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Meeting Minutes
August 20, 2004

Present: S. Cawley, R. Ford, B. Neas, A. Stunden, W. Wilson, G. Wilde, J. Brown, R. Summerhill, T. West, M. Lombardi, P. Brunelli

Jacqueline's Update on Northwest Initiatives

• Western Lights - a regional effort to purchase fiber for Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and Washington for those schools that are no longer nodes in NLR.
• The other initiative continues to be Lariat - but we still don't have a clear understanding of what will happen between Laramie and Bozeman.
• Metro-fiber acquisition in the Portland area, for Hawaii.
• Pacific Northwest Labs are in negotiations with FiberCo for purchase of fiber for DOE advanced network and they want a 10 Gig connection to Seattle GigaPop.
• CIO's at the Lariat sites were unhappy with videoconferencing (signals drop, etc., because of bandwidth restrictions). They've sent gear and asked for very controlled experiments testing the latency in the network before and after upgrading the Lariat network.

Glenn Wilde's Update on Idaho

• Moscow, Idaho to Pullman. OC-48 connection providing 2 Gig connectivity. Full implementation of connection back to Pacific Northwest Gigapop by January 2005.
• $16.5 million from NSF to support all of the colleges and universities in Idaho for training of medical personnel, but it's unknown right now how much will go for networking. - Glenn doesn't think there's money in that grant for connectivity; it's really for programs.
• Only OC-48 connection from Pullman to Seattle is possible because of present fiber. So they are working with congressional delegations of Idaho and Washington to get better connectivity and alternative routing. Fiber going up Highway 91, past the Rocky Mountain Lab (viral and material terrorism lab).
• Loop from Spokane to Boise through Montana to Missoula initiative.
• Brin/Lariat project - H.320 and H.323 will not be sufficient to provide the kind of high-resolution video needed for medical institutions. They are not happy with the Grid for that kind of file transfer. They are looking at a higher-level video, some experimental technologies.
• Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho (WWAMI)-create a special classroom where they'll install digital equipment experimenting with 40 mgs to set a standard for other institutions in the states.

Warren Wilson's Update on South Dakota

• Working with Great Plains Network on a regional initiative.
• Warren needs pricing to bring back to his legislators. Doesn't see much budget increase in state, but at least the Governor is talking research.
• NSF small grant ($75,000) for Great Plains Middleware Initiative to study middleware resources that could be shared in the region.
• South Dakota's Internet2 usage is so low that the universities need to find some applications or the state could take its appropriation back.

Bonnie Neas' Update on North Dakota

• Sprint has Internet1 contract for commodity traffic. The state network design is a redundant links design for all of K-12, reservations, and state govt. - Sprint has offered to update one of those links from OC-3 to OC-12. The Governor is not about to renew its contract with Sprint by 2006 (when the present contract is up) because the state is waiting to see what happens with Northern Tier. The state wants the next network to be optical.
• SD got a $16.5 million from NSF for programs, not networking (same as Idaho's award).
• Bonnie had a meeting with Dr. Kim of NSF (Division Chairman, NSF Cyber-infrastructure) regarding Northern Tier. He said that Northern Tier is "too much space, and not enough people." Dr. Kim told her to speak to Guy Almes (Chief Engineer for Internet2/NSF Cyber-infrastructure program director) who said NSF is interested in providing money for Northern Tier if we could involve researchers at our universities. He also recommended that we talk to David Nelson, national coordinating office in the White House, coordinating the JET group (the Federal Networks). We could get the Feds more in the loop if we present to that group, which meets monthly. Paul Love is in charge of the Jet meetings epl@internet2 .
• North Dakota requested money from Congress for high-speed network from Fargo to Minneapolis, and a connection to Grand Forks, and SD's congressional staff is following up on this and is very much for it.
• Homeland Security has huge amounts of money that's not designated, but we need a contact into the agency.

Ray Ford Update on Montana

• Ongoing news with respect to Lariat. Bandwidth is happening to Montana State and there is also a fiber asset from AT&T that goes through Missoula to Billings. The AT&T fiber map shows a Pop in Missoula. They want to come out of this with the lighting of this fiber asset.
• Montana is working with its state delegations, but the state CIO position is vacant until after the election and Montana State is not sure its interests are the same as the University of Montana in Missoula.
• Montana did just get money for a flight-training test center out of Homeland Security. The Center wants to focus on technology related economic development in Eastern Montana, so it seems like a potential partner for us.
• Montana won't be able to come up with matching funds to address local issues and so there's no urgency for state legislators in encouraging the university to win any of the Brin/Lariat money.
• The state of Montana did join the NTNC because it is interested in a fiber asset that goes border to border.

Steve Cawley Update on Minnesota

• Backup plan is to do a short-term 1 gig lease circuit down to Chicago followed up ideally by connecting through Madison and a second route for redundancy.
• Funding - try to find money by talking to congressional delegation staffers and governor's office through university lobbyist (no bites so far). University's legislative request is being thought out right now. The other plan is internal reallocations (they started squirreling away enough resources last year). Close to making a capital investment between Minneapolis, Madison, and Chicago.

Steve Fleagle Update on Iowa

• Iowa Communications Network is the state network run by a state agency. It doesn't meet the university's needs very well.
• Iowa population is a little over 2 million. It's very expensive to run this network so there is a lot of pressure to sell this network. Qwest and MediaCom is interested in buying it because it has a presence in every county and school district. There are all these little telephone cooperatives that object to selling it to a private entity because it would run them out of business. They have tried to make a lot of contacts in Homeland Security, but they haven't got a penny yet. They have really alienated the educational part of their mission because they want to focus on defense. Unrest and uncertainty.
• University went short-term route with 2 gig Ethernets from eastern part of the state to Chicago. Went from an OC-12 that carried both commercial and university traffic to 2 separate gigs for each.
• Interested in having two parallel paths in the northern tier. The southern and the northern. Southern route = Chicago-Iowa City-Ames-Lincoln-maybe north from there. Iowa State is in worse shape than University of Iowa.

Annie Stunden Update on Wisconsin

• Our own dark fiber process from Madison to Chicago. We expect to light it in a couple of weeks (10 Gig).
• We had a fiber procurement on the street for all the UW system institutions. But the Governor nixed that. Now the new winning vendor will be able to do transit provision.
• WiscNet can still be an ISP, but politics will make it difficult for WiscNet to be competitive in the bid to serve those sites and drain traffic from them.
• Our Chancellor has said build the network right away from Madison to Chicago, funded through internal reallocations. We will build out to Minneapolis if NTNC is interested; if not, we'll find an alternative route for our own redundancy needs. We're ready to build out 10 gig lambdas to Minneapolis and complete it by the beginning of Spring semester! Steve said, "let's do it."
• How much does the next lambda cost? (e.g. expansion question posed by Steve for Wisconsin).
• Steve said he could come out to Madison in a couple of weeks to finish it up and we can move on the build-out.

CIC - Chicago Update

• The CIC institutions are building a ring (96 strands of fiber) in Chicago to all the various points of interest, including Starlight at 710, McLeod, Equinex, Wiltel (costs each institution $130,000 for a pair of Lambdas on that ring). Wiltel will sell UW-Madison cheap transport directly to our campus, so that's a great opportunity for UW-Madison. NLR is on 111 Canal St. and won't connect up with our ring. Looking Glass and Level 3 are the two vendors. Redundant paths into Starlight.
• Steve wanted to know about the CIC's plan to share the NLR's single 10 Gig connection. Where is NLR going to be? Who can pass traffic on NLR - just the CIC schools, or can we bring in anyone behind us that we want to bring in. If the CIC is geographically responsible for the Chicago connector, we should have the right to determine the rules for our regional network policy-wise.

Don Riley Update on AT&T Fiber

• SURA - looking at the application-oriented initiatives that require advanced network and looking at USA Waves. It's going to take a while to get cost-effective waves from AT&T. Between Jacksonville on west to Houston for part of the NLR backbone.
• East coast international peering fabric connecting NYC to Miami at Florida International University with other peering points in Atlanta, D.C. and maybe N.C. - mirroring west coast fabric between Seattle and Los Angeles. There's a wave in place on the NLR backbone connecting Starlight in Seattle all the way to San Diego. Stressing to us that we want to be where these important peering points are located in Chicago.
• AT&T is still waiting on NTNC to tell them what we want. Don asked Gary Crane to see how we could leverage what we know of the AT&T route to give us some ballpark numbers to help us think about it.
• NSF doesn't seem to be funding infrastructure anymore, and wants instead to focus on advanced applications.
• Gary and Don put together a good starting point by estimating the costs of leasing from AT&T based on a single fiber pair. Ray asks, "How does Missoula connect to the Gigapops that AT&T is proposing?" Gary and Don put together an estimate based on a sparse-note backbone - one on-ramp in each of the states and ballpark it from there. Based on figures Gary got from an equipment vendor he's dealing with in Maryland named Mobaz, but Mobaz is not ultra-long haul equipment. Gary says they have introduced a new shelf that gives them longer reach.
• Annie explains that we have done a detailed engineer's design based on Cisco gear and the figures Gary came up with are very similar, so he's done a good job estimating the costs.
• What's included in management and other costs? Trying to include mgmt. systems, NOC operations, and field support. This is where most of the guesswork took place because that number is very variable depending on how well you manage it, and is especially variable given the great distances in our case. The proposed Northern Tier would be longer than any backbone span in NLR, and the pops are very remote. The five-year cost figure on maintenance is still too low, says Tom West. There are a very limited number of service providers in that remote geography, making it a real challenge to maintain these pops. There are only two fiber paths - the old Sprint path and the NextGen AT&T path. There isn't any cheaper third party solution.
• The loop north from Billings to Canada would be the cheapest, and the Canadian folks are willing to work with us. The trouble with the Interstate 15 corridor is that it wriggles around and there are no customers on it. If the only thing you're short of is 1,000-mile span between Billings and Fargo, then we could find a way to fill it. There has to be reasonable homogeneity between the products used across the Northern Tier. The Cisco gear Wisconsin is starting with is homogeneous with Ron's gear coming out from the west coast.
  1. Minneapolis to Chicago (Annie and Steve will do it)
  2. Minneapolis to Bismarck and Dickinson, ND, near Montana border (AT&T has a hut at Dickinson).
  3. Montana's western border to Billings (this is the hard part to fill; AT&T has five huts between the two sites).
  4. Seattle to Billings (Ron will be deploying from Seattle to Spokane and Billings in the next 6 months, so NTNC can piggyback onto Ron's path if we can get to Billings from the east).
• Rick Summerhill suggests that the Dakotas and Montana go together to EPSCOR for financial support.
• Ron: what he would want would be a long-haul optical fiber system with drops at the major educational sites.
• Ron would like to think of NLR operating this as an NLR path. NLR is a whole patchwork of local deals, so it seems likely that they would accept Northern Tier as part of NLR.
• Montana and Dakota universities need to look at someone else (NLR, the Seattle GigaPop, whoever) to manage the optical network after its built and lit, because they don't have the strong network services units of Minnesota or Wisconsin.
• Ron is concerned with DOT fiber and any acceptable use restrictions that might flow through to the fabric. Annie and Steve both assured Ron that the Wisconsin and Minnesota DOT fiber does not carry any acceptable use restrictions on it.
• Minnesota state network provides service to North Dakota and they are a little nervous about the Northern Tier research network taking away their ND business. Given that Ron has negotiated with AT&T so that there is no restriction on use of its leased fiber, Steve thinks maybe he should use the DOT fiber from Minneapolis through Wisconsin and use the AT&T option from Minneapolis west to Fargo, ND.
• Earmarked funds from Congress, Ron reminds us, have never been pulled together for regional networks. He recommends using existing programs --- NTNC members going to NSF or NIH together.

Tom West on NLR

NLR

National LambdaRail is the U.S. endeavor to secure and run infrastructure for national research & education community. Research universities have been renting fiber in order to respond to the individual needs of their research communities. NLR is trying to demonstrate to research universities that this collective ownership is a more cost-efficient solution.

Cisco is providing the multiplexers, switches and routers for the NLR, and Level 3 is supplying the dark fiber.

NLR is lighting the first fiber pair with an optical Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network capable of transmitting up to 32 simultaneous light wavelengths ('lambdas' or 'waves') each at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). NLR is also deploying a switched Ethernet network and a routed IP network over the optical DWDM network.

Currently, four dedicated point-to-point 10 Gigabit Ethernet wavelengths have been lit:

• One 10 Gigabit Ethernet dedicated for Layer 3 capabilities (e.g. knowing the address of the neighboring nodes in the network, selecting routes and quality of service, and recognizing and forwarding to the Transport layer incoming messages for local host domains.
• One 8X1 Gigabit Ethernet dedicated for Layer 2 Transport infrastructure (e.g. ensuring the reliable arrival of messages in the form of packets and providing error checking mechanisms and data flow controls). The plan is to provide Gigabit Ethernet service to all NLR MetaPoPs plus production GigE service.
• One dedicated to Internet2 HOPI (Hybrid Optical & Packet Infrastructure) - Internet 2 has a heavy investment in NLR, including $10 million, 2 board members, and the HOPI wave. NLR has to demonstrate its capacity to sustain an Abilene-like capability. In terms of peering, there are major points of international connection in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
• One "hot spare" for moving ahead on a project while waiting for the gear to provision the additional waves.

NLR"s basic proposal to date.

• Each participant/node typically commits about $5 million for a seat on the board. Tom West quoted around $15 million for five years, giving member universities of NTNC three seats on the NLR board.
  • Additional costs per segment (every 800 miles). In addition to the $5 million per node, transponder cards must be purchased and slotted in at each end of the segment for a dedicated 10 Gig lambda. The cost of doing so for one segment of the Northern Tier (e.g. between Fargo and Minneapolis) is $150,000 for five years. A dedicated lambda from Minneapolis to Chicago (two segments) would be $300,000 in additional costs for five years.
  • Furthermore, there are co-location costs that also need to be factored into the final proposal.
  • Management and other costs are estimated at $250,000 a year for every 800 miles.
• Each university member can purchase and run dedicated waves on top of the underlying NLR owned and managed fiber infrastructure. Once the underlying infrastructure is in place, NTNC can provision multiple networks for different needs, such as provisioning a wave for a peering capability across the country (Ron Johnson's goal). Steve Cawley called this benefit of NLR membership "maximum flexibility to plug-and-play."
• The benefit of working with NLR is that it provides NTNC's member institutions with a NOC in California (CENIC) for Layer 1 and a NOC in Indiana for Layers 2 and 3. Moreover, NLR's support may help the Northern Tier raise the requisite money from government agencies.
• Tom's proposal for the Northern Tier would differentiate between local networking issues that "hub in" and the long haul game plan across the northern tier. The basic transcontinental regional network for the Northern Tier would be a 10 Gig backbone from Seattle to Chicago with multiple waves and identified points of presence (e.g. a limited number of sites per state). Tom's suggestion was six full stops between Seattle and Chicago.

Issues and Concerns

• Management
  • NLR's management responsibility is at the huts and the terminals, not for every one of those miles out there.
  • Montana and the Dakotas might be better off going to AT&T for managed services. With this option, they would not own their own fiber.
• Down Time
  • NLR is not yet a production network, meaning that the dedicated lambdas can go "down" for several days. For those universities that plan to rely on this optical network for all statewide needs (rather than simply provisioning it for high-performance research projects exclusively), this could be untenable. For example, the state of North Dakota would not be willing to join the NLR infrastructure until it has attained the reliability of a production level network.
• Control
  • For the University of Minnesota and UW-Madison, control of the network is the big issues.
    • Univ. of Minn. wants to be a node on NLR, since NLR is going through Minneapolis anyway. Joining NLR means that the university will have a lambda infrastructure to Chicago regardless of what Madison decides to do with regard to NLR. Univ. of Minnesota will join forces with Madison to build a lambda infrastructure to Chicago, but only if Madison decides to join the NLR.
    • 
      Will NLR want Madison to sign over the operating rights on the existing glass and equipment to NLR in exchange for an additional four lambdas dedicated to Madison's research needs? If UW-Madison decides it's not going to turn that asset over, could the university still decide to be an NLR node? Would it choose to be off the NLR map altogether? Steve's (Univ. of Minn.) decision on the eastern Northern Tier build-out will depend on Madison's NLR position.
  • NLR's Financial Outlook
    • If the Northern Tier builds a regional network on its own, it might not be subject to NLR's financial pressures. Is NLR looking at the Northern Tier institutions for their money? Wouldn't this be the same concern if NTNC were to work with a vendor?
• Rick asks whether NLR would take over the Northern Tier and run it once NTNC can come up with the $12 million a year. Maybe the NLR name would have enough cache to help the effort to raise funds from DC agencies.
• Tom said, if NTNC joins NLR, NLR will manage/operate our northern tier network But Annie reminds us that Madison is building and managing the network connection to Chicago and so the idea of losing management responsibility to NLR is of concern. Steve concurred.
• What does it mean to become part of NLR? Each university member can have dedicated waves, etc. on top of the underlying fiber infrastructure (Level 1) that is owned and managed by NLR. NLR is trying to demonstrate that this is a more cost efficient solution than renting fiber for responding to the idiosyncratic needs of our research community.
• There is an NLR Engineering Committee - everyone who is associated with a Pop on the NLR has someone on that committee. Tom is the only full-time employee of NLR. In NLR member institutions/fiber owners learn together in this community of technical people who talk with one another about their regional issues.
• Annie wants to make sure she can fulfill the promises she's made to her researchers so that she can deploy what she needs to deploy without negotiating with all the NLR members.
• One of the big advantages to joining NLR would be that NLR would help us find the money to participate.
• NLR is at Starlight, too. NLR will have some fiber on the multiple fiber ring being built by the CIC in Chicago. Tom says the question for NLR is whether it can find facilities that are less expensive for its member institutions to connect to than the Level 3 Gigapops.
• Rick and Tom agree that the Great Plains Network would be very interested in this conversation. From an NLR perspective, the question is what's the cost. Every member of NLR has put in $5 million, but the Nebraska folks can't afford that.

Day 2

Tom West on NLR

Interstate system

We started off with a sparse backbone as a function of cost. Adding lanes and waves costs more money. With the Cisco 15808, it was easier to pick locations.

For the Northern Tier there are six full stops in between Seattle and Chicago.

That's what NLR is doing in the South, where the backbone is getting less sparse because they are creating stops for member institutions.

With this asset we can provision multiple networks for different needs, such as provisioning a wave for a peering capability across the country (Ron Johnson's proposal).

Institutions cannot be islands onto themselves because of the collaborative, cross-institutional nature of modern research.

Tom doesn't know where it's going to end up with Abilene and NLR. Eventually, the community has to coalesce. Internet2 has a heavy investment, including $10 million and 2 board members (and the HOPI wave), into NLR. NLR has to demonstrate its capacity to sustain an Abilene-like capability. In terms of peering, there are major points of international connection in L.A., Chicago, New York.

Bonnie asks about the $12 million - say we want a wave from Fargo to Minneapolis is there an additional cost for every wave we put on. Does NLR manage that kind of situation and how does that happen?

Tom answers - we basically have 32 waves, with 4 waves lit - one is a shared IP network, one for switched Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) channels, one for HOPI / Internet2, one is for provisioning a project while waiting for the gear to provision the waves. If you want a dedicated wave for a particular project that would be an additional cost. Between Fargo and Minneapolis -- $150,000 for five years at 10 Gig per segment. You're buying transponder cards slotted in at each end. If you go from Madison to Fargo, that's two segments. Dedicated lambda from Minneapolis to Chicago would be $300,000 for five years.

Regarding fiber management: NLR's management responsibility is at the huts and the terminals, not for every one of those miles out there.

Montana and the Dakotas can go to AT&T and acquire managed services - you don't own the asset, but that's a way of getting capabilities.

Tom differs with Gary Crane's quick estimate. According to Tom, based on using Cisco gear, AT&T's offering is really a $15-16 million deal. Tom doesn't know how many waves Gary is provisioning in the estimate. There are hidden costs involved in dealing with AT&T.

Ray said we won't be dealing with a lump sum, but instead people will be building segments and there will inevitably be cost creep as additional universities are able to complete their segments. It's still viable to build the segments as long as they connect to viable end points right now.

For Iowa and SD - Tom suggests we agree on how to include them.

Regional focus issues - Ray suggests we break into separate groups to define local loop issues of the West, the Iowa/SD, and the Minnesota/Wisconsin.

Steve suggests: We should just worry about building the big pipe points of access in each states and let the local groups deal with getting to these points.

Northern Tier -- 10 gig from Seattle to Chicago with multiple waves and identified points of presence (a limited number of sites per state).

Tom wants us to differentiate between local network issues that "hub in" and the long haul game plan across the northern tier. Tom said that he and Gary Crane and Don would discuss this and come back to us with a proposition. NLR would do the backbone engineering - Dave Richardson, Dave Reese, et al, at various NLR member institutions.

Rick thinks we need to study what we get and what it costs, especially things like being down for a couple of days, and if you're willing to do that, then it's fine. But he's skeptical about the organizational issue. Understand the realities - you'll get what you pay for. What does the $15 million cover? How about equipment renewals? The control issue is worrisome. Are you giving up control of your own fiber to another entity (NLR)? Internet2 would be supportive if you wanted to do this. If NLR builds something, does that automatically expand the number of waves to four? Yes.

Tom realized that Gary's figures didn't include co-location costs and so the $15 million figure he just offered is too low, as well.

Basic Difference in the Proposals :

Bonnie suggests we go to AT&T to find out what they would charge us for a managed service.

Steve reminds us that this is comparing apples and oranges. AT&T managed service won't give us maximum flexibility to plug and play that NLR will.

But Bonnie worries about the reliability of NLR and her state won't go for a network that could go down for a couple of days.

What's the risk involved in going with NLR? Tom says they have sufficient capital investment to do the footprint you see on our map. We have sixteen "investors" including Internet2's double investment, CENIC, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, CIC, Virginia, NC, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Learn in Texas, New Mexico, Pittsburg Computing Center, and Cornell.

Tom's basic proposal:

Northern Tier's $15 million for five years would be three seats on the board. NLR estimates $250,000 a year in management and other costs for every 800 miles. The cost differential is also produced by the fact that Gary added one wave and Tom added four waves. Tom will be using the AT&T fiber, because that's the only way that it works cost-effectively, so he will be working with Gary Crane on developing a proposal for us by next month.

Executive Committee agreed to plan a general member meeting. Proposal was for November 4-5, 2004, Thursday and Friday, noon to noon.

Impressions to this Point

The Western group takes on the building eastward right up to the North Dakota border, but the responsibility must be shared. Ray says the NLR proposal is interesting to the Western group (Mary Doyle, Glenn Wilde, Ray Ford, and Pacific Northwest National Lab). Ray will be meeting with his state folks and the Idaho state folks who have been on the fringe thus far. Ron will schedule the meeting in Seattle or Pullman. The Lariat project creates a problem - Washington State and Montana are not named in the project, whereas Idaho and Wyoming are named.

Glenn Wilde of the University of Idaho is very interested in moving in tandem with Washington State because of some liabilities on the fiber coming to them. He says Idaho needs a regional network to tie into the region's economic development, and he's in discussion with the State Board of Education about developing an Idaho high-performance intranet. Glenn says he can build an in-state network more easily than Ray can in Montana where the politics are stickier. Currently, Idaho looks to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and the BRIN project (Glenn's is the lead institution and is working to leverage it to serve the rest of the state). He hopes to have the regional discussions done by mid-October.

Jacqueline says Ron is interested in working with Ray & Glenn, et. al. now that there is an offer from NLR. She says the Pacific Northwest Gigapop will definitely work with the Western Northern Tier group to get them to Seattle. And the rest of the NT is welcome to connect there as well. We need agreement that if we build separately or together, that this is AUP-free, carrier-neutral facilities wherever possible, anchors in Westin and Starlight. Ron needs to know how Wisconsin is configuring their 454's to ensure they are compatible with his.

Bonnie is assuming that the connection from Minneapolis to Fargo is a done deal. But who is responsible for finishing the last piece. NLR is not at the production level yet, and ND state officials won't be willing to come on until NLR has attained that level. Bonnie says the NLR offer is something to look at to get things moving, as long as the production network is a part of this.

Steve wants to know whether the Pacific Northwest GigaPop could be used as a model of a relationship with NLR for Minnesota/Wisconsin. The GigaPop has its own electrical equipment/facility that it operates, and it's connected to NLR.

Control is the big issue, as Steve points out. For example, NLR probably wants Wisconsin to sign over the operating rights on the glass and equipment to NLR in exchange for an additional four lambdas that Wisconsin will have control over. If Wisconsin decides they are not going to turn that asset over, Madison could still decide to be an NLR node or choose to be off the NLR map altogether.

University of Minnesota needs to know what Wisconsin's position will be on this infrastructure issues. The University of Minnesota definitely wants to be a node on NLR, since NLR is definitely going through Minneapolis anyway. Does Steve want two lambda infrastructures into Chicago or not?

Rick warns that you lose control of your regional assets. For example, you lose the right to put 40-Gig equipment on your own fiber when you want to do it because you lose control to that piece of fiber to NLR. If you go with NLR as the backbone and build out your own regional network from there then adding the 40 gig equipment later on to the regional network is much more expensive.

Steve Cawley points out a benefit of working with NLR , which has a NOC in Indiana for Layer 2 and 3, and one for Layer 1 at CENIC, where there is also a call center. If we build out a Northern Tier network and we don't do it with NLR we'd have to provide our own NOCs, so one of the benefits of working with NLR is access to these NOCs.

Warren worries about NLR's financial stability. When Bonnie talked to Guy Alms, he said to proceed cautiously because he didn't feel they had the money to meet their build-out goals and objectives. Make sure that NLR is not looking at the Northern Tier institutions for their money. Jacqueline points out that this would be the same case when working with a vendor. Jacqueline says they got a quote of $12 million and then Tom saw two holes in Gary's quote that would bring the price even higher, so we need to build in contingencies because prices fluctuate.

Steve Fleagle - if we do it together, we won't have external financial pressures that NLR may have. There's a risk, not knowing NLR's true financial outlook. Warren Wilson wants to know how we define the eastern part of Northern Tier: Does it extend through SD and Iowa to Nebraska? Warren sees that there is a lot more fiber going south for SD but its expensive fiber. NLR is probably not able to commit to coming down from Minneapolis through SD to Kansas City.

Follow-up Meetings :

WEST-Forthcoming meeting with Ron Johnson

Washington

Idaho

Montana

CENTRAL - Warren and Steve Fleagle will discuss with Nebraska and IA State

South Dakota

Nebraska

Iowa

EAST - Bonnie's challenge is to get from Minneapolis to Fargo

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Iowa

North Dakota

Action Items:

1. Follow-Up Meetings
   • Nov. 4-5 General Members Meeting
   • Regional Planning Meetings as listed above - Ray (West), Warren and Steve F. (Central), Annie (East)
   • Minutes to Members on website - Ray, Marilyn
2. Annie calls Tom West. Have Tom come back with two estimates. One is where we put our assets into NLR, and the other for what he would charge for building his own infrastructure with us retaining our own regional pieces. Annie will discuss with Tom whether we can bring our $1.5 million equipment into the infrastructure he builds, thus decreasing the amount of money Wisconsin pays over five years by that $1.5 million. We need Tom's proposal back before we get the technical people together.
3. Early next week, Annie/Perry/Pat and Ron will talk about the Madison initiative to ensure it is compatible with his requirements.
4. If Iowa State and Nebraska are really interested then that might help us decide whether that mini-loop for SD, Iowa, and Nebraska is feasible. Steve Fleagle and Warren Wilson will make the necessary phone calls to determine interest.
5. Conference Call for late September to plan Nov. 4-5 General Meeting.
6. CIC Meeting Discussion - September 30 - Steve C., Steve F., Annie
7. Place NLR map on web site, plus "marketing" materials - Ray and Marilyn
8. EPSCOR states funding strategy - Bonnie