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New SoX Services Model
These are challenging but also exciting times for our community. Discussions at our last SoX participant meeting on December 7, 2006 evolved around turmoil within the Research and Educational community, planning for our future needs and requirements, and how best to meet our goals with advancing and improving our connectivity to the R&E high-speed networks. Feedback from this meeting was meaningful, with a general consensus that changes to our SoX business model were needed in order to remain flexible and effective in this changing environment.
The following is a summary of the progress with the SoX business model made based on your input from our last business meeting. This information includes our current services, planned changes in the SoX business model and changes in our connectivity philosophy and information on our anticipated pricing structure for FY08 (July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008).
Current SoX Services:
• PacketNet Access
• Internet2 Access
• Commodity Internet Services
• Redundancy/Backup Services
• Multiple Peerings
New SoX Services Model:
At the SoX business meeting in Chicago, we discussed a new services model
that included peering with the two research and education backbones and
multiple commercial networks, as well as bringing other “high-end”
services to the SoX community. Based on this principle SoX will peer with
both I2’s Abilene and NLR’s PacketNet. SoX will offer aggregators
direct peering with either network as a separate service, and our participants
will gain transparent access to both. SoX will maintain a 10 Gbps connection
with PacketNet and a 1 Gbps connection to Internet2’s NewNet based
on our current demand and resources. We will procure a National TransitRail
connection for our participants to augment the other commercial peerings
that SoX maintains such as EarthLink, ComCast, and the Atlanta Internet
Exchange. In addition, we will continue to provide a high bandwidth path
to the Chicago Starlight hub. We have renewed our Qwest contract which
provides free backhaul to the SoX GigaPOP for those SoX Participants purchasing
a minimum amount of Qwest ISP services. We will continue to contract with
other ISP’s as requested to meet our customer’s needs.
Planned FY08 Pricing Model:
The Southern Crossroads (SoX) management team has finalized budget projections for the upcoming 2008 fiscal year (1 July, 2007 through 30 June, 2008). Our goal is to maintain a participation fee equivalent to last year’s fee if actual participation levels will support this. Please contact us for further information on our anticipated pricing structure for FY08 (July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008).
There has been a decrease in our Qwest ISP service rate as a result of Quilt negotiations. With the reduction in rates consider increasing your ISP bandwidth for the same cost. Your FY08 SoX renewal will include current applicable ISP pricing reductions.
In addition to our current ISP service offering, SoX is negotiating an
agreement with Sprint to provide ISP services to our community. Information
will be forthcoming once an agreement is finalized between Sprint and
SoX. Plans are to have service availability by 1 July 2007. No other changes
to the current ISP offerings are anticipated for the near future.
Many of our SoX participants also participate in Southern Light Rail (SLR)
and have access to additional service offerings including; ethernet services
at 56 Marietta Street, NLR WaveNet and FrameNet. If your organization
is interested in joining SLR, please contact me for quotes on rates and
services.
Part of the Internet2 network build-out ("NewNet") includes a dynamic wave provisioning service. At this time, no SoX or SLR customers have requested access to this service. If you or your customers are interested in this service, please let us know 90 days in advance so we can evaluate the options and have time to set rates and provision the service.
At this time the SoX Management Team will need feedback or confirmation of your continued participation in this initiative so actual pricing can be established.
Please feel free to contact Ed Coleman (ed.coleman@oit.gatech.edu), Cas D’Angelo (404) 894-1356, Robin Greene at (404) 894-6176, or me personally, if you have any questions.