NREN vs ISP in Armenia

1
NREN vs ISP in Armenia

• Competition vs Collaboration
• For countries with low funding from government

2
NREN vs ISP

• NRENs Yerevan Physics Institute (since1994)
• Academy of Science
• Armenian Research Educational Networking
  Association (ARENA)
• ISPs - Arminco, Web, Netsys, ACC, Intarnet,
  Stalker, Netsoft,.
• Armentel(?)

3
NREN vs ISP

• NREN
• Internet provider for sci/edu,
• Connectivity inside country between sci/edu
• representative of sci/edu community,
• channel for funding of sci/edu networking,
• consulting
• ISP
• for-profit
• Internet provider for all

4
NREN vs ISP

• Problems (in the field under discussion)
• MAN or WAN owned by NREN-maintenance, explotation
• For-profit provision of Internet by NRENs do or
  not to do?
• Sci grants - influence on market
• Quality of service (questionable for non-profit
  service problem for SILK)
• Sustainability life after grant
• Very similar problems with other grants e.g.
  DoS grant for Internet in Armenian schools
  sustainability is main challenge, much stronger
  than for sci/edu, due to absence of any
  experience, resources, etc.

5
NREN vs ISP

• Possible strategy
• Keep Internet channel if created, it is easy to
  find a funding from colleague institutes in
  developed countries (TJNAF, DESY, Universities,
  .) and funding agencies (NATO, INTAS, TACIS,
  other EU programs), even private (Cisco,...), not
  so difficult to maintain due to localization.
• Exchange point for sci/edu, and also for ISPs,
  also exchange point of information and
  technology, and international contacts
  (e.g.contacts with CEENet, etc.)
• Collaboration with ISPs

6
NREN vs ISP

• Creation or sharing of infrastructure with ISP by
  sci/edu grants plus their funding use,
  partially, that infrastructure free of charge,
  problems on explotation to be solved by ISP.
• The same receipt was already discussed with ISPs
  for school connectivity grant.
• Quality of service becomes comparable with that
  of ISP
• Flexibility easy to buy additional bandwidhts
  (e.g. for videoconference inside city, temporar
  channels, etc.)
• Emergency helps from ISP
• New technology from NREN international
  collaboration attractive for local ISP

7
NREN vs ISP

• Self-funding of NREN other expenses
• After SILK installation Any reasonable low price
  for Internet, payed by sci/edu gives enough
  funding for NRENs current expenses
• Example YerPhI was able to gather 50k/year
  from 30 organizations (90 sci/edu) and solve
  all problems of maintenance of satellite node,
  including emergency events, repair of equipment,
  salaries etc.
• AUP, other regulations, measures against
  violations.
• Support market development and obtain a support
  from market.