Thunder Bay Timmins Sudbury North Bay Sault Ste. Marie Barrie Peterborough Belleville Kingston...

Thunder Bay

Timmins

Sudbury

North BaySault Ste. Marie

BarriePeterborough

BellevilleKingston

Ottawa

Guelph OshawaToronto

Oakville

St. Catharines

Welland

London

Waterloo

Sarnia

Windsor

Hamilton

Ontario’s gateway to research and discovery

Le portail ontarien de la recherche et la découverte

ORION ProjectOptical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario

[email protected] April 9, 2003

2Ontario’s gateway to research and discovery


Ontario, Canada



What is ORION ?

• Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network

• Owned and operated by ORANO – Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario - a not-for-profit company.

• 3,700-kilometre backbone network - 8,200 strand kilometres of optical fibre - among the largest fully owned and operated R&E networks in the world.

• Dark Fibre + DWDM network linking 23 PoPs

• Nortel Optera LH DWDM (32 x 10Gbps) Backbone

• Will connect more than 100 Ontario institutions and organizations with other local and global networks



What is ORION ?

• The Government of Ontario, with help from CANARIE and our private sector partners (Bell Canada, Hydro One Telecom, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems) invested in the entire capital cost of the network, up-front ($78 million CDN).

• This allows us to offer access to ORION at very little cost to our members (from $10,000 to $60,000 CDN a year).

• This is how ORION’s business model is different than most other R&E networks in the world. We own the entire infrastructure out-right. This gives us great flexibility and allows institutions to invest more of their resources in actual research and applications.



Ontario Universities

University of Ontario Institute of Technology Royal Military College



Ontario Colleges



Thunder Bay

Timmins

Sudbury

North Bay

Sault Ste. Marie

Barrie

Peterborough

Belleville

Kingston

Ottawa

Guelph OshawaToronto

Oakville

St. Catharines

Welland

London

Waterloo

Sarnia Hamilton

Windsor

Chicago

New YorkMichigan

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Pennsylvania

Ohio

Quebec

Indiana



Dark Fibre• The surplus fibre we hear so much about is predominantly

on rail and major highway cross sections. Most small towns have a limited choice of local dark fibre suppliers. Limited competition = high price/Km. Don’t set your budget for a regional network based on long-haul cost/Km.

• Finding a single vendor to supply a project of this scale (3,700 kilometers) is usually not possible. Our fibre consortium is 18 Telephone and Electrical Utilities with one company as the lead.

• Negotiations and contracting will require a lot of work. Our process was 9 months from RFP to contract. You will need to adapt your network design many times during the process to balance cost/equipment capability/functionality.



Space and Power

• Leasing collocation space in Telco facilities over 10+ years is not cost-effective for a not-for-profit enterprise. We located our DWDM Terminals/ADMs at member sites to keep operational cost as low as possible.

• Repeater sites are required on longer routes at intervals of 80-100Km. There is little choice but to collocate in the fiber providers shelters. We have 29 amplifier sites.

• Telecom equipment for long haul networks requires 48V DC telecom power. Few member sites had adequate UPS or generator capacity. For consistency we supplied a DC power system for each PoP. (About $25K per pop)



ORION PoP - 3 to 5 Racks



Organization

• You are building a telecom network. You need telecom-experienced engineering and project management staff who can anticipate the issues and manage the vendors. For instance, fiber delivery dates are highly fluid.

• Managing your relationship and reporting requirements to funding agencies is very important. You need staff who understand public sector funding program management.

• Anticipate substantial property and liability insurance costs while setting up your organization and planning your network.



Equipment

• You need to know what equipment you will be using when negotiating the dark fiber agreement. Equipment capability defines repeater hut spacing, power requirements, floor loading etc.

• Are you buying equipment only, or are you contracting for turnkey E,F & I? Don’t forget training.

• Who will prepare your sites, install the racks, power, fiber, optical gear, routers, test and integrate?

• How will you manage the network? Do the optical network elements speak SNMP, TL-1, or other proprietary protocols?



Growing Forward…

• We are in mid-deployment. The backbone will be complete in May with a push to have all member connections operational by August.

• We are already receiving requests and preparing budgets for network expansion to support additional Lightpaths for our researchers. One project in development is a 7 campus project requiring dedicated 10Gbps channels.

• We are in discussions with some of our district school boards (K-12) that are looking to ORION as a potential backbone between school boards to enable e-learning and resource sharing.



Growing Forward cont. …

• Our network topology is a star because of Great Lakes geography. We hope to explore partnerships with RANs in neighboring states/provinces to jointly develop diverse network paths.

• Our first RAN to RAN interconnect will be between Ontario (ORION) and Quebec (RISQ).

• We are interested in the Light Rail/FiberCo initiatives, and are eager to participate in initiatives that have the potential to increase our network capability and advance research.



ORANOThe Optical Regional Advanced Network of OntarioOntario Research and Innovation Optical Network

34 King Street EastSuite 800, 8th Floor Toronto, Ontario, CanadaM5C 2X8

T. 416-507-9860F. 416-507-9862

www.orion.on.ca

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