[2472] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
News release regarding T3 network
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pat Smith)
Wed Mar 4 17:00:18 1992
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: psmith@merit.edu
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 92 16:55:45 -0500
From: Pat Smith <psmith@merit.edu>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Merit Network, Inc. Contact: Patricia Smith
NSFNET Information Services (313) 936-3000
ANN ARBOR, Mich. March 4, 1992 - The NSFNET partnership
announced this week that backbone network production traffic
at more than half of the NSFNET sites has been migrated from
the T1 backbone (1.544 Megabits/sec.) to the ANSnet T3
Network infrastructure (45 Megabits/second). The remaining
T1 midlevel traffic will move to the T3 network in the
coming weeks.
The partnership is comprised of the National Science
Foundation (NSF), Merit Network, Inc., Advanced Network &
Services (ANS), IBM Corporation, and MCI Communications
Corporation.
During February, over three billion data packets from NSFNET
research and education sites traversed the new T3
infrastructure with the volume increasing daily. The number
of NSFNET-reachable networks over the T3 infrastructure has
also doubled in the last 30 days to nearly 2,400 networks.
"While not without some problems, the migration from T1 to
T3 has been successfully completed and the T3 network has
reached an acceptable state of stability," said Dave
O'Leary, Network Operations Manager for SURAnet in College
Park, Md. "We need the additional bandwidth T3 offers
because our aggregate traffic is so high. The additional
external connections offload the previously quite congested
T1 network."
Over the past 12 months, partnership activities have focused
on installing T3 technology at all NSFNET backbone service
sites, re-engineering the early T3 backbone to expand total
bandwidth and provide greater redundancy, and refining the
initial developmental hardware and software to bring the
level of reliability up to the production standards to which
NSFNET users have become accustomed.
"During the past two months the T3 network has been stable
and reliable," commented Vince Fuller, Associate Director of
Technology for BARRNet in Palo Alto, Calif. "In early 1991,
we had complaints from our customers about connectivity to
other T3 sites but, since last fall, when Merit and ANS made
a major effort to improve the reliability of the T3 system,
things have improved greatly."
Merit obtains NSFNET backbone services from ANS which
provides the new T3 infrastructure networking technology
based on the IBM RS/6000*.
Further advancements to this technology designed to increase
packet throughput are in the final stages of development and
are expected to be implemented in the coming months. The
NSFNET partnership is also continuing to enhance and tune
the network to maximize efficiency as the user base grows.
"Merit and the other members of the partnership are
dedicated to providing optimum T3 service to users of the
NSFNET backbone service," said Eric Aupperle, Merit
president. "The extraordinary efforts of all involved are
paying off with the now rapid transition of traffic from the
T1 infrastructure to the T3 backbone. We are pleased that
the T3 network is operating reliably and we're eager to move
ahead with leading-edge enhancements."
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