A Work in Progress by Cliff Frost
The basic premise of the campus's network funding model is cost-sharing with
departments:
The Central Campus is funding the capital cost of creating a "level playing
field" for all departments. The vision is that no department will be at a
disadvantage because of the building it occupies.
The departments (or end-users) are responsible for funding the marginal cost
of bringing network service into their office spaces. A gigabit/sec network
connection into a room will cost more than a 100 megabit/sec connection, but the
costs for any given type of service will be the same no matter what building the
department occupies.
Ongoing maintenance of the network as a whole is also cost-shared at
approximately a 50/50 split (for centrally funded departments.)
In order to understand the details, we parse the campus network support into
four pieces:
The "Core", or "Backbone".
- What it is: This is the portion of the network that connects campus
buildings to each other, and connects the whole campus network to the off-campus
internet.
- The Core includes underground vaults, conduits between them, fiber-optic
cabling running through them, electronics (including essentially all the campus
routers), and contractual service arrangements with Internet Service Providers
such as UCAID (Internet2), CENIC (CalREN2), UFO, Cogent, etc.
- Funding: The capital expenses of building out a consistent Core portion of
the network are centrally funded and this work is being carried out over several
years
The "Riser", or "vertical" infrastructure.
- What it is: This is the portion of the network that exists within buildings
to deliver network service between floors of a building, and into the Core of
the network.
- The Riser includes communications closets with power and air conditioning,
pathways (such as conduits) adequate for large amounts of fiber-optic cabling
between closets, pathways (but NOT cabling) from closets to right outside of
each room in the building. It also includes large amounts of fiber-optic cabling
between floors and into the Core portion of the network.
- Funding: The installation of the Riser portion of the campus network is done
one building at a time (multiple buildings are done in parallel). In theory, the
funding for upgrading each building will come from central campus.
- In practice, there is not enough central funding to do several Riser projects
at once and most available funding has gone to buildings that are undergoing
seismic retrofit. Several riser projects have been done because of full or
partial funding from departments that need the infrastructure sooner than
central campus can provide it.
The "Station", or "horizontal" infrastructure.
- What it is: This is the cable from the wall-jack in an office to the
communications closet, and the port in the closet electronics that the cable
plugs into.
- Funding: Installation of this portion of the network is funded by the
end-user, which may be an individual or a department.
Ongoing Maintenance of all of the above.
-
Funding: This is essentially recharged. The central campus has agreed to pay for
the maintenance of the network at the size it was in July of 2001. Thus
departments become responsible for the costs of network growth.
-
It is actually a little more complicated. For centrally funded departments
(including ORUs and recharge units), the maintenance costs of growth are also
subsidized centrally August 6, 2002
