GOVERNMENT
Exploiting the RON Resource
By Brian Savory, Director of Business Development, Enterprise Optical, ADVA Optical Networking -- Research-and-education institutions around the country are building regional optical networks (RONs) of unprecedented scope and capability, and state and local governments, to varying degrees, are helping foot the bills.
The new RONs leverage leading-edge optical-networking technologies that enable the dynamic delivery of high volumes of bandwidth to any location at any time. Innovations such as Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) control plane, Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) and Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) power multi-site computation and data mining, shared virtual reality, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, distributed learning, digital video, tele-immersion, telemedicine and other applications. The new capabilities are leveling the playing field among universities and allowing researchers from any institution to more fully participate in the global academic community.
Now, many of the invested states and municipalities are looking to leverage the university RONs to provide bandwidth to government agencies beyond higher education—at costs that are favorable to the market-based prices they pay for leased services today. Governments are finding that the traffic of K-12 schools, library systems and other agencies under their purview can be more cost-effectively shouldered by the new RON resource.
What are the implications of this trend for the university Information Technology (IT) personnel who must deploy, manage and maintain the new RONs?
‘Innovation Foundation’
OSCnet is a perfect example.
The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC)—“the ‘Innovation Foundation’ for the State of Ohio”—provides education, research, supercomputing and connectivity services via OSCnet to a diverse community of university and industrial researchers. At www.osc.edu, OSC details a duty “to empower our clients, partner strategically to develop new education, research and business opportunities and drive Ohio's knowledge economy.”
Celebrating its 20th year in 2008, OSCnet continues to ride the lead wave of research networking innovation. In January, it announced deployment of the nation’s ninth-fastest academic supercomputing capability. “The supercomputer offers researchers a peak performance of more than 17 teraflops, or 17 trillion calculations per second,” according to an OSC press release.
The state funds OSC as a project of Ohio’s university board of regents, and the state’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) serves as an equity partner with OSC in offering optical and core network services.
“Both OSC and OIT have created portals to make access available to points of presence on the network across the state,” said Paul Schopis, Director of Networking with OSC. “Any local government that wishes to get service provides the local loop and is charged on a cost-recovery basis by the OSC/OIT.”
Beyond Universities
Some municipalities use dark fiber to link to the RON; others provision managed services from private carriers—or take a hybrid approach to gaining connectivity to OSCnet. In some cases, local agencies have paid their access with funds from Ohio’s Third Frontier Initiative—a $1.6 billion bond program to expand the state’s high-tech capabilities.
“The governor sees it this way: Making the state a favorable environment for technology is essential to economic health,” Schopis said. “The service costs are strictly cost recovery, so any entity pays only for what they receive. This is a public-private partnership, so goods and services are purchased by the state, local governments and universities. The state and higher education explicitly do not wish to be in competition with the private sector; rather, the goal is to help provide incentives—such as acting as an anchor tenant—to promote broadband investment. The idea is that providing access services to government and education will help the private sector build into areas and have basic infrastructure in place to promote broadband services to citizens and businesses.”
For Schopis and OSC, the extension of the RON’s capabilities to customers beyond higher education has brought complications only in the area of scaling staff to support the additional users. “The level of support demanded by the universities was already a ‘five 9s’ network,” Schopis said, “so OSCnet has been designed and built to meet or exceed industry standards for service.”
A Nationwide Trend
Ohio is not alone.
The Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network (pronounced “ARE_ON”) was launched in 2006 to integrate Arkansas with the international research and education community. University of Arkansas researchers today have connectivity to two of the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortia: Internet2 and National LambdaRail. But when former Gov. Mike Huckabee in December 2005 provided $6.4 million in state funding for the network’s creation, he said, “It’s impossible to foresee all of the possible positive ramifications of ARE_ON for our state.” And, indeed, planners envision ARE_ON (www.areon.net) eventually being used to extend innovative telemedicine services into remote regions of Arkansas.
The Texas governor’s office in 2004 freed $9.8 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund to advance the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN). Twenty-five colleges and universities across the state gained access to Internet2 and National LambdaRail, but the vision is much farther-reaching—from a state-wide educational intranet for K-20 to service deployment for telemedicine and homeland defense. In addition to enhancing the research capabilities at Texas’s universities, the LEARN network (www.tx-learn.org) is designed to boost the state's economic competitiveness.
Georgia’s PeachNet (www.peachnet.edu) is a statewide communications network supporting more than 60 University System of Georgia sites, five private higher-education institutions and more than a half-dozen other government agencies. PeachNet supports services of speeds up to 10Gbit/s across the full network distance of 2,400 miles. Its users beyond university researchers include a K-12 school system connecting through PeachNet to Internet2, to a “global concert series” offered by the Philadelphia Orchestra via Internet2 and to interactive programs offered by Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts and the Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary.
Across the United States, RONs are bringing unprecedented networking power and flexibility to universities and a widening range of municipalities and public agencies.
The new RONs leverage leading-edge optical-networking technologies that enable the dynamic delivery of high volumes of bandwidth to any location at any time. Innovations such as Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) control plane, Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) and Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) power multi-site computation and data mining, shared virtual reality, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, distributed learning, digital video, tele-immersion, telemedicine and other applications. The new capabilities are leveling the playing field among universities and allowing researchers from any institution to more fully participate in the global academic community.
Now, many of the invested states and municipalities are looking to leverage the university RONs to provide bandwidth to government agencies beyond higher education—at costs that are favorable to the market-based prices they pay for leased services today. Governments are finding that the traffic of K-12 schools, library systems and other agencies under their purview can be more cost-effectively shouldered by the new RON resource.
What are the implications of this trend for the university Information Technology (IT) personnel who must deploy, manage and maintain the new RONs?
‘Innovation Foundation’
OSCnet is a perfect example.
The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC)—“the ‘Innovation Foundation’ for the State of Ohio”—provides education, research, supercomputing and connectivity services via OSCnet to a diverse community of university and industrial researchers. At www.osc.edu, OSC details a duty “to empower our clients, partner strategically to develop new education, research and business opportunities and drive Ohio's knowledge economy.”
Celebrating its 20th year in 2008, OSCnet continues to ride the lead wave of research networking innovation. In January, it announced deployment of the nation’s ninth-fastest academic supercomputing capability. “The supercomputer offers researchers a peak performance of more than 17 teraflops, or 17 trillion calculations per second,” according to an OSC press release.
The state funds OSC as a project of Ohio’s university board of regents, and the state’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) serves as an equity partner with OSC in offering optical and core network services.
“Both OSC and OIT have created portals to make access available to points of presence on the network across the state,” said Paul Schopis, Director of Networking with OSC. “Any local government that wishes to get service provides the local loop and is charged on a cost-recovery basis by the OSC/OIT.”
Beyond Universities
Some municipalities use dark fiber to link to the RON; others provision managed services from private carriers—or take a hybrid approach to gaining connectivity to OSCnet. In some cases, local agencies have paid their access with funds from Ohio’s Third Frontier Initiative—a $1.6 billion bond program to expand the state’s high-tech capabilities.
“The governor sees it this way: Making the state a favorable environment for technology is essential to economic health,” Schopis said. “The service costs are strictly cost recovery, so any entity pays only for what they receive. This is a public-private partnership, so goods and services are purchased by the state, local governments and universities. The state and higher education explicitly do not wish to be in competition with the private sector; rather, the goal is to help provide incentives—such as acting as an anchor tenant—to promote broadband investment. The idea is that providing access services to government and education will help the private sector build into areas and have basic infrastructure in place to promote broadband services to citizens and businesses.”
For Schopis and OSC, the extension of the RON’s capabilities to customers beyond higher education has brought complications only in the area of scaling staff to support the additional users. “The level of support demanded by the universities was already a ‘five 9s’ network,” Schopis said, “so OSCnet has been designed and built to meet or exceed industry standards for service.”
A Nationwide Trend
Ohio is not alone.
The Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network (pronounced “ARE_ON”) was launched in 2006 to integrate Arkansas with the international research and education community. University of Arkansas researchers today have connectivity to two of the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortia: Internet2 and National LambdaRail. But when former Gov. Mike Huckabee in December 2005 provided $6.4 million in state funding for the network’s creation, he said, “It’s impossible to foresee all of the possible positive ramifications of ARE_ON for our state.” And, indeed, planners envision ARE_ON (www.areon.net) eventually being used to extend innovative telemedicine services into remote regions of Arkansas.
The Texas governor’s office in 2004 freed $9.8 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund to advance the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN). Twenty-five colleges and universities across the state gained access to Internet2 and National LambdaRail, but the vision is much farther-reaching—from a state-wide educational intranet for K-20 to service deployment for telemedicine and homeland defense. In addition to enhancing the research capabilities at Texas’s universities, the LEARN network (www.tx-learn.org) is designed to boost the state's economic competitiveness.
Georgia’s PeachNet (www.peachnet.edu) is a statewide communications network supporting more than 60 University System of Georgia sites, five private higher-education institutions and more than a half-dozen other government agencies. PeachNet supports services of speeds up to 10Gbit/s across the full network distance of 2,400 miles. Its users beyond university researchers include a K-12 school system connecting through PeachNet to Internet2, to a “global concert series” offered by the Philadelphia Orchestra via Internet2 and to interactive programs offered by Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts and the Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary.
Across the United States, RONs are bringing unprecedented networking power and flexibility to universities and a widening range of municipalities and public agencies.
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