Continuing with the series of the views of regional research and education network leaders on the role of research and education networks and the importance of global collaboration, here we introduce the voice of the U.S. network: Internet2.

What comes to your mind when you hear that a researcher is talking about collaboration?
What comes to my mind is the amazing and critical work researchers in our community do.  Members of our community are collaborating to solve some of the most critical problems burdening global society--clean energy, climate change, cancer cures, astronomy, high-energy physics, and many other important issues.

It is imperative that researchers and their technology colleagues collaborate and provide tools that ultimately provide faster outputs of their research.  Whether this is providing solutions to send massive data sets at the press of a button – instead of shipping hard drives around the world, or providing the best possible solutions for fully interoperable and reliable video conferencing to collaborate with research colleagues across the globe. Our community must always serve their needs with the best solutions available now, and lead the charge for innovative and transformative solutions that enable more breakthrough discoveries tomorrow.

What would you identify as the main importance of research and education networks?
I would propose the critical importance of research & education (R&E) networks lies in stewardship and facilitation of the community – providing them what they need to develop and deliver real, transformative solutions to their unique, collective problems.  The networks themselves are just the initial example of the community’s ability to create solutions to collective opportunities and challenges.

When the first 34 Universities created Internet2, we did so because commercialization and a much broader use of the Internet, a goal very much supported, had impaired our ability to support large-scale scientific data transfer needs. Establishing a community-operated and later community-owned network devoted to our unique needs was quickly identified as the solution. Today, we face new challenges, and while the network is a cornerstone of our community, we must use the same collaboration concepts to develop and implement better yielding technology solutions that meet the needs of all mission areas and functions members support.

How would you describe the role of Internet2 at both a regional and a global level?
At both levels, I would describe Internet2’s role as the same. First, Internet2 was established to be the symbol of a set of ambitions for the research & education community.  Secondly, Internet2 was created to be an agent these leaders can use to develop and implement solutions to common problems.  That was the original definition of Internet2, and it holds true today. Though our community is much bigger today than it was 15 years ago – and its reach must be broader and deeper to be optimally effective, this definition applies now more than ever with the challenges facing research and education.

How important for Internet2 is collaboration with other regional networks and in what ways do you collaborate at a global level?
Internet2 places high priority in optimizing the role of all partners in the traditional 4-tier model of state, regional, national and global R&E networks. The ecosystem is dramatically expanding with new or increasing state efforts, competitive commercial offerings and other forces for change pushing against the historical R&E network model. Through broad collaborations with end users, existing and new network partners and other interested parties, Internet2 seeks to develop a contemporary set of models that link its own networking efforts with those elsewhere in the ecosystem—to create a coherent mission, business, operational and technical capability for the future.

Internet2 collaborates with its many international partner organizations to promote the development of these coherent network capabilities and architectures. For example, Internet2 is a partner in DICE, a strategic collaboration between European and North American Research and Education Networking partners focusing on optimizing trans-Atlantic networking operations for all research and education users. We also work with our global partners to provide above the network services. For example, Internet2 is working in partnership with several peer RENs, including RedClara, to enable seamless, interoperable, high quality video collaboration across institutional and international boundaries. Internet2 also works with its partners to ensure access to globally distributed science facilities and projects, including CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and the SOAR and Prompt telescope projects in Chile.

How do you think global collaboration among regional networks will change in the coming years?
Internet2 strongly believes that globalization is changing our mission and strategies—
and those of our higher education partners and universities—and will invariably shape the Internet2 of the future.

Because science, education, research and service are not bound by geographic borders, the long-term success of Internet2 relies on strengthening partnerships and collaborative opportunities with international counterparts, but also on our ability to seek out new ways of collaborating and extending our capabilities in support of the Internet2 membership. These partnerships create the bridges required between our respective communities, and support the teaching, learning, clinical and outreach missions of our membership and their communities.

Describe your vision of R&E networks in the future.
R&E networks must harness and build upon community experience in successfully developing collective solutions to meet the unique needs of the R&E community at-large and provide new dimensions of support for members to garner the resources required to develop and deliver unique solutions for researchers and educators.

Internet2 strives to continually earn the right to be an agent for the R&E community by assisting them in developing transformative solutions that address collective needs and problems, delivered by the community, enabled by advanced technologies that combine to create a complete platform for innovation. We are working hard to create an even better collaborative environment and provide innovative tools and technologies for community collaboration and solution delivery to enable the community to support all of their mission areas in new, unprecedented ways.

Further, Internet2 aims to mobilize the community to collaborate on defining a prioritized set of initiatives that will address their issues and needs, advocate with other organizations--commercial providers, open-source groups, government, global partners, etc.--to remove barriers to the community’s collective success, and serve the community in any other possible role to accomplish collective goals.

Ultimately, R&E community leaders can utilize a unique service-delivery mechanism to transform current business and service models – free of limitations imposed by current structures, models, and technologies, and deliver better yielding and perhaps previously unimaginable solutions. The results will be reduced education costs, new markets created, solutions to burdening societal problems more rapidly, and strengthened positioning of global research and education long into the future.