To: Samuel B. Trickey
From: Rick L. Smith
Subject: Report on Wide Area Networking

 A group was formed to consider wide area network issues of the following
members with their constituencies in parentheses:

        Rick Brown (HEALTHNET)

        Tom Hintz (ICON)

        Andy Olivenbaum (NERDC)

        Dave Pokorney (FCLA)

        Rick Smith (Network Services)

The charge of this group was to respond to the Net '99 recommendation:

Recommendation 5.  A Council Work Group, with members from FCLA,
HEALTHNET, ICON, NERDC, and Network Services, should report on the role
of networking at UF in metropolitan and wide area networking.  This
report should make recommendations on how UF and external providers
can cooperate to facilitate their missions, and, where possible,
identify mutually beneficial areas of technology transfer.  It should
also discuss possible financial and technical resource problems.  This
report is due in the office of the Executive Director by July 1.

Report of the WAN Group

With applications in telemedicine, distance education, video-conferencing,
electronic data interchange, scholarly and research collaborations,
agricultural and engineering extension, and state and national library
initiatives, wide area networking is gaining importance at the community,
state, national and international levels. These applications call for
a variety of services, geographic locations, and bandwidths. Locally
we are accustomed to building network, but it is not feasible
to build, maintain, and support a wide area network which will meet
all of these needs. We need network access to go anywhere in the state.

The best technology for meeting our diverse requirements would be a
universal switched network which would offer services on demand in much
the same way that we are able to use long distance telephone services
now. While this type of service is likely to be a component of the emerging
National Information Infrastructure, it is not here now and it is not likely
to be available, even in limited availability, for several more years. It
is important for us to move ahead now to establish our applications while
the carriers build the NII. It is important for us to present a united front
in communicating with the carriers. This group finds that there are
opportunities for cooperation on this front. To this end we make the
following recommendations:

Recommendation 1. We should continue cultivating relationships with FIRN, the
State Division of Communications, Southern Bell, Cox Cable, the various long
distance carriers including AT\&T, MCI and Sprint, as well as other interlata
exchange carriers like LDDS and Digi-Cel. Within these relationships
we should actively encourage the communications carriers to build needed
network and price its use appropriately.

Recommendation 2. A state-wide meeting of carriers and state agencies
should be set up to inform the carriers of our needs and to give them an
opportunity to tell us their plans.

Recommendation 3. Establish a WAN working group within the Standing Committee
on Networking and Telecommunications with the charge of coordinating and
encouraging cooperation on WAN activities and projects among the groups
represented on this study group as well as other University affiliations.
This group should include the people listed above on this task group as well
as the directors of telecommunications from Shands Teaching Hospital and
the University of Florida.