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Technology Infrastructure: The Internet and the World Wide Web

INTERNET2 AND T HE SEMANTI C WEB

When the National Science Foundation turned over the Internet backbone to commercial 101
interests in 1995, many scientists felt that they had lost a large, living laboratory. A group
of network research scientists from nearly 200 universities and a number of major
corporations joined together in 1996 to recapture the original enthusiasm of the
ARPANET and created an advanced research network called Internet2. An experimental
test bed for new networking technologies that is separate from the original Internet,
Internet2 has achieved bandwidths of 10 Gbps and more on parts of its network.
Internet2 is also used by universities to conduct large collaborative research projects
that require several supercomputers connected at very fast speeds, or that use multiple
video feeds—things that would be impossible on the Internet given its bandwidth limits.
For example, doctors at medical schools that are members of Internet2 regularly use its
technology to do live videoconference consultations during complex surgeries, and
particle physicists use it to collect and analyze large amounts of information while doing
experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (a large particle physics laboratory near
Geneva, Switzerland), which can generate 10 Gb of data per second. Internet2 serves as a
proving ground for new technologies and applications of those technologies that will
eventually find their way to the Internet. Many of the technologies that are now part of
the Internet of things (about which you learned earlier in this chapter) were first
developed as Internet2 initiatives. You can learn more about current activities conducted
on this network by following the WebLink to Internet2.
The Internet2 project is focused mainly on technology development. In contrast, Tim
Berners-Lee began a project in 2001 that has a goal of blending technologies and
information into a next-generation Web. This Semantic Web project envisions words on
Web pages being tagged (using XML) with their meanings. The Web would become a huge
machine-readable database. People could use intelligent programs called software agents
to read the XML tags to determine the meaning of the words in their contexts. For
example, a software agent given the instruction to find an airline ticket with certain terms
(date, cities, cost limit) would launch a search on the Web and return with an electronic
ticket that meets the criteria. Instead of a user having to visit several Web sites to gather
information, compare prices and itineraries, and make a decision, the software agent
would automatically do the searching, comparing, and purchasing.
For software agents to perform these functions, Web standards must include XML, a
resource description framework, and an ontology. You have already seen how XML tags
can describe the semantics of data elements. A resource description framework (RDF) is
a set of standards for XML syntax. It would function as a dictionary for all XML tags used
on the Web. An ontology is a set of standards that defines, in detail, the relationships
among RDF standards and specific XML tags within a particular knowledge domain. For
example, the ontology for cooking would include concepts such as ingredients, utensils,
and ovens; however, it would also include rules and behavioral expectations, such as that
ingredients can be mixed using utensils, that the resulting product can be eaten by
people, and that ovens generate heat within a confined area. Ontologies and the RDF
would provide the intelligence about the knowledge domain so that software agents could
make decisions as humans would.

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