The Quilt offers a number of programs designed to facilitate collaboration among Quilt participants to help them stay on the innovation edge in research and education networking, to advocate on behalf of Quilt members and to leverage the strength of the community to help Quilt members procure, deploy and deliver highly cost-efficient, reliable advanced networking services and applications.

Commodity Internet Services (CIS) Program

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.

Telepresence Working Group

The Quilt Telepresence Working Group aims to help Quilt members better understand and leverage telepresence technologies, including ultra high-definition video and other open, virtual presence capabilities.

Business Case Studies: Building and Managing R&E Optical Networks

In its role as an advocate for its members, and to assist the research and education (R&E) networking community in selecting the governance and funding models, membership plans, services and pricing structures that best meet their organizational goals and serve their user groups, The Quilt and South Carolina community network MidNet, Inc., have collaboratively documented various business models adopted by R&E networks participating in The Quilt.

Member Travel Grants for Next-Generation R&E Networking Leaders

Together with its members, The Quilt serves as an advocate for the next-generation of research and education (R&E) networking leaders. To help cultivate future leaders, The Quilt has set aside $25,000 in travel grants for 2012. These funds enable Quilt member staff who would otherwise not have the opportunity to do so to travel to Quilt member meetings.

Quilt R&E Community Workshops

Promoting collaboration, best-practives exchange and operational excellence among its partcipants is a Quilt priority. In the last 10 years, the optical network infrasructure deployed by Quilt members has transformed the network capabilities that are available today to research and education (R&E).