The Front Range GigaPop (FRGP) Jeff Custard Network Engineer for the Network Engineering and Technology Section at NCAR CHECO Presentation September 27, 2000

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The Front Range GigaPop (FRGP)Jeff
CustardNetwork Engineer for the Network
Engineering and Technology Section at NCARCHECO
Presentation September 27, 2000
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The GigaPop Concept
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What Is A GigaPop?

• Multiple sites agree to aggregate to a central
  location and share high-speed access from there,
  instead of each maintaining direct links to
  multiple networks
• Share costs through sharing infrastructure
• Share Commodity Internet expenses
• Essentially statistical multiplexing of expensive
  high-speed resources
• at any given time much more bandwidth is
  available to each institution than each could
  afford without sharing
• Share engineering and management expertise
• More clout with vendors

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Front Range GigaPop (FRGP)http//www.frgp.net
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FRGP History

• Initial concept October 1999 time-frame
  (including decision to house at UCD)
• Formed because high performance network funding
  was going away (vBNS)
• Many discussions prior to that time regarding a
  big pipe consortium of some kind
• Abilene made the GigaPOP concept lucrative
• Equipment in place at UCD April 1999 (CSU and UW
  purchased routers)
• First Abilene connections active April 1999

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Why NCAR as the FRGP Operator?

• NCAR already had GigaPop operational experience
• NCAR was already serving the FRGP members
• Abilene connection was an incremental addition to
  existing gigapop
• Didnt require a completely new effort from
  scratch
• NCAR has a 24 x 365 NOC
• NCAR is university-neutral

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FRGP Current Services

• Abilene (Internet2) access
• Shared Commodity Internet access to Qwest
• Intra-GigaPop access
• 24 x 365 NOC (Network Operation Center)
• Engineering and management (including monitoring
  and statistics)
• IPv6 router
• ANS Surveyor monitor

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FRGP Future Services

• Shared Commodity Internet access to the two state
  contract providers ATT and CW
• Web cache servers
• Akamai cache service
• Client-side cache server
• Netnews server
• Video server
• NLANR AMP machine

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FRGP Advantages

• Ability to aggregate and provide economies of
  scale
• High-quality physical environment
• High-quality support
• Ease of passing lots of traffic among members
  using existing connections
• Members control the infrastructure
• Aggregate news and web feeds
• Easy, low-cost migration path to I2 connectivity

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FRGP Membership Types

• Primary Member
• Primary I2 FRGP member
• Primary Commodity FRGP member
• Secondary Users

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FRGP Membership Types Contd

• Primary I2 FRGP member definition
• Must contract with the FRGP I2 Service operator
  (UCAR)
• Must pay the FRGP I2 Service operator the costs
  associated with FRGP I2 transit service
• Receives a single PVC/BGP peering session via
  FRGP equipment that can advertise approved
  Internet2 routes and can transit I2 traffic
• Has voting membership on the FRGP Management
  Committee (FMC)
• Has direct access to the FRGP NOC and FRGP
  engineers

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FRGP Membership Types Contd

• Secondary Users
• A "secondary" FRGP user isn't a contractual
  member of FRGP, but is any entity receiving FRGP
  services in a passthrough fashion from a primary
  FGRP member.
• A secondary FRGP user is not a member of FRGP and
  the only financial and technical ties that a
  secondary user has are with one or more primary
  members
• Service charges, if any, to secondary users are
  levied, and collected, solely by individual
  primary members
• A secondary user does not have a PVC/BGP peering
  session with the FRGP for either the Commodity or
  I2 networks
• A secondary user does not have membership on the
  FMC
• A secondary user does not have access to the FRGP
  NOC or FRGP engineers

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FRGP Initial Primary Members

• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Colorado State University
• University of Colorado at Denver
• NCAR/UCAR
• University of Wyoming

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FRGP New Primary Members

• Colorado School of Mines
• State of Colorado
• University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
• University of Denver
• University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

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FRGP Secondary Members

• Check the Routes list on FRGP web page for
  current information on FRGP secondaries

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FRGP Contractual Foundation
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Contractual Foundation

• UCAR is FRGP operator
• UCAR is the only legal FRGP entity
• Each Primary member has independent MOU with UCAR
• Cost agreement outlines principles of cost
  allocation, but amounts float from month to month
• MOU delegates some authority to FMC, such as
  authorization to purchase equipment and to change
  bandwidth amounts to service providers
• MOU terminable by either party without cause with
  60-day notice

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Contractual Foundation (cont.)

• Primary members pay all expenses up to the FRGP
  demarc (FRGP ATM switch port)
• All payments for FRGP expenses are made by
  primary members to UCAR
• UCAR as FRGP operator handles all subcontracts
  for FRGP services and disperses all FRGP funds
• UCAR bills primary members on a monthly basis,
  though UCAR fronts certain annual expenses such
  as the Abilene connect fee, and generally buffers
  floating expenses and floating membership numbers

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Governance

• FMC FRGP Management Committee
• One voting member per MOU
• Majority decisions
• FTC FRGP Technical Committee
• Delegated by FMC to operate FTC on a daily basis
  and make operational decisions
• Shared expertise among the primary members

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FRGP Documents

• Sample FRGP Agreement, DRAFT Service Level
  Agreement, DRAFT Operational Guidelines, etc.,
  can be found at
• http//www.frgp.net/docs

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FRGP Cost Sharing Policies
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Cost Allocation

• Circuit and service fees allocated proportional
  to rate-limited PVCs to primary members
• Abilene
• Commodity
• Operational costs divided equally among primary
  members
• Engineer salary
• Equipment maintenance
• One-time costs divided equally among primary
  members
• Equipment
• Capital improvements

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Example spreadsheet

• Most recent spreadsheet is available if
  questionsplease see me after the presentation

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Useful URLs

• http//www.scd.ucar.edu/nets/intro/staff/jcustard
• http//www.frgp.net
• http//www.ucaid.edu
• http//www.internet2.edu
• http//www.qwest.com
• http//www.att.com
• http//www.cwusa.com
• http//www.akamai.com
• http//www.nlanr.net
• http//www.caida.org
• http//www.advanced.org

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Almost lunch time!?But then its the end of
Fall 2000 CHECO . . .and its back to work . .
.?Questions?