Cigarette fire takes out Internet2

The experimental Internet2 high-speed network was taken out on Wednesday by a fire started by a homeless man. A lit cigarette carelessly discarded on a mattress is blamed for starting a conflagration which knocked out services on Internet2 (Abilene Network) between Boston and New York after it burnt cables which run through the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a silly question.

Why does a circuit that connects Chicago to New York run through Boston in the first place? Did they simply have an extra 300 km length of cable and no other idea what to do with it?

[Eduard Coli]

Best thing for it really

Internet2 if and when it supersedes or is integrated into the Internet (or is that Internet1?) will be a nightmare for privacy. Even if "researchers" claim that speed is the point now, it won't be when the marketing people and the feds are done with it.

[Guy]

There goes my bandwidth limit

Ok it goes at 9 gigabits per second. thats roughly 1 Gigabyte of data per second.........hmmm 20 seconds says goodbye to my bandwidth for a month, what the heck am I supposed to do for the rest of the month??

[Remy Redert]

Upgrade your account

Easy enough don't you think? If that kind of bandwidth is commonplace, bandwidth restrictions will necessarily be raised as well.

[peter]

The Dishwasher

We are all homeless until IPV6

[Jan Buys]

sub titles

"Redundancy is so net 1.0"

Hail to the person that writes them...

[Andy Bright]

Superb - the disenfranchised are rising up against the elitists..

Okay he was a bit of a careless tit, but if society was taking care of those considerably less fortunate than the few using these ultra-high bandwidth connections - then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Just a thought, and probably out of order given his honourary paedaphile status for being a smoker.

(The truly wonderful thing about this is it should come out on a day the office smokers managed to set fire to, and burn down, the office cigarette post..)

[KAWA IAN]

Internet2 may be coming, but fair usage policy generation 2 as well!

At this stage, I am really not so sure if BT or any other provider will invest to Internet2. As you see, we have been falling behind in the speed competition for many years and ISPs are still playing with their FUP,AUP... recently. To be honest, there is no hope that things could be improved. They are doing business. What they want is just money but not speed or quality, unless our government would like to alter this situation.

[Atman]

Have the chap pay for the repairs.....

He may be homeless but that's by partially by choice, smokes cost what..$4, $5, $6 a pack now??? While that may not be exclusive to the rich, it sure ain't for the poor. I guess society is to blame that he used funds for cigarettes rather than other things? We can't babysit them all the time Mr. Bright.

I2 has just been dangled out there for quite some time now....a tease for the rest of us. So many benefits and speed for so few people/univ yet around here there are hundreds of people who can't get over 17k with dial up. Satellite service is available $300 plus $60 per month but is still very slow in our areas quite literally it's not much faster than normal dial-up and there are severe caps on how much you can download before they shut us down. I know I2 was mainly setup for research but I was always under the impression they were going to use the technology to speed up the rest of us.

So as long as nobody was hurt I don't feel too sorry for em....

I guess I'm just jealous...

[Anthony Bathgate]

I2 is for research

Internet2 is not at all looking to supersede the Internet. In fact, you'll find that it's actually based on prettymuch the same gear. It's just a very large internet (little i, not big I - meaning a generalized external network) linking universities and research facilities to facilitate the sharing of RIDICULOUSLY large datasets that otherwise would have to be loaded onto hard drives and shipped out on a truck or something. Sure, occasionally there's other traffic being switched in from other networks (and occasionally the Internet) but I2 still isn't an extension or replacement for the current Internet.

It's a totally distinct network. And the amusing thing is that most bandwidth-increasing research being done on I2 is to facilitate larger data transfers for OTHER research. The results could be deployed to the Internet, but first somebody has to pay to install it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Title

FYI Atman: homeless people don't usually buy cigs unless it's been a real good can day... They cage them off smokers and recycle them from ashtrays, trash and gutter...