Here is the ARE-ON status report for October 20, 2008:
1. ADVA DWDM equipment: Additional shipments of ADVA equipment have arrived and are stored in the Government Ave. warehouse. We have been advised to place all activities on hold pending a protest filed over the RFP award.
2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.
3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: No new developments. We are still awaiting TWTC’s review of the current draft of the agreement with the City of Little Rock.
4. Ritter/Jonesboro: The last update that we received from David Adams was on October 3rd. I have the Ritter IRU document in redline format, but did not make any progress last week in its review due to the busy schedule.
5. Suddenlink: No new developments. I did not hear from Suddenlink this past week. We are anticipating two proposals from them, one for a fiber route from Jonesboro to Biscoe, and another for the lateral builds from our McLeod splice points in Russellville to the Arkansas Tech University campus.
6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).
7. Juniper Routers: The Fayetteville Juniper MX960 core router is now in production as of October 17. Steven Karp worked with OneNet to install a second, temporary 10Gig link using an extra wavelength between Fayetteville and Tulsa to connect our new Juniper MX960 to OneNet’s router at OSU Tulsa. He is still debugging a BGP localpref issue, so we have left the temporary 10Gig link operational throughout the weekend until he and OneNet can do some additional diagnostics.
8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: In the Friday, October 17, weekly status meeting with Facilities Management, McClelland Consultant Engineers, and CT&T, we got an update site-by-site on progress by CT&T. This will be summarized below. We also learned that Bob Beeler of FACM was able to get approval to use the construction coordinator (CM) method of selecting construction firms. A newspaper advertisement went out this weekend asking for companies to respond to a Request for Qualifications, which is due October 31. The CM will be selected through an interview process similar to that of the engineering company. The CM we select will then work directly with McClelland at CT&T on construction route details and will bid each construction project/phase. Phase I bids could be ready for construction bid in 4 to 5 weeks, pending permissions for right-of-way along the controlled access highways.
a. Alma/MBO: CT&T has obtained verbal agreement from property owners between the MBO and McLeod splice points for easements that will permit construction of a fiber hut where we can install our ROADM equipment. Still pending are easements on the private side of the fence to the McLeod splice point, and one of the two fiber routes to the Cox/MBO splice point.
b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: AT&T has denied access into their manhole and conduit that would permit easy splice access into the MBO POP in downtown Fort Smith and facilitated the southern route into the UAFS campus. We have identified alternative splice points north of the POP that will require a redesign of the routes. Scott Ramoly has a meeting scheduled with MBO and Cox on Wednesday to verify the splice points, followed by a meeting with CT&T to redesign the routes.
c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: We are awaiting final approval of the right-of-way along the I-40 controlled access highway before we can have CT&T complete their design of the fiber routes into the ATU campus.
d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: We have a meeting scheduled on October 20 with Conway Corp about them potentially building the two routes to the UCA campus for us.
e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: Preliminary route selection is complete.
f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. However, CT&T is facilitating a meeting with WEHCO Cable to potentially use some of their fiber for one of the routes. This could save money, plus give us a partner in town for future projects.
g. Monticello/UA Monticello: Preliminary route selection is complete. CT&T will start route measurements this week.
h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: The preliminary route selection is complete. CT&T has begun route measurements.
i. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: CT&T has agreed to facilitate a meeting with the companies that we may be able to use to procure fiber between Monticello and Magnolia. This meeting has not been scheduled yet.
j. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: Scott Ramoly met with CT&T last week to develop a preliminary route between two Level3 splice points in Little Rock through the UALR and UAMS campuses. They were not able to locate the northern splice point that is closest to the UAMS campus, but have proceeded based on the assumption that the Level3 map is accurate and that the splice point might be buried. Portions of this route are very difficult. CT&T will have a preliminary estimate ready by October 24.
k. Monroe/University of Louisiana – Monroe: I met with Lonnie Leger of LONI while at the Internet2 meeting last week to discuss the fiber lateral into the ULM campus where we will place an ARE-ON routing node and connection to the LONI network. LONI has fiber in the McLeod manhole where our fiber passes through, and 24-count fiber from there to the ULM campus. LONI is willing to provide a fiber pair into the ULM campus. After the interstate MOU is signed, we can simply contract with LONI to do the necessary splicing and collocation at the ULM campus.
9. NOC: We made no progress on this project.
10. DIS Peering: We will work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router after we have it in production.
11. SAU Magnolia DNS: Steven Karp continues to assist SAU Magnolia in setting up their own public-facing primary DNS server on campus rather than relying on their commodity Internet provider.
12. HPC: Steven Karp will be traveling to Jonesboro on October 21-22 to discuss High Performance Computing, mass storage, and how ARE-ON may be able to facilitate statewide needs for these resources.
13. Madison County Telephone: Steven Karp has arranged for a friendly meeting in Huntsville on Thursday with Madison County Telephone to tour one of their fiber huts. MCT builds their own huts rather than use preconstructed concrete huts.
14. Training: Scott Ramoly is scheduled to attend ADVA training in Norcross, GA, the week of October 27-31. We will also be sending him to an outside cabling plant course in Albuquerque November 17-21.
-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
Monday, October 20, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Status Report - October 13, 2008
Here is the ARE-ON status report for October 13, 2008:
1. ADVA DWDM equipment: A second shipment of ADVA DWDM equipment is scheduled for today via UPS. Scott Ramoly will handle unloading at the Government Ave. warehouse.
2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.
3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We are currently awaiting TWTC’s review of the current draft of the agreement with the City of Little Rock. In a meeting with UALR and UAMS following the steering committee meeting last week, we were asked to develop an alternate to the TWTC fiber in the event the agreement is either delayed or fails.
4. Ritter/Jonesboro: The last update that we received from David Adams was on October 3rd. I have the Ritter IRU document in redline format, but did not make any progress last week in its review due to the busy schedule.
5. Suddenlink: I did not hear from Suddenlink this past week. We are anticipating two proposals from them, one for a fiber route from Jonesboro to Biscoe, and another for the lateral builds from our McLeod splice points in Russellville to the Arkansas Tech University campus.
6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).
7. Juniper Routers: Steven Karp worked with OneNet to install a second, temporary 10Gig link using an extra wavelength between Fayetteville and Tulsa to connect our new Juniper MX960 to OneNet’s router at OSU Tulsa. We plan to make the cutover to the MX960 as our production core router, replacing the Force10 E600i, on the morning of October 17. This migration should be non-disruptive. Traffic will be moved to the temporary circuit while we replumb the current protected production circuit over to the MX960.
8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: We initiated a weekly status meeting with Facilities Management, McClelland Consulting Engineers, and CT&T on Friday, October 10. This was a very productive meeting. MCE delivered the contract to FACM, something we had hoped to have about a month ago. Not having it hasn’t slowed us up much since CT&T has been working with us without a contract. Another topic of discussion was the decision whether we can use the alternate delivery method of selecting a construction manager or whether each construction project will have to go through the normal bidding process. Bob Beeler of Facilities Management pledged to have the decision early next week in time to meet the Wednesday deadline for placing the newspaper ads soliciting responses for qualifications for construction managers. We also grouped the lateral construction projects into multiple phases, with the Alma, Russellville, and Fort Smith builds grouped as Phase I. We also spent some time discussing the Little Rock UALR/UAMS alternate route project. CT&T will meet Scott in Little Rock to develop the route so that a budgetary estimate can be prepared. We are asking that this estimate be ready within two weeks.
a. Alma/MBO: We received permission from Cox to use the splice point on the route along Hwy 64 just west of Alma. Scott Ramoly has instructed CT&T to begin the detailed route planning and right-of-way acquisition where we can build the fiber to the nearby McLeod splice point and to build a hut where we can install DWDM equipment. We will need right-of-way on the controlled access I-40, which will take special permission from the Arkansas Highway Department.
b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: We are working on details of splicing into the MBO fiber to reach the UAFS campus. The routes are nearly complete. Key to the completion are two issues, including permission to splice into the Cox fiber north of the MBO POP, and access into AT&T conduit into the downtown area. Our plans include converting the ADVA amp site at the MBO POP into an OADM and relocating the equipment to the UAFS campus. This places UAFS on the backbone, plus eliminates the need for a ROADM at the MBO POP.
c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: CT&T identified a splice point near the I-40/Hwy 7 interchange that shortens the north route by nearly 1.5 miles, including a bridge crossing. McLeod has given us permission to use the splice point. There is a slack loop very near the campus that would shorten the south route by another 1.4 miles. McLeod has not given us permission to splice into this slack loop yet, but CT&T is advocating on our behalf.
d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: We have a meeting scheduled on October 20 with Conway Corp about them potentially building the two routes to the UCA campus for us.
e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: Preliminary route selection is complete.
f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. However, CT&T is facilitating a meeting with WEHCO Cable to potentially use some of their fiber for one of the routes. This could save money, plus give us a partner in town for future projects.
g. Monticello/UA Monticello: Preliminary route selection is complete. CT&T identified a slack loop near the campus that eliminates near 3.5 miles on one route. McLeod has given permission to splice at that point, but has not given permission to use another splice point near the intersection of US425 and Jordan Road, which would eliminate nearly 1.2 miles off the other route.
h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: The preliminary route selection is complete. The north route will be much easier to construct than the south route.
i. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: We are pursuing the possibility of using fiber from multiple companies to span the distance between Magnolia and Monticello. CT&T is facilitating a discussion with these companies. If we can also identify a route from Magnolia to Hope or Texarkana, this would complete a ring for the southern part of the state, thus giving us the ability to build protected circuits for the ARE-ON members located in the southern half of the state.
j. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: We are developing a possible alternative to the TWTC metro fiber that includes building fiber from a Level3 splice point near I-630 to the UAMS campus, then to the UALR campus, then to another Level3 splice point in south Little Rock. We started this project last Friday.
9. NOC: We made no progress on this project.
10. DIS Peering: We will work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router after we have it in production.
11. Workshop: The BGP and routing workshop for the ARE-ON members took place on October 8th at the Cisco offices in Little Rock. Seventeen of the 21 registered people were able to attend. I started the workshop with three hours of training on routing and the BGP protocol. Following lunch provided by Cisco, Steven Karp led the participants through three hands-on labs using Cisco routers provided by Cisco, as well as two of our Juniper EX4200 switches that we brought from Fayetteville. Comments from the attendees were positive.
12. SAU Magnolia DNS: Steven Karp and I have consulted with SAU Magnolia on setting up their own public-facing primary DNS server on campus rather than relying on their commodity Internet provider.
13. ARE-ON Steering Committee: We all attended the steering committee meeting at the UA System Office in Little Rock on October 7. Mike Abbiatti introduced all of the people on the ARE-ON team. I gave a presentation on the status of the network construction.
14. UAMS Rural Hospitals: We had a videoconference with UAMS on October 10 to discuss their requirements for interfacing rural hospitals, clinics, and AHECs all over the state into the ARE-ON network.
-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
1. ADVA DWDM equipment: A second shipment of ADVA DWDM equipment is scheduled for today via UPS. Scott Ramoly will handle unloading at the Government Ave. warehouse.
2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.
3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We are currently awaiting TWTC’s review of the current draft of the agreement with the City of Little Rock. In a meeting with UALR and UAMS following the steering committee meeting last week, we were asked to develop an alternate to the TWTC fiber in the event the agreement is either delayed or fails.
4. Ritter/Jonesboro: The last update that we received from David Adams was on October 3rd. I have the Ritter IRU document in redline format, but did not make any progress last week in its review due to the busy schedule.
5. Suddenlink: I did not hear from Suddenlink this past week. We are anticipating two proposals from them, one for a fiber route from Jonesboro to Biscoe, and another for the lateral builds from our McLeod splice points in Russellville to the Arkansas Tech University campus.
6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).
7. Juniper Routers: Steven Karp worked with OneNet to install a second, temporary 10Gig link using an extra wavelength between Fayetteville and Tulsa to connect our new Juniper MX960 to OneNet’s router at OSU Tulsa. We plan to make the cutover to the MX960 as our production core router, replacing the Force10 E600i, on the morning of October 17. This migration should be non-disruptive. Traffic will be moved to the temporary circuit while we replumb the current protected production circuit over to the MX960.
8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: We initiated a weekly status meeting with Facilities Management, McClelland Consulting Engineers, and CT&T on Friday, October 10. This was a very productive meeting. MCE delivered the contract to FACM, something we had hoped to have about a month ago. Not having it hasn’t slowed us up much since CT&T has been working with us without a contract. Another topic of discussion was the decision whether we can use the alternate delivery method of selecting a construction manager or whether each construction project will have to go through the normal bidding process. Bob Beeler of Facilities Management pledged to have the decision early next week in time to meet the Wednesday deadline for placing the newspaper ads soliciting responses for qualifications for construction managers. We also grouped the lateral construction projects into multiple phases, with the Alma, Russellville, and Fort Smith builds grouped as Phase I. We also spent some time discussing the Little Rock UALR/UAMS alternate route project. CT&T will meet Scott in Little Rock to develop the route so that a budgetary estimate can be prepared. We are asking that this estimate be ready within two weeks.
a. Alma/MBO: We received permission from Cox to use the splice point on the route along Hwy 64 just west of Alma. Scott Ramoly has instructed CT&T to begin the detailed route planning and right-of-way acquisition where we can build the fiber to the nearby McLeod splice point and to build a hut where we can install DWDM equipment. We will need right-of-way on the controlled access I-40, which will take special permission from the Arkansas Highway Department.
b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: We are working on details of splicing into the MBO fiber to reach the UAFS campus. The routes are nearly complete. Key to the completion are two issues, including permission to splice into the Cox fiber north of the MBO POP, and access into AT&T conduit into the downtown area. Our plans include converting the ADVA amp site at the MBO POP into an OADM and relocating the equipment to the UAFS campus. This places UAFS on the backbone, plus eliminates the need for a ROADM at the MBO POP.
c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: CT&T identified a splice point near the I-40/Hwy 7 interchange that shortens the north route by nearly 1.5 miles, including a bridge crossing. McLeod has given us permission to use the splice point. There is a slack loop very near the campus that would shorten the south route by another 1.4 miles. McLeod has not given us permission to splice into this slack loop yet, but CT&T is advocating on our behalf.
d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: We have a meeting scheduled on October 20 with Conway Corp about them potentially building the two routes to the UCA campus for us.
e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: Preliminary route selection is complete.
f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. However, CT&T is facilitating a meeting with WEHCO Cable to potentially use some of their fiber for one of the routes. This could save money, plus give us a partner in town for future projects.
g. Monticello/UA Monticello: Preliminary route selection is complete. CT&T identified a slack loop near the campus that eliminates near 3.5 miles on one route. McLeod has given permission to splice at that point, but has not given permission to use another splice point near the intersection of US425 and Jordan Road, which would eliminate nearly 1.2 miles off the other route.
h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: The preliminary route selection is complete. The north route will be much easier to construct than the south route.
i. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: We are pursuing the possibility of using fiber from multiple companies to span the distance between Magnolia and Monticello. CT&T is facilitating a discussion with these companies. If we can also identify a route from Magnolia to Hope or Texarkana, this would complete a ring for the southern part of the state, thus giving us the ability to build protected circuits for the ARE-ON members located in the southern half of the state.
j. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: We are developing a possible alternative to the TWTC metro fiber that includes building fiber from a Level3 splice point near I-630 to the UAMS campus, then to the UALR campus, then to another Level3 splice point in south Little Rock. We started this project last Friday.
9. NOC: We made no progress on this project.
10. DIS Peering: We will work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router after we have it in production.
11. Workshop: The BGP and routing workshop for the ARE-ON members took place on October 8th at the Cisco offices in Little Rock. Seventeen of the 21 registered people were able to attend. I started the workshop with three hours of training on routing and the BGP protocol. Following lunch provided by Cisco, Steven Karp led the participants through three hands-on labs using Cisco routers provided by Cisco, as well as two of our Juniper EX4200 switches that we brought from Fayetteville. Comments from the attendees were positive.
12. SAU Magnolia DNS: Steven Karp and I have consulted with SAU Magnolia on setting up their own public-facing primary DNS server on campus rather than relying on their commodity Internet provider.
13. ARE-ON Steering Committee: We all attended the steering committee meeting at the UA System Office in Little Rock on October 7. Mike Abbiatti introduced all of the people on the ARE-ON team. I gave a presentation on the status of the network construction.
14. UAMS Rural Hospitals: We had a videoconference with UAMS on October 10 to discuss their requirements for interfacing rural hospitals, clinics, and AHECs all over the state into the ARE-ON network.
-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
Monday, October 6, 2008
Status Report - October 6, 2008
Here is the ARE-ON status report for October 6, 2008:
1. DWDM equipment RFP: The first shipment of ADVA DWDM equipment arrived on September 30. ADVA assisted with unloading and inventorying the equipment, which currently is
stored in the secured warehouse on Government Ave. ADVA has assigned a project manager. We will meet with him after the Internet2 member meeting next week to begin the detailed planning for deployment of the equipment. The main holdup in deployment will remain the construction of the fiber laterals to the campuses, to the Level3 POP in North Little Rock, and the new fiber hut to be placed near Van Buren. For the campuses where equipment will eventually be installed, we will be preparing a site preparation document.
2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.
3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We are currently awaiting TWTC’s review of the current draft of the agreement with the City of Little Rock. Tom Carpenter, Little Rock city attorney, gave us a brief progress update to say that TWTC is preparing a more detailed map of the existent fiber that will be a part of the agreement. We are very hopeful that the map includes not only the backbone metro rings, but also smaller rings and the lateral fiber routes that extend into North Little Rock and also southward along University Avenue. TWTC’s legal counsel is unavailable this week, so any further information from them will be delayed until her return.
4. Ritter/Jonesboro: David Adams from Ritter sent us his weekly status update on October 3rd. He reported having a very productive meeting with WEHCO Video, which resulted in them jointly establishing meet points for their fiber plants. Ritter has already begun construction on their end of the fiber to the meet point. David also sent me a redline version of the draft IRU agreement, which I have reviewed and will return to him later this week.
5. Suddenlink: I am still waiting for at least two proposals from Suddenlink for dark fiber. One offers a build of new fiber from the McLeod splice points to the ATU campus in Russellville. The second offers dark fiber accompanied with some construction from the ASU campus in Jonesboro to Biscoe, which is just east of Little Rock.
6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).
7. Van Buren/MBO: We have a great development in this project. Our objective has been to identify a location where we can splice our MBO and McLeod fibers in the Van Buren area and build a fiber hut where we can install DWDM ROADM equipment. Scott Ramoly met with MBO on October 2nd along Hwy 64 between Alma and Van Buren and identified a fiber splice point that is very close to a splice point on our McLeod fiber that follows I-40 between Little Rock and Fort Smith. The two are amazingly less than 800 feet apart. On October 6 Scott received approval from Cox to use the MBO splice point. Scott has begun working with CT&T to engineer the short build and fiber hut construction. This necessitates the purchase of a small plot of land for the hut, but if we can make this work we will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in not having to extend our Little Rock to Fayetteville waves through Tulsa.
8. Juniper Routers: We have set October 17 as the cutover date for placing the Fayetteville MX960 into production. Steven Karp has been working with OneNet on the temporary use of a ten-gigabit port on their Tulsa router and one of our spare waves between Fayetteville and Tulsa to bring the MX960 online. OneNet has had some trouble with that router and has expressed some reservations about using the second ten-gigabit port and possibly triggering a recurrence of their router problem. I have suggested a slight modification to the plan to reduce the impact on the Tulsa router, but we at this writing are still awaiting feedback from OneNet.
9. Fiber Laterals Construction: Scott met MBO at their POP in downtown Fort Smith on October 3rd to determine our options for getting the new fiber laterals from UA Fort Smith into the POP. It didn’t look promising, but Scott has a plan that he is working on with CT&T to build to splice points outside of the POP and to relocate the optical equipment from the POP to the UAFS campus. Also, Scott traveled to Conway on September 30 to meet with Conway Corp officials about the potential use of their poles for one of the fiber laterals to the UCA campus. The meeting was not very productive since none of the Conway Corp management was able to be present. However, the engineers who were present indicated that they might be receptive to building the fiber for us with attachment to their poles. We asked UCA to assist in getting another meeting scheduled with Conway Corp management present, which is currently scheduled for October 20.
10. NOC: Although we have not had the time to pick up discussions with the Indiana University Global NOC, we have had some internal discussions about how our clients can contact us in the event of a problem. We had an incident last weekend in which the OneNet Tulsa router experienced some problems, and while the UARK data center was able to reach me via my cell phone, we are considering a dedicated phone line that can be forwarded to the engineer on call. The campus phone system may not provide the features we need, so we will be considering some alternatives, including a VOIP service like Broadvoice.
11. DIS Peering: We will work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router after we have it in production.
12. Workshops: The BGP and routing workshop for the ARE-ON members is scheduled for this week, October 8. Cisco has provided generous access to their test lab and training facility in Little Rock for the day-long workshop. We have 21 people registered. The objectives are to train the ARE-ON member networking staff on the BGP protocol and routing configurations they will need for interfacing their campus networks to ARE-ON.
13. SAU Magnolia DNS: Steven Karp and I are consulting with SAU Magnolia on setting up their own public-facing primary DNS server on campus rather than relying on their commodity Internet provider.
-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
1. DWDM equipment RFP: The first shipment of ADVA DWDM equipment arrived on September 30. ADVA assisted with unloading and inventorying the equipment, which currently is
stored in the secured warehouse on Government Ave. ADVA has assigned a project manager. We will meet with him after the Internet2 member meeting next week to begin the detailed planning for deployment of the equipment. The main holdup in deployment will remain the construction of the fiber laterals to the campuses, to the Level3 POP in North Little Rock, and the new fiber hut to be placed near Van Buren. For the campuses where equipment will eventually be installed, we will be preparing a site preparation document.
2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.
3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We are currently awaiting TWTC’s review of the current draft of the agreement with the City of Little Rock. Tom Carpenter, Little Rock city attorney, gave us a brief progress update to say that TWTC is preparing a more detailed map of the existent fiber that will be a part of the agreement. We are very hopeful that the map includes not only the backbone metro rings, but also smaller rings and the lateral fiber routes that extend into North Little Rock and also southward along University Avenue. TWTC’s legal counsel is unavailable this week, so any further information from them will be delayed until her return.
4. Ritter/Jonesboro: David Adams from Ritter sent us his weekly status update on October 3rd. He reported having a very productive meeting with WEHCO Video, which resulted in them jointly establishing meet points for their fiber plants. Ritter has already begun construction on their end of the fiber to the meet point. David also sent me a redline version of the draft IRU agreement, which I have reviewed and will return to him later this week.
5. Suddenlink: I am still waiting for at least two proposals from Suddenlink for dark fiber. One offers a build of new fiber from the McLeod splice points to the ATU campus in Russellville. The second offers dark fiber accompanied with some construction from the ASU campus in Jonesboro to Biscoe, which is just east of Little Rock.
6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Van Buren/MBO project (below).
7. Van Buren/MBO: We have a great development in this project. Our objective has been to identify a location where we can splice our MBO and McLeod fibers in the Van Buren area and build a fiber hut where we can install DWDM ROADM equipment. Scott Ramoly met with MBO on October 2nd along Hwy 64 between Alma and Van Buren and identified a fiber splice point that is very close to a splice point on our McLeod fiber that follows I-40 between Little Rock and Fort Smith. The two are amazingly less than 800 feet apart. On October 6 Scott received approval from Cox to use the MBO splice point. Scott has begun working with CT&T to engineer the short build and fiber hut construction. This necessitates the purchase of a small plot of land for the hut, but if we can make this work we will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in not having to extend our Little Rock to Fayetteville waves through Tulsa.
8. Juniper Routers: We have set October 17 as the cutover date for placing the Fayetteville MX960 into production. Steven Karp has been working with OneNet on the temporary use of a ten-gigabit port on their Tulsa router and one of our spare waves between Fayetteville and Tulsa to bring the MX960 online. OneNet has had some trouble with that router and has expressed some reservations about using the second ten-gigabit port and possibly triggering a recurrence of their router problem. I have suggested a slight modification to the plan to reduce the impact on the Tulsa router, but we at this writing are still awaiting feedback from OneNet.
9. Fiber Laterals Construction: Scott met MBO at their POP in downtown Fort Smith on October 3rd to determine our options for getting the new fiber laterals from UA Fort Smith into the POP. It didn’t look promising, but Scott has a plan that he is working on with CT&T to build to splice points outside of the POP and to relocate the optical equipment from the POP to the UAFS campus. Also, Scott traveled to Conway on September 30 to meet with Conway Corp officials about the potential use of their poles for one of the fiber laterals to the UCA campus. The meeting was not very productive since none of the Conway Corp management was able to be present. However, the engineers who were present indicated that they might be receptive to building the fiber for us with attachment to their poles. We asked UCA to assist in getting another meeting scheduled with Conway Corp management present, which is currently scheduled for October 20.
10. NOC: Although we have not had the time to pick up discussions with the Indiana University Global NOC, we have had some internal discussions about how our clients can contact us in the event of a problem. We had an incident last weekend in which the OneNet Tulsa router experienced some problems, and while the UARK data center was able to reach me via my cell phone, we are considering a dedicated phone line that can be forwarded to the engineer on call. The campus phone system may not provide the features we need, so we will be considering some alternatives, including a VOIP service like Broadvoice.
11. DIS Peering: We will work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router after we have it in production.
12. Workshops: The BGP and routing workshop for the ARE-ON members is scheduled for this week, October 8. Cisco has provided generous access to their test lab and training facility in Little Rock for the day-long workshop. We have 21 people registered. The objectives are to train the ARE-ON member networking staff on the BGP protocol and routing configurations they will need for interfacing their campus networks to ARE-ON.
13. SAU Magnolia DNS: Steven Karp and I are consulting with SAU Magnolia on setting up their own public-facing primary DNS server on campus rather than relying on their commodity Internet provider.
-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
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