TransitRail Participant Information

Topics on this page

• Why should your R&E organization participate in TransitRail?
• Current Participants
• TransitRail Routing Policies for Participants
• Service Levels and Fees
• How Participants Get TransitRail Services

Why should your R&E organization participate in TransitRail?

Reliance on, and demand for, commodity Internet services has grown in all sectors and the research and education (R&E) communities are no exception. While market changes in the past 6 years have resulted in a substantial overall reduction in the per megabit cost of these services, the unabated demands for more bandwidth means that R&E groups continue to spend more money on these services than they would like. Furthermore, use indicators suggest that demand will only continue to increase as new bandwidth intensive applications such as IP-based video conferencing, disaster-recovery programs, complex data-mining, web-based data resources, media, and communications continue to evolve. In addition, recent consolidations within the Internet Service Provider (ISP) arena are likely to result in an erosion of cost-effective options to meet these needs.

Strategies for managing commodity Internet costs within the R&E community have taken several forms and include:

• Deployment of 'packet shapers' to limit the amount of bandwidth that can be consumed;
• Participation in aggregate buying programs, such as The Quilt's CIS program;
• Building a strong peering program to offload demand from the fee-based transit networks.

TransitRail focuses on large scale peering. It will not replace local, regional, R&E, or 'layer1' peering solutions.

As a performance solution:

Peering can result in more efficient traffic flows by getting packets to their destinations faster and more directly.

As an improved service solution:

Participation is a well-run peering program can also offer protection from the adverse affects of third-party routing decisions. Properly integrated, inclusion of a sophisticated peering program in your network design can significantly increase the robustness of your network.

As a fiscal solution:

Peering connections absorb traffic that otherwise would go over commodity circuits and hence reduce costs for commodity services.

As a strategic solution:

Peering establishes power-sharing, cooperative partnerships between source and destination entities-content and network providers-thereby avoiding the 'network in the middle' and the complexities of the multi-layered commercial policies and one-size fits all 'solutions'.

Current Participants

• Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC)
• Duke University www.duke.edu
• Education Networks of America (ENA)
• Florida LambdaRail www.flrnet.org
• Front Range Gigapop
• Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN)
• Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) www.loni.org
• MidAtlantic Terascale Partnership www.midatlantic-terascale.org
• Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX)
• OneNet - Oklahoma's Telecommunications Network
• Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)
• Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC)
• Southern Crossroads www.sox.net

TransitRail Routing policies (for TransitRail participants)

Participants are asked to:

• Maintain IRR Objects for reference by Transit Rail
• Provide and Maintain a list of prefixes which may be announced to Transit Rail
• Avoid rate-limiting traffic sent to or received from Transit Rail
• Prefer routes received from Transit Rail over other commodity Internet paths

Participant Service Levels & Fees

TransitRail services are offered on one-year contract terms. Participants may select either a GbE or a 10GbE port at a fixed port cost. There are no usage fees associated with TransitRail.

One year contract terms available starting July 2007:

• GbE $ 50,000
• 10GbE $240,000

TransitRail is operated on a cost-recovery basis. An increase in participation by R&E entities should result in...

• More major peers peering with TRansitRail and hence greater traffic flows between peers and participants
• A greater per Mbps savings as traffic flows increase
• Lower annual rates per participant resulting in even greater per Mbps savings.

How Participants Get TransitRail Service

Participants may get service in one of three ways:

• Through existing NLR FrameNet service
• Through existing NLR PacketNet service
  • 
• By direct interconnect to a TransitRail router at one of the following locations:
  • Los Angeles, CA
    • Equinix (LA1) 600 W 7th
    • Equinix (LA2) 818 W 7th
    • One Wilshire 624 S Grand
  • Seattle, WA Westin Building, 2001 Sixth Ave
  • Palo Alto, CA Switch & Data/PAIX 529 Bryant
  • Chicago, IL Equinix [CH1]
  • Ashburn, VA Equinix [DC3]

With the appropriate physical interconnects, the participant's prefixes will be announced through the TransitRail AS to the TransitRail peers. Likewise, the routes of the TransitRail peers will be passed directly to the TransitRail participants.

The net effect is that traffic between the participants and the peers will take a more direct, more cost-effective path thereby improving network performance and reducing overall costs.