· SURA is now recruiting for a Network Development Project Leader to provide high level technical planning, analysis, design, and project management to further the development of the SURA Crossroads Initiative. Click here for details on this position.

· On December 12, the SURA Crossroads Partner Development Team (Jed Diem, Gary Crane, Ron Hutchins, Mark Johnson, Jerry Sobieski, Mary Fran Yafchak and Geo/Matrix representatives) met with the potential partner finalists in Raleigh, NC. The six finalists included Global Crossing, ITC Deltacomm, Level3, Southern Telecom, Velocita and Williams Communications. Representatives from these six companies participated in a very interactive discussion that served to highlight SURA’s requirements for a high-speed regional network service. Potential partners were offered several possible partnering scenarios and strongly encouraged to work together to develop a region-wide solution for SURA. The current schedule for formal responses from these six finalists is as follows:

• January 14 - Preliminary draft partner proposals due
• January 21 - Complete review of draft proposals
• January 21 thru February 8 - Meet with potential partners to review draft proposals
• February 22 - Draft of final proposals due
• March 14 - Final partner proposals due

· On December 13-14 SURA held an Optical Networking Technologies Workshop at MCNC, Research Triangle Park, NC. This NSF sponsored workshop provided members of the SURA Crossroads Architecture Working Group and members of the national gigapop community (TheQuilt) with an opportunity to explore the current state of optical technologies and share experiences with their peers and with selected technology leaders from established and emerging optical networking technology companies. One product of this workshop was an outline for an Optical Networking Technologies Cookbook which will be created over the next several months and made available through the SURA website to the advanced academic networking community. Materials from this workshop will be made available through the past events section of the SURA website.

· In mid-November, SURA distributed a Network Connectivity Cost Survey. Nearly half of our members have now completed and returned this survey. It is very important that we get completed surveys back from all SURA members. Without understanding the aggregate cost of the connectivity services of our members it will be very difficult to determine the economic feasibility of a region-wide shared network service. Individual institutional information provided through this survey will be held confidential. It will not be shared with vendors or other members of SURA. Only aggregate information will be used in the SURA Crossroads feasibility study. If you haven’t already completed the connectivity cost survey for your institution, please take the time necessary to return this completed survey to gcrane@sura.org as soon as possible.

· The SURA IT Staff developed the following Crossroads Initiative Update which was distributed by Jerry Draayer to the Executive Committee of the SURA Board of Directors just prior to the Christmas break:

A SURA Crossroads Initiative Update to BoT Executive Committee (December 2001)

Over the past several months the scope and goals of the SURA Crossroads Initiative have been sharpened significantly. Throughout the Fall the Crossroads Partner Development Team has met with 14 potential commercial partners. This team, comprised of SURA staff, SURA IT Committee members and our consultant, Geo/Matrix, is now focused on soliciting detailed proposals from six final potential commercial partners. These proposals will provide the Crossroads Team and the SURA IT Committee with a clear picture of the components and costs of a region-wide shared network infrastructure.

Basic concepts

• Aggregating and coordinating the purchase of network services currently being purchased by the SURA membership should result in significant savings

• Aggregated traffic would include research (Abilene) and commodity Internet traffic. Immediate savings are possible in both areas.
• Partner development process will define the expense side
• SURA member connectivity cost survey will define the existing revenue stream
• Options may exist to capitalize on existing revenue stream to provide some upfront capital (essentially a guaranteed loan)
• Major SURA region hubs (connecting to national services) are planned in Washington, Atlanta, Miami and Houston
• A carefully planned shared backbone connecting major hubs could help to alleviate some of the geographic inequities in the availability of competitive network services to non-metro SURA members
• Work with potential commercial partners to optimize locations of backbone access points to result in greatest value to largest number of SURA members
• Implement cutting edge optical technologies to reduce overall cost of service by driving optical access as far to the edge of the network as possible

The SURA IT Committee has approved the use of the SURA IT Fund to recruit a Network Development Project Leader to provide high level technical planning, analysis, design, and project management to further the development of the SURA Crossroads Initiative. The full SURA IT Committee will be updated on the status of the project at the next IT Committee meeting being planned for early February. A comprehensive report with recommendations for implementation will be presented at the Spring SURA Board of Trustees meeting.

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