1. Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP), UCAR Point of Presence (UPoP), Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON) 1 Marla Meehl UCAR/FRGP/UPoP/BiSON Manager UCAR/NCAR 2014-04-29

2. 2 Acronym soup University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR; http://www.ucar.edu)http://www.ucar.edu –National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) –Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP) –UCAR Point of Presence (UPoP) –Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON) Questions and discussions throughout as needed – and as for acronym soup ingredients, please ask if I miss one or check decoder page at http://bit.ly/acronym-souphttp://bit.ly/acronym-soup

3. 3 Colorado Network History NSFnet national network Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Operated mid-1980s to 1995 Encouraged creation of regional networks to aggregate Westnet (Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah) Operated and managed by Colorado State University and the University of Colorado 56Kbps, T1, to T3

4. 4 Colorado Network History – Cont’d Very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) funded by the NSF to connect the supercomputer centers including NCAR OC-3 (155Mbps) to OC-12 (622Mbps) Left out universities and other entities Internet2 formed and created the Abilene Network – 1999 Formed by 34 member universities Still in operation with a 100Gbps backbone Own fiber for expansion

5. Abilene, Kansas 5

6. 6 Colorado Network History – Cont’d National LambdaRail (NLR), Inc. Founded in 2003 and operational in 2004 14 members formed including the FRGP Owned 12,000 mile national Level3 fiber optic footprint In November 2011 the control of NLR was purchased from its university membership by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong for $100M His intention to upgrade NLR infrastructure and repurpose portions of it to support an ambitious healthcare project The upgrade never took place. NLR ceased operations in March 2014

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8. 8 Front Range GigaPoP (FRGP) http://www.frgp.net The FRGP enables advanced scientific research and education, supports experimental and production networks, fosters networking and application research, and facilitates interconnectivity among regional, national, and international high-performance research and education networks.

9. What is the FRGP? For over 14 years, the FRGP has advanced the research and educational goals of government, nonprofit, and educational members in the region by establishing and maintaining a unique multi-state network infrastructure that is owned and controlled by the FRGP member research and education community. 9

10. What is the FRGP – Cont’d The FRGP is a consortium of Universities, non- profit corporations, government agencies, secondary members, and the UCAR Point of Presence who cooperate as part of a Regional Optical Network (RON) in order to share wide area networking services including the commodity Internet, Internet2, intra-FRGP, and peering connectivity. UCAR provides the management, engineering, and network operations center support for the FRGP and UPoP. 10

11. What is the UPoP? http://upop.ucar.edu The UCAR Point of Presence (UPoP) is a consortium of colleges, K-12s, non-profit corporations, government agencies, and non- profit health care entities These groups cooperate in an aggregation point called the UPoP in order to share FRGP services The UPoP is part of the FRGP 11

12. Current FRGP members - 12 Colorado School of Mines Colorado State University System National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Boulder) State of Colorado University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR/NCAR) University NAVSTAR Consortium (UNAVCO) University of Colorado Boulder University of Colorado Colorado Springs University of Colorado Denver University of Denver University of Northern Colorado University of Wyoming

13. Current UPoP members - 20 Auraria Higher Education Center ARTstor Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries Colorado Community College System City of Boulder City and County of Denver Colorado Department of Higher Education Colorado Mountain College Colorado Telehealth Network Community College of Denver Denver Health Educational Access Gateway Learning Environment Network Fort Lewis College Metropolitan State University of Denver Open Media Foundation St. Mary’s Academy Science and Technology in Atmospheric Research (STAR) Institute United States Antarctic Program University Information Systems (CU system) University of Colorado Hospital

14. FRGP/UPoP Benefits FRGP and UPoP members typically enjoy reduced costs, shared expertise, shared services, increased buying power, and economies of scale. Aggregated and direct intra-member network access –This includes access to all members, secondary connections behind primary FRGP/UPoP members Direct peering connections including Comcast, Google, CoreSite Any2, and the Energy Sciences network (ESnet). 14

15. FRGP/UPoP Benefits Access to multiple commodity Internet service providers at 10Gbps offering resiliency and diversity –TeliaSonera and Level3 Traffic aggregation and FRGP membership in The Quilt, Inc. provide cost savings for commodity Internet services The FRGP also participates in the commercial network peering program known as TransitRail (TR) / Commercial Peering Service (CPS) managed by Internet2 –Designed to improve network performance through peering relationships with commercial networks to help members reduce the overall cost of, and reliance on, commodity Internet transit services. –Carries 30-50% of FRGP/UPoP traffic 15

16. FRGP/UPoP Benefits Provides caching services as part of the Akamai and Netflix (carrying ~7Gbps) Provides connectivity to the Internet2 network –Either directly for Internet2 members or qualifying community anchor institution via the US UCAN program (formerly known as SEGP) –50Gbps to Chicago –10Gbps to Salt Lake City –10Gbps to Los Angeles –100Gbps upgrade in progress 16

17. FRGP/UPoP Traffic FRGP/UPoP Traffic (excludes caching and intra-FRGP) –~14% commercial IP transit (Level3 and TSIC) –~60% peering (ESnet, Google, TR/CPS, Any2) –~26% Internet2 17

18. FRGP/UPoP Benefits Has supported a doubling in traffic growth every 2-3 years since inception Currently serves approximately one million users whose organizations participate in our research and education community in Colorado and Wyoming Multiple locations to terminate circuits for redundancy 18

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21. FRGP/UPoP New members Initial request to Marla or Jeff at UCAR Reviewed internally FRGP members are approved by the FRGP Management Committee (FMC) and then the UCAR President’s Council UPoP members are approved by the UCAR President’s Council 21

22. Bi-State Optical Network (BiSON) 4 The Bi-State Optical Network, or BiSON, is a collaboration of research and educational institutions in Colorado and Wyoming that utilize fiber optic links for high-speed optical networking BiSON members receive robust, redundant access to regional and Wide Area Network (WAN) services.

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25. Discussion 18  Any follow up questions or feedback?  Other items?