Internet2

Internet2 is a U.S.-based, member-driven organization that operates a national advanced research and education network and provides shared technology services for universities, research institutions, government agencies, and partners.

• National advanced research and education backbone network for member institutions (networking).
• Federated identity and access management services for cross-institutional collaboration (security and Identity Access Management (IAM)).
• Cloud connectivity and brokerage services linking institutions to commercial cloud providers (cloud networking).
• Shared applications and middleware frameworks for research and education workflows (integration and collaboration).
• Community-driven technical standards, working groups, and operational support for higher education IT (IT services and governance).

More About Internet2

Internet2 operates a national-scale advanced network infrastructure that connects U.S. research universities, regional research and education networks, government agencies, and selected partners. This backbone is engineered for high-bandwidth, low-latency transport to support data-intensive science, academic collaboration, and enterprise IT workloads across geographically distributed environments. The network uses common carrier-grade technologies and protocols such as IP/MPLS, optical wavelength services, and Ethernet-based services to interconnect campus and regional networks.

For enterprise and institutional stakeholders, Internet2 functions as a shared services platform that aggregates connectivity, identity, and cloud-related needs across a consortium of members. Institutions use Internet2’s networking services (networking) for high-throughput research data movement, campus-to-campus connectivity, and connectivity to national laboratories and other specialized facilities. The organization’s architecture typically integrates with campus border routers, regional optical networks, and commodity internet services, providing a distinct path for research and education traffic.

Internet2 provides federated identity and access management services (security and IAM) that enable Single Sign-On (SSO) and trust frameworks across institutions. These capabilities support collaboration tools, research platforms, and cloud services by allowing users to authenticate with their home institution credentials while accessing resources hosted by other organizations. The trust and federation model uses standard web security and identity protocols and is designed to align with higher education governance and policy structures.

Cloud connectivity and brokerage capabilities (cloud networking) from Internet2 provide private, high-capacity connections between member institutions and commercial cloud platforms. This allows campus IT organizations and research groups to route traffic to cloud workloads over dedicated research and education network paths rather than solely over the public internet. These services are used for data-intensive applications, storage, compute, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workloads tied to teaching, learning, and research.

In addition, Internet2 supports shared applications, middleware, and collaboration services (integration and collaboration) that are developed and governed with input from member institutions. These efforts often address common requirements such as integrating campus identity systems with cloud platforms, supporting research data workflows, and enabling secure inter-institutional access to specialized instruments or datasets. Internet2 also convenes technical working groups, community forums, and operational collaborations that focus on topics such as network architecture, security practices, and cloud strategy.

In an enterprise technology directory, Internet2 can be categorized under advanced research and education networking, federated identity and access management, cloud connectivity and brokerage, and shared higher education IT services. Its offerings are used by CIOs, enterprise architects, research computing leaders, and network engineers in higher education and research organizations that participate in the Internet2 community.