Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

[A very useful overview of the impact of open courseware, open source software, open collaboration, and much more. The report emphasizes the point that institutions should be focusing on developing new tools and policies to support openness rather those that restrict access or require prior permission such as federated access, Shibboleth, Eduroam etc. While some applications will always require such permission based technologies, they should always be seen as a last resort subject to identifying alternative open solutions. Thanks to Mike Nelson for this posting on Dave Farber’s IPer list – BSA]

"Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education," a report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development Committee
http://www.ced.org/images/library/reports/digital_economy/dcc_opennessedu09.pdf

CED’s Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of information technology experts from trustee-affiliated companies, was established to advise CED on the policy issues associated with cutting-edge technologies.


The rise of the Internet and the digitization of information are affecting every corner of our lives. In a series of reports we have examined how these two changes are increasing the “openness” of information, processes and institutions.

The degree of openness of information, for example, can differ dramatically. To the extent that people have access to information, without restrictions, that information is more open than information to which people have access only if they are subscribers, or have security clearances, or have to go to a particular
location to get it. But accessibility, quite similar to the concept of transparency, is only one aspect of openness. The other is responsiveness. Can one change the information, repurpose, remix, and redistribute it? Information (or a process or an institution) is more open when there are fewer restrictions on access, use, and responsiveness.

The Internet, in particular, has vastly expanded openness. It is changing the nature of information, processes and institutions by making them more accessible to people next door and around the world. It also makes information more responsive—capable of being enhanced, or degraded, through the digital contributions of anyone interested enough to make the effort, be they experts, devoted amateurs, people withan ax to grind, or the merely curious.

In this report we examine higher education through the lens of openness. Our goal is to understand the potential impact of greater openness on colleges and universities. Like other service industries such as finance or entertainment, higher education is rooted in information—its creation, analysis, and transmission
—and the development of the skills required to utilize it for the benefit of individuals and society.

But finance and entertainment have been transformed by greater openness while higher education appears, at least in terms of openness, to have changed much less. We aim, in this report to identify some of the potential gains from making higher education more open. We also make a series of concrete recommendations for
policy makers and for institutions of higher education that should help harness the benefits of greater openness.
[…]

Larry Lessig on the "culture of permission" versus Eduroam and Shibb

Today at Educause Larry Lessig, as usual, gave a brilliant talk on
the "culture of permissions" and how the Hollywood interpretation of
copyright is distorting the sharing of knowledge, culture and science.
Increasingly we are entering a world where you need to a priori
"permission" to do anything including accessing networks or sharing
and knowledge regardless of whether the underlying information is in
the public domain or not.

Larry Lessig's talk can be seen at:

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EDUCAUSE2009FacetoFaceConferen/ItIsAboutTimeGettingOurValuesA/175767

Paradoxically just prior to Larry's talk, Ken Klingenstein, on behalf
of the Shibboleth team received a special award of recognition from
Educuase. I have great admiration for what Ken and his team have done,
and I fully appreciate we will need federated access tools like
Shibboleth and Eduroam for certain applications such as shared
computational resources, etc. But on the other hand I worry that these
technologies represent the thin edge of the wedge in terms of
deploying a "permission" culture on our campuses. They may be a
necessary evil, but we must be vigilant to ensure that they are
limited to only those applications that truly need federated identity
management and do not become a proxy for publishers and software
companies to control access and distribution of their products and
effectively become a tool to limit access information at our
universities.

The essence of universities is to allow uncensored access to to
information and data, not only for researchers and educators but to
the greater community in which they serve. Most institutions freely
allow members of the public to use the library and browse the stacks
including reading journals and other material. But increasingly, as we
move into the digital age where everything is on line, this important
public service is being restricted through various permission tools
like identity management or closed wireless networks. Although there
are legitimate privacy and security concerns of allowing open access
let us not sacrifice openness and innovation on the alter of security
and privacy

Eduroam, in particular, to my mind exemplifies this culture of
permissions. In the spirit of providing open access to the community
in which they serve, I have always argued that universities should
provide open wireless networks for any visitor to the campus, just not
visiting academics from another institution. Many airports and
municipalities provide open access wireless networks and I am puzzled
why this is so rarely found at our universities and colleges. Airports
probably have much greater security concerns then universities and yet
many feel secure in offering open wireless access.

Let us avoid in getting caught up in the technology wizardry and for every
application and service really think hard if there is a way to deliver
a service in an open manner whether it is a network, data or journal.
Only as a last resort should we look to "permission" technologies
whether the it is networks or federated access. End of rant.

Here is a another great blog on this subject

Innovation in Open Networks - Creative Commons, the Next Layer of
Openness

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/10/30/innovation-in-o.html

The explosion of innovation around the Internet is driven by an
ecosystem of people who work in an open network defined by open
standards. However, the technical ability to connect in an
increasingly seamless way has begun to highlight friction and failure
in the system caused by the complicated copyright system that was
originally designed to "protect" innovation. Just as open network
protocols created an interoperable and frictionless network, open
metadata and legal standards can solve many of the issues caused by
copyright and dramatically reduce the friction and cost that it
currently represents.



Hell hath no fury as a vested interested masquerading as a public
issue

The Economics of Federal Government Cloud Computing Analyzed

[From Slashdot. I would argue that "green" clouds using follow the
wind/follow the sun architectures would have even more dramatic
savings as documented in recent MIT and Rutgers papers--BSA]

http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/10/19/0053207/The-Economics-of-Federal-Cloud-Computing-Analyzed

"With the federal government about to spend $20B on IT
infrastructure, this highly analytical article by two Booz Allen
Hamilton associates makes it clear that cloud computing has now
received full executive backing and offers clear opportunities for
agencies to significantly reduce their growing expenditures for data
centers and IT hardware. From the article: 'A few agencies are already
moving quickly to explore cloud computing solutions and are even
redirecting existing funds to begin implementations... Agencies should
identify the aspects of their current IT workload that can be
transitioned to the cloud in the near term to yield "early wins" to
help build momentum and support for the migration to cloud
computing.'"

http://govcloud.ulitzer.com/node/1147473

/"Of the investments that will involve up-front costs to be recouped
in outyear savings, cloud-computing is a prime case in point. The
Federal Government will transform its Information Technology
Infrastructure by virtualizing data centers, consolidating data
centers and operations, and ultimately adopting a cloud-computing
business model. Initial pilots conducted in collaboration with Federal
agencies will serve as test beds to demonstrate capabilities,
including appropriate security and privacy protection at or exceeding
current best practices, developing standards, gathering data, and
benchmarking costs and performance. The pilots will evolve into
migrations of major agency capabilities from agency computing
platforms to base agency IT processes and data in the cloud. Expected
savings in the outyears, as more agencies reduce their costs of
hosting systems in their own data centers, should be many times the
original investment in this area." [2]/

The language in the budget makes three key points: (1) up-front
investment will be made in cloud computing, (2) long-term savings are
expected, and (3) the savings are expected to be significantly greater
than the investment costs.

Booz Allen Hamilton has created a detailed cost model that can create
life-cycle cost (LCC) estimates of public, private, and hybrid clouds.
We used this model, and our extensive experience in economic analysis
of IT programs, to arrive at a first-order estimate of each of the
three key points in the President's budget.

Most Internet traffic bypasses tier-one networks

[Once again the world's R&E networks have been at the forefront of this revolution. Most R&E networks around the world arrange for direct peering with major content providers and Tier 2 networks. This saves anywhere from 40-50% of Internet transit costs for their customers and is also a major, if not primary source of income for most R&E networks. Some R&E networks are now talking about exchanging their respective peering routes to create a global Tier 1 peering consortium which will further reduce costs for their connected institutions. Of course, this is only possible if you have an extensive optical backbone with lots of capacity to add wavelengths etc - another example of how the optical revolution is changing the market dynamics of the Internet. CANARIE's UCLP was originally designed for this scenario to enable R&E networks and institutions to do low cost remote peering. From a posting on Dewayne Hendricks list -- BSA]

From: (Dewayne Hendricks)


Study: Most Internet traffic bypasses tier-one networks
Telephony Online
By Ed Gubbins

The majority of Internet traffic now goes through direct peers and
does not flow through incumbent tier-one telecom networks, according
to a recent report from Arbor Networks, which sells network management
and security products.

Tier-one incumbents were once the chief providers of connectivity
between content companies like Google and local or regional broadband
providers like Comcast. But over time, Google and other content
providers have built out their own infrastructure, connecting more
directly to end users and bypassing those tier-one intermediaries.


RSS Feed:

My submission at CRTC traffic throttling hearing

Full submission is available at:

http://www.cippic.ca/uploads/File/Attachment_C_pt_1_-_St_Arnaud_Report.pdf

Recommendations:

• Avoid use of DPI. The use of DPI raises serious privacy concerns that have not been resolved.
• Traffic management techniques should be applied uniformly to all users. Targeting a sub-set of users can be arbitrary and therefore unfair. Application targeting is an example of this. For example, throttling all P2P file-sharing application users will also catch many users of P2P file-sharing applications that generate only a small amount of bandwidth.
• Disproportionate targeting of lower tier customers should be avoided. If, for example, a customer with a 1 Mbps line and a customer with a 10 Mbps line were, in combination, generating enough traffic to congest a link they shared, they should each be throttled in proportion to the bandwidth they have paid for.
• Targeting newly developed protocols or applications should be avoided. Such innovations may make easy targets at first, while they are only employed by a small subset of users, as interfering with such traffic will only impact on less customers. This is true of P2P throttling. Telcos/Cablecos can now say that a relatively smaller portion of users are generating a large amount of P2P traffic and so this type of traffic should be targeted. However, given the efficiency in bandwidth distribution P2P offers customers, its use is only likely to increase in the future. As P2P use becomes more ubiquitous, the rationale that a small number of users are generating large amounts of P2P traffic will be become more inaccurate. More importantly, allowing telcos/cablecos to target a newly developed application or protocol because a.) it currently has a small number of users and b.) it happens to be very effective and so generates a large amount of bandwidth traffic, is likely to hinder innovation.

My testimony at FCC broadband workshop

[The FCC has been tasked to develop a national broadband strategy and are holding a series of workshops. I was invited to give a short presentation on some of the ideas we have been working in Canada and elsewhere. Here are my speaking notes – Bill]

www.broadband.gov

My presentation and background slides can be found at
http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/fcc-broadband-workshop


Good morning

First all I would like to thank the FCC staff inviting me to give speak at this event and I applaud their initiative in this area. These workshops will be very critical in defining a national broadband vision not only for the US but other countries around the world as well


I am Bill St Arnaud Chief Research Officer for CANARIE

CANARIE is the Canadian equivalent of Internet 2.

Our mandate is a bit broader in that we have been tasked to advance Canada’s telcom and Internet networks and applications

We work closely with organizations like Internet 2, NLR , Educuase in the US and institutions like UCSD

As everyone knows the Internet originated with the R&E community.

Not many people realize however that R&E community is also a major pioneer in new broadband architectures and business models

The R&E community has long experience in operating their own networks national and locally and many university networks are equivalent to those that would be deployed in a small city

New broadband Concepts like condominium networks, customer owned and controlled networks, hybrid networking, etc all started with the R&E community

[First slide]

In my opinion the biggest challenge in developing a national broadband vision is defining a business case

Many people think that government is going to invest billions of dollars in a national broadband deployment

In this era of trillion deficits and near bankrupt state and local governments I very much doubt that governments will be able to make any significant investments in broadband

So we have to look at the private sector as the primary vehicle for deploying broadband

But the business case for private sector to deploy national broadband is also very weak, especially if we want multiple facilities based competitors

I think there is general agreement that multiple facilities based competition is the ideal solution as competition drives innovation, lower prices and more choices for the consumer

But the business case for traditional NGA deployment is very weak and is predicated on 40% takeup and triple play revenues of $130

And of course revenues from triple play are gradually being undermined as video and voice service migrate to the internet in the coming years

Even with those numbers high speed broadband based on fiber will only reach about 40% of customers

So what we need is to experiment with new business models to underwrite the cost of next generation broadband

NEXT SLIDE

Some good examples are the “Home with Tails” concept that some Google analysts are advocating where the customer owns the last mile

Another one is Green Broadband where the cost of the broadband infrastructure and service is bundled with the customers’ energy bill, and the customer is encouraged to reduce their energy consumption, while the service provider makes money from the energy bill rather than triple play. There are now several pilots around the world adopting this model

As you may have heard CANARIE has launched a modest Green IT pilot program to help industry and academia capture new business opportunities in this field

Other examples include the condominium fiber deployment in Netherlands being lead by KPN in partnership with Reggenfiber

Another good example is the Swisscom national condo fiber project being deployed in partnership with numerous energy companies in that country

So my number one suggestion to FCC is that they work with R&E community and fund a number of NGA pilots that promote facilities based competition

For more information please see the links on your screen

American R&E networks are the lynch pin for broadband strategy

American R&E networks are the lynch pin for broadband strategy

[It is exciting to see the important leadership role that R&E networks in the USA and other countries are playing in the development and deployment of a national broadband strategy. R&E networks have the unique skill sets and knowledge on how to deploy low cost open infrastructure network through their existing extensive fiber deployments. They already connect many of the key public institutions such as schools, libraries, etc that are essential part of any broadband strategy. More importantly the R&E networks were the original organizations to bring Internet to the masses and have played a critical innovation role ever since in new network business models such as customer owned & controlled networks, green broadband, etc. Thanks to Mike Totten for these pointers –BSA]

New Coalition Will Work to Bring Broadband Internet Access to the Public (United States)
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3821/new-coalition-will-work-to-bring-broadband-internet-access-to-the-public
[June 11]

New Coalition Will Work to Bring Broadband Internet Access to the Public
A group of education, health, and library advocates has formed a new coalition to expand broadband Internet access. It will focus on how to most efficiently bring access to the public by using community institutions — including community colleges and other higher-education institutions — as a base.
The new Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition is made up of 28 commercial and not-for-profit groups, including the American Library Association, Internet2, and and Educause. It will seek federal money to provide broadband access first through “anchor institutions,” such as colleges, schools, libraries, and hospitals, since millions of people rely on those institutions already. The coalition says the high-speed connections could help schools and community colleges offer specialized courses and distance learning, could help health-care facilities make better use of telemedicine, and could help colleges and universities advance research.
“There’s not enough money in the stimulus bill to bring fiber optics to everybody’s home,” said the coalition’s coordinator, John Windhausen Jr. “One of the best ways is to bring the broadband to where the most people are likely to get it.”
[…]

New Coalition to Promote the Deployment of High-Capacity Broadband to Anchor Institutions and the Community (United States)
https://wiki.internet2.edu/confluence/display/realtime/2009/06/11/Schools%2C+Health+and+Libraries+Broadband+Coalition+Announced
[June 11]

NLR Offers Available, Leading-Edge Infrastructure for America's Network
http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=45

National LambdaRail (NLR), the cutting-edge network for advanced research and innovation owned by the U.S. research and education community, announces "America's Network" by offering its coast-to-coast platform and demonstrated expertise as the foundation for a national broadband infrastructure.

NLR has submitted this offer to the Federal Communications Commission, and urges the Commission to take advantage of NLR's readily available, secure, high-speed and user-neutral national backbone as a giant leap forward towards the realization of the goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and broadband in the U.S.

The NLR proposal presents a concrete roadmap for realizing the ARRA vision of stimulating innovation, research and economic development by rapidly upgrading the country's broadband infrastructure.

The nearly 30 state and multi-state regional optical networks (RONs) interconnected to NLR provide the nucleus of a truly nationwide broadband backbone, America's Network. With federal assistance, for a fraction of the cost of constructing a new nationwide network infrastructure, broadband connectivity at the highest speeds can be brought quickly to Americans in every state in the Union.

Just as a broad range of community organizations across the country -- from schools to public libraries to hospitals -- today enjoy broadband services by connecting to NLR through their regional network, NLR, as the infrastructure for America's Network, would enable all kinds of users and providers to benefit from inexpensive broadband access to an already existing, leading-edge network at state-of-the-art speed and efficiency.