MERC

MERC Board of Director’s Meeting

May 10, 2006, 9:30 a.m - Noon

NGN Update

The NGN project has involved exploration by MOREnet staff in several alternatives to address pressing capacity needs and contractual deadlines for backbone circuits, which currently expire in February 2007.  As discussed at the last MOREnet Council meeting, .progress on NGN has been slowed due to several factors including uncertainty surrounding:

• Proposed legislation
• Possible access to MODoT fiber and the state converged network RFP.  
• Ability to raise sufficient funds for an initial investment in a long-term dark fiber solution  
• MOREnet’s E-rate application status

After careful consideration of these issues, including discussion and advice from the president of the University of Missouri and the chair of the MOREnet Council, a decision was made to discontinue pursuing a full dark fiber backbone solution at this time.

MOREnet staff will continue to pursue the “traditional managed transport” option in the original NGN plan and a hybrid dark-fiber/traditional managed transport option that has recently emerged.   More detailed descriptions of these options as currently conceived include:

• Upgrading the entire backbone from its current 622mb circuits to Gigabit (1,000mb) circuits, a 40% increase in capacity, to replace the expiring circuits by February, 2007. 
• Continuing to pursue a dark fiber solution along the I-70 corridor while maintaining Gigabit circuits for the rest of the backbone.  The I-70 corridor carries the majority of the Internet traffic as well as the University inter-campus traffic and will require additional increased capacity in 2008.

The revised plan is still under development and a formal update will be provided at a future Council meeting.  In the interim, please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any issues associated with the NGN project.