Tag Archives: NSFNET

A Quiet Success

I’m writing this blog in recognition of the 60th anniversary of Merit, a non-profit network operating in Michigan. There aren’t many network entities that can trace their beginning back to 1966 when Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University formed the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad (MERIT) with the goal of networking the universities together. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation that was matched by the Michigan Legislature, Merit successfully networked the mainframe computers at the three universities in 1971.

Merit played a role in the early development of the commercial Internet. In 1987, Merit partnered with IBM, MCI, and the Michigan Strategic Fund to create and manage NSFNet, a venture funded by the National Science Foundation to connect universities to a series of five supercomputers. That network was founded in 1986 and quickly bogged down due to the network speed of 56 kilobits per second. By 1988, Merit had connected 13 nodes on the network to operate at the blazing speed of 1.5 Mbps. From 1987 to 1994, Merit organized a series of Regional-Tech meetings around the country to add 170 other universities and networks to NSFNet. In 1996, Merit joined numerous other universities to create the Internet2 fiber network.

Merit established an early goal to connect all educational entities in Michigan to an interconnected network. This work got a huge boost in 2010 with two federal grants that helped to build 2,287 miles of middle-mile fiber across Michigan. The Merit network today reaches throughout the state, including 70 new miles of fiber funded by a federal grant in 2022 to reach the Upper Peninsula.

This blog refers to Merit as a quiet success, which I think is an apt description. While well-known in the education and government sectors in Michigan, Merit is like other middle-mile networks and is not well-known to the public. This is partially because Merit, like other middle-mile networks, doesn’t seek publicity, but also because it operates quietly behind the scenes. People recognize that their local school, library, or community college has fast gigabit broadband, but don’t know that Merit brought that broadband and manages the underlying network.

Currently, Merit is connected to 3,041 member locations in Michigan, which includes 863 higher ed locations, 633 K-12 locations, 526 government locations, 325 non-profits, 235 healthcare locations, and 212 libraries. Merit is also connected to 247 meetpoints with for-profit ISPs and carriers that use the middle-mile network to spread last-mile broadband throughout the state.

Merit’s reach is huge. The network now brings faster broadband to 1 million K-12 students and 250,000 college and university students. There is still room for growth and expansion. While Merit reaches 100% of public 4-year colleges and universities, it reaches 45% of private colleges and universities, 93% of community colleges, 14% of K-12 schools, and 8% of libraries.

Merit is not just a middle-mile fiber provider. A few years ago, Merit launched the Michigan Moonshot initiative, which aims to benefit communities through data and mapping analysis, infrastructure planning, and digital inclusion research and programs. Merit participates in Eduroam, the worldwide initiative to provide WiFi access by allowing visiting students and faculty to log on with their home-campus credentials from any other participating institution. Merit participates in the Tribal Broadband Bootcamp sponsored by the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa Tribe, which brings hands-on experience working with fiber technology.

There are other non-profit networks around the country that connect schools, universities, and libraries. But none have been around as long as Merit, and few have have the reach and impact in their state that Merit has achieved in Michigan.

Welcome, Merit Network!

The rural broadband community has a new ally in Merit Network of Michigan. Merit Network is a non-profit network that is governed by Michigan’s public universities. The organizations was founded in 1966 and was an early player that helped to develop some of the practice and protocols still used on the Internet. Their early mission was to seek ways for universities to network together, something that they accomplished by connecting Michigan and Michigan State in 1971. Merit went on to manage NSFNET, a nationwide network sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that was used to connect advance research labs and universities.

Over time, the company also collaborated with the Internet 2 project but also turned its attention to Michigan where it cobbled together a network comprised or owned and leased fibers used to provide bandwidth to K-12 schools around the state.

In the last year, Merit decided to further expand their mission. They now see that the biggest problem in Michigan education is the lack of home broadband for students. 70% of the teachers in Michigan assign computer-based homework, and yet 380,000 homes in Michigan don’t have a broadband connection. They are convinced, like many of us, that this homework gap is creating permanent harm and disadvantaging students without broadband.

The organization recently held their first statewide broadband summit and invited communities, service providers, anchor institutions, and broadband ‘activists’ to attend the summit. I’m pleased to have been invited to be a speaker. The goal of the conference was to describe the homework gap and to talk about real solutions for solving the problem in the state. The summit hoped to bring together stakeholders in rural broadband to form alliances to tackle the problem.

Merit has also taken several extraordinary steps that is going to make them a major player in the national effort to solve the homework gap. They’ve undertaken what they call Michigan Moonshot. This is an intensive effort to map and understand the availability of broadband around the state. The effort is being undertaken in collaboration with M-Lab and the Quello Center of Michigan State University. The concept is to encourage state educators to get students to take a specific speed test and to pair that effort with a program that teaches students about gathering scientific data.

The Moonshot effort is also going to correlate student test scores with broadband availability. This will be done in such a way as to guarantee student anonymity. This has been done before, but not on such a large scale. The project solicited participation from several school districts in Spring 2019 but expects to include many more in the future. The results of the data collection will be analyzed by scientists at Michigan State. The results of Moonshot studies should be of interest to educators and rural broadband proponents all over the country. Preliminary results show that it’s likely that there will be a strong measurable negative impact for students without home broadband. This study will provide peer-reviewed statistical evidence of that impact and should be a useful tool to educate legislators and to goad communities into action to find a broadband solution.

Merit is also nearing completion of a lengthy document they call the Michigan Moonshot Broadband Framework, which they hope will be a living document (meaning that collaborators can make edits) that lays forth a guide for communities that want to find a local broadband solution. This document is a step-by-step roadmap for how a community can tackle the lack of broadband.

It’s always good to have another major player in the national battle to tackle the lack of household broadband. I have high hopes that Merit Network will spur finding broadband solutions for rural and urban students in Michigan.