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Merit Network, Inc. presentation at

A Gathering of State Networks

April 30, 2001

Greg Marks - gmarks@merit.eduAndy Rosenzweig – andyr@merit.

edu

www.merit.edu

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Merit Background Private, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3), Michigan

membership corporation Founded in 1966 by Michigan State

University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University

Member/owners now include all 13 public universities in Michigan– Each member has a seat on the Board of

Directors 100 employees $23M annual budget

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Merit Services Overview MichNet is the name of Merit’s network Michigan GigaPOP and MichNet backbone

– Internet2 Affiliate Member– Internet2 Sponsored Educational Group Participant

(SEGP) for Michigan MichNet dial-in service Center to Support Technology in Education Web and email hosting and support services USF (E-rate) educational activities Performance analysis and security consulting

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MichNet Dedicated Services

MichNet backbone Michigan GigaPOP and Internet2 Affiliate Member

– See map for connectivity– IP only– Abilene Service

» Michigan State University» Michigan Technological University» Northern Michigan University» UCAID/Internet2 Ann Arbor offices» University of Michigan» Wayne State University» Western Michigan University

» Internet2 Sponsored Educational Group Participant (SEGP) for Michigan

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MichNet Shared Dial-in Coverage

– 13,500 dial-in lines – 162 POPs in Michigan plus New York, D.C., Windsor– 98% local coverage in Michigan (est. 250,000+

users) “Shared” dial-in

– Services sold to organizations in units of dial-in lines– Lines placed at cities where organization has users– At each city, multiple organizations own lines, but all

users call same number» Customized RADIUS software moderates access » Owners’ lines are are reserved for their users, but sharing is

allowed during lighter-user periods

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Teacher Technology Initiative

State project to provide laptop computer and Internet access for all public school teachers– Governor, with support from legislature, allocated $110M

RFP process run by Michigan Virtual University chose 5 vendors (Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, IBM) to sell approved system bundles to districts– See http://www.mivu.org/ for details– Laptop or desktop with full suite of software– 3 years repair– Dial-in Internet access from any teacher’s home or school, at

17:1 ratio (users:dialin lines), for 1-3 years Merit is ISP supplier for all vendors Systems began shipping in March

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TTI User Support Challenges

Registration and authentication – Scale too great (92,000 teachers) to do via paper– Developed user-initiated, Web-based registration system– User enters serial number and school district; if match,

able to register and select userid and password– Involves receiving data from manufacturers– Perhaps difficult for users

Helpdesk– No Merit end-user helpdesk– Helpdesk provided by manufacturer or by Michigan State

University

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Provision of Dial-in Access Installation at existing sites

– 120+ physical locations: lots of travel– Unknown when/where/how many users will emerge– Some lines added on speculation, but must wait for

registrations and add lines in response Construction of new sites

– 90 new sites needed to reach 100% coverage– Unknown where new sites will be needed– Populations could be very small– Doing prep work to find locations; building first sites

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What Next? 17:1 ratio of users to dialin lines

– Will it be adequate?– How to improve if inadequate?– Possible technical solution to allow upgrade to

ratio What happens to accounts after 1-3 years?

– Planning ways to extend accounts, by district or by user

– Possibility of more state money– Will dial-in be desirable in 1-3 years?

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Additional MichNet Services

Center to Support Technology in Education– Develops online K-12 resources and training

materials– Often involves state level K-12 partnerships– Activities generally either grant funded or for-fee

» Michigan Teacher Network A clearinghouse of 4500 internet resources 13 professional selectors review for inclusion, annotate http://mtn.merit.edu/about/index.html

» Teach for Tomorrow “Constructivist” way for teachers to learn about how

they can use the internet in their teaching A toolkit for use by school trainers http://tft.merit.edu/about.html

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Other MichNet Services - 2 Web and email hosting and related

services– Build and support Internet servers– Provide streaming media services

USF (E-rate) educational activities– Popular email forum and in-person activities– See http://www.merit.edu/usf/

Performance analysis and security consulting

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State Educational Environment

Very decentralized– 13 universities are all independent of each other– K-12 and community colleges also decentralized,

“local control” No state-provided network for education No explicit state funding for networking No state-imposed networking standards for

K-12 or higher education Merit has no formal relationship with state

government, but lots of informal contacts

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Merit’s Funding Model No state funding The 13 members pay annual sliding

membership fees that cover uncapped connectivity wherever they need it– Fee based on bandwidth and Board voting rights

Affiliates pay for services based on service, bandwidth, location, and organization type

K-12 technology training is grant or fee funded R&D is grant funded or funded by licenses Consulting services are fee-based

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MichNet Customers Merit’s 13 owner-member universities 275 other affiliated organizations

– Approximately 90% of the state’s K-12 districts– Approximately 95% of the state’s public

libraries– Most of the state’s community colleges and

private 4-year colleges– Various governmental, health-care, and non-

profit organizations– Over 50 commercial organizations and ISPs

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Merit’s R&D Activities Active in networking software and

standards development for many years Lead partner with IBM and MCI in

managing the NSFNET, 1987-1995 Current activities:

– AAA (RADIUS) Consortium – Interlink Networks, Inc. created as spinoff

– GateD Consortium – NextHop Inc another spinoff

– Multithreaded Routing Toolkit (MRT)– Internet Performance Measurement & Analysis– North American Operators Group (NANOG)

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Challenges for Merit Network capacity management

– Forecasting bandwidth requirements– Buying commodity service and telco circuits

» Good news – new providers, prices are dropping» Bad news – new providers, erratic lead times, unmet due dates

– Sharing infrastructure for Abilene and commodity– Looking for less expensive last mile connectivity

» Using CLECs» Installing dark fiber» Co-locate POPs with carriers» DSL» Wireless

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Challenges for Merit - 2 Working with K-12s and libraries

– Decentralized environment makes this time consuming– No one can represent or speak on behalf of the Michigan

community with any authority, because so decentralized– Struggling with professional development, new learning

approaches and materials, new technologies such as IP video, etc.

– Uneven understanding of technology, funding– Role and direction of state government has often been

unclear– Rollout of Internet2 Sponsored Educational Group

Participant (SEGP) activities opens up new opportunities

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Challenges for Merit - 3 Sustaining grant-funded K-12 training

– Have learned that teacher training is not something for which most school districts have money available

– Evolved to relying on grant funds– Grants are often fairly short term and time

consuming to obtain

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Challenges for Merit - 4 Promoting Internet2

– Signing up additional participants» SEGP activities

– Participating in demos and other Internet2 promotional activities

» Demos can be expensive and/or hard to arrange» Applications not yet abundant

– Devising equitable ways to use shared infrastructure to support both Abilene and commodity traffic

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Challenges for Merit - 5 Sustaining R&D activities

– Staff moved to commercial world spin-offs– Changes in NSF priorities makes funding

harder– Merit R&D activities less related to

operation of MichNet than they once were

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Challenges for Merit - 6 Being a non-profit in an increasingly

commercial world– Is Merit a technology partner or just another

vendor? – Sometimes viewed with skepticism by

organizations that haven’t used our services– Hard to retain staff (pay rates, stock options),

but good working environment and high quality of current staff helps

– No deep pockets when major capital needed