A Sad Day as Emotion Drives R & E Networking in the USA
November 4th, 2007 by Gordon Cook
Life in the American research and education networking community begins to look ever more strange. Over the past 16 years I have written a great deal about research networks. My writing has covered foreign research networks because until National Lambda Rail became operative in 2004, the United States had a research network only name. While Canarie and Surfnet advanced the state-of-the-art in providing maximal bang for the buck at layer 2 and 3, Internet2 provided high speed applications for its members - that is layer 4 and up.
Before NLR, Internet2 had no competition. But in the summer of 2005 Internet2 said to NLR – you must merge with us. Understand? Ever since there has been the most embarrassing on and off mating dance. A year ago Doug van Houwelling’s attempt to swallow NLR was turned down. But the two Board Chairs kept talking –
Jeff Lehman former president of Cornell and an economist for Internet2 and Tracy Futhey, who came to Duke as Technology VP from Carnegie Mellon in 2002.
Then out of the blue In March of this year on a Friday Jeff and Tracy put out a press release that they had negotiated behind the scenes. It informed their respective boards at the last hour that merger talks were on again. The document laid out a schedule designed to culminate in a merger during the summer. That did not happen.
On August 30 NLR rejected the merger. It voted unanimously in favor of continued merger talks and sent I2 a three point memorandum regarding issues that needed to be resolved with the definitive agreement before it could become acceptable.
By the time I returned from China on September 3, it was clear to me that several NLR board members whose state governments had made multimillion dollar investments in NLR would be placing themselves in legal jeopardy if they voted to give those assets to a new entity that could change how they were used - including shutting them down.
On October 4, NLR sent I2 another memo elaborating on the three points and proposing solutions. The Internet2 Board again turned down any further discussion. Accept the agreement “as is.”
On October 21 the NLR board passed a fresh resolution to be sent to I2. This one focused just on the transfer of asserts.
Although I have not seen it, I gather that it very likely explained why the NLR board could not accept the transfer of state granted assets per the terms of the I2 definitive agreement without placing its board members in legal jeopardy. Again the I2 board said no. “As is.” Either the I2 board members did not read the materials they were being asked to vote on – or if they did they decided they did not care what they were asking their NLR counter parts to do. Accept the agreement “as is.” This diplomatically speaking is a diktat - comply or else – the kind of demand that was made to Poland before it was attacked on the eve of WW II, or to Iraq by the Bush Administration in February 2003.
As the memo linked to at the very end of this essay and written, on Friday, November 2nd, by the new NLR Board Chair, Erv Blythe, makes clear, the Internet2 folk seem to be especially inattentive to ongoing communications between the organizations. Since Internet 2 has no army divisions at its disposal, the NLR Board refused to commit seppuku and again voted the merger down. Professor Blythe says it more diplomatically below.
But this time he spells out the legal reasons for the world to see since the Internet2 board - seeing them - apparently did not care.
Now here is an example of the kind of thing that I2 folks have hit NLR over the head with.
A little Googling finds:
“CIC statement on the status of the merger and the NLR boardmeeting. The following is from the CIC CIOs regarding the merger of Internet2 and NLR, addressing the fact that the NLR board has not yet approved the Definitive Agreement for the merger, requesting the community to make public what their respective positions would be if the merger fails, and requesting the NLR board to make all votes on the merger public. [snip…] ” Although at one point, having NLR and Internet2 as separate entities made sense “when the two provided very different and complementary services, this ceased being true some time ago.”
Cook’s Edge: It seems to me that Karen Partlow has an inadequate understanding of the differences between the organizations.
But looking at her statement causes one to wonder if this is typical of what the I2 folks have been doing with their lobbying. Rather than pay attention to the legal issues for NLR board members, are they merely engaged in sloganeering?
Have they not made their contributions to BOTH? If they no longer willing to be members of both, fine. Withdraw from NLR. Leave it alone. Quit trying to destroy it by merging it out of existence.
I am sure that NLR must have gotten many well-reasoned comments on what it should do. I have a feeling that there is an Astroturf operation going on from the I2 side of the house. How else to explain what Professor Blyth’s memo shows to be a naked power play?
Are the State networks the Major Prize in the Power Struggle?
In its fall meeting I2 placed some major emphasis on an inventory of state networks. http://events.internet2.edu/2007/fall-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3416&event=273 While most of these networks are strongly interconnect with NLR some are also Internet 2 members. Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, and New Mexico are members of NLR at the national level. These states have poured various amounts of public money into the creation of their state networks. They are very likely among the board members of NLR who faced legal constraints in determining how they could dispose of assets that came from public money as opposed to university of corporate money. Relatively few people are aware of the state level optical networks reach. They should consult the map at
Meanwhile XO Declines to Renew its IRUs and Goes into Competition with Level 3
And just to shake up the deck this year XO Communications jumped clear of Level 3, bought Infinera gear and lit its own dark fiber over its 18,000 route mile foot print.
Here is the operative paragraph from the Sept 2007 Capacity Magazine: “Just over a year ago, XO Communications’ long-haul network was mostly built on wavelength IRUs from Level 3. Despite having its own fibre as a result of the network joint build with Level 3, XO lit up only 30% of its footprint between 2001 and 2006, concentrating investment instead on building out its metro coverage. “When those IRUs expired in 2006, we had a choice: do we renew those IRUs or give them back and light up the network ourselves?” MacNeil explained. Much to Level 3’s dismay – and Level 3’s lawyers are still on the case – XO Communications chose the latter option. It purchased the same Infinera kit which Level 3 has pioneered across the same footprint and “at the end of 2006, we lit up all 18,000 route miles, migrating 100 wavelengths within four months,” MacNeil said.
Sadly (I say sadly because I like Level 3) this puts a hole in Level 3’s analyst conference scenario from March 2003 where level 3 carefully portrayed an image that presented itself as the only integrated national fiber foot print alternative to Verizon and ATT.
Meanwhile since the summer Level 3’s stock price has been hammered. It is beset with integration problems from the fiber networks it purchased between 2005 and 2007 “which, Level 3 admits, have led to delays in fulfilling customer orders.”
University CIOs Aren’t What They Used to Be
In short we have a convoluted situation where for close to three years many university CIO’s who understand only the university financial bean counting side of things have been grumbling in frustration that they are paying money to (the horror) TWO research network organizations. Strangely they seem to see the new seven year agreement that they signed onto with Level 3 for managed services as giving them the equivalent technology that NLR offers its members. They don’t seem to rebel at all against the fact that a lightwave via managed services costs on the order three times what a lightwave on NLR costs.
Unfortunately the issue has degenerated to a state of internecine warfare among the US R & E community where, on both sides, emotions and not logic are in control.
Finally read Erv Blythe’s Announcement of the terminated merger discussions