Affiliations: Laboratory for Radiological Informatics, University of California at San Francisco, 530 Parnassus Ave., Rm CL‐158, San Francisco, CA 94143‐0628,USA | Enterprise Network Services, University of California at San Francisco, 250 Executive Park Blvd., Suite 2000, San Francisco, CA 94134, USA | Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA
Note: [] Present address: Department of Radiology, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles/University of Southern California, Mailstop #81, 4650 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90027, USA, Tel./Fax: +1 818 889 9411; E‐mail: hkhuang@aol.com.
Abstract: The next generation internet (NGI) or Internet2 is an initiative for the integration of higher speed backbone communication networks as a means to replace the current inadequate Internet for many applications including medical imaging. This paper first reviews the current status of the Internet2 and reasons why telemedicine and teleradiology require its service. A case study is given using the private ATM OC‐3 network at the Laboratory for Radiological Informatics, UCSF as an example for connecting a local site to the Internet2. Network security and data integrity are discussed in both the global and the local network level. Some preliminary results on Internet2 performance in the regional and the national level, as well as comparing with other WAN technologies are given.
Keywords: Internet, Internet2, Next Generation Internet (NGI), medical imaging, telemedicine, teleradiology, data security
