Scientists Given Free Access to Cloud

[Another example why content peering at major IXs will be critical for future of scientific research. More and more research projects need access to global Internet community for crowd sourcing, cloud computing, distribution of educational video and citizen science. Excerpts from NY Times and Dan Reed’s blog – BSA]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/science/05cloud.html?hpw

U.S. Scientists Given Access to Cloud
The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company’s new cloud computing service.

A goal of the three-year project is to give scientists the computing power to cope with exploding amounts of research data. It uses Microsoft’s Windows Azure computing system, which the company recently introduced to compete with cloud computing services from companies like Amazon, Google, I.B.M. and Yahoo. These cloud computing systems allow organizations and individuals to run computing tasks and Internet services remotely in relatively low-cost data centers.

Neither Microsoft nor the foundation was willing to place a dollar amount on the agreement, but Dan Reed, the corporate vice president for technology strategy and policy at Microsoft, said that the company was prepared to invest millions of dollars in the service and that it could support thousands of scientific research programs.

Access to the service will come in grants from the foundation to new and continuing scientific research. Microsoft executives said they planned eventually to make the new service global.
[…]
Simplicity of use is one Microsoft goal. Programming modern cloud systems for full efficiency has been difficult. The company is trying to overcome this difficulty in creating a variety of software tools for scientists, said Ed Lazowska, a University of Washington computer scientist who works with the Microsoft researchers.

Dr. Lazowska said the explosion of data being collected by scientists had transformed the staffing needs of the typical scientific research program on campus from a half-time graduate student one day a week to a full-time employee dedicated to managing the data. He said such exponential growth in cost was increasingly hampering scientific research

http://www.hpcdan.org/reeds_ruminations/2010/02/innovation-via-client-plus-cloud-microsoft-nsf-partnership.html

Innovation Via Client Plus Cloud: Microsoft-NSF Partnership

Today, February 4, Microsoft and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a collaborative project where Microsoft will offer individual researchers and research groups (selected through NSF's merit review process) free access to advanced client-plus-cloud computing. Our focus is on empowering researchers via intuitive and familiar client tools whose capabilities extend seamlessly in power and scope via the cloud.

I am very excited about this, as it is the fruit of nearly two years of planning and collaboration across Microsoft product and research teams, as well as many discussions with researchers, university leaders and government agencies. As part of this project, a technical computing engagement team, led by Dennis Gannon and Roger Barga, will work directly with NSF-funded researchers to port, extend and enhance client tools for data analysis and modeling. We also appreciate the support of the Microsoft Dreamspark, Technical Computing, Windows Azure, Azure Dallas, Public Sector, education and evangelism (DPE) teams, among others, to build and deliver this capability.

21st Century Innovation

The brief history of computing is replete with social and technological inflection points, when a set of quantitative and qualitative technology changes led to new computing modalities. I believe we are now at such an inflection point in computing-mediated discovery and innovation, enabled by four social and technical trends:
• Massive, highly efficient cloud infrastructures, driven by search and social networking demands
• Explosive data growth, enabled by inexpensive sensors and high-capacity storage
• Research at the interstices of multiple disciplines, conducted by distributed, virtual teams
• Powerful, popular and easy-to-use client tools that facilitate data analysis and modeling

The first two of these are well documented, and I have written about them before. (See Beyond the Azure Blue and Language Shapes Behavior: Our Poor Cousin Data.) The late Jim Gray also lectured and wrote perspicuously about data-intensive scientific discovery, which he called The Fourth Paradigm. As a logical complement to theory, experiment and computation, the fourth paradigm is based on extracting insight from the prodigious amounts of social, business and scientific data now stored in facilities whose scale now dwarfs all previous computing capabilities.

Climate change and its environmental, economic and social implications; genetics, proteomics, lifestyle, environment, health care and personalized medicine; economics, global trade, social dynamics and security – these are all complex, multidisciplinary problems whose exploration and understanding depend critically on expertise from diverse disciplines with differing cultures and reward metrics.
As our research problems rise in complexity, the enabling tools must rise commensurately in power while retaining simplicity. I have seen far too many multidisciplinary projects founder on the rocks of infrastructure optimization and complexity, when they should have focused on simplicity, familiarity and ease of use.

As Fred Brooks once remarked, "We must build tools so powerful that full professors want to use them, and so simple that they can." Simplicity really, really matters. It is for this reason that Excel spreadsheets, high-level scripting languages and domain-specific client toolkits are now the lingua franca of multidisciplinary innovation, the harbingers of invisibility.

Invisible Simplicity
[..]
Sadly, our technical computing experiences have been dominated and shaped by a focus on technology and infrastructure, rather than empowerment and simplicity. We talk routinely of data and software repositories, toolkits and packages; of cyberinfrastructure and technology roadmaps. In our technological fascination, it is all too easy to lose sight of the true objective. Infrastructure exists to enable. If it is excessively complex, cumbersome or difficult to use, its value is limited. The mathematician Richard Hamming's admonition remains apt: "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers."

Empowering the Majority

To address 21st century challenges, we must democratize access to data and computational models, recognizing that the computing cognoscenti are, by definition, the minority of those who can and should benefit from computing-mediated innovation and discovery. Instead, we must enfranchise the majority, those who do not and will not use the low-level technologies – clusters, networks, file systems and databases – but wish to ask and answer complex questions. Remember, most researchers do not write low-level code; nor should they need to.

I believe we must focus on human productivity, not cyberinfrastructure, and leverage popular and intuitive client tools that hide infrastructural idiosyncrasies. This means deploying tools like Excel that can manipulate data of arbitrary size, reaching into the cloud to access petabytes of data and executing massive computations for epidemiological analysis as easily as one might balance a checkbook. It means coupling multiple, domain-specific toolkits via a script of a dozen lines, and launching a parametric microclimate study as easily as one searches the web. Perhaps more importantly, it means rethinking public and private sector partnerships for innovation, identifying and leveraging core competencies.
It all comes back to simplicity and invisibility. Technical computing can and should be an invisible intellectual amplifier, as easy to use as any other successful consumer technology. Now is the time; and Microsoft is committed to making it a reality. We look forward to working with the community.


------
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

The Future of Higher Education and ICT - Research 3.0

[By popular demand I have started a new e-mail list to continue deliver information on subjects that I remain passionate about, especially related to R&E networks, green IT etc. In particular I will be expanding upon the subject of the Future of Higher Education and ICT in the coming weeks as I believe that clouds, content distribution networks and cyber-infrastructure are not only transforming education but will have a major impact on innovation in general and continue to drive the Internet revolution. Green IT and new wireless Internet will play a big part. I think R&E networks, once again can play an important leadership role especially in those later two areas (yes wireless). These 2 papers: the first a collaborative effort by Educause, JISC, CAUDIT and the SURF foundation and the second by JISC point to an exciting future for Higher Education, Research and ICT. Thanks to Donald Clark and Richard Ackerman for these pointers. Please see instructions below if you want to subscribe or unsubscribe to this list. It is also available on Twitter and my blog – BSA]



The Future of Higher Education and ICT – Research 3.0



http://bit.ly/5ejtEl



Information technology supports virtually every aspect of higher education, including finances, learning, research, security, and sustainability, and IT professionals need to understand the range of problems their institutions face so they apply IT where it brings greatest value. Creating this future will require collaboration across organizational and national boundaries, bringing together the collective intelligence of people from backgrounds including education, corporations and government.








Research 3.0: driving the knowledge economy

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/campaigns/res3.aspx





Digital technologies are rapidly changing the type of research we can tackle and the way researchers work. How will research be in future? As the key provider of the digital infrastructure for UK higher education and research, JISC is seeking answers to this question during the Research 3.0 campaign.

See our Research 3.0 video3 for more about the issues we’re addressing, go to our blog4 to give your views and say what are the important issues for you, or see what others are saying.

You can also find out what JISC is doing for research and researchers by going to our research lifecycle diagram5 and watch videos showing how researchers from different disciplines use digital technologies6 in their research.

------

email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com

twitter: BillStArnaud

blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/

skype: Pocketpro

Middle mile architecture using anchor institutions such as universities, schools, etc critical to future of broadband

[Just released report on the Recovery Act Investments in Broadband stresses the critical role of the middle mile in connecting small rural communities using anchor institutions such as universities, schools, hospitals, etc. The report cites the investment NSF made in the early regional networks as a precedent. NRENs and/or RONs can play a critical role in this regard -- BSA]

http://bit.ly/8nTBBA


RECOVERY ACT INVESTMENTS IN BROADBAND:
LEVERAGING FEDERAL DOLLARS TO CREATE JOBS AND CONNECT AMERICA

Bill St. Arnaud is leaving CANARIE

All:

With mixed emotions and many fond memories I will be leaving CANARIE as of January 8.

Over the past 15 years of tenure at CANARIE I am very proud to feel that I have made a small contribution to several significant developments in the areas of customer owned networks, user controlled lightpaths, development of infrastructure as service, various broadband initiatives and most recently in looking at how networks and cyber-infrastructure can help address the challenge of climate change.

I strongly believe that research and education networks will continue to play a critical in today's society not only in supporting next generation research such as cyber-infrastructure but in continuing to demonstrate new Internet and broadband architectures and business models.

I now look forward to pursing new opportunities related to my on going passion for Internet networking, especially in the area of developing network and ICT tools to mitigate climate change.

I will continue to personally blog, tweet and e-mail as usual on the subject of Internet, climate change and R&E networking in general as per the following coordinates:

e-mail: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
Facebook: Bill St. Arnaud
skype: pocketpro
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
or http://green-broadband.blogspot.com

It has been a fantastic experience working at CANARIE and I will depart with long memories of working with so many engaging and brilliant colleagues within CANARIE and throughout the world.

Until we meet again

Bill

New digital strategy launched for UK universities by JISC

[JISC has been at the forefront of many global technology
developments for education and research. They have been one of the
early champions of the use of clouds and understanding the impact of
Green IT-- BSA]

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/Home/news/stories/2009/12/strategy.aspx

JISC launches 2010-2012 strategy

The UK is at risk of losing its world-leading reputation for
education, unless it continues to invest in digital technologies to
meet the ever-changing needs of modern learners, researchers and the
academic community says JISC, in its three-year strategy which
launches today.

The strategy1 outlines a vision of the future whereby a robust
technological infrastructure is required to meet the shifting needs of
the 21st century education community. JISC believes it is crucial that
the UK’s education system continues to compete on the international
stage by investing in innovation, research and increasing the
availability of online resources.



Recent JISC projects, such as the Google Generation and sustainable
ICT studies, have defined a new world for teaching and learning and
have outlined the infrastructure needed to support it. With new
technologies constantly evolving, sustained investment is needed to
pioneer their use. Over the last decade JISC has invested its research
and development funds in around 200 universities and colleges to help
uncover new products, approaches and systems as well as increase
skills and capacity.

JISC through JANET has developed a world-leading computer network and
technical backbone which has transformed the way that technology is
used and understood. Now, a network once used by a select few purely
for cutting-edge research allows millions in education and research to
share, manipulate, analyse and reuse digital content from around the
world. It is also the first national research and education network in
the world to complete a 100Gbit/s network trial that is nearly two
hundred thousand times faster than the average broadband connection.

As the web continues to transform life in the education sector, JISC,
through its services will guide individuals and organisations to make
effective use of digital technology through training and staff
development

JISC’s strategy outlines four key areas of investment:

* effective, creative approaches to teaching and an enhanced
learning experience;

* increased research quality and innovative approaches to support
the research process;

* efficient and effective institutions;

* shared infrastructure and resources.

Within these four areas, focus will be given to online learning,
management information systems, cloud computing, innovation and
impact.

The launch of JISC's strategy 2010-2012, follows a period of
consultation in which UK higher and further education institutions,
membership bodies, mission groups, and key partners were invited to
respond and help inform the strategy’s final direction. The strategy
has been written to ensure JISC’s planned future investment
priorities focus on the areas of greatest importance to those in
education and research.

AARNet salutes the 20th anniversary of the Internet in Australia

[Congratulations to AARnet. Australia has been undertaking some very innovative approaches to networking - first with AARnet and now NBN. Great video on Youtube celebrating their 20th anniversary- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPDZd4VNIWI. Some excerpts -- BSA]

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/327868/aarnet_salutes_20th_anniversary_internet_australia



Pioneer of the Internet launches book to commemorate historical milestones

Sydney, AUSTRALIA – 26 November 2009 – The Governor-General of Australia, Ms Quentin Bryce, AC, will launch a book today at Admiralty House, commissioned by AARNet (Australia’s Academic and Research Network) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Internet in Australia.

AARNet – 20 years of the Internet in Australia documents the history of how the Internet network was established in Australia through AARNet. The book explores how Australia’s commercial Internet network, as we know it today, was originally developed by AARNet. It also documents key individuals, events and milestones that led to the growth and development of a high-speed Internet network dedicated to Australia’s research and education institutions.

[...]


The need for a dedicated high-speed Internet network to serve the research and education community was developed out of the special demands for a network that had the speed and capacity to manage innovative projects and collaboration between Australian and international researchers. AARNet’s unique governance and funding arrangements meant its network was always more technically advanced and affordable. AARNet has showcased how innovation and collaboration is possible and is future proofing potential applications for the National Broadband Network into the future.

[..]

Today, AARNet serves over one million users in Australia’s research, tertiary education and scientific sectors. AARNet continues to demonstrate its relevance and importance in promoting collaboration and innovation in Australia through its high-speed network, which will complement the advent of the National Broadband Network.

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.

The Internet has emerged as a key driver of economic growth

[Here are two interesting pointers on how the Internet has emerged as a key engine for economic growth. Thanks to Rob Tai from a posting on Google policy blog and Dan Murphy –BSA]


http://www.viddler.com/explore/geoffdaily/videos/2/117.192/

Economic Impacts from Investments in Broadband
Broadband infrastructure is essential for the effective participation of businesses and organizations in today's economy. Research conducted by Strategic Networks Group (SNG), finds that the local economic growth and secondary investment enabled by broadband is 10 times the initial broadband investment and the contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 15 times the initial investment. Broadband today is as vital as electrification was in the 1930's and increased participation in the digital economy results in economic and quality of life improvements.
Investments in broadband infrastructure strengthen regional economies by improving skills, competitiveness, and service delivery, thus enhancing the local business environment. Broadband provides communications and information-sharing capabilities that have trans-formative effects on business operations and relationships. Opportunities and additional value are created from new or improved products and services, the ability to create and leverage new business models, better management of resources, and increased operational efficiencies. The ‘playing field' is leveled between large vs. small, urban vs. rural, established businesses and entrepreneurs.
• For businesses of any size, broadband and e-business applications enable them to expand their market reach and revenue opportunities, improve service to customers, and become more competitive and profitable in the global economy. In particular, broadband delivers affordable e-business solutions for small and medium enterprises through hosted applications and Internet-based service innovations.
• For organizations of any size, broadband and e-business applications enable them to improve service, become more cost effective and continue to be effective in the face of increased service demand and shrinking budgets.
• For individuals and residences, broadband delivers services such as Internet telephony (VoIP), Internet connectivity, movies and IP TV, tele-health, as well as new opportunities such as being able to work from home.
The impacts from investments in broadband infrastructure and broadband-enabled applications are measurable and significant. The immediate effects from an investment in broadband are twofold. The first comes from the construction of the broadband infrastructure. The affected residents, businesses and organizations then invest in the skills, know-how, tools and facilities to take advantage of broadband and e-business solutions so they can more effectively participate in the digital economy. These secondary economic effects take longer, but have far greater impact as they improve productivity, competitiveness and quality of service on an ongoing basis.
The table below provides two examples of the economic impact of broadband investments (infrastructure and applications such as e-business, tele-medicine and remote learning) from studies conducted by SNG in Canada in 2004 and 2003. Broadband impact data on new revenues, reduced costs, and new jobs were collected directly from businesses and organizations. Investment in broadband increased the retention and expansion of existing businesses and organizations within the local area. As businesses became more profitable and competitive, they expanded, which increased local employment, local training, local spending and investment in facilities and equipment. These outcomes flow through to the rest of the local economy creating a multiplier effect from the initial broadband investment. Input-Output impact models were used to calculate the contribution to GDP:
Investment and Impacts of Broadband Infrastructure Case example[1] from investment in community broadband infrastructure Case example from investment in e-learning, tele-medicine and broadband infrastructure
Initial Investment in broadband infrastructure by government $10 million $10 million
Leveraged Investment (i.e. first round effect) from other sources (private sector, other levels of government, etc.) $116 million $101 million
Total Investment $126 million $111 million
Contribution to GDP from Total Investment $164 million $150 million
Contribution to Total Employment* 2,100 4,800
Contribution to Taxes*
(State and Federal) $61 million $32 million
*Note – impacts on Total Employment and Taxes vary according to the types of jobs created and investments made. Adapted from a study conducted by SNG in 2003 for Department of Trade & Industry, United Kingdom. Adapted from a study conducted by SNG in 2004 for Industry Canada.

Infrastructure investment in broadband provides a healthy return in its own right, even for relatively small and rural communities. Broadband infrastructure construction has job impacts immediately in the local economy like typical shovel-ready investments. More significantly, as the table above shows, investment in broadband infrastructure increases the retention and expansion of businesses and organizations to a community or region.
The positive effects from broadband infrastructure become even more important in times of economic uncertainty, especially for smaller, rural communities who often have less economic diversity and resilience to withstand the effects of an economic slowdown. The availability of broadband gives enterprises, in smaller or rural communities, the options to expand their market reach and thereby becoming more efficient during difficult economic times. Individuals can use broadband find new opportunities, including supplemental education and skills training, out-of-region employment through tele-working / working from home, and from starting-up new businesses.
In parallel with addressing broadband gaps in coverage, capacity and quality of service, local businesses and organizations need to understand how to ‘connect the dots' and move having broadband towards effective participation in the digital economy. This involves promoting awareness of the benefits of broadband and e-business solutions with the follow-on of supporting implementations that benefit business operations and service delivery. This often requires intensive engagement and repeated visits, however such a ‘grass roots' approach with individual businesses and organizations is needed for them to understand and apply the lessons of "best of class" e-business solutions and success models. Such local linkages are needed to show how investing in broadband infrastructure offers a significant and immediate economic lift to a community or region. Addressing local broadband infrastructure gaps and accelerating adoption of e-business solutions are fundamental to promoting regional economic development that is built on competitive businesses and skilled human resources.
Just like electrification in the '30s, broadband service (coverage, capacity and quality of service) is critical to the long term prosperity of communities and gaps need to be addressed, whether for un-served rural areas or under-served regions. Service providers that have not made investments in these regions during good economic time are even less likely to do so during an economic slowdown. Furthermore, just like during the electrification expansion of the 1930's, many municipalities do not have the financial or human resources to make the broadband investment.
In summary, investing in broadband infrastructure now can alleviate the challenges faced by communities and regions in the short term, while providing a positive impact on long term economic and community development.

[From Google Policy Blog..]


With news of bankruptcies and bailouts dominating the headlines recently, it's easy to lose sight of one of the bright spots in our economy: the Internet. In an incredibly short amount of time the Internet has emerged as a key driver of economic growth, creating millions of American jobs that generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity.

… According to Harvard Business School professors John Deighton and John Quelch, the Internet is responsible for 3.1 million American jobs and $300 billion in economic activity spread throughout the United States. As Professors Deighton and Quelch put it, the web "has created unprecedented opportunities for growth among small businesses and individual entrepreneurs."

As the report makes clear, it's difficult to overstate the social and economic benefits of the Internet on the United States. Unlike any other platform in history, it has empowered entrepreneurs to start new businesses and connect with customers around the world, and has provided users with access to unprecedented amounts of information.

We think it's important for policymakers to understand the social and economic benefits of the Internet. That's why I was happy to see IAB also announce this afternoon the launch of the Long Tail Alliance, a group of small independent online businesses working to educate policymakers about the benefits of online advertising and to advocate against burdensome restrictions that would damage the Internet economy. In conjunction with the release of the new study, a group of Long Tail Alliance members representing 25 Congressional districts and 13 states took a maiden voyage to Washington to tell Congress their story. Check out some of what they have to say at "I Am the Long Tail."


http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-061009-value

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 10, 2009) – Interactive advertising is responsible for $300 billion of economic activity in the U.S., according to a new study released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The advertising-supported Internet represents 2.1% of the total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). It directly employs more than 1.2 million Americans with above-average wages in jobs that did not exist two decades ago, and another 1.9 million people work to support those with directly Internet-related jobs. A total of 3.1 million Americans are employed thanks to the interactive ecosystem. These are the key findings of the first-ever research to analyze the economic importance, as well as the social benefits, of the Internet.
“This is the first time anyone has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the size and scope of the Internet economy and measurement of its economic and social benefits,” said Professor Deighton, the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and an author of the study. “I am convinced the results of this study will prove useful for business leaders, legislators and the educational community.”
“This study underscores that the Internet ecosystem is generating an increasing level of economic activity in every corner of the nation,” said Professor Quelch, the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the study.
The study looks at the entire interactive marketing ecosystem, which includes:
• The ad-supported Internet, narrowly defined as the content and usage supported by an estimated $23.4 billion of Internet advertising in 2008
• E-commerce
• E-mail, the cornerstone of lead generation and customer care for many companies
• Enterprise websites, the Web sites that businesses, large and small, develop and maintain for communication.
Among some of the other important findings:
• Small businesses have thrived as a result of the Internet:
o There are more than 20,000 Internet-related small businesses in the U.S. that provide a variety of services such as web hosting, ISP services, web design, publishing, and Internet-based software consulting. Many of these businesses have 10 or fewer employees.
• Internet-related employment is particularly important to certain areas of the country but exists in every one of the 435 U.S. Congressional Districts. Some Congressional Districts have more than 6,000 Internet-related employees.
• Interactive advertising has substantially reduced what consumers have to pay for access to the Internet and for e-commerce products and services. In addition to its financial contribution to the U.S. economy, the Internet has produced large social consequences as an infrastructure and platform, providing American society comprehensive qualitative benefits that include:
o Universal access to an almost unlimited source of information
o Increased productivity (output per unit of capital or labor, or increased consumer utility at a lower cost)
o Innovation in business practices, consumer behavior, commerce and media
o Empowerment of entrepreneurs to start small businesses, find customers and grow
o Environmental benefits derived from saving natural resources lowering pollution through the reduced use of petroleum-based fuels and paper
•

How R&E networks can help small business

[Here is an excellent blog from the BCnet web site describing the benefits of transit exchanges for small businesses in British Columbia. BCnet and several other R&E networks such as KAREN in New Zealand operate transit and/or peering exchanges for the benefit of their research and education institutions. Not only do these facilities provide a valuable service to their members in terms of providing competitive access to multiple service providers locally, they also help small businesses and community networks to access a number of competitive commercial providers. BCnet has established a number of transit exchanges at several communities throughout British Columbia and operates them on the community’s behalf—BSA]

https://wiki.bc.net/atl-conf/display/BCNETPUBLIC/2009/05/27/Transit+Exchange+helps+Novus+Entertainment+Save+on+Internet+Costs+and+Improve+Performance

Transit Exchange helps Novus Entertainment Save on Internet Costs and Improve Performance
Novus Entertainment Inc., a Vancouver-based premier service provider for television, high speed Internet and digital phone, is claiming cost savings and improved performance by connecting to BCNET's Vancouver Transit Exchange.
Chris Burnes, Manager of ISP Operations with Novus Entertainment, is responsible for connecting Novus to the BCNET Transit Exchange. Burnes spoke to us about his experience, "We came into BCNET's Transit Exchange at Harbour Centre on a one month trial to test out the waters. During that first month, we immediately received customer feedback about the improved network performance. Particularly, we have a number of university students residents and they have found the network to be extremely fast when they are collaborating and sharing data with the universities in Vancouver.'' Novus Entertainment has been using the BCNET Transit Exchange for over two years.

Novus delivers advanced high speed Internet services to Metro Vancouver's high-rise residents. Their claim to fame is delivering the fastest residential service in Western Canada and having built their own state-of-the-art fibre optic network throughout downtown Vancouver. Their residential network boasts speeds of up to 50 Mbps without a modem.
Peering Delivers Cost Savings
Novus is directly peering with BCNET and over 40 different research and higher education organizations, as well as industry and government, at the Vancouver Transit Exchange. Burnes commented, "One of the biggest advantages to peering with BCNET and its members is that we are realizing large cost savings by reducing our data trafficking fees. We can siphon off a portion of our traffic through BCNET, rather than the traffic going to one of our upstream providers, which would incur a megabit per second fee. Through BCNET's Transit Exchange, we have the most direct access."
A Marketplace of Internet Services
In addition, the Exchange provides a marketplace to purchase network services from nine commercial Internet upstream providers. The advantage of having a "shopping mall" of service providers at one central location, according to Burnes, is the simplicity and low cost of switching providers. Burnes says, "If we want to get the most competitive transit fees, we can easily switch providers at the Vancouver Transit Exchange. It is as simple as getting a VLAN to a new provider."
Finally, Burnes has a larger vision for the future. He sees the growth potential of the Exchange and the opportunity to form new alliances with organizations that are connected to the Exchange, "Interconnecting opens up new possibilities for partnerships and collaborations with Vancouver organizations." Burnes is currently talking to a few Vancouver organizations that are peering at the Exchange about potential business ventures.