s in order to achieve efficient real-time communications, “Although the Internet is emerging as a key communications medium, there are limitations currently associated with communicating over the net. For example, delays, variability, and packet loss in sending traffic across the Internet present a significant hurdle providing the quality of service required for real-time communications. These limitations impede the ability to run real business applications over today’s Internet,” (Nortel, 1997: 2).
The White House, and in particular President Clinton and Vice President Gore, are very much in support of the Internet2 development because its development is part of the White House’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. President Clinton believes that the development of a new Internet system is crucial to keeping America in the forefront of productivity and economic growth because it is a significant part of today’s infrastructure. As the President said in a speech during his campaign for re-election, “Everything ages, and the Internet is straining under its growing popularity. Like any other piece of critical infrastructure, it has to be repaired and upgraded to meet all our educational, medical and national security needs,” (Bisby, 1997: 1).
The new Internet2 technology provides much more rapid rates of transmission and more power than the current Internet. Further, it provides a much more reliable system for using multi-media applications that are often interminably slow or shut-down when applied over the current Internet. The development and implementation of the Internet2 technology is expected to take five years time. Further, only institutions that are authorized by the National Science Foundation are able to access the new technology which was partly designed for the exclusive use of business, government and education. The effort was launched in 1995 and the system has technology not availa...