The Quilt leverages the collective purchasing power of its participants to enable The Quilt community to purchase advanced network services at a lower cost.  Towards this goal, The Quilt screens and qualifies CIS vendors who meet the community’s requirements through a Quilt RFP process and then negotiates favorable pricing with Quilt-approved CIS vendors.

Specifically, The Quilt looks for vendors who, through their IP transit Internet service offerings, are willing and able to be partners in the delivery and development of research and education networks throughout the United States and who are willing to offer pricing discounts appropriate for the significant levels of bandwidth consumed by Quilt participants and their users. The Quilt Community has collectively purchased 220 Gbps of committed commodity bandwidth from Quilt Approved Providers established from The Quilt's 6th RFP effort in 2010.

The Quilt will issue another RFP in early 2012. For questions, please contact Jen Leasure at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

For vendors: Overview of The Quilt's 2012 Commodity Internet Services RFP Process