Academics with a competitive streak are taking up the challenge of high-speed internet links over long distances, Angus Kidman writes.

Published in The Bulletin, April 30 2003

If we'd had to wait for the internet to be built by commercial interests, everyone would have given up by now. Internet technologies evolved for more than 20 years in the largely cloistered worlds of academia and the military before reaching mass-market acceptance. First the glitches were ironed out, then the commercialisation process began.

The same is proving true for next-generation internet technologies. While commercial IT companies are slashing research budgets, academic consortiums across the globe are pulling in large sums to research ways of eliminating problems.

But why do we need a new internet at all? Despite its ubiquity, the internet has several obvious problems. For instance, the resilience that has made it so useful for basic text communications -- your email is guaranteed to get through eventually, although the actual delivery time isn't fixed -- is unsuited to applications such as video-conferencing, which rely on a given amount of data being constantly available.

While internet speeds have increased dramatically in recent years, providing high-speed links over distances of more than a few kilometres remains challenging. Developing such fast networks is an essential step for applications such as remote diagnostics; how can a doctor in Melbourne interpret live-scan results from the Northern Territory if they take hours to arrive?

One answer is to update the fundamental protocols used by the internet to send and receive information. Experi­ments by the California Institute of Technology have shown that data can be transmitted at speeds of up to about nine gigabytes per second over distances as far as 4000km, simply by adapting existing standards and sending data over a number of parallel connections.

Another major issue being investigated by these projects is the notion of "grid" computing, which allows multiple computers to work simultaneously on complex problems and then pool results. This has been theoretically possible for years, but it's only useful if the information being processed can be returned to a central location quickly and efficiently.

One such project being carried out in the United Kingdom involves research into mammograms to enhance early detection of breast cancer. "We're applying the vast computing power of a grid to create a massive digital 'photo album' of mammogram scans available to medical experts across the UK," says Nicholas Donofrio from IBM, which has co-developed the project with Oxford University.

Although a co-operative ethos was essential to the success of the original internet, the race to build next-generation technologies appears to be heavily fuelled by national pride. The United States staked an early claim in the field, forming a private-public consortium known as Internet2 in 1996. Backed by more than 200 universities and a handful of wealthy corporations, the stated aim of Internet2 is to "help to sustain US leadership in internetworking technology".

Nor is Australia excluding itself from the race, pursuing a similar model of university research backed by private funding. In April, the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy was launched as a co-operative venture between the CSIRO and four other institutions of higher education. The charter for CENTIE, which received funding from Nortel Networks as well as a $14m funding injection from the federal government, is to investigate network enhancements and applications, especially in the areas of telehealth and media systems.

Universities across Australia are also co-operating to develop higher bandwidth connections between campuses. Last December, $42.5m was allocated over two years to enhance inter-university connections.

It may be some time before the impact of these developments is felt by the average net surfer at home. But just as those net surfers are relying on technologies that have been commonplace in universities for years, the way we use electronic communications in the future is being shaped right now by academics with a competitive streak.