Feeding the Bandwidth Beast: Addressing Demand and Reducing Cost through a Collaborative Network Redesign Project Debbie Pepper, Colleges of the Fenway Sean Philpott, Emmanuel College Justin Ragsdale, Wentworth Institute of Technology NERCOMP Annual Conference March 31, 2015 2:30 p.m.

Overview of session Introductions Session Topics: Lessons Learned Outline the situation being addressed Describe the processes followed to identify and execute the chosen solution Share the results of the project Lessons Learned Questions

Emmanuel College (est. 1919) Coeducational, liberal arts, Catholic college, 1,750 students Massachusetts College of Art & Design (est. 1873) Only public college of art in U.S., coeducational, 1,802 graduate and undergraduate students Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (est. 1823) Coeducational, three campuses, two in Massachusetts, one in New Hampshire 3,909 graduate and undergraduate students Simmons College (est. 1899) Undergraduate college for women, coeducational graduate programs 4,700 graduate and undergraduate students Wentworth Institute of Technology (est. 1904) Coeducational graduate and undergraduate college, focus on engineering and architecture 3,938 graduate and undergraduate students Wheelock College (est. 1888) Coeducational liberal arts college focus on youth and family, 1,046 graduate and undergraduate students

Colleges of the Fenway Total enrollment: approximately 20,000 students Location: a close geographic area on the Fenway, adjacent to medical and cultural facilities, public transportation, in the heart of Boston March 29, 1996 - The COF Principles of Collaboration signed marking the beginning of significant Collaboration. 18 years Goal: To add value to student’s academic and co-curricular opportunities while seeking innovative methods of investing in services and containing the costs of higher education. Services : Consortium includes – The Global Education Opportunities Center, Intramurals Program, Performing Arts Program, Training and Development Programs, Center for Sustainability, Colleges of the Fenway Area Network and numerous joint contracts and collaborative purchases, cross registration and Grant Funded Programs such as Emergency Management, Shared positions such as Environmental Health and Safety, and Emergency Preparedness

Colleges of the Fenway Area Network COFAN established 2005 1G backbone 200Mb Internet 2011 2G Internet 2012 COFAN 2.0 designed 2013 40G backbone 4G Internet July 2014 BostonIX Peering Jan 15 2015 NetFlix Peering Co-lo space

Bandwidth Beast?

devices

March 2012 - IDC forecasts that end-user demand for broadband traffic will increase from 9,665 petabytes per month in 2010 to a jaw-dropping 116,539 petabytes per month in 2015. HD video content will drive a new level of bandwidth demand, with more than 50% of video and audio streaming destined for a connected TV (either directly or indirectly), an iPad, or another mobile device or tablet. 12X demand

dependancy 36 hours

Devices, Demand, Dependency & Design Limited access to ISPs Additional bandwidth at a premium New ISPs only with 'last mile' expenses Existing Network 10+ years old Functional limitations End of Support design

How To Tame the Beast? Replace EOL Equipment Create a True Diverse Path Access other ISPs Improve Usage Monitoring

RFP Process and Education Step 1 Carefully Crafted RFP Step 2 Specific requirements and must haves with room for creative solutions and options Step 3 Did not prescribe solution Step 4 Budget not given Step 5 Wide net of vendors Step 6 Systematic dissemination of information Step 7 Confidentiality and consistency Step 8 Committed team of reviewers to assess responses Step 9 Managed Services not in scope

RFP Process and Education 12 respondents Disqualified Those who withdrew! Those way off base 3 Formal presentations and debrief sessions for full committee Best solution rose to the top – creative and forward thinking, respectful of the foundation

New Design Speak to results specific to the problems originally discussed. Benefits of Markley

February - CoFAN ISP Utilization - 95th Percentile 3325 Mbps total

March - CoFAN Internet Usage 95th Percentile 3289 Mbps total

BostonIX Impact Pre NetFlix peering Post NetFlix peering GTT @ Limit

Resources and Execution Who are the stakeholders? Technical Decision makers? Schedule dependencies? Unknowns? School Configurations? Backbone Capacity? Internet Bandwidth? How did we actually get there?

Resources and Execution Lot of time and groups Network Managers from 6 schools 6 CIOs 6 CFOs 6 College Presidents 2 Facilities Departments 4 ISP Providers 1 Transport Provider including City of Boston, NSTAR Existing and New Managed Services Providers Design Team Co-lo Provider 60+ 60+ individuals involved Lined up the partners needed Debbie help coordinate the meetings and ensure appropriate information reaching right groups​ Already had a working relationship with most of these group

Resources and Execution Equipment finalization Determining power needs Weekly meetings internal COFAN Management Heavily Leaned on our integration partner Cutover dates Each school determining their capabilities, what to use links for - inet & private ​backbone 10G or 40G Would be running old and new infrastructure at the same time.​- power Management team creation IPC lead the way having pre meeting with each school and then being with them during cut over Established date when environment had to be online and school cutovers

Resources and Execution Redesign Internet infrastructure - Move Internet PoPs to 1 Co-lo Present Opportunities to off-load traffic from commodity internet - Join Internet Peering Exchange (BostonIX), initially Akamai and Netflix ISP choice discussion high tier providers had to pick Began negotiations two 2G links for inet on 10G interfaces​ 

Resources and Execution Creating Diverse path Had to go digging 1 year time frame Lit up one side Closer to carrier connection had weekly and bi-weekly calls Had two paths where fiber was available needed to make one of them use more diverse path, started to work on getting 2nd diverse path built, used existing fiber that was previously brought onto Wentworth campus  to temp support new 40G connection

COFAN 2.0 Impact Doubled the lanes Reduced the tolls Increased the speed limit Added HOV Lane No tolls on HOV Lane

Lessons Learned – All Equal ownership and commitment Executive Project Management Consultant that is technical and business savvy The collaboration challenge – Not part of consortium? Our experience can be your experience! Reduce Costs Shared Technical Resources New Opportunities

Q & A

Thank you Contact information Sean Philpott, Emmanuel College philpotts@emmanuel.edu Justin Ragsdale, Wentworth Institute of Technology ragsdalej@wit.edu Debbie Pepper, Colleges of the Fenway dpepper@colleges-fenway.org