PNWGP Circular, September 2002

The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) Circular is an occasional update of news for and about PNWGP and Pacific Wave participants. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this update service, send email to gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net

In this Circular 004

PRICE REDUCTION ON COMMODITY INTERNET SERVICES
PNWGP UPGRADES COMMODITY INTERNET CIRCUITS
UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA SETS INTERNET2 LAND SPEED RECORD
PACIFIC WAVE JOINS APAN
PACIFIC WAVE AND IPv6
NEW INTERNET ROUTING REGISTRY POLICY IN EFFECT OCTOBER 1
PNWGP EXPANDS PEERING RELATIONSHIPS
INTERNET2 FALL MEMBER MEETING IN LOS ANGELES OCTOBER 2002
CURRENT PNWGP AND PACIFIC WAVE PARTICIPANTS
UPDATING YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION
PNWGP CONTACT LIST

PRICE REDUCTION ON COMMODITY INTERNET SERVICES

Effective October 1, 2002, the Pacific Northwest Gigapop will reduce its fees for all commodity Internet services.

• Port fees for Abilene plus Commodity Internet Services will sink from $7990/mo to $5995/mo (Usage fees for this service remain at $275/Mbps)
• Usage fees for Commodity Internet Services will drop from $400/Mbps to $325/Mbps (Monthly port fees for this service remain unchanged at $2995/mo)

Additional savings are available to those organizations with monthly use levels regularly at or above 50Mbps.

There are three contributing factors to this decrease in PNWGP commodity service fees.

• The telecommunications industry shakeup of the past 18 months has
  resulted in a lowering of IP transit fees.
• The PNWGP has been an active member of The Quilt, a national collaboration of gigapops, and through The Quilt has been able to participate in some lower-cost aggregate IP transit purchases.
• An increase in peering relationships by the PNWGP has diverted some of the traffic that would have gone over commodity links through regional peering points.

To receive the PNWGP Service Catalog reflecting this new pricing, please send email to gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net

PNWGP UPGRADES COMMODITY INTERNET CIRCUITS

The PNWGP estimates that the collective monthly commodity Internet bandwidth needs of its participants will reach 875Mbps by the end of this school year. To accommodate this growth, commodity Internet services for PNWGP have once again been expanded.

Last year, the PNWGP increased commodity Internet bandwidth from 445Mbps to 1.45Gbps. This year, the commodity capabilities have been expanded to 3Gbps. The new commodity services configuration provides unprecedented redundancy options, plus room to grow.

PNWGP will receive 1Gbps circuit from each of the following vendors: Level3, Verio, and Cable & Wireless. A failure or poor performance in any given circuit can easily be absorbed by the remaining two circuits. The new configuration also allows for simplified BGP configurations while continuing to offer optimal IP packet routes to and from the Internet.

In addition to retaining vendor diversity, these GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) commodity circuits are made at two geographically diverse connections at two separate nodes within Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Some of the criteria used by the PNWGP in selection of IP transit providers are

National backbone
Seattle ingress/egress
Overall technical competence
Multicast service capability
BGP support
Significant peering with Tier One providers at multiple locations throughout the country
Response policies to security incidents
Engineering of their Point of Presence facilities
Backbone engineering
Corporate financial viability

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA SETS INTERNET2 LAND SPEED RECORD

Congratulations to the teams at the University of Alaska (led by Kerry Digou) and the University of Amsterdam (led by Erik-Jan Bos) who blasted the Internet2 Land Speed Record last May! 625Megabytes of data were transferred from Fairbanks to Amsterdam at a rate of 401 Mbps.

See the full press release at http://archives.internet2.edu/guest/archives/I2-NEWS/log200205/msg00003.html

PACIFIC WAVE JOINS APAN

In September, Pacific Wave was accepted as an affiliate member of the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN). This higher-profile role in the APAN community will help the PNWGP in structuring its Pacific Wave services to meet the diverse and changing needs of Pacific Rim research and education partners, some of which are already active today at Pacific Wave, including AARNet and TANET2. APAN itself is also a Pacific Wave participant today through TransPAC.

Pacific Wave hopes to use this opportunity to leverage large-scale research and education projects between our regions, particularly in the areas of the physical sciences and health care.

PACIFIC WAVE AND IPV6

PNWGP regularly receive inquiries about IPv6 capabilities at Pacific Wave. The Pacific Wave switch infrastructure is capable of passing IPv6 traffic so long as each of the peering parties supports IPv6 on their Pacific Wave connected routers.

NEW INTERNET ROUTING REGISTRY POLICY IN EFFECT OCTOBER 1, 2002

Technical contacts at all PNWGP commodity transit sites were notified a few weeks ago of the upcoming implementation of a new Internet Routing Registry Policy by the PNWGP. In order to assure that your commodity routes are effectively and efficiently propagated over the PNWGP commodity circuits, your site will need to abide by this new policy. The full text can be found at http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/tech/irr.html

PNWGP EXPANDS PEERING RELATIONSHIPS

In the past six months, PNWGP staff spent considerable resources aimed at 'keeping local traffic local.' By becoming an active peer at strategic locations, data not only reaches its destination more efficiently, but money is saved as well.

In May of this year, the PNWGP joined the Northwest Access Exchange (NWAX) in Portland, Oregon (see http://www.nwax.org).

In August, the PNWGP joined the Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX) in Seattle, Washington (see http://www.seattleix.net).

Additional peering opportunities will be opened within the next few weeks for Pacific Wave participants, as well as the PNWGP.

Approximately 200Mbps (monthly 95th percentile) is being transmitted through PNWGP peering relationships, exclusive of Pacific Wave. Total peering traffic through Pacific Wave runs at about 500Mbps (monthly 95th percentile).

INTERNET2 FALL MEETING IN LOS ANGELES OCTOBER 2002

Internet2/UCAID will have its fall member meeting in Los Angeles, October 27-30th. For more information, see http://www.internet2.edu/activities/html/fall_02.html

CURRENT PNWGP AND PACIFIC WAVE PARTICIPANTS

Pacific Wave International Peering Services Participants
    AARNet
    ATTBI
    CA*net 4
    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
    AARNet (Australian Academic and Research Network)
    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, routing, tech backup, or outages notifications, please email gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net or call 206-934-5588.

PNWGP CONTACT LIST

General Information & Circular Subscriptions
1-206-934-5588 / 1-888-934-5588
gigapop-info@pnw-gigapop.net
www.pnw-gigapop.net
www.pacificwave.net

Network Operations Center (7x24)
1-206-934-5580 / 1-888-934-5580
noc@pnw-gigapop.net

Web Site Contact
webmaster@pnw-gigapop.net

PNWGP Services Manager
Jan Eveleth
1-206-221-2300
eveleth@cac.washington.edu

Network Engineering Manager
David Richardson
1-206-934-5580

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

Fax
1-206-934-5589 / 1-888-934-5589

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

Circular 004 September 2002
Copyright (c) 2002 Pacific Northwest Gigapop