BRINGING THE NEXT GENERATION INTERNET TO NEW ZEALAND
NEIL JAMES, University of Otago and Chairperson, NGI-NZ Consortium
20 June, 2003
Abstract
The research and education (R&E) community in New Zealand lacks one important tool that
their counterparts in most other developed countries enjoy - a national research and education
computer network. This paper reviews how New Zealand got to this position and goes on to
explain what is being done to redress the situation. Advances in networking technology are
briefly covered, and some examples of advanced network applications are given. The lead up
to the establishment of the Next Generation Internet NZ (NGI-NZ) Consortium will be
explained, and its current plans will be presented.
Keywords: Research and Education, Next Generation Internet, Tuia, AARNet, Internet2,
Advanced Networking
What is the Next Generation Internet (NGI)?
The Next Generation Internet (NGI) aims to provide a quantum leap in capabilities beyond
what is now seen as the ‘commodity’ Internet. Countries with NGI networks now have
communication capabilities that are not available on today’s ‘commodity’ Internet, opening
new possibilities for collaborative research and education at both a national and global level,
as well as shrinking the distance and time barriers. It is very clear that New Zealand,
particularly in consideration of our geographical position, must have access to this technology
to support the knowledge society and knowledge economy. Collaborative applications such as
high quality multi-site video conferencing, real-time access to remote resources, shared virtual
reality, and large scale, multi-site computation and data mining are examples of some of the
high-performance networking facilities that researchers in other countries, who already have
access to an NGI network, are developing and using today.
The current commodity Internet
Next Generation Internet
Limited bandwidth
Over-supply of bandwidth
Intermittent availability
Permanent and pervasive access
Coexistence with:
Data, voice, and broadcast networks converge
into an interconnected network of digital,
packet-switched IP
 analogue broadcast networks
 circuit switched networks
 proprietary data networks
Connectivity
Inter-operation
Communication
Collaboration
Share information
Shared Resources
Personal productivity
Virtual organisations
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Some history of computer networking in New Zealand
In common with many countries the Internet was brought to New Zealand by the research and
education (R&E) community. The first permanent connection to the Internet was established
via the University of Waikato, and managed by Kawaihiko, the New Zealand universities’
networking body. In the early 1990’s the New Zealand R&E community formed the Tuia
Incorporated Society and established TuiaNet, which brought together the universities and
newly created Crown Research Institutes’ (CRI ) interests in national and international
networking. However, unlike most if not all other developed countries, the New Zealand R&E
network did not survive the 1990s. Telco’s (telecommunications service suppliers)
approached individual institutions and had the effect of undermining the aims of the Tuia
Society. They came with attractive offers that matched or even bettered the offers they were
making to Tuia. In consequence the individual institutions went their own way and Tuia
withered.
The loss of a network focused on the needs of the R&E community lead to the New Zealand
network capabilities drifting behind those available to R&E communities in every other
developed country. In addition, while New Zealand had been active on the international R&E
networking scene in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, it was left almost entirely unrepresented
at the international network forums by the mid 1990’s. In 2000 the author, while attending an
advanced networking workshop convened by AARNet (the Australian university and CSIRO
network organisation), realised just how far behind New Zealand was. This raised some
fundamental questions:

does it matter – are our research workers significantly disadvantaged?

if the sector really wanted advanced network services wouldn’t the market – the telcos
– be only too willing to provide?

is New Zealand missing out on opportunities because it is not represented in the
international R&E networking forums?

how can New Zealand re-enter the world R&E network scene?
Over the past three years it has become very clear that New Zealand must re-establish an
advanced computer network for the R&E community. A failure to do so would greatly
disadvantage our R&E sector.
A high level view of the technology issues
There is now a consensus that most communication – voice, video and data – will be
transported on IP (Internet Protocol) based networks in future. This greatly simplifies the
communications scene as special purpose telecommunications networks will no longer be
required. For example there will be no need for special circuits for carrying voice traffic, and
other services to carry video. Already the majority of national voice traffic is actually carried
on IP networks, and increasingly organisations are migrating to voice over IP (VoIP) services
internally, and for inter-branch communications.
One major issue arises with voice and video because they are what are known as isochronous
services, meaning that they require a service that guarantees delivery within close time
constraints. Random gaps in speech make it unintelligible. Unfortunately the commodity
Internet provides no guarantee of delivery of communications within a particular time
interval. There are two general approaches to solving this problem: either (1) ensure that the
network is never congested by making its capacity/bandwidth enormous, or (2) provide some
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type of priority systems (know as QoS, quality of service) to allow isochronous data (voice,
video etc.) to have a high priority on the network. In practise both of these solutions are used.
Advanced R&E networks usually rely primarily on ‘over-supply’ of bandwidth to ensure
service for isochronous material, and this is achievable and affordable because of advances in
technology. In the last decade there have been dramatic improvements in networking
technology with speed records being continually surpassed, and the cost of the technology
tumbling. The price-performance of communications technology is now improving by at least
two- or three-fold a year.
As an example of the enormous capabilities of currently available technology it is possible to
carry an individual video stream simultaneously to every person alive in the world today
through a single cable package 50mm in diameter. The backbone service of a typical NGI
network can transport the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in less than 1 second. This
has come about through continual improvement of the total bandwidth capabilities of glass
fibre communications.
The capabilities these advances can provide have not generally come through in the services
we get from our telcos. Our communication bills are not dropping two or three fold a year.
Very high speed networks – a gigabit and above – are not affordable, notwithstanding such
cost movements as the recent drop of 45% in the cost of fibre lighting equipment from one
major supplier.
The are several reasons for this situation, and the NGI-NZ Consortium seeks to be a catalyst
for change to take New Zealand into a network future that has very affordable high speed and
high quality communication services. In pursuit of this aim the Consortium notes that:

high speed backbones are now the low cost part of any network – the high cost part is
the ‘last mile’.

telcos come from a perspective of carefully managing scarce resources, but bandwidth
need not be scarce.

it has been estimated that less than 10% of the fibre in the ground in New Zealand is in
use.
Advanced Network Applications
The key attributes of NGI applications can be summarised as:

interactive research collaboration and instruction;

real-time access to remote resources;

large-scale, multi-site computation and data mining;

visualization - shared virtual reality.
A key theme in these is support for collaboration. This may be collaboration at one site, or
nationally or globally. There is a whole class of applications know as ‘grid’ applications.
Two examples are the Computational Grid and the Access Grid. A computational grid
provides an environment for developing systems that aggregate the capabilities of the
multitude of computing resources from around the world. The Access Grid provides a
collaborative environment that allows several physically separated groups to interact using a
wall full of video presences.
Remote manipulation of research equipment opens up opportunities for research workers who
do not have physical access to the equipment. For example a telescope can be manipulated
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from across the world, providing a distant community of research workers and opportunity to
use an instrument that is not normally accessible to them.
The use of technology with haptic (‘feel /touch’) feedback provides another set of possibilities
for collaboration at a distance ranging from remote involvement in surgery to remote teaching
of music.
High quality sound and video offers opportunities for remote collaboration in the arts.
Why the market has not provided the answer
It is often stated that if the demand is there, the market will provide the services. The problem
with advanced networking is that the demand is not obvious enough for the market to justify
the investment. As discussed below, because advanced services are not available, the level of
demand for these services cannot be demonstrated to the satisfaction of a telecommunications
service company looking for guaranteed returns for its shareholders (in the short term).
Without a client willing to commit to using advanced services the market players are
unwilling to invest.
Starting to address the issues
A briefing paper (‘National Computer Networks in Research and Education’) was written
explaining the situation and sent to appropriate Government Ministers and the NZ ViceChancellors’ Committee in August 2000, and a presentation was made to the NZVCC in
October 2000. While this activity resulted in letters of support from Government Ministers
and from the NZVCC no forward path was identified.
It was found that New Zealand research workers had become used to the high cost of
communications, and adjusted their expectations accordingly. The level of awareness about
what could be available to them, and what their counterparts overseas enjoyed, and how they
might use such capabilities, was low. This environment created many examples of ‘making
do’ or avoiding activities that would require advanced networking. This meant,
notwithstanding some very compelling evidence that New Zealand had a significant problem
that needed addressing with some urgency, it was difficult to clearly demonstrate the demand
from the research community.
However several people with a good understanding of the significance of New Zealand’s poor
R&E networking infrastructure contributed to a seminar in July 2001 in Wellington’s
(e)Vision breakfast seminar series to explain the situation and explore what could be done.
The seminar was well attended and well reported. InternetNZ subsequently set up an Internet2
Steering Group with the following terms of reference:

raise awareness and potential benefits of advanced computing services and
applications for the New Zealand research community, the commercial sector, and
society in general;

facilitate the development of partnerships and consortiums with the research
community and industry that will keep New Zealand at the cutting edge of advanced
computing and networking technologies;

provide input to Government industry policy formulation.
The Steering Group met in August 2001 and resolved to convene a meeting of interested
parties to discuss a way to get New Zealand into the advanced networking world. This
meeting took place in October 2001 and the major outcome was an agreement to pursue the
goal of implementing an advanced research and education network for New Zealand. It was
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resolved to write a paper laying out the situation and suggesting a course of action. This paper
(‘Internet2 Steering Group Report’) was completed by December 2001, and it concluded with
a recommendation to undertake a Capability Study to investigated how to proceed with the
implementation of a network.
Funding to support the Capability Study was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister in May
2002 and the study was undertaken over the next 4 months culminating in a substantial report
‘Collaborating at Speed’i (a copy of the report can be found at http://www.internetnz.net.nz).
A ‘report back’ meeting was convened in September 2002 where the findings were presented
to those who had been consulted during the Study, and other interested parties. The report
recommended the establishment of a consortium of interested parties to establish a research,
innovation and education network for New Zealand, and to promoted the development of
advanced networking applications. It also promoted the following vision statement:
An innovative and globally-connected economy, with state of the art national internet
infrastructure delivering bandwidth at capacities and prices that encourage
collaboration, and stimulate researchers and entrepreneurs to seek new challenges
and business opportunities.
This vision reaches out to all New Zealanders, beyond the tertiary education and
research sectors, to schools, businesses and the community, creating a widespread
“innovation culture”.
The Report strongly supported the development of a network without an ‘acceptable use
policy’, allowing users to transport whatever communications they wished, whether R&E
related or commercial. It also supported the concept of inclusion of the ‘innovation’ sector,
along with the R&E community.
Following the recommendations from the report the first meeting of NGI-NZ Consortium (the
term Next Generation Internet – NGI was used rather than Internet2, as Internet2 is the
registered name of the US universities’ NGI project) was held on 30 October 2002, with 10
initial members – all the New Zealand universities, CityLink, and AgResearch – and a Chief
Executive was appointed by the end of the year.
Early in 2003 the Consortium went out to the market to seek offers from potential network
suppliers and partners. At the time of writing the Consortium is in final stages of determining
a direction to take in the implementation of the network.
Government interest in advanced networking
As noted above earlier approaches to Government received support in the form of
encouraging words, and in 2002 the Capability Study was financially supported through
Industry NZ. The Minister for Communications, Paul Swain, met with the representatives of
the InternetNZ NGI Steering Group on two occasions and gave further encouragement.
However it is only recently that the Ministry for Research, Science and Technology (MoRST)
started to show tangible interest in this area. They are now very quickly coming to terms with
what needs to be done to provide this vital part of New Zealand’s infrastructure. MoRST has
initiated a project that is looking at infrastructure needs, and advanced networking is a major
element identified for action. This project team is working closely with the NGI-NZ.
International network organisation interest
Over recent years the international R&E community has continued to offer assistance to New
Zealand to help re-establish a R&E network in New Zealand and has offered to help with
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establishing the relationships required for New Zealand to obtain appropriate connection to
international R&E networks. In particular there is strong support from AARNet (Australian
Academic and Research Network), and contacts have been made with the Nation Science
Foundation and Internet2 in the US, and CANARIE (Canadian Network for the Advancement
of Research, Innovation and Education) in Canada.
What next?
The network is on track for initial implementation by September 2003. NGI-NZ is now
initiating a membership programme focused initially on the research and education sector. It
is expected that there could be up to 50 members soon after the network is established and a
greater number as more of the ‘innovation’ community is approached. As the market model
for communications is changed, partly or largely through this current initiative, the facilities
and services of the so-called second generation of the Internet will become available in the
‘commodity’ Internet. However it is also expected that the process of advancement in
capabilities will continue and NGI-NZ will continue to have a role in ‘pushing the
boundaries’ just as Internet2 in the US, CANARIE in Canada, and AARNet in Australia do.
i
Laurence Zwimpfer for the NGI Steering Committee, Collaborating at Speed: Innovation
Infrastructure for a Knowledge Economy, ISBN 0-473-09060-0
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