Bandwidth up, price down

Updated 11:00 AM September 9, 2004

Bandwidth up, price down

By Nancy Connell
News Service

The University will have the ability to increase its high-speed network capacity dramatically while slashing costs by an estimated $1 million during the next four years, thanks to a project known as Michigan Lambda Rail (MiLR) being undertaken jointly with Michigan State University and Wayne State University.

The fiber optic network gives the University the ability to increase network capacity at one-tenth the current price structure, and it locks in a pricing model expected to remain stable for the next 20 years.

"Advanced networking is critical to meet the growing demands of research and teaching," says James Hilton, associate provost for academic, information and instructional technology affairs. "MiLR gives us the means to support the faculty need for increased capacity and faster transmission speed, while reducing the significant expense associated with network computing. We are pleased that a new collaboration with Michigan's public universities makes it possible to accomplish this goal."

MiLR involves the acquisition of about 750 miles of fiber optic cable that links the three universities to each other and to major networking hubs in Chicago. The universities were able to purchase the cable at prices far below those of just a year ago because of the economies of scale of the consortium, and because telecommunications companies had an interest in selling excess fiber-optic cable capacity that was installed in the 1990s.

In explaining the financial advantage of the new arrangement, Hilton notes that at present the University pays roughly $1.9 million yearly to the Merit Network and Internet2 to use one gigabit per second (one billion bits per second) of capacity. The University will make a one-time investment of about $1 million to acquire the use of the MiLR fiber for 20 years, and as much as $1 million more for equipment (with a 3-5 year life expectancy) needed to activate, or "light up," the fiber optic cable. The MiLR project plans to lease capacity on the fiber system to Merit.

During a several year period, the project probably will save the University about $1 million in networking costs due to decreased Merit fees, assuming the current one gigabit per second service capacity is not increased, Hilton says.

Because current capacity will not keep up with demand, however, the new arrangement promises even greater savings in the future, Hilton says.

Researchers need to exchange ever-growing quantities of data, and new applications, such as video, are very bandwidth-intensive. For instance, the largest high-energy experiments, such as those being conducted at CERN in Switzerland, are dealing with data stores approaching the petabyte range (a million gigabytes) and the datasets are expected to increase exponentially. Under the former model, if the University wanted to double its network usage to two gigabits per second, its annual cost probably would have increased to more than $3 million. When MiLR is operational, however, the cost of additional capacity will be much lower.

Another advantage of MiLR is its ability to make point-to-point connections—in essence to create private network channels not shared by other users. Point-to-point connections are especially important when data must be transferred in real time, because they are not subject to the slowdowns that occur due to traffic jams on the Internet.

MiLR will allow University researchers to obtain very high-speed (e.g., 10 gigabits per second) point-to-point connections to two national and international points in Chicago. From there the connections can be extended to other universities and research facilities. It is expected that the marginal cost of establishing these connections will be about $100,000-$150,000 with very little additional recurring cost, Hilton says.

Bandwidth up, price down

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