Connecting to the Goddard Collaborative

One of the main objectives of the Goddard Collaborative is to help our members increase their bandwidth for commodity internet, add Internet2 access, and reduce their costs. We have been able to do this for the vast majority of our members by deploying a local peering network and assembling a group of participating vendors and service providers committed to our goals and objectives.

Cost reductions happen several ways:

1. By aggregating our demand for services at the NEESCom telecommunications building at 474 Main Street, Worcester, we have been able to secure special pricing for our members for internet services and local access.
2. The design of the network is based on a peering architecture that keeps local Internet traffic between members local, free and off the traditional internet. (see figure 1.)
3. Local access can be shared for both Internet2 and commodity internet services. It can also be used for connecting to local and long distance providers at 474 Main Street.

Internet Service and Local Access providers:

MEC

MEC provides internet services to the majority of K-12 schools in Massachusetts. They offer bundled services, including local access, and work with Verizon and Charter to provide the connections for schools to the Goddard Collaborative at 474 Main St. MEC also offers a portfolio of services, including content filtering, network management and professional development targeted at the needs of the K-12 schools.

Contact: Carole Schuster, 978-262-4110, shuster@mecnet.net

Lightower

Lightower (formerly NEESCom) has a large fiber network in Worcester and throughout Massachusetts. They are also the owner of the 474 building. They provide both dark fiber and rack space in the building. For prospective members whose needs are in the DS3 and up range, their services can be very cost effective. Their space at 474 is also being used by some Goddard Collaborative members for off-site data storage in addition to the connections to the network.

Contact: John Destefano, 508-389-3168, John.DeStefano@lightower.com

Charter Communications

Charter offers a cost-effective alternative for Verizon's local access over their hybrid fiber-coax network. They have worked to provide custom local access solutions and they can work with your organization directly. They can be particularly cost effective if they are already providing cable services to your organization. Their services are provided via ethernet, rather than a TelCo protocol, which should should be economical to interface to your network.

We also work with a number of fiber and network installation companies, microwave vendors and others in the local access business.

Examples of the Peering Network

To give an example of the way the peering network operates, let's look at one of the colleges. WPI has a fiber connection to 474 and subscribes to Internet service from Charter. All normal Internet traffic goes to the router at 474, passes over to the Charter router and out to the Internet.

Traffic from WPI to other collaborative members in Worcester would follow the same path to the Charter and then route to the destination college, bypassing the commodity Internet. Similarly, traffic to colleges served by the NoX and Internet2 would bypass the commodity Internet. Without the peering network, WPI would have to substantially increase the amount of commodity Internet it subscribes to. In addition to the Worcester institutions, the Goddard Collaborative also connects to the NoX in Boston in an extension of our peering network. The NoX, http://www.nox.org, connects almost every major college in the Boston area, U Mass Amherst and the Five Colleges, OSHEAN in Rhode Island and the State College networks in Maine and New Hampshire.

Charter Communications plays a key role in the peering network. They currently serve approximately 70,000 residential subscribers on their high-speed Internet service, including many faculty, administrators and students from Goddard Collaborative member institutions. Traffic to and from Goddard Collaborative members and Charter will stay on the peering network and bypass the commodity Internet, improving performance and reducing the need to buy commodity Internet services to support it.

Figure 1. Conceptual view of Goddard Collaborative Local Peering Network Architecture

For more information about connecting to the Goddard Collaborative, contact the Connectivity Committee at connectivity@goddardcollaborative.org.