Anniversary Web Book
Akira Kato, Ph.D
Associate Professor, ITC, The University of Tokyo
I would like to express my congratulation to those who have related to this AI3 Project for its 10th anniversary. It was not an easy task to set up just a couple of VSAT stations to establish an IP link between two countries -- people may needed to work hard for large diversity of problems from physical installation of the stations to the license negotiation with their governments.
Furtheremore AI3 group performed outstanding work to extend the infrastructure to cover other countries, enlarging its foot print and the community. Meanwhile people were educated by themselves to contribute statble operation as well as made the infrastructure as a testbed to the new technologies including UDLR, IPv6 unicast, and IPv6 multicast. While it experienced some minor glitches, the infrastructre has been operated reliably so that many students and faculties received the benefits.
It is a good moment to reconsider the role of satellite link and AI3 among the current Internet environment for next few years. While the network of people will be more important to expand the community, the operational strategies may need to be re-evaluated with the terrestrial infrastucture which has been deployed in some few countries in order to provide a better and efficient environment. I wish the AI3 group will keep the current activities in both hands for other success for the next decade.