ICG BRAN Extension Marla Meehl NCAR 07/17/02

Technical Advantages Long term technical goal of BRAN to access central offices Eliminates last mile costs Increases flexibility Increases vendor competition Virtually unlimited access to bandwidth on dark fiber Very flexible configuration to meet constituent WAN networking needs Expands BRAN to the national fiber infrastructure Long term growth potential

Cost Advantages Extremely cost effective NCAR/DOC/City currently have an OC3 to Denver for our WAN connectivity (155Mbps) 5,745.81/month; $68,949.72; $482,648.04/7 years This bandwidth is inadequate We will have to upgrade to an OC12 in the next couple of months $10K/month for a leased OC12 to Denver; $120,000/year; $840,000/7 years We would pay $1,675.58/mo for a pair of fibers from the ICG CO in Boulder to the FRGP $20,106.96/year; $140,748.72/7 years This saves these partners $699,251.28 at a minimum over 7 years An OC12 would not last us 7 years, so the savings is really greater. This does not include CU-Boulder savings

Overall Advantages Increasing capacity is relatively easy, cost effective and fast: Cisco 6509 Ethernet switches can support 1Gbps (1000Mbps) and 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) We already have the hardware since it is used in the LAN In order to get the the 10 times increase in capacity to 10Gbps, we only have to buy a card for the 6509 switches at each end We don't have to pay to install a new expensive recurring cost circuit - we already have the fiber This scales beyond 10Gbps - once we have the fiber, we can continue to grow the network as needed

Overall Advantages This provides the necessary dark fiber access national networks such as LightRail/Teragrid/etc. This allows a reduction in service costs for existing services for all BRAN partners since we eliminate the distance charge to the Boulder CO by using BRAN This was a long time goal of BRAN Provide faster access to the FRGP and the services there: Commodity Internet, Abilene, intra-FRGP, and future services