OPEN Update: Partnerships

by Tom Cook, Director, Oregon Public Education Network

The success of the Oregon Public Education Network (OPEN) has been founded on partnerships and collaboration. OPEN itself originated through a partnership among several ESDs and local school districts, a grassroots effort to bring Internet services to schools as cost-effectively as possible. During the past several years, the network has accomplished more than was once thought possible.

Now, in a continuation of its mission, OPEN has entered into a partnership agreement for the provision of network services and Internet access. The agreement (made possible through the NERO backbone network architecture and the State Fast Packet Technologies contract) joins together the efforts of three state-wide technology networks -- the Department of Administrative Services' (DAS) OR-net, the Oregon Public Education Network (OPEN), and the Oregon State System of Higher Education's (OSSHE) Network for Education and Research in Oregon (NERO). The collaborative efforts seeks to optimize existing resources by aggregating demand and improving network routing within Oregon. The partnership is an outgrowth of NERO's role as technical advisor to various state agencies and to K-12 networking initiatives, and it represents a growing level of trust and cooperation across Oregon's educational and governmental communities.

Curt Pederson, Oregon's Chief Information Officer, noted that, even a year ago, most people would have doubted that such a partnership would ever occur given all of the divisive technical, political, and economic issues that have hampered efforts at data networking. David Campbell, Vice-Chair of the OPEN Steering Committee, said, "We are very excited about the new possibilities for K-12 education that will be available through this partnership." Tom West, Dean of Engineering at Oregon State, speaking for himself and for Robert Dryden, Interim Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering at Portland State University, affirmed their shared belief in the importance of network technologies for engineering, for education, and for Oregon's economy; West stressed the need for ongoing investment to support this resource.

Internetwork connections will be coordinated through NERO hubs at Beaverton (OCATE, Capital Center), Corvallis (OSU), and Eugene (UofO). The partner networks -- OR-net, OPEN, and NERO -- will remain independent, in order to provide the services best suited to their own end-users -- state government employees, K-12 teachers and students, and the higher education community, respectively. The agreement is open ended, with provision for other groups to join the partnership. Discussions are already underway with community colleges, and other state agencies are eligible to participate immediately under the DAS umbrella.

NERO began in 1993 as a collaborative project of the Oregon Joint Graduate Schools of Engineering (OJGSE) under the visionary leadership of the late John Owen, Dean of Engineering at OSU and Vice Chancellor for the Oregon Center for Advanced Technology Education (OCATE) and the OJGSE. With support from former Senator Mark Hatfield, from NASA and OJGSE, and from industry partners US WEST, GTE, and Cisco Systems, a high-speed, wide-area network testbed was created in 1994 with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and fiber optic technology. The ATM testbed linked the schools of engineering and computer science at OSU, PSU, UofO, and the Oregon Graduate Institute, as well as OCATE and the Oregon Health Sciences University.

In 1995, US WEST and GTE fielded ATM cell relay service offerings, which were used to develop a production network for OJGSE. The following year, with support from David Stubbs, OSSHE; Joy Hughes, Associate Provost for Information Services, OSU; Joanne Hugi, Compute Center Director, UofO; and Bruce Taggart, Director of Computing, PSU, the NERO WAN was expanded to serve all of the OSSHE campuses.

Tad Reynales, College of Engineering, OSU, is the NERO Project Manager. David Meyer, Advanced Network Technology Center, UofO, is the principal network architect for NERO and participates regularly in national standards groups. David Crowe, Jr., OSU, is the interim network operations manager for NERO. In addition to production services, NERO is supporting OSU and UofO charter membership in Internet2 and a high-speed NERO connection to the National Science Foundation's very Broadband Network Service (vBNS) for meritorious applications, under an award to Reynales, Meyer, and Dr. Cherri Pancake, OSU.

Now -- what does all this mean for K-12? There are several key benefits. First, without changing any current K-12 objectives, we can take advantage now of an intrastate backbone telecommunications system that would take years to develop without this support. Second, the scalable bandwidth capability will meet our needs at minimal cost. Third, we could not afford to buy the valuable technical resources made available through partnership with OSSHE and DAS. And finally, we are now optimizing our use both of public dollars and resources and of existing telecommunications systems.

A lot of details remain to be worked out, but the groundwork has been established to bring a higher level of service to all involved.