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Metropolitan Area Network projects

The NCAR/UCAR MAN/WAN structure is logically depicted in the diagram titled FRGP/vBNS/NCAR Mini-gigapop, and it is depicted in much greater detail in the diagram titled NCAR/UCAR MAN/WAN Connections.

Westnet Gigapop project

The Westnet Gigapop evolved from a Boulder-area consortium (called the Big Pipe Consortium) that was begun in June 1995 to bring to UCAR a set of communication links that allow participating institutions to interchange information among themselves and the vBNS, and more importantly, to share the costs of one or more high-bandwidth links to the Commodity Internet.

By joining together as a group to access the Commodity Internet, the Westnet Gigapop members save a considerable amount of money and obtain more service for the amount of money being spent.

The dynamics of the Westnet Gigapop have always been fluid. Right now, NCAR supplies a means for Westnet members to attach to itself, the vBNS, the MCI Commodity Internet, and the BBN Commodity Internet via Qwest/SNI (SuperNet Incorporated, formerly Colorado SuperNet). Those Westnet universities that find it advantageous to connect to NCAR for these services do so and help share in some of the costs, while other Westnet universities find the costs to connect to NCAR to be too great to justify any possible benefits.

Currently, Westnet members that access the Commodity Internet via NCAR are:

BRAN project

BRAN (Boulder Research and Administrative Network) is a strategic initiative in which UCAR has joined along with CU-Boulder, NIST, NOAA, and the City of Boulder to construct and operate a private fiber network to interconnect the key facilities of these institutions and access certain common-carrier telecommunications facilities in Boulder. UCAR's portion of the construction costs are estimated to be around $350,000, with capital recovery resulting from cost savings in other areas very conservatively estimated at around 8-10 years.

BRAN will include fiber that transits both the US West Boulder CO (central office) and the ICG Boulder POP (point of presence). UCAR could greatly reduce tail circuit charges to US West for access to the Boulder Main CO (BMCO), and could access ICG without any US West charges at all. ICG is a major US CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier), and direct access to its facilities has major implications for cheaper access by UCAR to national telecommunications facilities in Denver.

Currently, a management team composed of upper-management members of the BRAN partner institutions has been meeting to develop ownership and and management models of the partnership. The team is close to finishing an agreement regarding funding and bidding a full cost-study to accurately determine construction costs.

Voice and data network project

NETS continues to support communications systems from NCAR's FL site to NCAR's Jeffco and Marshall sites. Jeffco still uses a T1 connection for voice service, though data service to Jeffco is provided by a US West Transparent LAN Service (TLS) link, which acts like a 4-Mbps full-duplex Ethernet link between FL and Jeffco.

The Marshall site is the only NCAR/UCAR site that relies exclusively on T1 for communications. The T1 line to Marshall provides both voice and data service between Marshall and the Mesa Lab.

In FY1998, NETS successfully installed T1 voice circuit emulation between the ML and FL PBXs over the existing ML-FL OC-3 ATM link . All voice conversation between ML and FL is now carried via ATM, and the leased ML-FL T1 tie-lines have been eliminated.

Remote-working and home-access project

Until recently, home access was furnished exclusively by a centrally supported pool of about 50 dialup modems. This pool supports speeds up to about 32 Kbps, but it is not upgradable to higher speeds.

The existing modem pool is now being replaced by digital T1 PRI access to two Cisco 5200/5300 Remote Access Servers (RAS). Each T1 PRI line can provide 23 56-Kbps channels that can support analog or ISDN dialin access. Two such lines were installed in FY1998, and a third will be installed shortly. Long distance access via 1-800 numbers will shortly be removed from the modem pool and overlaid on one of the PRI lines. The RAS modems will also shortly be upgraded to the new 56-Kbps V.90 modem standard when it becomes available. Telnet, PPP, and ARAP access are supported on the Cisco RAS devices.

The old modem pool is being decommissioned in a phased fashion, removing the oldest and slowest modem banks first. About 75% of the old modems have been decommissioned to date.

NOAA atmospheric laser link project

NETS worked with NOAA to install an OC-3 ATM atmospheric link between NCAR's ML site and NOAA's new Boulder complex, which is about 1.5 miles from ML. NOAA uses this link to communicate with NCAR, without the need for leased carrier lines.

To access the rest of the NETS FY1998 Annual Scientific Report:

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