July 2003
$78 million optical network nearing completion
When primary segments of the new $78 million ORION network became operational last month, no one was more satisfied than ORION’s Project Director Sam Mokbel and his team of engineers.
As of July 24, the Toronto-Thunder Bay, Ottawa-Toronto-London, and the Toronto-Hamilton segments were completed. The Windsor-Toronto segment will be completed by the week of July 28.
While there are some segments of the network yet to be lit, advanced optical and routing gear has been installed and successfully tested at 15 of ORION’s 22 PoP (Point of Presence) locations, from Windsor to Thunder Bay, and from Ottawa to Welland - a huge engineering and logistical undertaking.
The network is among the largest and most powerful fully-owned and operated Research and Education (R&E) networks in the world, involving a pair of optical fibres extending 8,200 kilometres and over 50 PoP and co-location sites spanning 3,700 kilometers.
Work began in October of last year, and the very first connection was completed and tested between Laurentian University, in Sudbury and York University’s main campus at Downsview on February 7, 2003. “That was a very important day for us,” says Mokbel. Few have ever tried to complete a network of this size and scope in this amount of time,” he said. “You could say that was the day our baby was born,” he said.
“Our original Business Plan did not anticipate full operation of the network across Ontario until 2004,” said Baker.
“I’m glad to say that the network is now operational in several key segments and we expect the final segments to be connected by August. I must really commend our engineering team and our partners at Bell Canada, Hydro One Telecom and Nortel Networks for being able to achieve so much, in so little time, ” he said.
“Our biggest priority now is to get as many organizations signed up and accessing the network as soon as possible, to take full advantage of the network’s advanced capabilities.”
It is expected that up to 25 organizations will be connected and accessing the ORION network by September and up to 40 by the end of December. ORANO’s target is to connect 100 user institutions by the end of 2004.
The Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation and Ontario’s SuperBuild Corporation are ORION’s primary funding partner, with an investment of $32.3 million. The federal government has invested $3.4 million through CANARIE, Canada’s Advanced Internet Development Organization, which operates CA*net4.
Additional private and public sector investments over the next three years will bring the value of the ORION project to over $78 million.
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