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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Frustrated Scientists Set Up Their Own Network Internet’s Slow Speed Triggered Quick Response

Associated Press

Computer scientist Oliver McBryan had a problem working on a virtual model of a flying airplane: The Internet is so slow it would take 100 days to download one simulation.

The vast computer network originally built for scientists is so technologically dated and clogged with regular folks sending e-mail, playing games and downloading video clips that the scientists can’t get anything done.

Now, McBryan and other researchers have gone on-line with an entirely new, scientists-only computer network called vBNS that exchanges data at speeds that blow away the World Wide wait of the Internet.

“Moving from the Internet to vBNS is like moving from a pocket calculator to a personal desktop computer,” said McBryan, a prefessor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Top speed of the vBNS, or “very high speed Backbone Network System,” is being bumped up this month to more the 21,000 times that of the average modem. The network will be able to transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress twice a day - a task that would take an entire month on the Internet.

While the general public may never have access to the vBNS, telecommunications companies already are taking lessons learned from the vBNS and using them to help ease congestion on the Internet.

The vBNS started in 1995 as a 14,000-mile fiber optic loop connecting the nations’ five supercomputing centers in San Diego; Boulder, Colo,; Urbana; Pittsburgh; and Ithaca, N.Y. MCI Telecommunications Corp. built and maintains vBNS.

Administrators at the National Science Foundation, which once managed the original Internet, decide which researchers and projects can have access to the network.

“There aren’t millions of users doing e-mail,” said Charles Lee, project manager for MCI. “It’s strictly for what’s called meritorious applications - support of science with a big S.”