When Internet was intensely commercialized in the 90s, the same quality criteria were adopted as those used for telecom networks. Only a third of the loss and interference in the Internet is due to the quality of the network itself. Reliable routers at the network periphery play a far more important role. In other words, simpler and more cost effective technology could be used for Internet connections, says Bill St. Arnaud. The message of St. Arnaud to his Nordic audience was that the role of the academic world is not limited to developing new applications or protocols for the Internet.
Academic communities can also play an important role in building the infrastructure of networks.
Another topic to be presented deals with international GRID projects, in which high-performance computers connected to a superfast network are used to compute exacting scientific tasks. One of the speakers is Professor Tom DeFanti who works at STAR TAP, in Chicago, Illinois. Promising results have been acquired from around the world regarding decentralized GRID computation. In one experiment supercomputers of Japan, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States were joined to simulate flow dynamics around a spacecraft that had just reached the earth's atmosphere and to analyze radio astronomy data. Similarly, European supercomputer centers and research institutions are planning to link their high-capacity networks to allow use for decentralized scientific computing.