Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government.

This resulted in the creation of the very-high-performance Backbone Network Service, or vBNS, developed in 1995 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and MCI for supercomputers at educational institutions.

[17] The Internet2 community, in partnership with Qwest, built the first Internet2 Network, called Abilene, in 1998 and was a prime investor in the National LambdaRail (NLR) project.

[19] Those talks paused in spring, 2006, resumed in March, 2007, but eventually ceased in the fall of 2007,[20] due to unresolved differences.

Users of poor quality libraries can now download not only text but sound recordings, animations, videos, and other resources, which would be otherwise unavailable.

Neurosurgeons can now video conference with other experts in the field during an operation in a high resolution format with no apparent time lag.

[25] The judging is conducted by many universities and based upon the following criteria: Winners of the award are announced each year at the Spring member meeting: 2006,[26] 2007,[27] 2008.