Member Area

Quilt News

The Quilt Releases National RFP for OpenFlow Enabled Network Switches

Overview

The Quilt, Inc. (The Quilt) is a collaboration of advanced regional network organizations. It is a dynamic forum where leaders from throughout the advanced research and education network community build on the intellectual capital and best practices of network service providers worldwide. Based on the participants’ combined experiences in operations and development of leading edge technologies, The Quilt aims to influence the national agenda on information technology infrastructure, with particular emphasis on networking. Through this coalition, The Quilt promotes delivery of networking services at lower cost, higher performance, greater reliability, and heightened security. The Quilt derives support and primary funding from its participants. For a full listing and description of each of the current Quilt participants, please see http://www.thequilt.net/index.php/about-us/the-quilt-participants.

There is a well-defined track record of success for companies who have created meaningful partnerships with this leading-edge networking community. Quilt organizations and the institutions they connect are consistently early adopters of new technologies, including but not limited to network technologies and ways of implementing them. The Quilt also leads the curve in finding new ways to organize networks to multi-organizational benefit. Our unsurpassed level of expertise in the customer community has been a valuable resource to our industry partners.

2012 OpenFlow Switch RFP Documents Open Flow Switch RFP

Goals of the OpenFlow Switch RFP

One of the missions of the research and education community is to engage with its many partners, including industry, to design, develop and support experimental, leading edge technologies in order to drive advancements in academic networking and research. The goals of this RFP effort are to:

define a preferred set of configurations for OpenFlow enabled equipment for the research and education community
provide a sensible set of switch options for Regional and campus networks to purchase OpenFlow enabled equipment
promote and enable software -defined networking capabilities to scale to more regional and campus networks by leveraging our community’s collective experience and interest in software-defined networking
identify and partner with equipment providers who are creating a new development platform around the ideas of OpenFlow

The Quilt's 2012 OpenFlow Switch RFP Information

Event	Date
RFP Release	May 11, 2012
Non-Binding Letter of Intent to Respond Due	May 21, 2012
Due Date for OpenFlow RFP Submission to The Quilt (11:59 pm EST)	June 8, 2012
Providers Selected to be OpenFlow Switch Authorized Quilt Provider (AQP)	July 20, 2012
OpenFlow Switch Master Services Agreement Signed	August 31, 2012
OpenFlow Switch AQP Now Authorized to Sell Under Quilt Pricing Agreement	August 31, 2012

Preparing and Submitting a Response

All interested providers must submit a non-binding Letter of Intent to respond to the RFP no later than Monday, May 21, 2012. RFP questions and responses will only be accepted from providers that have submitted a Letter of Intent. The Letter of Intent should be sent electronically and addressed to Jen Leasure at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and include the following information:

A statement that your company is planning to submit a response to the RFP

The lead person’s name, title and contact information along with signature

Responses must contain all information that the Responder wishes to be taken into account in evaluating their submission. The information must be responsive to all requested criteria listed in this RFP. The text of the RFP response must be provided electronically in PDF format and delivered electronically (email) to:

Jen Leasure, President
The Quilt
2442 NW Market Street #68
Seattle, Washington 98107
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

No later than 5:00 PM eastern daylight time on Friday, June 8, 2012. Responses received after that will not be considered.

The Quilt Circle 2012 is Ready!

What I think may be our best edition yet of The Quilt’s annual showcase of the many contributions Quilt members make to research, education and communities across the country is now available - The Quilt Circle 2012

You may also find a link on The Quilt’s Resource page. If you’d like print copies, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

New Quilt Executive Committee Members

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Quilt Board of Directors recently completed its annual election for The Quilt Executive Committee. The Quilt is pleased to announce three new members will join the Committee as of 2012 for two-year terms: Don Welch, president and CEO, Merit Network; Veronica Sarjeant, Chief Operating Officer, Florida LambdaRail; and Claude Garelik, System IT Security Officer, South Dakota Board of Regents and Chairman of the Board for Great Plains Network. The nine-member Executive Committee provides ongoing oversight of Quilt affairs as delegated by the full Board.

The Quilt Releases its 2012 Commodity Internet Services RFP

Overview

One of the goals of The Quilt is to provide advanced network services at a lower cost. Toward this goal, the coalition of Quilt members and Authorized Quilt Buyers purchase Commodity Internet Services (CIS) through several approved CIS providers who participate in the program.

Quilt Community collectively purchases 220 Gbps of committed commodity bandwidth from Quilt approved providers established from The Quilt's 6th RFP effort in 2010.

The Quilt TelePresence Workshops

Following on to the success of its previous workshops. The Quilt TelePresence Working Group decided to host another workshop in October focusing on trends in the video conferencing for the research and education community. With the new technology and focus on interoperability in the video conference space, the working group found it difficult to narrow the topics for the workshop to fit into a single session. Rather than eliminate key topics, the decision was made to spread the program across two half day sessions instead. Forty six individuals spanning 15 states joined the two interactive sessions with a choice of joining either by video through sites connected through the R&E TelePresence Exchange or by WebEx.

The Quilt Fall Member Meeting - Portland, OR

Portland, Oregon was the gathering site of over 50 individuals from Quilt member organizations and Quilt community partners for our Fall 2011 Member Meeting. We wish thank David Crowe and the Oregon GigaPoP for hosting our event at the University of Oregon - Portland campus in the recently renovated White Stag Block.

KINBER Joins Quilt as Associate Member

The Quilt is pleased to welcome KINBER (the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research) as its newest Associate Member. Member based organization comprised of major institutions in the Commonwealth. KINBER will serve as the coordinator for the construction and management of a state-wide fiber optic network accessible to a host of educational, research, health care and economic development partners. KINBER's mission is to serve Pennsylvania through the establishment and sustainment of a high-speed research and education network, PennREN, which will connect Pennsylvania institutions of higher learning with K-12 programs to advance the education, health care, work force development and training programs across the Commonwealth. KINBER is a member based organization comprised of major institutions in the Commonwealth. KINBER is overseen by a member-based Board of Directors. KINBER is the recipient of a Federal NTIA BTOP grant of $99.7 million to implement PennREN, the first major initiative launched by KINBER. KINBER is a 501(c)3 non-profit Pennsylvania corporation.

The Quilt looks forward to supporting Jeff Reel and the KINBER team in these initial stages of building the PennREN network.

20+ BTOP Grants for Quilt Community

Quilt participants or their members were involved in 20 successful funding grants under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) over the past year or two. And many more BTOP grants received funding thanks to technical expertise and support provided by Quilt participants. This impressive result testifies to the critical role regional networks and their “middle mile” fiber routes play in realizing the goal of the National Broadband Plan that every American community should have affordable access to at least 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) broadband service.

These new BTOP funds will enable regional networks to improve existing broadband infrastructure to currently connected community anchor institutions and to extend their networks to reach more institutions within their own geographic area. And with lower fiber acquisition costs, regionals will be able to serve additional community anchors at only the incremental costs of reaching them.

Perhaps just as significantly, these new BTOP grants provide the opportunity for new conversations between regional networks and new partners, or to revive conversations with existing partners, and to think of private/public partnerships in entirely new ways to achieve improved broadband to a growing number of participants who are becoming part of these networking communities.

For a directory of BTOP awards received by regional networks, see:

Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP)

Articles