High-speed area network shut down

A private, high-speed fiber-optic network tying local research, educational and health care institutions and touted as an economic development and collaboration tool, has gone dark – at least for now.

Citing insufficient use to justify the cost of maintaining the Virtual Possibilities Network, an oversight board late last year voted to shut down the network, and it was turned off in March, said VPnet President Steve Trabun. But he said VPnet is only dormant, and the board is willing to work to reactivate it for specific projects.

“It was highly underutilized as a resource,” said Trabun, an Avista Utilities manager.

Launched in September 2004 with donations by Avista Corp., VPnet grew to encompass 17 area institutions, including Spokane and Mead school districts, Inland Northwest Health Services and Washington State and Eastern Washington universities. Proponents imagined exploiting the network, capable of operating at speeds several times faster than typical commercial Internet, for many purposes, from taking virtual hikes to engineers working remotely on complex machines.

Though about 40 documented projects or applications, such as multiple-way video conferencing, used VPnet, “We weren’t even putting a dent into the bandwidth,” Trabun said.

“Certainly it’s disappointing that things didn’t take off more quickly,” Trabun said. “It just needed more time.”

Avista donated more than 200 miles of fiber throughout the Spokane area to economic development. Advocates initially foresaw creating a regional digital university, which Avista Utilities President Scott Morris in 2002 called the “21st-century version of the Spokane Industrial Park.”

“We saw that as an opportunity to help researchers and educators and health care professionals collaborate, and frankly do some great things from an economic development standpoint,” Trabun said. “Bringing more research and education means those people could then go out and pursue grants, and those dollars would come in and feed hiring of new folks.”

But use didn’t develop as planned. VPnet had paid off its debts after operating at a loss, but it was “about a wash” in the end, Trabun said.

Founding member institutions paid $11,500 up front and $1,250 a month per site, and other members paid $750 per month. That money went toward buying about $170,000 in network equipment and toward Trabun’s compensation, travel and some contracts, Trabun said.

But Avista had made in-kind donations not offset by member fees, such as the fiber itself, which Trabun said was worth roughly a couple million dollars. Also donated were about $15,000 a month in fiber-use contracts with other telecoms and technical support staff.

A board comprising members from each organization, and tasked with overseeing the nonprofit that runs VPnet, in December voted to let the network go offline – a move Trabun said was needed to keep the network sustainable. Members “didn’t realize the amount of value that could have been realized by using VPnet,” he said.

Later composed of Trabun and another Avista employee, the board sold the network equipment.

EWU computer science professor Steve Simmons had used VPnet for videoconferencing and had planned to use it for a project allowing musicians to collaborate remotely, he said. The network concept was ahead of its time, he said, and he discovered the aging equipment wouldn’t support his project.

“It’s hard to gauge and catch the wave exactly right in super-high-tech,” Simmons said, adding VPnet should have been rebuilt “at great cost” from the beginning.

“The architecture that we originally specified for VPnet hardware-wise was probably wrong,” he said.

In order to get the network started, Trabun said, VPnet sacrificed a network design allowing greater speeds.

While “nothing mission-critical” to Spokane Public Schools ran on VPnet, the district had used the network for several projects, said Ken Brown, executive director of technology and information services.

“We were very sad to see it come to an end,” he said.

One allowed Whitworth students to observe Spokane elementary and high school classrooms using a high-resolution video camera and streaming audio from two microphones, Brown said.

“A lot of these things you can do over the Internet, but you don’t have the speed and it’s not private, so there’s some vulnerability with some things you might do,” he said.

At WSU, a research project on a communication system to improve the power grid received federal funding for a pilot study after VPnet had gone dark, causing researchers to look elsewhere for connections, said lead GridStat researcher Dave Bakken, an associate computer science professor.

“Having VPnet in place would have really helped us, but getting to that point took us years longer than any of us had thought,” he said, noting regular Internet is not as “reliable and predictable” as VPnet.

Former board members also point to the proximity of VPnet’s infrastructure to the new Inland Northwest Gigapop node – the local connection to a super-fast link to University of Washington and to advanced global educational networks. Organizations might use VPnet as the “last mile” of connection to the Gigapop, Trabun said.

Even without VPnet, organizations might connect in other ways, such as through the U.S. Bank building in downtown Spokane, where many networks interconnect, former board members said.

If a project emerges, equipment costs might be shared by the nonprofit and the organization proposing the initiative, Trabun said.

Trabun said that while there aren’t applications ready for VPNet, he’s talked about it with both Simmons and the Institute for Systems Medicine, a nonprofit health institute, which he anticipates might need connectivity next year.

“I’m waiting for somebody to come knocking on my door saying, ‘Hey, it’s time,’ ” Trabun said.