[AG-TECH] AG on "commodity" Internet

Thomas J. Hart thart at uams.edu
Thu Sep 12 13:04:55 CDT 2002


Hi... and request for help from newbie Tom Hart @ University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  background...
a.  We're getting ready to set up an Access Grid faciltiy here.
b.  We are in process of implementing a new campus Internet service (45 Mbps) with a tier-1 provider.  previous has been 10 Mbps through the state network (government, higher ed, K-12).
c. Along with UA-Fayetteville and UA-Little Rock We have been a member of Internet2 and connected to Abilene (through Great Plains POP... soon to be through OneNet - Oklahoma.)
d. Approximate annual cost of I2 membership and connection is about $160,000.
e. Use of high-performance networking capabilties through Internet2 (Abilene) has been marginal on campus to date.  AG has been projected as one of key users.

Understanding, as I'm sure you all do, that campus adminsitrators are always in a cost-cutting frame of mind you might see where this is leading...  They say... "Okay we're going to be spending all this money for a new super-duper 45 Mbps Internet connection.  That should be able to handle the AG requirements... Right?   So we can save some money by dropping our participation in Internet2."     No matter what I say about Internet2 being more than about bandwidth they just see megabits-per-second
and dollars-and-cents.   I need to understand the constraints, issues, problems, of attempting to operate AG particiaption via commodity Internet... and to convince them that it won't work - or even if it could work we'll wind up paying more in pruchasing special services and having staff troubleshoot etc. than if we did it like it's supposed to be done.

Am I on the right track here???   Ideas, arguments, suggestions most welcome.

Tom Hart
------------------------------------------------------
Director, Academic Computing
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
4301 W. Markham - Slot 620
Little Rock, AR  72205

phone: 501-686-5507
email:thart at uams.edu


We are also looking at improving our Adminitration, in perennial cost cutting point of view, asks




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