Internet Connectivity and Internet2
Walt Milligan, 10/18/2006
Michigan Tech lost its internet connection to the MERIT network twice, for over 6 hours, in a period of 6 weeks recently. In both cases, the loss of connectivity was due to a fiber-optic cable cut in Wisconsin by construction crews. MERIT is the internet provider for all but one of Michigan's public universities, as well as most of the K-12 school districts.
Currently, Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan University only have one link to MERIT. This is obviously not an acceptable situation.
We are doing everything in our power to establish an independent, redundant link to MERIT across the Mackinac bridge, or across the International Bridge to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. There are some issues with ownership of fiber, and some stretches of fiber that do not yet exist. MERIT is making this a very high priority. We are also investigating a redundant link through Wisconsin.
In the meantime, we have contracted with Charter to install a business-class cable modem connection (5Mbps download, 1Mbps uplink, 5 available IP addresses) to campus. Should we experience another fiber break before the redundant connection can be made, this Charter connection will allow us to access the internet for high priority tasks such as NSF proposal submissions which have hard deadlines and which must be submitted electronically.
Telcom has been studying this over many, many months. Connectivity to this area provides many unique geographic and economic challenges.
On a related note, we have not done a good job of informing the campus about developments in networking and internet traffic. Internet2 is not a separate pipe. Internet2 traffic and our commodity internet traffic all travel over the same fiber to MERIT. While Internet2 used to be fairly expensive, our current bill for both Internet2 and commodity internet is on the order of $350k/year. As a commodity, the price is dropping, and our bill this year was over $120k less than last year.