CONGESTION on the Internet has grown so bad that the US National Science Foundation is planning to offer scientists a 鈥渂ypass鈥� that will move them into the fast lane of the information superhighway. The NSF has decided to build special high-capacity links for the exclusive use of certain scientific projects.
As the Internet has grown in popularity, it has become seriously overloaded, making it increasingly time-consuming for scientists to transfer large data files to each other. NSF officials say that the bypass is an interim solution for scientists who need high-speed connections, but they hope that the project will also spur on the development of cheaper technology to give high speed connections for general use.
鈥淲e鈥檙e hoping that by priming the pump, we will help move the process along,鈥� says George Strawn, director of the NSF鈥檚 division of networking and communications research and infrastructure.
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Under the plan, the NSF will help universities to pay for high-capacity connections to the Internet for scientific projects that must transmit large volumes of data. 鈥淭elecollaboration鈥�, in which a team of scientists work together at various locations, swapping large data files and holding videoconferences over the Internet, would then become practical.
A high-capacity connection from a campus to the Net can cost more than $100 000 a year. Many universities are already buying high-speed connections for routine use. But these will soon be running at full capacity, and most universities cannot afford to buy another connection for relatively small groups of scientists.
About a hundred universities will acquire high-capacity connections to the Very High Speed Backbone Network, created last year to connect the NSF鈥檚 five supercomputer centres. The backbone is also connected to the rest of the Internet.
Paul Ginsparg of the US government鈥檚 Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico runs a computerised distribution system for physics papers that handles a million requests from the Internet each month. He says that the NSF has identified a serious problem: 鈥淭he increase in bandwidth couldn鈥檛 come too soon.鈥�
It is still unclear how the planned Internet bypass will be reserved for the scientists who need it most urgently. One possibility is that 鈥渞outers鈥� in the network would be able to tell from people鈥檚 Net addresses whether or not they were eligible to use the bypass.
Strawn recognises that the idea of reserving high-speed connections for a privileged few runs counter to the egalitarian ethos of many users. 鈥淭he Internet contains a lot of people who think independently,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 do much that isn鈥檛 criticised by somebody, but we think we鈥檙e on the right track.鈥�