Status Report - November 10, 2008

Here is the ARE-ON status report for November 10, 2008:

1. ADVA DWDM equipment: A protest was filed in the award of the DWDM equipment RFP. The November 12 hearing scheduled with State Procurement was postponed to November 17.

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 have had no further updates from the Little Rock city attorney on the TWTC agreement. He had planned a conference call with TWTC on October 30, but we have no word on the outcome of the call. The major outstanding issue was usage restrictions for our use of the TWTC metro fiber.

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 and have a draft ready to go back to him this week.

5. Suddenlink: We are awaiting a new estimate from Suddenlink for a fiber route in Arkadelphia that might displace our need to build the southern route to the HSU campus. Also, Suddenlink said they would provide an estimate for an alternative to our eastern route in Russellville to the ATU campus.

6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Alma project (below). All indications are that we will not need any additional fiber in Tulsa and can ask OneNet for a refund of an IRU for cross-town fiber to reach their demarc at the OSU Tulsa campus.

7. Juniper Routers: Steven Karp had originally planned to move the UAF Juniper M10 router from the Force10 router to the Fayetteville Juniper MX960 on November 6, but he encountered a BGP problem while testing the configuration in our lab that caused a postponement. He and I have still not been able to identify the source of the problem. This makes the third major problem with the MX960 routers since their acquisition this summer.

8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: Of the five companies who responded to the newspaper advertisement for a construction manager, four have agreed to come to Fayetteville for the interviews scheduled to take place on November 14. The fifth company withdrew because they were more interested in the actual construction than construction management.

We have had several conversations with AHTD personnel regarding our request for use of right-of-way along controlled access highways. AHTD’s policy restricts these permits to utilities only, so we are continuing to work with them on a waiver of the policy. These permits are critical to our ability to build our lateral fibers to our member campuses. Until we reach resolution, CT&T will be unable to complete the survey and drafting work necessary to begin construction.

Here are brief status updates on each of the fiber lateral projects:

a. Alma/MBO: CT&T has obtained verbal agreement for all of the easements necessary for the fiber build and fiber hut construction. They are securing the signed easement documents and will immediately start the surveys. We have also passed information received from Madison County Telephone Company to McClelland for their architect to draft the plans for the construction hut. This will be a concrete block building on a poured slab with reinforced metal roof, designed hopefully to survive a tornado strike.

b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: We are working on our fifth or sixth redesign of the fiber route to UAFS as a result of the restriction AT&T placed on our use of their manholes and conduit into the MBO POP in downtown Fort Smith. Scott Ramoly and CT&T drove the possible routes for the Midland Blvd. bridge splice point, and none of them looked feasible or economical. As a result, we are now working on use of a Cox splice point under the Garrison Ave. bridge. The benefit of this route is that it uses much of the original south route that CT&T did for us weeks ago. The north route comes off a splice point on 6th Street between P and Division Streets and looks good. The city engineer claimed that we would need a city franchise agreement, but CT&T is almost certain that we will not since this is a state-funded project. They will be conferring with Fort Smith city officials to confirm.

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. Suddenlink will also be providing an estimate for an alternative to the east route.

d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: Conway Corp has indicated that they will be willing to work with us on builds and use of existing fiber and rights of way. We have a meeting scheduled with them on November 10 during which they should provide us with information on what they can and are willing to do.

e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: Preliminary route selection is complete. We are awaiting final approval of the right-of-way along I-40 and I-30 controlled access highway before CT&T can complete the final route design.

f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. We have a meeting scheduled for November 11 with WEHCO Cable on possible use of their fiber in Pine Bluff for one of our routes to the campus. The fiber builds in Pine Bluff are expensive and use of WEHCO fiber could bring that project’s cost down significantly.

g. Monticello/UA Monticello: CT&T has nearly completed the surveying and drafting of this route and should have it ready for construction very soon.

h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: The preliminary route selection is complete. CT&T has nearly completed survey and drafting of the north route and is wrapping up the work on the south route. The south route requires a short stretch of access along I-30, which is waiting for the AHTD permit along controlled access highway. Suddenlink will also be submitting an estimate for an alternative to the south route using some of their existing fiber that may be less expensive.

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 will probably take place the first week in December.

j. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: CT&T has completed a preliminary route design and estimate for a route between two Level3 splice points in Little Rock through the UALR and UAMS campuses. In the event we are unable to use the TWTC fiber in Little Rock, this could be a viable route for connecting these two campuses.

k. Monroe/University of Louisiana – We are awaiting the MOU with LONI before we can proceed with this project.

9. NOC: We made no progress on this project.

10. DIS Peering: We still plan to work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router.

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. OneNet: Mike Abbiatti, Bob Zimmerman, and I had a videoconference with OneNet on November 5 during which we discussed continued membership in the Great Plains Network. Current plans are for Bob Zimmerman to give the six-month advance notice of discontinuing membership in GPN. The real intent of this is to get GPN to clarify with us the membership requirements for Arkansas’s continued use of the OneNet link and direct peering with GPN and Internet2.

13. Campus Visits: Mike Abbiatti and Steven Karp will be traveling to Northwestern State University with Arkansas Tech University in the second of the campus visits that Mike is planning. The intent is to match ARE-ON member campuses with similar campuses in other states having an established regional optical network where they can exchange information on applications.

14. Training: Scott Ramoly will be attending a class on him outside plant cabling in Albuquerque November 17-21. This class will be key to the construction of our fiber hut in Alma and will also be useful for producing the detailed site preparation documents that we will append to the collocation agreements with our member campuses.

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