Planning the new institutional backbones and interconnections

Sat Jan 11 16:58:43 UTC 1992

Subject:
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Planning the new Institutional backbones and their inter-connectivities.

Objective:
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To determine the network backbones requirements for NREN and institutional
applications.
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Premises:
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All present telecommunication and Local Area networks are not directly 
compatible with the new fiber based networks that will soon be activated,
worldwide.

Today's Video, LANS, WANS, POTS, Routers, Packets & Frame relays, etc, will
all be carried transparently on the new fiber backbones. They will coexist
for a while until all their functions are completely absorbed by Sonet, ATM,
B-ISDN and F-CATV.

The NREN and institutional backbones can all be build, today, using readily
available Sonet fiber equipment and systems, from multiple sources and with
full standards compatibility.

We do not need to wait for the common carriers to build our applications, we
can buy the same compatible equipment from the same sources that they do.

The fibers are already installed across the country, between most of the metro
area telephone central offices, on the outside plant subscriber loop carriers,
on many CATV trunk distributions, and to many of our institutions.

We need to lease the backbone fibers from the common carriers, now,  before
they deploy their Sonet and B-ISDN systems. If we wait then we will only
be able to affoard leasing bandwidth from them. The NREN and other backbones
need the fiber capabilities more than a conservative bandwidth increment.

FDDI-2, Sonet(SMDS, ATM, FDDI-3, MAN, B-ISDN) and F-CATV backbones, they 
represent compatible technology, at different stages.

All these LAN, MAN, WAN, RAN, NAN and GAN  fiber based new implementations
will be able to provide the same, or compatible, data and multimedia services,
on the same telecomm media: single mode fiber media at 1300 and 1500 nm
wavelengths.

We could all learn how to apply the new fiber technology, from the NREN 
network backbone deployment and their applications.

A full NREN backbone deployment, as described below, could be completed
within a year. At that time many of today's backbones, Internet, Milnet,
Fednet, Videonet, could be carried within it, and still have most of the
large bandwidth left to develop the intended NREN applications.

Recommendation:
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What should the NREN backbone fast evolution be like ?.

Phase I, start national NREN backbone
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Single mode fiber leased from common carriers, four fibers per node.
Fiber shall terminate directly at NREN location nodes
Install ED-Optical fiber amplifiers at common carrier locations.
OC-48 Sonet transport fiber equipment installed at all NREN locations.
All NREN equipment should be owned by NREN and have a distributed management
organization, among non-commercial NREN regionals.

Phase II, start state NREN backbones
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Expand fiber NREN backbone between major cities, same as Phase I

Phase III, connect regional members to NREN backbones
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Add, common carrier provided, Sonet access service to NREN backbones nodes, 
for regional networks access.

Phase IV, upgrade NREN backbone.
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Upgrade existing fibers for dual wavelength multiplex, 1300/1500 nm.
Upgrade for higer capacity Sonet transport, OC-96 through OC-256.

Phase V, upgrade to ATM and B-ISDN
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Install small B-ISDN switches with ATM at major NREN nodes.
Install Local Sonet and Video distribution fiber, to the Desk/Station, using
bidirectional B-ISDN fibers.

Phase V, complete backbone for full research use
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Upgrade inter node fiber for multiple Wavelength Multiplex
Add common carrier provided B-ISDN access service, for regionals

Phase VI, building the applications for the Future
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This is the only phase that we can not buy, the research and development,
from other vendors.

Cost recovery:
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All cost could be recovered, if NREN wants, by selling the NREN back to
the common carriers, at the end of the research exercise. NREN could even
get some profit, by getting a free lease back for some years.

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The end of the beginning.