Status Report - August 25, 2008

Here is the ARE-ON status report for August 25, 2008:

1. DWDM equipment RFP: The evaluation committee will meet on August 27 at the UA System Office in Little Rock where we will have presentations and best & final offers from each of the top three vendors. Our intent at the end of the day is to have the final recommendation from the evaluation committee for awarding the bid. The schedule for the meeting is:

08:30 – 10:00 Cisco
10:00 – 11:00 AT&T
11:00 – 12:00 ePlus Technology
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 15:00 ADVA Optical Networking
15:00 – 17:00 Committee Final Evaluation

2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: We received an email from our McLeod/Paetec representative on Friday saying that they will have the IRU appendix ready early this coming week. They are currently reviewing our list of desired splice points along the Little Rock/Monroe route and the Memphis/Tulsa route. This, plus the requests for collocation, will be incorporated into the new appendix.

3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: The Little Rock city attorney is apparently still reviewing what he characterized as “a rather curious draft” of the agreement with Time Warner Telecom. He did not respond to my offer to meet with him while in Little Rock this past Wednesday. I am very concerned about the lack of progress.

4. Ritter/Jonesboro: Mike Abbiatti and I had a very good meeting in Jonesboro with Paul Waits and some of his staff from Ritter Communications last Tuesday. For several reasons, Ritter has returned to their original idea of extending their fiber from Wynne to the Forrest City area rather than tying into splice points in the West Memphis area. Ritter is pursuing a new opportunity to acquire fiber from a cable TV provider that has existing fiber between Wynne and Forrest City rather than having to build new fiber. Ritter will also have to replace some of their fiber between Harrisburg and Wynne since they are at capacity. Paul Waits felt that they would have this completed by the end of the calendar year. Ritter will build to both the Level3 and McLeod regen sites in Widener (near Forrest City) as a part of the deal.

5. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).

6. Van Buren/MBO: Scott Ramoly and I went to Van Buren this past Friday to look at the feasibility of splicing our MBO fiber into our McLeod fiber. We were very encouraged to find the McLeod splice point, which is around 2000 feet from the MBO fiber. We found a good location for the fiber hut that will have to be built, but it’s on Arkansas highway department property. That will require some negotiation. MBO has expressed no interest or need for this fiber or hut, so we will add this build to the list for McClelland Engineering.

7. Juniper Routers: Steven Karp has been at a Juniper class all of the past week. We will begin installing the EX4200 switches this week. The larger MX switches are scheduled to ship this coming Friday, August 29. We will have a very busy week installing these routers when they arrive.

8. Fiber Laterals Construction: Immediately after our staff meeting on Monday morning I will be in contact with Facilities Management to press for the meeting with McClelland/CT&T that was to have taken place over a week ago to get the engineering fee and contract established. Scott Ramoly has completed the updates to the preliminary documents we will deliver to McClelland detailing the fiber laterals we need built.

9. NOC: Steven, Scott, and I will meet this week to draw up a preliminary list of services that we will need for 24x7x365 NOC support. We will base this on the document that the Indiana University Global NOC provided us. I will also contact the University’s purchasing division to get an understanding of what we will need to establish an outsourced contract. It’s highly likely that we will need to do an RFP.

10. LifeSize Video Conferencing: The TV stands have arrived, and we have one of them assembled in Mike’s office. But we have not yet received the LifeSize units. I contacted the vendor, Comm3, and got a reply over the weekend that LifeSize had delayed shipment. We will get a shipping update on Monday from Comm3.

11. iPhones: Steven and Scott have received their iPhones, but I am still waiting on mine to be delivered.

12. DIS Peering: We will be ready to move the Fayetteville DIS connection from the UA’s Juniper router to the new ARE-ON Juniper MX960 core router when the peering agreement is completed.

13. Workshops: We have gotten the okay from Cisco to use their lab and conference room in Little Rock for the Routing and BGP Training workshop that we are planning for the ARE-ON member network engineering staff. We will have date nailed down this week. Tentatively, we are looking at the third or fourth week in September. Steven Karp and David Merrifield will be the instructors for the workshop.

14. State Technology Council: I attended a luncheon meeting of the State Technology Council on August 18 in Little Rock. Claire Bailey visualizes a state technology plan that echoes Gov. Beebe’s vision for the state, including educational advancement, economic development, protecting the future, and providing meaningful tax relief. There were discussions of technology procurement procedures and an enterprise architecture. Putting something like this together in such a way as to be usable across the spectrum of state agencies, public schools, and higher education institutions will be a real challenge. There is no hope to have this completed prior to the start of the legislative session. The opening meeting for the Council will probably take place in September at the UA Cooperative Extension Service campus in Little Rock with Gov. Beebe attending.

15. Monticello Meeting: Mike Abbiatti, Bill Ashmore, and I attended meetings at the University of Arkansas at Monticello this past Thursday. We had opportunities to meet with top UAM management, faculty, staff, and a few students to give them insight into what ARE-ON is, how their campus can benefit from ARE-ON, and to hear back from them about their needs. The UAM networking folks have made great strides in preparing their campus network for the ARE-ON connection. They have completed a new communications building that will serve as the ARE-ON demarc. Also completed and recently tested is a new campus fiber ring.

Written as the 2008 Beijing Olympics closing ceremony was in progress.

-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network