How universities can play leadership role in First Mile Infrastructure and provide alternate solution for network neutra

1. How universities can play leadership role in First Mile Infrastructure and provide alternate solution for network neutrality Bill St. Arnaud CANARIE Inc – www.canarie.ca Bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca February 14, 2006

2. CA*net 4 Network New 72 channel x 40 Gbps ROADM 5 x 10 Gbps Amsterdam Boston Los Angeles

3. Carleton University Campus DWDM University Global Physics Network 10G Internet Physics Department 1G NREN 1G Main campus Network Architecture Design Network Border Router Firewall 1G Research Testbed 10G School of Architecture Engineering Telecom

4. University of British Columbia Campus DWDM Tier 2 University Global Physics Network 1G Tier 1 CERN 5G Internet TRUMF 1G NREN 1G Main campus Network Health Network Border Router Firewall 1G 3G 3D HDTV Research Hospital Engineering Telecom

5. CA*net 4 Plans • Many universities deploying campus CEF networks and extending ROADM into campus • UBC, Carleton, McGill, UoToronto, OttawaU, UdMontreal • ROADM network allows us to place all active DWDM gear at campus • Core of network is solely optical • We are expecting big demand from individual researchers and departments for their own 10G/40G circuits directly connected to wavelengths on CA*net 4 • We also planning wavelength swaps with NYSERnet, MiLR, ORANO, NLR and others • We only charge incremental costs for wavelength • $20K per year per end for 10G • $30K - $40K per year per end for 40G • UCLPv2 software now available to allow users to manage their own lightpath topology both on and off campus

6. Problem • Universities and Telephone companies face the same problem of small number of heavy users consuming expensive Internet bandwidth • University solution is to cap bandwidth from dormitories and/or block types of traffic • Telecom solution is to build a two tiered Internet or doing volume capping • A high speed un-congested channel for the telco traffic particularly aimed at carrying video • Universities can play a leadership role in piloting new last mile (hundred feet) architectures that address problems of dormitories • May serve as possible model for telcos • University students are ideal early adopters and were instrumental in diffusion of the Internet throughout larger community

7. One possible solution • Following is example of one possible solution • There may be others- this is not intended to be definitive or exclusive • Work with a few universities on a small number of pilots where interested students can lease or control dedicated fiber/copper to university colo point • They can directly peer with other students in the dormitory across a “white light” switch or user controlled VLAN switch; and/or • Connect to service providers of their and/or setup point to point user controlled VLANs to other students across Internet 2, CA*net 4, GLORIAD, GLIF, SURFnet, i2Cat, KREOnet, etc • Primary application would be collaborative video such as YouTube and/or CineGrid

8. What is user controlled networks? • Tools that allow user to do their own layer 1 & layer 2 configuration and management e.g. • University of British Columbia transmorgifier • HEAnet (Ireland UCLP deployment) links VLANs with MPLS tunnels • Not a new idea – many overlay networks work like this e.g. Skype, Kazaa, BitTorrent • In essence we want to extend peer to peer overlay network to physical domain • By extending user control to physical network, user can control their own routing and bandwidth • Big advantage is that provider of physical facility cannot do packet filtering or blocking at layer 1 • UCLP in addition allows users to manage virtual routers, switches, server nodes so that they can do their own routing and topology • UCLP is a generic peer to peer network management tool for creating “underlay” networks as opposed to “overlay” networks

9. University colo details Only the contracted Service Provider provides return signal Campus Network GLORIAD GLIF Student computer OXC Yahoo Passive Optical Splitter or UCLP Ethernet switch TDM or WDM return Service provider can be several km away University Colo Node Active laser & optional CWDM on student computer User Controlled or Owned Fiber

10. Policy Neutral University Colo • Two possible models: • Simple splice case that contains RPON only direct mapping of all fibers from student doms to all service providers’ fibers ; or • Cabinet that also contains optical OXC or Ethernet switches (each provider has their own OXC) to optimize service providers fiber utilization • Customer’s laser signal is split with RPON or across Ethernet switch to all service providers in the colo • PON technology allows 16, 32 and 64 split • Split ratio determined by power of customer’s laser and distance • LX GBIC 10 kms – about $200 in small quantities • Customer contracts with service provider of their choice • Selected Service provider then provides return signal to customer from their CO • Service providers in colo agree to use different colored lasers for return signal • One service provider can be a lightpath across GLORIAD/GLIF

11. Advantages for student • One time very small cost for UNLIMITED bandwidth forever to university colo • Cross connect to service provider of their choice or research network(s) • NO or very low monthly Internet service fees for connection to content providers or connection across research networks • Participate in new global collaborative models such as YouTube.com, MySpace or CineGrid • Direct connection to content and application providers • Student installs transceiver or simple media hub at their computer • Media hub with CWDM for about $200 which includes laser, Gbe transceiver etc

12. Student Empowered Network University A University C YouTube or CineGrid server University Residence Internet transit provider University Residence UCLP switch University Neutral Colo switch/RPON University Neutrol Colo switch/RPON NREN-GLORIAD GLIF Lighpaths University B UCLP switch Dark Fiber Internet transit or content provider

13. How it would work • A few selected students in university dorms would be given UCLP software and access rights to a subset of optical/VLAN switches on campus and backbone network • Participating institutions would have to deploy RPON or layer 2 ethernet switch which supports UCLP at network connection point to lightpath networks and transit IP networks • Could be done at campus or at regional transit exchange • Students would be encouraged to establish their own layer 1 peer to peer networks linking their servers together as well as those of YouTube and CineGrid • Initially small STM-8 1G lightpath(?) would be allocated across partner networks which would be partitioned into smaller STM-1 lightpaths for student networks • Rather than building a mesh network the students would be encouraged to deploy virtual routing or layer 7 routing at various nodes to minimize lightpath meshing • But actual logical network architecture and topology would be decided by students

14. Background material • http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6332098.html • it only takes about 10 BitTorrent users bartering files on a node (of around 500) to double the delays experienced by everybody else. • http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060222-2074.asp • University students played critical role in diffusion of the Internet to the global community