Internet Initiatives Announced

Yesterday, President Clinton announced a program to develop a “Next Generation Internet” initiative to greatly increase communication speeds between selected universities and national laboratories.

As now envisioned, next generation Internet communication speeds between 100 or more universities and national laboratories would increase 100 times over current operations. In some cases, communication would increase 1,000 times faster than current speeds.

The Administration intends to allocate $100 million in FY 1998 money to finance this effort under its High Performance Computing and Communications program. NSF and the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Education will contribute $30 million, with the remaining $70 million coming from the defense budget. No funding commitments beyond FY 1998 will be made until the program is evaluated. The President’s Science and Technology Council estimated that the development of a next-generation Internet will cost between $350 million and $650 million, taking between five and six years to implement. This money will be used to develop Internet resources for government and university research that the private sector is unlikely to support. The Administration reaffirmed that the private sector will continue to have over-all responsibility for construction, ownership, and operation of the Internet.

In describing next generation Internet capabilities, the Administration described “an increased ability to handle real-time multimedia applications...sufficient bandwidth to transfer and manipulate huge volumes of data...the ability to access remote supercomputers...and the ability to collaborate with other scientists and engineers in shared, virtual environments, including reliable and secure remote use of scientific facilities.”

Further technical details are to be developed, the Administration stating that it “intends to consult broadly with the research community, the private sector, and other stakeholders before developing the final technical details for this initiative.” The Administration also proposed to provide every school and library in the U.S. free access to basic Internet services. A federal-state board will decide by November 8 how this Internet access should be financed, with a final vote by the Federal Communications Commission on a payment schedule next year.

In announcing these initiatives, Clinton stated, “when I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page.” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/kids/html/home.html )