ORION Project

1. ORION Project Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario randy.neals@orano.on.ca April 9, 2003

2. Ontario, Canada

3. 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

4. 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.

5. Ontario Universities University of Ontario Institute of Technology Royal Military College

6. Ontario Colleges

7. Timmins Thunder Bay Minnesota Quebec Sudbury Sault Ste. Marie North Bay Ottawa Kingston Peterborough Wisconsin Barrie Belleville Oshawa Guelph Toronto Oakville Waterloo St. Catharines London Hamilton Sarnia Welland New York Michigan Windsor Chicago Pennsylvania Indiana Ohio

8. 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.

9. 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) Space and Power

10. ORION PoP - 3 to 5 Racks

11. 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. Organization

12. 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? Equipment

13. 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…

14. 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. Growing Forward cont. …

15. ORANO The Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network 34 King Street East Suite 800, 8th Floor Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5C 2X8 T. 416-507-9860 F. 416-507-9862 www.orion.on.ca