Ohio’s Broadband Initiative

Broadband SummitSan Jose, CAPankaj Shah,Director of NetworkingOhio Supercomputer Center06/29/07

Discussion today…• History

• Activities

• Successes

• Relationship to digital literacy

• Partnerships

• State & Regional Policy

• Challenges

OSC Networking History-1987

• The Ohio Supercomputer Center is established by the State of Ohio

– Modeled after centers created by the National Science Foundation– Today, OSC provides supercomputing, networking infrastructure

to education, research and industry

• OSC networking (formerly known as OARnet) established to provide network access to OSC's first Cray supercomputer

– Connected 20 colleges – The network architecture consisted of 14 X T1 circuits

OARnet Backbone 1990

As of 1990

History: OSCnet Background

Board of Regents Vision identified Networking Needs:

• Need to enable Ohio’s distributed Higher Education Schools to interact as one multidisciplinary team with access to complex and expensive state resources

• Need to have flexibility and expandability in our approach to networking to respond quickly to current and future demands for service.

• Need to build a large-scale research/commercialization initiative for Ohio to develop high-tech businesses and workforce.

Activities: OSCnet Today• OSCnet, as built is comprised of over 1,850 miles of fiber and

represents the nation’s most advanced state wide superscale fiber-optic network serving education, research, government, and healthcare.

• OSCnet is powered by the world’s largest deployment of CISCO optical switches using dense wave division multiplexing, which provides the capability of almost limitless bandwidth over a single pair of fibers.

• Packet based architecture using Internet protocol (IP) and state of the art routers and switches and using multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), creates a platform capable of meeting the industry standards for reliability and the flexibility

Activities: OSCnet Today

• OSCnet has created IntraOhio service which enables Ohio users to connect without having to access the internet resulting in lower cost of collaborating in Ohio and improved quality of service

• OSCnet is facilitating economic and community development by making broadband services available to local governments to attract business opportunities and improve the delivery of community services.

• Combining this high level of technology with Ohio Supercomputer Center’s (OSC) service provided by the OSC Network Operations Center 7X24 and engineering team results in unsurpassed service and performance

Successes: Current Status of Broadband Connections

• Higher Education, K12 and Government

• Higher Education:– All 85 member universities are connected to OSCnet – 39 universities connected at OC3 to 1Gig or higher capacity– 42 universities connected at varying speeds up to 45Mbps– eTech (K-12 & all 9 Public Broadcasting Stations connected)

• Federal Agency– NASA Glenn, Ohio Aerospace institute (OAI)-1 Gig connection

upgrades underway– WPAFB, City of Springfield-on/going discussions

Successes: • Economic Development

– DubLink - City of Dublin– CORN – Central Ohio Research Network– CERF– City of Columbus– Tuscarawas County – Connecting Tech. Park in New Philadelphia, Dover, Kent State

University campus, etc.– One Community (One Cleveland) in NE Ohio– Battelle facilities in Downtown Columbus connected with Tech Park in Dublin– Healthcare

• National Collaborations– NewNet (Internet2), NLR, GNC meetings (on-going)– Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), Indiana, Kentucky– Internet2/Abilene – MERIT (Michigan)

Relationship to digital literacy:• Close co-ordination with OLN (Ohio Learning Network)

http://www.oln.org/& Ohio Link: http://www.ohiolink.edu/

• Seamless Video Conferencing (Firewall and other new product testing)

• High-definition Videoconferencing using collaboration tools

• Shared Instrumentation

• Collocation services over the backbone

Partnerships:• Public-Private partnerships

– Telecommunications companies– Equipment vendors– Consulting

• eTech (K-12 & Public Broadcasting Stations

• State of Ohio:

– Memorandum of Understanding signed earlier this year– Awaiting budget approval and Executive Orders

Governor’s Office

L1, L2, L3

L1 OSC

NextGen NetworkOSCnet

K-12 BCC

Resrch-Fed

-State-Local

Ag. Health Public TV

Higher Ed.

State & Local Gov’t.

Under-served Rings Econ.

Dev.PublicSafety Courts Public/

Private

Office of Budget & Management (OBM)

Ohio Broadband Council (OBC)Director of State Networking/

OBC Executive Director Ohio Supercomputer

Center (OSC)

Office of the CIO (OCIO)

Rural Broadband - Digital Inclusion/MARCSPolicy - Contracting

Application Innovation

Technical Consortia(OSC/OCIO Co-Chairs)

01/03/07

Challenges:• Funding to upgrade remaining 33 universities to higher

bandwidth due to high cost of last mile connectivity

• Next generation equipment upgrades will require future capital funding in 3 years

• NLR/I2 Networks

• Equipment Maintenance coming due

Lessons learned:• Partnership

– Anchor tenants make a difference

– Each relationship brings some uniqueness

• More Capital funding to avoid loan

• Constitutes come mostly from polices not technology

ContactPankaj ShahDirector of NetworkingOhio Supercomputer CenterPh: 614-292-1486Email: pshah@osc.edu