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Education Network The Internet IT

The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools 117

Posted by Soulskill from the 4k-cat-videos-for-all-students dept.
Lemeowski writes: The IT departments at all the University System of Georgia institutions have a luxury that most CIOs could only dream of — access to about 2,800 miles of free fiber and a private cloud that they an always count on. The private cloud configuration allows the perk of not focusing on bandwith. "Our local CIOs even take some pleasure in telling telecom company representatives, 'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.' That tends to shut down most conversations,"writes USG CIO Curt Carver, who explains how the technology is now becoming an educational equalizer across the state. In 2015, Georgia school districts are expected to have a 33-fold increase in bandwdith available to them through the program. "This will help to flatten the state. No more haves or have-nots in terms of bandwidth going into the school districts."
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The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools More

The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools

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  • Free to who? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Surely it's not free to the taxpayers.

    • You forget, tuition in the US is absurd and more than enough to cover the infrastructure and land use.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Depends on the school/university, as some depend entirely on tuition and run like a business, others have a large endowment, and some get most of their money from grants and research. A lot of the places that fall into the latter two categories will state a large tuition rate, but then give need based grants to students to cover anything beyond what is expected from their family (using typically a standard EFC formula). The result is only a small portion pays full tuition, and increases in tuition only im

        • In GA, tuition is subsidized by the state lottery (ironic little idiot tax, but NOT in any way a forced/theft tax system like regular taxes), and the University System of Georgia is the state gov agency that runs public state schools (there might be a private one or two, but they don't account for the bulk of the budget that USG gets). the USG certainly does get proper tax money, but it's a minor source of income compared to actual tuition and such. Source / used to work at a GA state uni

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Surely it's not free to the taxpayers.

      True, but the point is that it's free to the end point user, who would have nothing otherwise.
      Instead of having each of the 6,000 plus schools and colleges run their own network department, each rent bandwidth, and each run a budget item for it, the University System of Georgia pays for it and maintains it. In other words, just like any large corporation would do. Schools in rural areas an't get high-speed bandwidth through the commercial carriers for anything affordable, and in some rural areas you can't

  • So who's taxes are paying for this? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The article doesn't mention anything about how this "impressive" infrastructure is maintained.

    Do they have a bunch of tinker fairies that live in Georgia that we don't know about???

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by everett ( 154868 )

      I imagine it's paid for by the "technology use fees" paid by every student of the USG.

      • 'Twas $75 a year the last time I was a student in 2013. Good to know my money went to something awesome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      The same people who would be paying even more to get less capability for one-off connections for their county schools. Bandwidth gets cheap fast when you can buy large amounts.

  • Bandwidth is not a finite resource (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And I wish people would stop talking about as such its unlimited everything is run by peering agreements were the backbone providers just exchange traffic for free. The only charge is the last mile of infrastructure and theres no reason that has to be expensive either.

  • Free Beating (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:51PM (#48756363)

    'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.'

    Well, someone should tell them its not free, its just that they don't get the bill. Its not clear from the article what the actual cost is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.'

      Well, someone should tell them its not free, its just that they don't get the bill. Its not clear from the article what the actual cost is.

      sigh.
      It should be obvious to anyone that read the article that what he meant was free at the endpoint - free to the school that receives the bandwidth.

      How can I explain it?
      My next door neighbor was working in his garden, and I told him him could take a break and offered him a beer.
      I handed him a beer over the fence. He did not give me any money.
      He got a free beer.
      I know that I had to earn the money to buy the beer,
      He got a free beer because he didn't give me any money.
      I know that the brewery had

      • You don't get it. If you gave him that beer from the community fund, that he himself was contributing to, he didn't get a free beer and might wonder why you were using the community chess to give him a beer, or if that was the wisest use of that money. If the state educational system is funding it, just because a school doesn't see the bill doesn't mean its free. Or, in your case, everything for the school is free because they really aren't paying for anything, they are just workers at the schools.

        My exa

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by clovis ( 4684 )

          You don't get it. If you gave him that beer from the community fund, that he himself was contributing to, he didn't get a free beer and might wonder why you were using the community chess to give him a beer, or if that was the wisest use of that money. If the state educational system is funding it, just because a school doesn't see the bill doesn't mean its free. Or, in your case, everything for the school is free because they really aren't paying for anything, they are just workers at the schools. My example is a lot shorter as well!

          It drive me nuts when someone makes the argument that something is not free because somebody paid for it somewhere.
          It's free to the person who got it and did not pay for it, otherwise the word "free" has no meaning.

          Sure, Peachnet is funded ultimately by the State of Georgia taxes and lottery players, and all money ultimately comes from the labor of the proletariat or something like that. The thing is that various entities have their own budgets, whether it's my bank account, schools, or the fire departme

    • 'If you can beat free, then I'm willing to listen.'

      Well, someone should tell them its not free, its just that they don't get the bill. Its not clear from the article what the actual cost is.

      But that's the point - they don't get the bill. Would it be the same w/ the telecom guys who approach him?

  • a private cloud that they an always count on

    I hope they share this cloud technology with the rest of the world, so we can all have access to a cloud we can count on. This sounds almost too good to be true, but if the CIO said it, it must be true!

    I'd like to see some interviews from the departmental IT staff that use this always available, unlimited use bandwidth and cloud.

    • I would like to see that too. They're across the street from my office, funny enough. I wonder if I go knock on the door and ask, if anyone would talk to me?

      Now if they could just make this service available to alumni, I'd be set. Heck, I'd pay them. My house isn't that far from campus, and their service clearly can't be any worse than AT&T or Charter.
    • I believe it does not mean it's uptime and accessibility is 99.99999% (or better) but that since it's not private third party shenanigan, it can't go bankrupt and disappear overnight. Or be closed by FBI without warning.

  • Free Market Solution? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:55PM (#48756403)

    This doesn't seem like a good Free Market solution. The state of Georgia could save a lot of money by having private enterprises, with expertise in these areas, sell bandwidth to individual schools. It's just a short move from this, to the communism that is municipal broadband.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Free Market doesn't always mean less costly. AT&T screwed over the people of Wisconsin writing a bill for the politicians to put in place that made it so they could eliminate this exact type of efficiency that Georgia is doing. Not exactly free market when political contributions are involved.

  • GFD (Score:5, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:59PM (#48756491) Homepage Journal

    I only recently finished convincing all my non-technie friends that the Internet is not a series of tubes; now I have to start explaining to them that bandwidth does not actually come in buckets. Do you realize how many pounds of email I'll have to write about this? Fuck it, I quit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      What is the bandwidth of a bucket of microSD cards on the back of a motorcycle?

      • Making certain assumptions and estimations about the size of the microSD (presuming 64GB), the number of microSD cards that could fit on the face of an average sized playing card (estimating a 10 by 7 grid of them), and basing the volume of playing cards WolframAlpha states can fit in a 5 gallon bucket (about 12k)... an estimation of the bandwidth is ~51.5 PB * speed/distance. So the bandwidth to go from one town to the next at the normal highway speed limit here is roughly 120 PB / hour or 34 TB/s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neminem ( 561346 )

      Right, it doesn't *come* in buckets... that's just where it goes [wikipedia.org] , duh.

  • In other words, it's a Utility. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @01:03PM (#48756533) Homepage
    A state run one at that.

    And proves pretty well, that the government can and does do things better than private corporations.

    The key is that the government works best when the service/commodity in questions needs to go to everyone and does not truly have inherent differences in quality, besides quantity.

    The internet fits this bill, just like water, electricity, and roads.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )

      And proves pretty well, that the government can and does do things better than private corporations.

      Ok, what is being done better here?

      • What's your link speed? ping? Do you have a bandwidth cap? What's your monthly rate for internet? What's your uptime%? How's your customer service? This system beats any internet service anyone has inside the USA, save for other municipalities who have also made their own ISPs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          What's your link speed? ping? Do you have a bandwidth cap? What's your monthly rate for internet? What's your uptime%? How's your customer service? This system beats any internet service anyone has inside the USA, save for other municipalities who have also made their own ISPs.

          "Beats" in what way? I notice several obvious flaws with your argument: no consideration of cost, no consideration of peculiar economics of scale of a considerable university system, and no basis of comparison.

          • Nice dodge. What you are trying to imply is that somehow this costs a lot more than say Comcast does. It doesn't. And you get far better service in every single way as I said, with many unique features not even offered by the big ISPs. If you don't think there is a basis for comparison then you don't understand networking in general, and you'd only say that anyway because you know in a comparison that the Georgia system wins hands down, as would any municipal ISP.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by khallow ( 566160 )
              Comcast doesn't serve this sort of market. Look for a backbone provider like AT&T or MCI. And you have yet to address even one of my observations.

              • "And you have yet to address even one of my observations." You made no observations other than "you can't compare them" when you can easily, but you have completely ignored my observations twice now.

                I notice you do this a lot, ignore what people are saying that is very relevant, while claiming the same is being done to you when it's not. It's not conducive to good dialogue.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by khallow ( 566160 )

                  I notice you do this a lot, ignore what people are saying that is very relevant,

                  That's because people make a lot of irrelevant observations. I explain below why your post fell into that unfortunate category.

                  but you have completely ignored my observations twice now.

                  Comcast serves a different sort of market. And there are private services which are far better fits for a comparison.

                  Sure, it's similar enough to make a misleading comparison, but it's a bit like comparing a fancy restaurant to a fast food restaurant. Which is better depends on how you weight their respective services, quality, cost, speed of service, etc.

                  But I think everyone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      The internet fits this bill, just like water, electricity, and roads.

      That explains why poor quality roads don't exist!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )

      Not really. The state just sub-contracts all this out to AT&T today, although they opened the bidding up to other carriers for the 2015 upgrade discussed in the article.

    • Actually, funny thing: water and power aren't always public. In fact, they're usually private, only heavily regulated.

      Roads are mostly public, but some states were so cash-strapped they actually sold sections of road to private entities.

      There are a lot of things that should be public, those namely being infrastructure (roads, power, communications) and services (police, fire, medicine). The alluring thing about private is that it moves faster and usually is more efficient when building out the service or in

    • I would like to see why you think it's run well (really).

      The article has sentences like this, " It’s essentially a bottomless bucket, as long as it's used efficiently and in a cost-effective manner." So which is it, a bottomless bucket, or something that must be used efficiently? Which is it, free, or something that you have to worry about using cost-effectively? The article doesn't explain, they say they have thousands of miles of fiber, then say it's free (which of course it's not, even if the aut

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by whit3 ( 318913 )

        I would like to see why you think it's run well (really).

        The article has sentences like this, " Itâ(TM)s essentially a bottomless bucket, as long as it's used efficiently and in a cost-effective manner." So which is it, a bottomless bucket, or something that must be used efficiently? Which is it, free, or something that you have to worry about...

        The resource is 'free' only in the sense that it isn't encumbered by administrators outside
        the state educational system. The indication that it's run well

  • From the article:
    "Squirrels in Georgia like their fiber, there are always squirrels chewing on fiber lines somewhere, "

    Thank you slashdot for continuing to warn society about the ever present squirrel menace: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org] http://beta.slashdot.org/submi... [slashdot.org] https://www.google.com/#q=slas... [google.com]

    • I saw this. What kind of crazy squirrels does America have that can digest glass? Seriously, I can't imagine it does their insides any good!

      *insert high fibre diet joke here*

  • I wonder how many jobs the state lost for this communist nirvana. Not so much the telecom jobs, because any state endeavor is going to employ 4 useless people to do the job of one productive individual. But all that infrastructure comes with a great big government check - that is inevitably written against a great big tax. Taxes are the unseen killer in any economy.

    It is also worth calling out the studies coming out showing, remarkably, that you cannot replace Teaching with Technology. No rational perso

    • Before spouting nonsense on the internet, maybe you should inform yourself on how it was and is funded since your post makes you sound like a commie-hating loon that doesn't trust the guberment.

  • I'm happy for all those CIOs with all that bandwidth. Deliriously happy. But wait, has there ever been a CIO who didn't have lots of bandwidth compared to average people?

    Tell me about the real people who benefit from this. The college students, high school students, government employees, etc. Oh, that's for the future? So why are we reading this on slashdot?

    • Bah. Cynical. I'm benefitting directly from this now, and I am no where's near the level of a CIO. The community at large here benefits in this college town because the bandwidth demands of the local colleges (3 within this town alone; 2 of which are part of the USG; and I'm not even including the campuses/offices for the local presence of Virginia Tech and University of Phoenix) as well as the demands of local students to be able to communicate large amounts of audio/video data (legitimate video conferen

  • We'll know this is working and improving education when we see GA become a blue state.

  • I couldn't find anything in the article where it explained where the magic fairies created the network out of dreams and wishes. Someone had to pay for the "2,800 miles of free fiber" because it couldn't have been donated all of those responsible, well-meaning corporations out there. Too many government officials confuse free with "didn't come out of our budget".
  • This is good for the State of GA, but overall is not a paradigm shift...many states have been running Research and Education networks for years. NCREN (MCNC.org) has been offering a similar model for years to UNC system schools and private colleges and universities. It's now been expanded (through grants and foundation funding) to a footprint that touches virtually all K12 as well. It's a combination of owned fiber, IRU's (and some ISP connections to some K12 sites). The UNC institutions have a minimum of

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