Our commitment to members has always been to support research, education, and service missions by providing the network capability to move big data that assists in their collaboration efforts. Since October 2016, the Internet2 network has been moving over one exabyte of data each year. We are committed to delivering a national research and education (R&E) network that Internet2 members can continue to trust while leaving behind a greener footprint.

The Next Generation Infrastructure (NGI) program promises a reduced carbon footprint that will remove 6681 metric tons a year of carbon from the environment, while delivering  multiple contiguous routes equipped with 800 gigabits per second of bandwidth between the East and West coasts.

Based on engineering models, the Cisco 8200 routing platform selected for the NGI program is projected to reduce the total operating power used by Internet2’s packet platform by a minimum of 61% – calculated to drop from 88,100 watts to 34,125 watts. Taken annually, the proportional savings in kilowatt hours for direct power results in 334 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions avoidance. Factoring in an equivalent amount of cooling, the total rises to 668 metric tons of carbon dioxide reduction.

This is equivalent to taking 144 cars off the road per year, or approximately 1.6 million driven miles by an average passenger vehicle per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.