Universities, college get star treatment with ORION

Special to Technology in Government

Dr. Todd Sands can't wait until Ontario's new high-speed network for researchers, scientists and educators becomes a reality.

The University of Windsor geneticist and executive director of WEDnet (Windsor Essex Development Network) says Ontario's Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) is essentially an extension of CAnet 3 that will open doors the province's research community has long anticipated.

Last month the Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology announced the province would spend $57 million over five years to create ORION - a high speed network for educators and scientists to conduct advanced research and develop and test new technologies.

"It's a big step forward just getting ORION blessed," says Sands, adding it has been in the planning for more than a year.

"We already have the walls going up in anticipation of the fibre that will be there in three to six months."

In phase one of ORION, universities will be linked to the network, followed by colleges and research institutes. Sands says ORION will function in conjunction with the federally funded CAnet 3 providing a faster connection to regional networks such as WEDnet.

"We need this bandwidth - we've been screaming for it," says Sands. "We're limited at the present time -- we have feeds on CAnet 3 to get access to the University of Calgary for satellite images using a GIS system but it takes us at least 50 minutes on the existing CAnet connection to bring down an eight gigabit file. ORION will make that happen in 10 minutes."

The news of ORION was also welcomed by CANARIE (Canadian Network for Advancement of Research Industry and Education) officials who also say the program will be an extension of the national backbone that is the CAnet 3 point of presence.

"We have been talking with the Ontario government about the ORION project for many months and we're pleased to see the commitment they have made in this area," says Andrew Bjerring, president and CEO of CANARIE Inc., a non-profit consortium funded by the federal government and private industry. CANARIE will provide more than $4 million to upgrade a gigapop connecting the two networks.

"The program extends the focus around the activities under the CANARIE programs, and the network they're developing in this first phase is, in many respects, the Ontario arm of the broader CANARIE initiative," says Bjerring.

Funding for ORION will be provided through the province's $20 billion SuperBuild Fund made up of capital dollars pooled from all ministries and some new money from the budget surplus, which will be used to build hospitals, roads and other big-- ticket infrastructure items. Another $17.2 million will be provided by several partners, led by the Optical Research Advanced Networks Ontario consortium.

Minister of Energy, Science and Technology Jim Wilson and researchers say ORION completes the picture for researchers and is not a parallel system to CANARIE.

"We don't do anything that is duplication and silly nonsense anymore," says Wilson. "We work very closely with them. To whoever is using CANARIE, this is the Ontario base.

"We actually kind of thought it was silly - CANARIE is great, but it only has two portals in Ontario and they are not accessible to the great brain trust of Canada, as we think we have here in the province," he says.

If there is one criticism, Sands says, it's that the ORION business case has to be further developed and that development should come from the application side.

Still Sands is excited about ORION, not just because Ontario universities and colleges can access the power of the network, but because of what it will mean to those who aren't aware yet of the possibilities the system offers.

He points to projects such as a $7.6 million investment made by the province for a virtual library project at the University of Toronto for the storage and archiving of digital library resources.

"Even though the storage is going on, groups like these have not begun to think about delivering it out to existing universities or colleges in the system," he says. "ORION could do that."

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Aug 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved