The SURA Crossroads
Interconnection to Enable Transformation
Interconnection to Enable Transformation
As the number of network-based applications and regional network services that are supported by SURA and its members grow, the need to find more economic methods to interconnect member institutions and their collaborators will also grow. This need is magnified by the desire to provide advanced network services to the broader education community within the SURA region and to extend the capability for collaboration to other communities as well.
While providing advanced network services to SURA members in large metropolitan areas may be economically possible, extending this connectivity to secondary and tertiary metro areas and rural areas will continue to be difficult. SURA and its members are working with others who are invested in the South to identify state assets that could be integrated into a larger regional infrastructure, develop creative uses of state and local tax credits and economic development zones as incentives for developing telecommunications facilities in high need and rural areas, and lobby for new federal dollars in support of advanced networking infrastructure and services for our collective constituents.
Through the SURA Crossroads we anticipate being able to forge creative partnership between corporate, government and academic organizations in the SURA region. Through these partnerships we intend to dramatically reduce the cost of and increase the access to advanced network connectivity throughout the SURA region.
SURA is committed to help ensure that our region is competitive both nationally and internationally in a rapidly emerging technology-based economy.
SURA
Southeastern UniversitiesResearch Association
The SURA Crossroads provides the Southern U.S. with an opportunity not just to keep up with but to lead the development and deployment of new networking technologies to help shape the emerging national networks of the future.
“We must begin to envision a South whose strength is science – a South where science education is uniformly strong, entrepreneurship flourishes and where technology reduces the divide between people, and businesses and government work together.”
Paul Patton, Governor of Kentucky & Chairman of the Southern Governors’ Association, April 25, 2001.
Interconnection to Enable Transformation
Work locally, think regionally, impact nationally
Recognizing that SURA members' collaborations are not locally or even regionally bound, SURA consistently integrates national and international perspectives into its programs to deliver outcomes of regional value with global significance.
The SURA Crossroads will move forward with the benefit of close association with organizations and individuals who direct and influence the political and economic climate of the South and who realize that the value of the proposed regional infrastructure extends far beyond immediate advancement of SURA's scientific and engineering mission.
Together, we can make cost-effective advanced network services available as a tool for research, education and economic development across the entire South, including our rural and under-served communities.
Stakeholder Commitment
High ImpactPrograms
Strategic Initiatives[defined/articulated program]
[committed, connected leaders]
[local/regional/national impact]
“Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a team work.”
-Vince Lombardi
Capturing the Present
The SURA Crossroads intends to meet these challenges through combined innovative leadership and the leveraging of collective assets to:
• Access, control and potentially own optical fiber that forms the basis of today's most advanced networks• Challenge, and even disrupt, the existing pricing structure for this fiber and its related components• Leverage SURA and SURA members' assets and partnerships to develop "buying club" power• Work with state and regional government initiatives to build extensible electronic superhighways
Defining & Meeting the Challenges
The challenges of providing this vital network layer are well understood:
• The increasing necessity of "becoming connected" frequently means that those who cannot afford to pay high connection costs pay the much higher price of remaining unconnected
• The demand for robust networking exceeds the availability of the infrastructure, particularly in rural areas • Even if services are available, they are cost prohibitive for many
"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
-Andy Warhol
Copyright Brian H. Trammell
Capturing the Present
The Timing Is Right for Major Change In Network Economics
Factors Contributing to a New View of Telecommunications Service and Pricing:
• The demand for access is outstripping the ability to pay• Convergence of aggressive fiber deployment, DWDM, IP in the WAN
changes existing economic models • Shrinking capital markets forcing sound revenue models and clearly
defined markets.• State and local government awareness of the role networks play in
education and economic development.• State and local government awareness of the value represented by their
control of the physical ROW.• Resurgence of the SURA community’s desire to get involved in a region-
wide IT initiative.• Fiber optic cable deployments in second and third tier metropolitan
areas combined with the convergence of high speed transport technologies brings end user ownership and control of regional fiber networks within the realm of possibility.
"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” -Doug Larson
“Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper--much less in the course of a couple decades. That's as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.”
-Michael Rothschild, author of Bionomics, Economy as Ecosystem
Capturing the Present
The overarching vision of the SURA Crossroads is to organize and leverage the collective monetary, physical, and intellectual assets of SURA and its member institutions to develop a new model for extending network connections throughout the Southern United States.
The following principals guide the development of the SURA Crossroads:• To seek improvements in networking options for non-metropolitan and rural areas in addition to the more "solvable" problem of connecting metropolitan areas • To avoid limitations imposed by restrictive use policies that favor one community over another or neglect the benefits of economic development • To focus on lowering the cost of all networked services, both production and research• To create a telecommunications infrastructure that can be priced at or near actual cost and significantly disrupting the existing market-based pricing models.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of the dream.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
The Spirit & Necessity of Collaboration
"Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.” -Marian Anderson
The SURA Crossroads is proceeding with the support of the SURA membership and the critical guidance of highly qualified staff from SURA member institutions as well as invited partners.
The SURA Crossroads will work collaboratively with state and local governments and corporate partners to gain access to dark fiber facilities. These facilities will be engineered for immediate use by SURA members, with use envisioned to extend quickly to the larger research and education community within the SURA region.
To provide industry insight and improved communications with potential industry partners, SURA has retained the services of Geo-Matrix, a fiber industry-consulting firm, for the first several phases of the Initiative.
SURA Crossroads Working Group
Carl BakerFlorida State University
Brice BibleUniversity of Tennessee
Alan BlateckyDuke University
Jeff CrowderVirginia Polytechnic Institute
Gary CraneSURA
George DavisUniversity of Tennessee
Jed DiemTulane University
Joel DunnUniversity of NC/Chapel Hill
Larry FlournoyTexas A&M University
Doyle FriskneyUniversity of Kentucky
Joe Grissom University of Oklahoma
Jack HallFlorida Atlantic University
Don HalverstadtUniversity of Alabama at Huntsville
John HurleyClark Atlanta University
Ron HutchinsGeorgia Institute of Technology
Mark JohnsonNorth Carolina R&E Network
Tom LindsayMississippi State University
Zia MafaherCatholic American University
Peter MurrayCatholic American University
Jerry SobieskiMid-Atlantic Crossroads
Troy Travis University of South Carolina
Gordon Wishon Georgia Institute of Technology
Mary Fran YafchakSURA
SURA Crossroads Architecture Team
Steve CorbatoInternet2
Gary CraneSURA
James DeatonOneNet
Tim DeevesTulane University
Jed DiemTulane University
Thomas DurkinGeo-Matrix
Larry FlournoyTexas A&M University
Doyle FriskneyUniversity of Kentucky
Jeff FritzUniversity of West Virginia
Zane GrayUniversity of Oklahoma
Chris GriffinUniversity of Florida
Daniel GrimUniversity of Delaware
Philippe HansetUniversity of Tennessee
Rene HatemCANARIE
Ron HutchinsGeorgia Institute of Technology
Bill JohnsonOneNet
Mark JohnsonNorth Carolina R&E Network
Michael KrugmanBoston University
Dewitt LattimerUniversity of Tennessee
Paul LoveInternet2
John NicholsVirginia Tech
Ken OrgillWest Virginia University
David PokorneyUniversity of Florida
Ana PrestonUniversity of Tennessee
Mike RackelyMississippi State University
Sandra RedmanNASA
Dave Reese4CNet
Stewart SeruyaUniversity of Miami
Jerry SobieskiMid-Atlantic Crossroads
Troy TravisUniversity of South Carolina
Ryan VaughnUniversity of Florida
John WattersUniversity of Alabama
Roy WhitneyJefferson Lab
Bill WingOak Ridge National Lab
Mary Fran YafchakSURA
Robert ZimmermanUniversity of Arkansas
The Spirit & Necessity of Collaboration
Leveraging Existing Network Assets
The SURA Crossroads will proceed in collaboration with several successful semi-regional network deployments that are already providing vital network services to many in the SURA region:
The SURA region contains the largest collection of advanced academic networking aggregations working together on a regional basis. The infrastructure that has been built thus far and the leadership and lessons learned across this community of service providers is an invaluable asset moving forward.
Gulf Central GigaPoP - http://www.gcgpop.net Louisiana State Network (LA Net) - http://www.state.la.us/otm/lanet
MAX (Mid-Atlantic Crossroads) - http://maxgigapopp.net
Mississippi GigaPoP - Located in Jackson, MS; coordinated by Mississippi State University
Network Virginia - http://www.networkvirginia.net
North Carolina Networking Initiative - http://www.ncni.net North Florida Aggregation Point - http://mrtg.acns.fsu.edu/mrtg/internet2 OneNet (Oklahoma) - http://www.onenet.net
SoX (Southern Crossroads) - http://www.sox.net
Texas GigaPoP - http://www.gigapop.gen.tx.us/index2.html