Students are taking advantage of the university network to exchange files at speeds that far surpass the Internet

A new file-trading network has sprung up on Internet2, the university network that offers researchers and students a way to communicate at blazing speeds while avoiding the ordinary Internet's data traffic jams.

Dubbed i2hub, the network has drawn thousands of students from universities around the country to trade files and chat at speeds that far exceed what even ordinarily swift campus networks can provide. It has drawn rave reviews on student Web sites and from users but has already sparked concern among other Internet2 denizens.

The students involved say they're simply looking to use unused Internet2 bandwidth, which can be less expensive for their colleges than ordinary commercial Net connections. But some also see it as a way around limitations that many universities have begun to impose on widely used file-swapping applications such as Kazaa.

"Some universities put a restriction on commodity Internet line speeds but don't put any restriction on Internet2," said "Ttol," one of the students managing the project. He declined to give his real name. "The experience of transfers over Internet2 is much faster than on the commodity Internet."

Universities have been at the heart of the file-swapping, controversies since the launch of Napster in 1999. Armed with fast Net connections in dormitories, students have flocked to peer-to-peer services for free music, videos and software, and they have recently been a focus of record industry enforcement efforts.

The Recording Industry Association of America sued a quartet of students who were operating campus network search tools a year ago, settling with each of them for between $12,000 and $17,000 (£6,784 and £ 9,611). Individual students who have used ordinary software such as Kazaa have also been targeted in the RIAA's more recent wave of lawsuits.

Universities, most of which have strict policies against using their networks for copyright infringement, have begun installing software that blocks or limits the amount of bandwidth used by file-swapping applications. Some have begun investigating tools that actually look inside individual file trades, identify copyrighted music and block the transfers.

Bringing this process to Internet2 could conceivably raise the stakes for the content industries, particularly the movie studios. Using ordinary broadband connections, movies can take many hours to download, particularly if a network is congested.

Internet2 was developed by a consortium of universities and technology companies to provide vast improvements in connections speeds. Researchers use it to exchange large data files, experiments with high-definition video and other applications. But the same speed could make traditional file-swapping happen in the blink of an eye.

The i2hub network is based on a piece of open-source software called Direct Connect, which connects users and allows them to search each other's hard drives, using technology similar to the original Napster. Unlike most recent file-swapping networks, it routes search requests through a central server, which can be operated on an ordinary PC in a dorm room.

This version of Direct Connect links only students at universities with access to Internet2. While this keeps all traffic on the fast network, it's probably not the first time that Internet2 has seen file-swapping incursions. Some schools automatically route students' data traffic over Internet2, if the destination is another participating university. Thus, some students even using older tools such as Kazaa might already be using the fast academic network without knowing it.

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