Anniversary Web BookCelebrating 10 years of AI3 Project
and 5 years of SOI Asia Project
Anniversary Web BookAsian Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) is an international research consortium among research institutes in Asian region and is aiming to form a group of researchers to develop leading edge technologies for the Internet, such as IPv6, multicast, unidirectional links, WWW caching and replication mechanisms, multimedia communication mechanism, and applications for the advanced usage of the Internet. AI3 Project was kicked-off in October 1995 by WIDE Project and JSAT Corp, and AI3 started its test-bed network operation in October 1996 with the establishment of NAIST-ITB link.
AI3 Project is running a satellite Internet test-bed network in Asia. It started with three bidirectional links on Ku-band, and after several changes, the test-bed network is now consisted of eight bidirectional links and a unidirectional link on C-band. Besides the above mentioned actitivites, AI3 Project also serves as the network insfrastructure for SOI Asia Project. AI3 is now operating a network connecting 24 organizations in 13 countries, including SOI Asia Partners.
| Organizations | Country |
|---|---|
| Brawijaya University | Republic of Indonesia |
| Institut Teknologi Bandung | Republic of Indonesia |
| Keio University | Japan |
| Nara Institute of Science and Technology | Japan |
| University Sains Malaysia | Malaysia |
| Tribhuvan University | Kingdom of Nepal |
| Advanced Science and Technology Institute | Republic of the Philippines |
| Temasek Polytechnic | Republic of Singapore |
| Asian Institute of Technology | Kingdom of Thailand |
| Institute of Information Technology | Socialist Republic of Viet Nam |
In the course of ten years, AI3 Project, has been involved in research, development, and deployment Internet technologies, e.g. adaptive web cache, IP multicast, IPv6, and unidirectional link routing. We developed an adaptive web cache system and deployed a network of web cache servers employing adaptive algorithms to prefetch WWW object based on access patterns. We deployed IPv6 on our network test-bed since 1999 to evaluate IPv6, which was still under development at that time, and now IPv6 is fully operational on our network.
We developed and deployed a unidirectional link (UDL) on our network test-bed to connect research and education institutions in Asia, and we are running IPv6 and multicast on this UDL. We have connected more than twenty sites to our UDL as of September 2006. The main applications running on our UDL are SOI Asia applications, such as real-time classes and multicast file distributions.
We deployed a policy routing mechanism on our network to increase the efficiency of our satellite links. Our policy routing mechanism monitors transit traffic to a partner on a bidirectional link and if the traffic exceeds a certain limit, the policy routing diverts the traffic from the bidirectional link to the unidirectional link. Therefore, we can spread transit traffic to both bidirectional and unidirectional links.
Research for large scale IPv6 networks on broadcast links are currently underway. The objective is to enable broadcast wireless links, such as satellite links, and digital terrestrial broadcast links, to carry traffic for a large number of nodes on a single carrier. The challenge is to find the solution to optimize the number of control packets on the link so that they would not excessively consume the wireless link bandwidth.
We will continue to expand the deployment of our unidicational link and doing research on various Interent technologies that will best suite to satellite links. We will also continue to provide the infrastructure for SOI Asia Project for delivering distance learning to Asia.