Our Mission

THE SOUTHERN CROSSROADS INITIATIVE
A Model for High-Speed Educational and Research Internetworking

SOUTHERN CROSSROADS The Southern Crossroads (SoX) is a cooperative initiative. SoX is designed to facilitate access to current and future highly integrated, digital communications services for education, research and economic development within the Southeast region and across the United States. Initial support for development of the SoX inter networking aggregation facility was provided by a National Science Foundation grant.

As it evolves, SoX will enable a highly functional, reliable communications system with the ability to integrate high performance voice, data and video services in a competitive multi-vendor environment at reasonable cost and with a quality of service standard.

SoX will serve to connect both SoX Participants to Next Generation Internet services, as well as commodity services where appropriate, thus enhancing opportunities for collaboration among university researchers at institutions throughout the Southeast.

A unique opportunity is presented to us through aggregation of our common needs to more effectively support networking of research institutions, maintain connectivity and enhance our community effort, while leveraging our experiences and service models. Our focus remains to provide enabling research connectivity and to continue our history of community interaction. This allows continued competition on an international scale.

The continuation of aggregations, such as SoX and the Quilt consortia, with costs shared equally among participants, coupled with adjustments according to numbers engaged, cost offsets, market rates and grants factored into the overall expense, serve to make this opportunity a reality. This initiative represents a viable methodology by which we can reduce expense, expand services and enhance performance for all participates.

SoX connectivity includes national and regional education and research peering as well as settlement-free commercial peering. SoX provides connectivity to high performance educational and research networks including the Abilene and PacketNet networks unitizing the facilities of SoX to the Participants in accordance with the Abilene and PacketNet Agreements. Participant charges are not based on bandwidth of the connection, incentivizing members to maximize their connection bandwidth, enabling research into high-speed applications.

SOUTHERN CROSSROADS FUTURE

Ongoing and planned future developments include, but are not limited to:

• Provide opportunities for industrial participation and partnering to develop new national economic models for advanced, integrated services, such as the QUILT, USA Waves, and the National Lambda Rail initiatives and;
  
• Continued support of high bandwidth connectivity to link researchers with increased capabilities via higher bandwidth links to campuses at reduced pricing via partnerships with vendors such as Qwest, Cogent, and Sprint;
  
• Provide access to other resources, such as the Department of Energy's ESnet, the Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), national research and education backbone networks, and commodity Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and a National TransitRail peering connection;
  
• Promote research of high bandwidth networks and their operation;
  
• Build communities of interest through workshops and other information dissemination means;
  
• Enable non-SLR member institutions K-20 schools and others to achieve connectivity by sponsoring state run SEGP network organizations such as the Georgia Board of Regents (PeachNet), University of Kentucky, South Carolina SCINET and the Alabama Supercomputing Authority (ASA);
  
• Ensure that potential partnerships and projects involving Federal Agencies and other nationally supported activities utilizing SoX are encouraged and facilitated such as the QUILT, the National Lambda Rail, the Imperial College of London and the Georgia BioRing initiatives.