Status Report - November 17, 2008

Here is the ARE-ON status report for November 17, 2008:

1. ADVA DWDM equipment: The hearing for the protest filed in the award of the DWDM equipment is scheduled for 10:00am on Monday, 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. Scott Ramoly, Steven Karp, and I have been discussing an update to our network design in the event that the TWTC fiber decision is substantially delayed or falls through.

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: Suddenlink has provided us with estimates on two routes, one from the eastern splice point in Russellville to the ATU campus, and one along the southern route in Arkadelphia to the HSU campus. Both are significantly less expensive than the cost of building our own fiber, but have the disadvantage of being almost entirely aerial and being limited to just four strands of fiber.

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 has continued to work with Juniper TAC on a problem with BGP that appears to be related to a non-stop routing bug that he uncovered on the MX960. This came to a head this Sunday morning, November 16, when OneNet maintenance triggered a problem with the router we peer with, which in turn triggered the same BGP problem we have had between the MX960 and one of our lab routers. Steven came in and rebooted the MX960. We had about two hours of unplanned downtime on Sunday morning. Steven thinks that all of the problems he has seen over the past 3-4 weeks have been related to the non-stop routing problem.

8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: The evaluation committee met with the candidates for the construction manager job on Friday, November 14. Four companies were interviewed and a recommendation was made to Dr. Don Pederson. He will be writing a letter to Dr. B. Alan Sugg for approval by the ARE-ON board. The selection is based on qualifications, and if the selection is approved, the university will negotiate the cost for the company’s services. The construction manager will serve as general contractor for the fiber laterals construction, be responsible for bidding the individual construction projects to qualified subcontractors, and supervise the construction to ensure that it is done per the design specifications for each route. We have several sites just about ready for construction, all of which will be placed in the first phase bid package.

Scott Ramoly and I had a meeting with the AHTD on Wednesday, November 12, in their offices in Little Rock. AHTD has continued to hold to their policy that they will only grant right-of-way permits on controlled access highways (interstate highways) to telecommunications utilities. We will contact Level3 and McLeod about building the portions of the routes we need along the interstates, but we will also contact some of the other carriers we have done business with about the same. This setback will likely cause delays and cost us significantly more money, neither of which we can really afford. Until we have the permits for these portions of our routes, CT&T cannot complete the route design for a number of locations, including Alma, Russellville, Conway, North Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Arkadelphia.

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

a. Alma/MBO: CT&T has obtained signed easements for the fiber build and fiber hut construction. Last Friday a question arose about whose name for ARE-ON should appear on the easements. We are trying to get this clarified. This question, plus the resolution of the AHTD permit for the short build along I-40, are the two holdups on this project. This build needs to be in the first bid package for construction.

b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: I have a meeting in Fort Smith on Monday afternoon, November 17, with Cox Communications and MBO to verify and get permission to use a Cox splice point near the Garrison Avenue bridge in Fort Smith. Once we have the permission, CT&T can complete the design for the southern route to the UAFS campus. The two routes in Fort Smith will be in the first bid package for construction.

c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: The northern route to the ATU campus is completed, and CT&T should have drawings ready within a week. We are awaiting final approval from the ATHD for right-of-way along I-40 for the eastern route to the campus before CT&T can complete their design. Suddenlink’s estimate for the eastern route is lower in cost than building it ourselves and presents an attractive alternative.

d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: Scott Ramoly and I had a meeting with Conway Corp on Monday, November 10, during which they provided us with a description of the north route that they would be willing to provide for us to the UCA campus. We will have to build a short piece of that route, a portion of which requires a permit for access to I-40. We should receive the proposal, including cost, sometime this week. Conway Corp cannot provide fiber for our southern route to the campus, and we have asked CT&T to start working on that route.

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. While waiting we have considered an alternative to these two fiber builds that may lower our costs and accommodate a substantial delay in the availability of the TWTC fiber.

f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. Scott Ramoly and I had a meeting with WEHCO Video in Little Rock on Tuesday, November 11, during which we pitched the idea of using their fiber for one of the routes to the UAPB campus. WEHCO is very interested and is working on a proposal and pricing for us. We feel that WEHCO can significantly lower our costs in Pine Bluff.

g. Monticello/UA Monticello: CT&T has completed both routes to the UAM campus and should have the route drawings completed within a week.

h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: CT&T has completed the route diagrams for the north route to the HSU campus, and has completed the measurements for the south route. Since Suddenlink’s alternative for the south route will likely be less expensive, we placed further work by CT&T on this route until we have a chance to review the Suddenlink proposal. The north route requires a lateral crossing of I-30, which should pose no permitting problems from the AHTD, but the south route will require a permit from AHTD for a short portion along I-30. The Suddenlink proposal has the advantage of not requiring us to obtain the AHTD permit.

i. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: CT&T has arranged two meetings with Community Cable and South Arkansas Telephone Company on December 2 in Little Rock. We will propose a cooperative arrangement to use their fiber, potentially with some additional construction, to link Monticello to El Dorado. From El Dorado, we hope to use Suddenlink fiber to reach Magnolia. This will solve our major outstanding dilemma with reaching SAU with dark fiber if these companies are receptive to our proposal.

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. Arkansas On-Call & ARKUPS: Scott Ramoly and I dropped by the Arkansas One-Call offices in Conway on our way back from Little Rock on November 12. We picked up an application for AOC and had a very nice conversation with their CEO and Operations Manager. AOC’s sister company is ARKUPS who provides locate services for utilities. Membership in Arkansas One-Call is an absolute requirement for ARE-ON, and having a contract with ARKUPS for utility locate service will pretty much be a necessity.

10. Qwest Commodity Internet: We began discussions with Qwest via a conference call on November 11 on the use of their commodity Internet service through the Quilt. Qwest is preparing a list of on-net connecting points in our region so that we can evaluate where we might need to place equipment. Qwest does not have IPv6 dual-stack support in production yet, which we feel will be important for any CIS provider we contract with, but they plan to roll it out in early 2009. We also talked with Qwest about direct peering through OneNet via a VLAN, and this is still under investigation.

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

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

13. Campus Visits: Mike Abbiatti and Steven Karp traveled to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA, on November 11-13 to meet with representatives from Arkansas Tech University. This was the second in the series of meetings designed to match ARE-ON universities with similar universities in Louisiana to trade ideas about applications and network use.

14. Training: Scott Ramoly will be attending a class on 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