WIDE Internet is an operational testbed network for WIDE Project. When WIDE Project was established in 1988, there was no Internet in Japan but just an UUCP based Email network called JUNET and BITNET were operational. The first our duty was to connect participated institution via IP to create an Internet. The first IP link get operational in July 1988 between the University of Tokyo and Tokyo Institute of Technology at 64kbps, which was a "high speed" link. The second IP link between the University of Tokyo and Keio University Yagami campus installed a month later.
In Auguest 1989, the first 64kbps international link was established between University of Hawaii and Keio University as a part of PACCOM Project led by Prof. Torben Nielsen from University of Hawaii. Then we have been connected to the world-wide IP network or the Internet.
The first long-haul IPv6 connectivity was introduced in 1995 between Tokyo and Nara. 64kbps bandwidth was splitted from a T1 link operational then, and FreeBSD PCs each with a Riscom serial interface card was used for IPv6 routing by using provider based IPv6 addresses, which used an AS number to represent a block of IPv6 address space.
Now our WIDE backbone network consists of various speed of links from 2Mbps CBR ATM upto 10Gbps Ethernet. Part of the links are provided by JGN2, a VLAN/Ethernet based nation-wide testbed network. Almost all of the links carry IPv4 datagrams as well as IPv6 datagrams natively. The WIDE backbone is configured as a multivendor environment. The routers includes Cisco, Foundry, Juniper, and Hitachi. PCs running NetBSD with Zebra routing daemon are also used mainly for IPv6 routing especially IPv6 multicast.
The geographical view and topological view of the WIDE Backbone are shown below:
As seen in the drawings, WIDE Backbone has been connected to varies external connectivity. We have been connected to DIX-IE (or former name was NSPIXP-2) in Tokyo and NSPIXP-3 in Osaka respectively. While it is not shown in the diagram, we had NSPIXP-6 access as well, which was a purely experimental but one of the largest IPv6 only IX connecting about 50 ISPs in Japan or from oversea. NSPIXP-6 project was concluded on June 6th, 2008.
WIDE is participating to APAN and the connection to APAN is now at 10GE. WIDE is founder of T-LEX, yet another L1/L2/L3 academic to support lambda networking or high performance research traffic domestically or internaltionally.
Our international link was started by a 64kbps to Hawaii, we had a T1 link to Hayward, CA as one of the first customers of InternetMCI. We also had IPv6 connectivity to vBNS in Hayward. In 1999, we rehomed our international link to Los Angeles at 3Mbps ATM and it has been placed with an OC3 circuit in 2001. We have access to LAIIX which is also a layer-2 extention of LAAP. Our upstream in Los Angeles is UUnet or AS701.
We had an OC-3 extention from Los Angeles to San Jose in 2002-2003. In 2004, we settled our North California access in San Francisco with an OC-3 link from Los Angeles. We have access to PAIX at Fast Ethernet.