also provides backbone services to Internet2 and to commercial Internet service providers. Northern Telecom will provide the equipment to translate between the fiber-optic network and the CalREN-2 networking equipment.
     Cisco Systems will provide its most advanced Internet equipment and will work with CENIC and ISI engineers to enhance the capabilities of these products to produce guaranteed levels of service. This will enable users to hold multimedia conferences across the network smoothly without interference from lower-priority traffic.
     John A. Silvester, USC vice provost for scholarly technology who is also vice chair of the CENIC board, said CalREN-2 (California Research and Education Network) will offer higher bandwidth data rates and more predictable performance to researchers at California academic institutions.
     “When it started, the Internet was essentially a research network," he explained. "But researchers now find it difficult to get good performance on the Internet because of its commercial success, and many new applications involving audio and video require predictable perfomance.”
     CalREN-2 will interconnect CENIC institutions at speeds ranging from 622 million to 2,400 million bits per second. The latter speed would allow an entire 30-volume encyclopedia to be transmitted in less than two seconds.
     With CalREN-2, researchers will be able to collaborate and conduct simulation experiments in real time. Students in science courses will be able to access remote instruments and receive multimedia instruction while clinicians at university medical centers receive and transmit high-precision images for remote diagnosis. The network will handle such applications without perceptible delay.
     “Much of the need for higher performance networking is for visualization of the results of computer modeling or simulation,” said Jon Postel, ISI computer scientist. “For example, the view of the digital representation of the surface of Mars as you seem to fly over it, or the view of a complex chemical molecular structure as you seem to walk around it.”

Silvester said that the new network would make it possible for School of Cinema-Television faculty to do remote editing of movies. USC researchers are also eager to gain access to supercomputers at the San Diego Super-computer Center through CalREN-2, he said. And physicians at the Health Sciences Campus need the high-bandwidth performance to transmit radiographic images and for performing remote consultations.
     The network will also give health-care researchers at other institutions instantaneous access to a vast store of complex clinical images, linked biomedical reference data and on-line educational video-streaming at USC's Advanced BioTele-communications and Bio-Informatics Center.

CalREN-2 will also facilitate the growth of digital libraries.
     “We are going to see a real move to sharing resources in libraries,” said Jerry D. Campbell, USC's chief information officer and dean of the university libraries. “It doesn't make sense for all universities to be collecting the same material. What makes sense is for each university to acquire discrete material and make it available worldwide. We are creating one gigantic virtual library.”
     Govindan said that CalREN-2 will help scholars at ISI and the Integrated Media Systems Center who are working on tele-immersion technology. Tele-immersion projects three-dimensional virtual representations of people in different locations, producing the illusion they are conferring face to face.
     “Tele-immersion systems provide the virtual reality 3-D environment for the most advanced types of visualization of computer modeling or simulation results often requiring powerful supercomputers to create the images,” Postel said.
     Silvester said the idea for a second Internet was born in late 1995. More than 100 of the nation's leading universities formed the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) to encourage development of a new generation of advanced education and research technologies. USC President Steven B. Sample is a member of UCAID's board.