The Pacific Northwest Gigapop Circular is an occasional update of participant activities, new technologies, meetings, services upgrades, and enhancements. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Circular along with other occasional informational announcements related to the Gigapop, send email to gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net.

In this Circular 003

TRANSIT SERVICE PRICING CHANGES
TRANSPAC AND TANET2 JOIN PACIFIC WAVE
CELL SYSTEMS INITIATIVE DEVELOPS I2 APPLICATION
AARNET BIO-MIRROR COMES TO LIFE
PNWGP UPGRADES COMMODITY INTERNET CIRCUITS
CURRENT PNWGP AND PACIFIC WAVE PARTICIPANTS
UPDATING YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION
CONTACTING THE PNWGP

TRANSIT SERVICE PRICING CHANGES
   The telecommunications landscape has changed significantly in the past two and a half years. Until now, the PNWGP price model had not.
  The original PWNGP pricing model for Internet2 Abilene and commodity Internet services was based on ranges of anticipated use within either the commodity services or the Internet2 services. This model created financial 'bumps' whenever a new, larger circuit was installed to support increased use. While billing was predictable, there was little opportunity for savings based on steadily escalating use.
  The new usage-based pricing model is geared to allow for smooth pricing transitions with increased bandwidth usage. Plus, it combines the commodity with Abilene transit usage to help those organizations purchasing both to get to those savings faster.
  For any service greater than DS1, there are two components to the new transit fees: a fixed monthly port fee, and a per Mbps usage fee based on the 95th percentile for the month. Both inbound and outbound traffic are measured every five minutes; the usage fee is based on the higher 95th percentile of the two.
  As part of the new administrative procedures, all participant traffic will be measured at their router port. This model will simplify billing and traffic reporting. For those participants getting both Abilene and commodity services, PNWGP will be able to provide only estimated breakdowns between the two types of traffic.
  The new price model will take effect January 1, 2002. To receive a copy of the current Services Catalog, please send email to gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net.

TRANSPAC AND TANET2 JOIN PACIFIC WAVE
   Within the past few weeks, the traffic passing over Pacific Wave has expanded its international reach significantly to include Asia Pacific Academic Network (APAN) entities via TransPAC and the Taiwan Research Network (TANET2).
  TransPAC provides high-performance international Internet services connecting the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) to the Internet2 Abilene high-performance network, vBNS, and other global networks for purpose of international collaborations in research and education.
  TANET2 is built and run by the Taiwan National Center for High-Performance Computing. It connects Taiwan's leading research institutions to each other and, via Pacific Wave, to the leading research and education networks around the world.
  All PNWGP transit customers will now be able to seamlessly pass IP traffic with these new entities as part of their regular PNWGP service. Pacific Wave participants who are interested in establishing peering relations with TransPAC or TANET2 should refer to their contact information at www.pacificwave.net.
  For more information about TransPAC visit www.transpac.org. For more information about APAN, visit www.apan.net. For more information about TANET2 visit www.tanet2.net.tw.

CELL SYSTEMS INITIATIVE DEVELOPS I2 APPLICATION
   While many equate Internet2 with the Abilene high bandwidth testbed network, Internet2 has advanced application programs that reach well beyond the network itself. The Cell Systems Initiative based at the University of Washington is developing one such high bandwidth intensive application in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
   Under the leadership of UW Professor Bob Franza, the Cell Systems Initiative program has taken the first steps in enabling biology to make the conceptual leap from describing the cell to understanding how a living system works. Franza believes that scientists will need three things in order to do this: a specialized language for biological systems, a new array of tools, and the means for extensive collaboration. Future biologists will need experience in these areas, so CSI is creating a virtual space to bridge the gap between activities of the research laboratory and the science classroom.
  The first step toward the creation of a virtual classroom is the Labscape digital laboratory assistant, a model-based structure that provides scientists and students with a clear overview of the scientific/experimental process.
  For more complete information on this initiative and Labscape, see the full article at www.pnw-gigapop.net/cell.html.

AARNET BIO-MIRROR COMES TO LIFE
   AARNet and the GrangeNet consortium in Australia recently announced the implementation of the Bio-Mirror project. The project's goal is to provide a global set of mirror sites for large-scale bioinformatic/genomic data sets, thereby providing high-speed access to Australian researchers and reducing the network load on the source sites whenever a major new release of data is made available.
  The Bio-Mirror site is currently over 65GB in size and growing steadily. Current datasets provided include: BLAST, GenBank, FlyBase, MGD (Mouse Genome Data), Prosite, and many others. This service is possible because of AARNet's connectivity to Pacific Wave and the many research and education networks that it peers with here.
  For more information, contact Markus.Buchhorn@anu.edu.au or bio-mirror@apan.net.

PNWGP UPGRADES COMMODITY INTERNET CIRCUITS
   While the primary function of the PNWGP is serving as a connection point to the Internet2 Abilene network, commodity Internet services are also available to our participants.
  The commodity services have been upgraded from 305Mbps (burstable to 445Mbps), to 1.45Gbps within the past six months. Previously, services were delivered by four vendors over five circuits ranging from DS3 to OC-3. The new services are delivered by four vendors on four circuits ranging from OC-3 (155Mbps each) to GbE (1000Mbps). Vendors delivering these circuits are Level3, WorldCom, Sprint, and Verio.
  Each vendor provides multicast, has significant bandwidth into and out of the Pacific Northwest region, and significant established public and private peering relationships.
  In addition to offering vendor diversity, this latest round of vendor enhancements also added a level of geographic diversity to the circuits. Three OC-3s terminate at the Westin Building in downtown Seattle and the GbE circuit terminates at 1000 Denny at the Level3 gateway providing an extra level of redundancy to the service.

CURRENT PWNGP AND PACIFIC WAVE PARTICIPANTS
   For a current diagram of PNWGP and Pacific Wave participants, go to pacificwave.net and select either the .gif or .pdf version of the thumbnail graphic by the listing of section headers.

Pacific Wave International Peering Services Participants
  AARNet
  @Home
  CA*Net3
  Defense Research & Engineering Network (DREN)
  Energy Sciences Network (ESNet)
  Microsoft Corporation
  Peer1.net
  Pointshare
  TransPAC
  TANET2

Pacific Northwest Gigapop Transit Participants
  Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
  Boeing Research
  Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center
  City of Seattle
   - King County
   - Seattle Public Library
  Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
  Institute for Systems Biology
  Microsoft Research
  Montana State University
  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Pacific Marine
  Environmental Laboratory (NOAA/PMEL)
  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
  Portland Research and Education Network
  - Oregon Graduate Institute
  - Oregon Health & Sciences University
  - Portland State University
  Seattle Cancer Care Alliance
  Seattle Community College District
  Seattle Pacific University
  University of Alaska
  University of Idaho
  University of Montana
  University of Washington
  Washington State Dept. of Information Services
  Washington State K-20 Network
  Washington State University

UPDATING YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION
   If you have changes in contact info for administration, billing, technical, tech backup, or outages notifications, please email gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net or call 206.934.5588.

PNWGP CONTACT LIST
General Information & Circular Subscriptions
206-934-5588/888-934-5588
gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net
www.pnw-gigapop.net
www.pacificwave.net

Network Operations Center (24x7)
206-934-5580
888-934-5580
noc@pnw-gigapop.net

Web Site Contact
webmaster@pnw-gigapop.net

PNWGP Services Manager
Jan Eveleth
206-221-2300
eveleth@cac.washington.edu

Network Engineering Manager
David Richardson
206-934-5580

Mailing Address
4545 15th Ave N.E.
Seattle, WA 98105-4527

Fax
206-934-5589/888-934-5589

More information about Internet2 can be found at
http://www.internet2.edu/.

Circular 003 December 2001
Copyright (c) 2001 The University of Washington