The Association of County/City Information Systems, meeting in Vancouver, Washington this week brought together the Washington State Department of Information Services and Oregon Department of Administrative Services
Topics of discussion included; Public Access to information, the EGov Alliance, Streaming Media, Cable Franchise, Gigabit to the Doorstep and a talk from Sanswire Technologies on their balloon-based Wireless Broadband Network.
Sanswire has designed and intends to begin construction on a National Wireless Broadband Network using high-altitude airships called “Stratellites“. Each Stratellite will be held stationary in the stratosphere and remotely controlled from tracking stations on the ground. When completed, the Network will allow subscribers to roam anywhere in the country while staying wirelessly connected to the Internet at high-speed.
Currently, Washington State’s Intergovernmental Network (IGN) connects all 39 Washington counties and governmental entities within the State of Washington. The anchor tenants of IGN are the Department of Health, Washington State Patrol, Washington Courts and Department of Social and Health Services. The Justice Information Network (JIN), connects justice agencies with each other and their electronic access to criminal justice information.
Washington’s K-20 Educational Network, which began operation in 1997, now serves over 420 educational sites distributed throughout the state. During FY03, DIS will implement one or more proof-of-concept configurations to integrate high speed Ethernet service into the K-20 Network. DIS expects that the evolution from T1 access to Ethernet access will be a major activity in the 2003-05 Biennium.
Citizens can find government information using Find It, sponsored by the Washington State Library, and Access Washington, the state’s web portal, recognized as one of the nation s best websites from Government Technology InternetWeek and Network Computing magazines.
Portland’s I-Net uses Comcast cable infrastructure with 200 MHz upstream and 550 MHz downstream with 3.7MHz equaling 10Mbits/sec (upstream) or 47Mbps (downstream) on coax cable. It’s divided into High and Low Capacity users. The high capacity users consist of 300 government buildings, public and private schools and universities, public libraries and selected non-profit organizations. The low capacity sites include 1,000 traffic signals, bus stops and digital monitoring devices.
Portland’s city-run I-Net uses Comcast cable and connects to the Integrated Regional Network Enterprise (IRNE), a broadband telecommunications network that carries voice and data communications for the City of Portland.
The The Oregon State Board of Higher Education promotes distance learning from PCC, PSU, OSU and U/Oregon, “on-line”.
A multi-channel ITFS (Instructional Television Fixed Service) network operates from transmission towers located in Eugene, Salem and Portland. Each transmission site broadcasts four to six channels of programming directly to homes, businesses, schools and government offices. The three ITFS systems offer “last mile” delivery of education programs and cultural events throughout the Willamette Valley.
Eugene’s GigaPOP connects to the Oregon Internet Exchange while Portland’s GigaPop at the Northwest Access Exchange costs $395/month. You can exchange traffic between various local customers at GigE rates.
The Oregon Gigapop provides networking and switching for Oregon’s high-speed networks and provides connections to the Internet-2 Abilene network. The heart of the Oregon Gigapop is a Cisco MFR (12008) router. Partner circuits share a common ethernet switch (10/100/1000Mbps). The Abilene connection is over dual OC3 (155Mbps) circuits with Qwest provisioning local loops.
NERO net peers with many other providers at the Oregon Exchange achieving route diversity by MCI in Eugene and Northwest Net in Beaverton.
Cal(IT)2 is developing a “new Internet” built on high-speed wireless networks and computing devices. Larry Smarr, the founding Director of NCSA, helped to build the first national NSF backbone in 1986, and is now Cal(IT)2 director. “The Grid,” will be a seamless network of high-speed wireless nodes that are cheap, always on and accessed through palm-size computers, even microprocessors inside human beings.
Wireless technology will be used to coordinate and enhance care of mass casualties in a terrorist attack or natural disaster in a new federally funded research project at UCSD called the Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters (WIISARD).
The goal of WIISARD is to provide emergency personnel and disaster command centers with medical data to track and monitor the condition of thousands of victims on a moment-to-moment basis.
A wireless network for the Northwest was described in my Wireless Revolution website (a year before 9/11). I got zero feedback from it. Maybe I needed a good acronym - like Oregon Rains, CapWin or Utopia.
Daily Wireless has more on balloons, Internet Rickshaws, Sharing an Internet Van and Vivato In The Park.
.gif)
