Optical Communications, Internet2 and Global Reliance on Informatics

Internet2 is designed to address the shortcomings of internet and to include new innovative design initiatives in communication networks. The internet1 had very wide acceptance and has penetrated in all walks of life much beyond the expectations of the designers. The initial text only traffic has now grown into voice, video and text requiring differential services architectures. The evolving concept of bandwidth brokerage for connectivity on demand is rapidly gearing the internet applications. The internet2 is an initiative to provide network services to demanding applications in education and scientific research. It will also look ahead to applications in the next 50 years. Fiber optics will play a key role in development of an infrastructure of internet2. The DWDM technology has been widely accepted and greater utilization of the available bandwidth for un exploited range of frequencies is being considered. The initial applications tested for internet2 are for education and research community but it will soon become a global phenomena where communities will be formed to host applications of common interest. The concept will be extended to interaction between communities in the global perspective. In this paper the globally evolving scenario of involving social, commercial and intellectual communities has been discussed. A model Medical Decision Support Service (MDSS) for Pakistan has been proposed on the lines of PERN2 over internet2 for medical and health care services. A Service Architecture for Archiving and Presentation of data (SAAP) may be used to extend MDSS for global grid connectivity.