[1st-mile-nm] Mea Culpa and Comment

[Arthur Maccabe]

Looks like it's time for me to chime in -- when it comes to wide area  
networking, I'm the new kid on the block.  My background is HPC  
operating systems and I've done some work in networking protocols for  
HPC systems, but I hadn't thought too much about wide area networking  
until recently.

While I've subscribed to this list for a while, I must admit that I  
tend to file the messages for future reading and rarely get to the  
reading part.  A little bird suggest that I read this thread.  My  
apologies if I drag everyone over well understood ground.

I'm of two minds when it come to venting on lists like this.  On the  
one hand, it's hard to respond to a criticism that is unspoken, so I  
appreciate it when people take the time to complain.  On the other  
hand, many criticism quickly  degenerate into attacks on the  
personalities involved, this is rarely productive.

My first observation is that a network is more than the physical  
infrastructure used to connect the points.  Networks provide services  
and are governed by policies.  Different groups may see different  
benefits from the physical infrastructure, the services provided, or  
the governance model.   National Lambda Rail (NLR) tends to be defined  
by it's physical infrastructure -- this is natural given that the  
"lambda" in NLR comes from the symbol used to denote wavelength.   One  
of the unique services that NLR provides is the ability to allocate a  
wavelength between two endpoints without any packetization or  
framing.  This is critical for high end networking research and may be  
important for applications with very high bandwidth requirements.  As  
far as I can tell, the physical infrastructure for I2 (the only  
significant alternative to NLR) makes it impossible to provide this  
service in I2.

That said, there are few points in the NLR network who will actually  
take advantage of this service.  In particular, you can only take  
advantage of this service if you have full fiber access which would  
rule out things like Sandoval County and the Internet to the Hogans  
(ITH) project.  The fact that a site doesn't take advantage of a  
service is not a reason to be on another network.  At the time  
Sandoval County and ITH committed to NLR, I2 had specific policies  
prohibiting commercial traffic while NLR embraced commercial traffic  
-- this alone may have been an appropriate incentive for joining NLR.   
I2 is in the process of changing its acceptable use policies, but this  
is a very recent development.

Another important difference between I2 and NLR is that NLR owns the  
physical infrastructure that provides the foundation for the network  
(long term leases on fiber and the routers).  This means that NLR is  
far more independent, but requires far more up front investment by its  
members.  I2 relies on long term contract with infrastructure  
providers, like Level 3.  I2 will tell you that the relationship with  
Level 3 is a huge benefit -- in the case of I2, Level 3 actually  
provides a layer 1 service, upper layers are provided and managed by  
I2.  On the other hand, the fact that NLR owns its infrastructure  
means that NLR can never be in conflict with one of its service  
providers, this means that NLR can really do what ever it wants to do  
(within the constraints imposed by federal and state regulations).

A third distinction between NLR and I2 is the size of the governing  
organization.  I2 has thousands of members and New Mexico has a total  
of 3 or 4 votes in the membership, with a potential of being elected  
to a position of governance on one of four or five governance boards  
consisting of about 25 people on each board.  NLR has about 17  
members, one of which is the New Mexico Lambda Rail Board.  Clearly,  
New Mexico is in a much better position to affect the direction of NLR  
than we are to affect the direction of I2.

Whether the differences between NLR and I2 are important to the  
individual subscribers or the state of New Mexico, remains to be  
seen.   While I don't know all of the individuals involved in the New  
Mexico NLR saga, I believe that most of these people were motivated by  
their perceptions of the importance of the differences between NLR and  
the alternative.  I continue to believe that these differences are  
important.  The NSF panel that is reviewing a Track-2 proposal that I  
led singled out the Intel facility in Rio Rancho and our connection to  
NLR as critical parts of the proposal.  (If funded, this proposal will  
bring about $31 million in NSF money to New Mexico.)

In the end, it's critical that New Mexico move forward in building  
adequate communication infrastructure.  This is far more important in  
New Mexico than in our neighboring states like Arizona or Utah where  
population is much more centralized and they tend to ignore the rural  
parts of the state.  I like to think  of our challenge as the need to  
push (network) services to the edge.  As we go through this process,  
there will be false starts.  We can spend our time complaining about  
the problems that we have run into, or we can try to learn from  
failures and move on -- there's clearly a lot more to do.


On Feb 9, 2008, at 12:37 PM, peter wrote:

> First, a mea culpa: last night I mixed up some off-line with on-line  
> comment.
>
> I think it's important to realize that to succeed this list needs to  
> focus on positive direction, engaging a full spectrum of people  
> including, but not limited to, technical and non-political and even  
> non-normal and non-other things. Our common focus is, and always  
> should be, "Improving the quality of life with technology" by  
> promoting REAL connectivity for the first mile.
>
> Many thanks to all who contacted me off-line and I truly did not  
> realize what a hot button many of these issues are for many of you.  
> Thanks for the praise, but in this case I will decline credit.
>
> The postings did however raise an interesting point: We are dealing  
> with highly intelligent networks and the systems connected to them,  
> but it seems that simple issues like "How will this improve people's  
> economic level and quality of life" are not visible, and the most  
> widely read sources of information that we have locally are the New  
> Mexican and the Journal, with their "if it bleeds, it leads"  
> approach, which is scary. It is also apparent that the plans,  
> designs and even operational systems infrastructure is incapable of  
> answering these simple questions or even transparently showing them  
> for open comment and true evaluation for logic or purpose.
>
> Its readily apparent that, even at our level, there is no clear  
> source of reliable information as to status and objectives of some  
> large initiatives that will affect the quality of life of New  
> Mexicans for years to come. The coincidence that a large number of  
> these projects seem to fail and are poorly planned, and that most  
> are contracted with out-of-state vendors who are paid a lot of money  
> to fail when we have such hugely talented in-state companies is also  
> worth looking at.
>
> Here is my challenge to the political and governing bodies of  
> Lamdarail, Sandoval Broadband, The Rio Rancho Intel Supercomputer  
> and other state and government funded technology initiatives (of  
> which I know many members are on this list): Show us clearly within  
> 30 - 60 days -- by means of current, active web mash up technologies  
> that display graphical easily-understandable dynamic models:
>
> 1. Exactly how was your project designed and funded?
>
> 2. Who did the economic feasibility analysis and when and where was  
> it done?
>
> 3. What are its short- and long-term goals in terms of economic well  
> being and improvement?
>
> 4. How did you calculate the economic benefits and how will they be  
> monitored and evaluated?
>
> Last point: No massive position text papers, no PR Video, voice  
> fluff, no pdfs, no sql reports, just a simple concise API mashup  
> model that operates in real time and is web posted for all to see  
> and understand and evaluate. Simply " Use your technology to  
> DEMONSTRATE your technology "
>
> Yes, I have been to all the websites for the projects mentioned and  
> this information is not contained anywhere within them. And, no, I  
> do not buy the "Homeland Security! We cannot show you!" argument:  
> all of these projects are publicly funded and subject to FOIA, and I  
> am not suggesting that engineering specs be posted for public  
> access, but that the social, political, tax/private funding and  
> economic motivations and, above all, the social ROI should be open  
> to scrutiny by any member of the public.
>
> ( : ( : pete
> -- 
> Peter Baston
> IDEAS
> www.ideapete.com
>
>
>
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-- 
Barney Maccabe
Chief Information Officer (Interim)
Professor, Computer Science Department
University of New Mexico
(505) 277-8125  maccabe at unm.edu