THE METRONET
A San Antonio Metropolitan Area Network:Creating a New Community for Education, Research, and Economic Development
Richard L. Murphy
Southwest Research Institute
Pleas McNeel
Pleas McNeel & Associates
February, 1993
February 1993 It's now conceivable that the U.S. can implement a network connecting every student and teacher in the country--from kindergarten to postcollege--before the end of the century, revolutionizing education and research. Stephen Wolff, National Science Foundation, December, 1992.
Most important, we need a commitment to build the highspeed data highways. Their absence constitutes the largest single barrier to realizing the potential of the information age. Al Gore, September 1991.
Introduction
An educated, informed, and adaptable workforce enables a society to move forward and prosper; this is the lesson we have learned from the last twenty years. A bewildering array of new tools are emerging that promise to change the way we live, work, and play. Technology is rapidly changing the way we communicate, educate, perform research, and do business. Faster, cheaper, more powerful personal computers linked together will form the basic structure of the workforce of the future. Telecommuting, intelligent buildings, and virtual corporations offer exciting new challenges for architects, planners, and business people. This paper describes an investment in the future of San Antonio, one that the cities of Austin, Aachen (Germany), Singapore, and San Marcos have already undertaken, to ensure their participation in this educational and scientific revolution.
San Antonio cannot be left out of this revolution. The marketplace will serve those able to pay a high price for access to these new resources; but underfunded government agencies, educational facilities, and civic groups, as well as ordinary citizens, may lack the ability to participate individually. The project described in this paper is an attempt to direct the application of new technologies towards a common, community-centered purpose.
The MetroNet Project seeks to develop a consortium of potential users and technologists to stimulate the building and use of a public high-speed optical fiber network to carry voice, video, and data between entities such as schools, universities, research organizations, libraries, and local governments. Further, the project will create an organizational structure to design and manage this network.
Due to the large number of school districts involved and the geographic expanse of the city, this endeavor will require careful planning and coordination. However, by bringing together representatives of the various organizations with the best technologists in the region, we can overcome the organizational and political challenges of this task. Such a public network can serve to better educate and inform our children, workers, and citizens by networking the diverse talents and resources of the San Antonio metropolitan area. It can eventually include commercial organizations as more local businesses go "on-line." This paper will also present the rationale and benefits of the Metropolitan Network (MetroNet) project and some ideas concerning marketing, funding, and implementation.
Our goal in this project is to make San Antonio a "smart city" in which access to information and the tools to use information are available to the public. We will focus initially on enhancing educational opportunities within the City. The success of earlier projects in the State, such as Project Bluebonnet and the Texas Education Network (TENET), provides evidence that the effective cooperative use of networking technology can provide substantial financial advantages to the educational community as a whole.
Our secondary objective to pursue in this program will be fostering cooperative ventures among the elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as higher education and the research community. The third objective touches both private businesses and private citizens; it will include:
Providing citizen access on demand to information stored in public databases. The City library is an ideal organization for connecting citizens with information.Encouraging economic development through enhanced communications, allowing businesses to function with increased efficiency -- "Virtual corporations" and "virtual workgroups" may be the business paradigm of the next century [ref.].Allowing member organizations to access the worldwide Internet.
A common basis for telecommunications will reduce the cost to the City, individual school districts, and research groups; without this, we will have an overpriced "tower of Babel" with little possibility of synergism. By combining resources, we can maximize cooperative investments in these complex systems and improve our future ability to meet the needs of future growth, expanding workloads, and new technologies.
We need to aim high when specifying the parameters of the MetroNet. Another educational channel on the cable TV system is not enough impetus to truly change the way education and research are done in San Antonio. The MetroNet should provide this and more.
A series of informal meetings have been held to discuss technical aspects of the Metronet and to assess the needs of each organization. Some actual examples of these needs are:
Direct data capture on dental procedures for a project to research ways to reduce costs of dental care; this would include local dentists, the TRTF, and the UTHSC Center for Health Informatics.Creation of a San Antonio scientific and professional databank; all research organizations would contribute and access would be given to City and County government, K-12 science teachers, and each contributing organization.
Interactive video between school campuses and the Region 20 Service Center. One use could be special science workshops. This particular application illustrates a technological quirk: satellite technology provides a means to do this across a continent, but there is no equivalent mechanism available for local use.
Internet access for the City library reference librarians. As the City library serves as a public information source, it would like to provide access to City, County, and water district information.
[SwRI part TBD]
Support of a City-wide medical patient record exchange. A high-speed network is required because medical data often contain images (x-ray, CAT scans, etc.) and other types of voluminous data. The San Antonio Health Care Partnership seeks to create affordable health care for the community by making information manipulation and exchange more efficient.
Many of those expressing the preceding needs have also provided lists of services and data they could offer. In the biomedical field alone, these offerings could support much innovative research.
The services provided over this network can be categorized as interactive and non-interactive. Furthermore, interactive services can be divided into conferencing (human interaction) and human-machine interaction. The spectrum of non-interactive services goes from messaging (electronic mail) to distributed computing. Similarly interactive services range from remote login and file transfers to video conferencing. The standards adopted by the MetroNet at the various protocol levels are intended to help bridge the use of such services across disparate subnetworks. It is much more useful to think of these network services in terms of what capabilities are made accessible to the users. The following partial list of the user-level services illustrates the power of the MetroNet:
Access to many local and distant library catalogs of books and journals from any network computer in the city, including those in the public schools. Data Resource Associates allows limited access to their Library of Congress catalog and new libraries go online each week. A City-wide virtual library is an immediate possibility as local librarians already cooperate towards such an eventuality. The new main library could become a modern entryway to a world class virtual library.Distance education opportunities between schools of all levels. Extensions of traditional concepts will include worker retraining, self-directed education, and educational access for the handicapped.
Access to electronic mail for all citizens. Why leave this only to the citizens of Cleveland?
Access to both local and remote computing resources including regional and national supercomputing centers. Research laboratories may pool funds to acquire shared resources.
Access to public records maintained by local governments, including forms, maps, applications, zoning requests, city council meeting minutes, and others. Legislation is now in Congress to implement this at the National level.
Interaction with distant researchers and students through the international networks. This can be both interactive and non-interactive.
For colleges of education, opportunities to provide real-time observation of teaching methods, research on computer-aided instruction, and the development of distance education technologies.
The ability to create "virtual work groups" decentralizing the way work is done. Since these work groups require no offices or furniture, when their job is done they can painlessly cease to exist. Consider, for example, virtual government agencies with almost no overhead and no imperative to self-perpetuation.
Each subscribing site will not need all of these services, but their availability will yield synergistic surprises that may even confound the visionaries.
The MetroNet project is intended to link, rather than replace, existing networks. In several instances, user-level facilities will be provided where none exist. The existence of a high-speed backbone will provide impetus to subnetwork improvements and migration towards higher bandwidths and standard protocols.
The technology used for high-speed networking has evolved rapidly in the past several years. If this plan had been implemented in 1986, the choices for the backbone would be some combination of T1 circuits and the Fiber Distributed Data Interchange (FDDI) token ring technology. However, extending Local Area Networks (LAN) technologies to a Municipal Area Network (MAN) presents several problems of which the most critical to this project involve the isochronous nature of video data. This means that certain kinds of data, in particular full-motion video, use a lot of bandwidth and must have a guaranteed minimum bandwidth on the network. Users do not like full motion video to stop and start as the network load changes.
Also, the heritage of analog telephony is still prevalent in much of the data transport offerings now available. This is evident when one closely examines the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) service available in many locations. Likewise, the heritage of older network technologies is still with us, as in the features frame relay has inherited from X.25.
It appears that the state-of-the-art physical network layer would be best built from AT&T's Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) equipment. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switches offer the possibility of rapid switching of small fixed-size "data cells" passed over the optical backbone. ATM switches and routers are now becoming available and the combination of ATM layered on SONET can provide the bandwidth needed by digital video, as well as tremendous growth capability. ATM handles both the isochronous data problem and the need to multiplex substreams of different rates. ATM does not require users to deal with virtual channels of predefined bandwidths.
The idealized backbone would support digital video, because it is easier to control multipoint and bi-directional video distribution in the digital world. Initially, however, some video services may have to rely on the cable TV system's B-trunk. Unfortunately, the B-trunk is not connected to all the necessary sites. Dealing with this issue is outside the the scope of this project.
Other technologies are available for participants who do not require full motion video. MIME mailers and packetized slow-scan video over IP are becoming widely used and will be available to the MetroNet users. These software technologies can be used in numerous ways, some of which are outlined in the section on benefits. Voice channels will provide specialized services, such as PBX and intercom links within a school district.
Sufficient modem banks will be provided to support dial-up access to certain resources. These banks will function analogously to those used by TENET.
Adherence to recognized standards is fundamental to maintaining and enlarging this system. This document will not specify the full range of these standards, but the following table outlines my thoughts on the applicable standards.
Standard Use
SONET Physical Backbone
Distributed Queue Dual Bus Network Access Layer (MAC)
(IEEE 802.6)
Others TBD
Benefits
An important effect of implementing the MetroNet, is that the San Antonio metropolitan area will be better positioned to participate in the planned National Research and Education Network (NREN). Once the gigabit information highway becomes a reality, it makes sense for an entire community to join through the MetroNet because individual organizations cannot use all the bandwidth or justify the cost.
In doing this, we gain the additional advantage of local administration. It will be possible to determine and plan for local needs because the MetroNet administration will be involved in the the day to day delivery of services, advised by the consortium. While the management of the network could be handled from Austin or even Washington, the needs of the community users necessitate local control. The MetroNet project ensures that policy governing the network will come from the community level.
Related to this idea is that of "necessary infrastructure" for future economic development of the metropolitan area. Telecommunications support is as necessary to attract and keep companies as are roads and airports. San Antonio will be able to offer easy access at reasonable cost to the national telecommunications web through this network. As the use of the Electronic Document Interchange (EDI) standard becomes widespread, more businesses will need direct computer links to their suppliers and customers.
Many other municipalities are working towards this sort of information infrastructure. Any company that sells information services or requires advanced telecommunications will gravitate towards San Antonio because it can provide such a system. An added bonus is that these companies are often high paying and low polluting. Of course, if it gives the educational community more effective ways of teaching, then this, too, is noted by firms when they study a locale for possible relocation. Studies repeatedly show that educational quality ranks high among the factors used by employees to rate the quality of life at a given location.
This paper cannot begin to cover all the possible things that can be achieved with interactive video and shared computer resources. At the recent Texas Distance Learning Conference in Austin, more than 300 educators from across the State heard presentations on the changes technology is bringing to the classroom. Public school university partnerships are exposing students to stimulating research topics. Team teaching classes across school district boundaries are providing teachers with a new learning experience and bridging social barriers between students. In a time when all Texas public schools face economic uncertainty, the sharing of resources can offer each school the opportunity to build on its own particular strengths.
This sharing also saves money, because resources may be used more efficiently and do not need to be duplicated at each network service point. Electronic textbooks may someday relieve the State of an annual $150 million expense on books that are soon outdated. More advanced learning concepts, such as "telescience," enable students to participate in experiments and exploration that would not have been physically possible otherwise. The Jason Project, in which students controlled an undersea robot in the Mediterranean, is a powerful paradigm for new educational vistas.
The "Texas Through Time" project is an excellent example of creative use of the proposed infrastructure. It is an ambitious combination of art and technology using networked multimedia to bring Texas history to life. They plan to create an epic outdoor music drama written and storyboarded by networked Texan artists using "desktop virtual reality." Characters for the drama will come from a public school research project involving school districts strung along the San Antonio river and networked over the Internet. Results of the research will be stored in an interactive "virtual museum" available to the network. It is related to the new "interactive museum" effort, which will allow students to have a telepresence at nationally important museums.
For those organizations already leasing local data circuits, participating can provide savings:
Shared hardware, such as routers, can reduce the cost to individual organizations.Unnecessary circuits can be eliminated.
Bandwidth and services will be acquired.
Organizational Plan
Southwest Research Institute proposes to co-design and operate this network. SwRI is independent of government bodies and, thus, local political concerns. As a not-for-profit institution, SwRI can represent the community's interest because successful delivery is the bottom line. Also, SwRI has no affiliations with equipment or telecommunications vendors, and is in an excellent position to evaluate competing technologies.
SwRI would provide not only network management, but also a Network Information Center (NIC) with a strong research component. The MetroNet NIC would provide a clearinghouse for public domain software and data. Another service would be an X.500 directory that would allow San Antonio to participate in the national pilot project. Local management of this network provides a unique ability to implement a local acceptable-use policy.
Our idea is to include as many uses and users, and to be as inclusive, as possible. The growth of national commercial backbone services will provide a means for commercial traffic to obtain wide area coverage although now, even the NSFnet allows commercial use after payment of an access surcharge. As a not-for-profit entity, the MetroNet represents a buyers' consortium rather than competition with the public carriers and other communications service vendors. A steering committee selected from the membership will provide strategic direction and ensure that the project is always focused on the needs of the community.
At the same time the requirements group begins its job, a steering committee must be organized to market the project to potential partners and to formally organize the effort. Each organization supporting this project will be asked to sign a written memorandum committing itself to a certain level of support. Some organizations have already submitted letters of commitment and offers of labor and other resources.
The nature of this project requires cooperation in acquiring funding. One possible source of funds at the local level is a line item in a bond issue. Local companies and other interested parties may contribute equipment or expertise towards this partnership. If this program is strongly innovative, it may be possible to acquire start-up funds through a federal grant or a proposal to the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. One of the goals of the steering committee is to identify ways of funding this project and writing the necessary proposals.
It is important to note that all organizations that have heard about this initiative have expressed full support of the concept. With the facility in place, the operating expenses can be offset through user fees. These fees could be based on a three tiered structure, in which educational organizations pay the least, followed by federal and state government supported organizations, with commercial organizations paying full cost, unless they are donating something towards the effort. Because this system will not be operated for profit, the user fees should cover only maintenance and management overhead. Strictly commercial ventures could purchase special memberships and generate a little profit to cover R & D.
The first step, as agreed to by the interest group members, will be a demonstration project. The idea is to demonstrate some of the advantages of the completed network and to expose the public to the concept. While requirements have been solicited from the interest group organizations, they will likely change after the experience of the initial demonstration. The project will be flexible enough to accommodate discoveries and changes and solid enough to completely document the progress of the experiment.
The initial step is to build a testbed network, using as much of the existing infrastructure as possible. This includes right-of-ways, conduits, communications equipment, optical and copper transmission media, and other technologies. This is not to imply that the demonstration will be something just "thrown together." While every effort will be made to minimize costs, full service delivery and growth potential will be primary considerations. Also, several participants will obtain Internet connections.
Each stage of this demonstration/experimental project will significantly advance the local state of the art even if the ideal MetroNet takes several years to build. Everybody involved should get something concrete at each stage of the demonstration project.
The proposed participants in the demonstration project are SwRI, TRTF, NISD, Harlandale ISD, Region 20 Service Center, the city library, the Texas Through Time Living History Foundation and the UTHSC. The connectivity concept is shown in the following diagram:
[remaining Section 11 text in progress]