BCNETwork News

March 2006

Innovative, High Bandwidth “Malls” for Information Sharing

With increasing bandwidth requirements in the marketplace today as well as growing costs over the Internet, many organizations are looking for cost effective ways to increase network performance as well as “communicate” or exchange data with others in their community. In addition, many organizations are only served by a single Internet Service Provider, putting them at risk if there is any sudden loss of connectivity. To address some of these challenges for the research & higher education community, BCNET pioneered a new community model for data exchange.

Creating Communities for Data Exchange

Optimizing data exchange within BC’s network of research and higher education institutions was one of the goals of BCNET-- to create a community for sharing data. What does this mean? Simply put, it means there is a BCNET community of organizations that can share packets of information or peer amongst each other, facilitated through a central “transit mall” or data meeting place. The more organizations that connect into the transit mall, the larger the community and the greater the exponential benefit to exchange information--not unlike the party telephone lines in days of yore; where, everyone could get online and chat for free.

Peer-to Peer Networks, Swapping Data for Free

Peering, is the most common terminology for this practice of voluntarily interconnecting distinctly separate data networks on the Internet for exchanging traffic between customers. Today, these packets of data traveling between peering members who are connected to this central meeting place or “BCNET Transit Exchanges” are free; eliminating often costly transit fees. By exchanging data through one central, “neutral”, third party location, users can peer with or access a community network where packets of information flow freely. BCNET has 5 Transit Exchange Centres: Vancouver, Victoria, Prince George, Kelowna and Kamloops. Anyone can connect to these private exchange centres and have the benefit of peering with their community.

As an example, any business that connects to the Vancouver Transit Exchange can peer with research, business, government as well as higher education community members. For a complete listing of businesses, click here.

Internet Service Guaranteed

Another great advantage of this model is that a “Transit Exchange” can provide cost effective access to multiple Internet Service providers. Connecting to multiple ISPs provides multi-homing or insurance against any sudden loss of Internet service. For example, organization’s that are running mission critical applications over the Internet need fault tolerance measures to guarantee 100% service levels. Typically, without this model it is expensive to switch service providers and difficult to access several service providers at once as each user needs a separate physical circuit to each ISP.

Currently, BCNET has a minimum of three ISPs connected at each Transit Exchange. Any organization that wishes to connect to the Exchange can purchase one or multiple VLAN links to their service provider of choice. Now, Internet service providers can provide bandwidth to multiple user sites via one large capacity channel.

Greater Speed, More Bandwidth

For greater bandwidth requirements, the Transit Exchange provides both 100 megabit and up to one gigabit capacity network connections. It is also very easy and cost effective to create a virtual network connection to an organization of choice.

 Who Can Connect?

Virtually any organization can connect to the BCNET Transit Exchange and receive the cost benefits of peering with your regional community, the fault tolerance of multihoming as well as higher bandwidth network service of up to one gigabit capacity. For as little as $200 per month, organizations can connect with BCNET and access a diverse network of exponentially hundreds of thousands of users. For more information about BCNET services, contact info@bc.net