World-class network set to power up the North: research, health, education fibre optics network propels North into new communicative era.

Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario is trumpeting the success of a $25-million contract with Bell Canada in building one of the largest and most powerful research, health and education optical networks in the world, right here in Ontario.

The new network, Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION), will catapult researchers and organizations into a new communicative era, Maxim Jean-Louis, president of Contact North/Contact Nord, says.

"We are providing institutions with speed that is close to 180 times more than the average 56k modem in the home or office," Jean-Louis says.

ORION will complement the existing Northern Ontario infrastructure, with its affordable world-class broadband connectivity network. The sharing of information can be attained efficiently and quickly through the network thereby making distance an almost obsolete issue.

"The word international will become almost meaningless because everything will become so interactive," Jean-Louis says.

"Collaboration will be made much easier in the health, research and educational institutions."

Due to the amount of planning and implementation of a network of this magnitude, the execution of such an infrastructure will be an innovative process. Utilizing skilled people will be paramount when breaking ground in uncharted Northern Ontario network territory.

ORION, with 8,200 kilometres of fibre-optic cable, will seek to provide 21 Ontario communities spanning 3,700 kiometres with a 10-gigabyte network.

The network will possess optical wavelength capacities from 10 gigabytes up to 320 gigabytes by applying Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), transmission capabilities and Layer three routing architecture. With this technology, the network will be able to support multipoint applications such as videoconferencing and grid computing. In fact, once ORION is fully implemented, it will have the means to download and transfer the entire hard drive of a 40-gigbyte high-end computer from one location on the network to another in a matter of a few seconds.

The first component of the project has started in Northern Ontario, since the region provides more challenges.

"It was important for the network to deal right away with the distances between communities, climatic conditions and gaps," Jean-Louis says.

Connections will be made in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, followed by Timmins, North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

The market for such a high volume information infrastructure is ripe, Jean Louis says. However, research, educational, and health institutions have to utilize the pipe to get the most from it.

"There is no sense having a super-fast information highway when there is very little going in it," Jean-Louis says.

"When you look at the kind of exciting research that is going on in Sudbury, Thunder Bay and the North, there is no doubt one can make good use of the infrastructure."

In northwestern Ontario, Bob Angell, director of communication technology at the resource centre at Lakehead University, plans on using the super-large bandwidth in less than 30 days.

"We can now participate in projects and activities that we traditionally could not before," Angell says.

For instance, the Large Library Initiatives, which is like a sharing of provincial university libraries, can now be accessible to Lakehead University through the network, Angell says.

"These are issues we couldn't solve with the smaller bandwidth that had been delivered to Northern Ontario before," Angell says.

Another avenue that opens up to the university is called Internet Protocol (IP).

"We can do full motion videoconferencing through this technology where we could not do that previously" Angell says.

As well, the network will allow for a Virtual Private Net (VPN). This will provide an environment for private discussions on given topics.

"It's very exciting for our researchers who are interested in doing collaborative work with other universities in the technology area.

In the future, the university expects to develop some strong engineering and computer research venues.

"We are really just trying to get the architecture running at this point," Angell says. "It is hard to say what will come first, but I would trust computer science or engineering will be our first research thrust. We have a very strong interest in shared parallel computing with the National Research Council and that is the kind of area where we are hoping to get our feet wet."

Lakehead will obtain a two-gigabyte transfer rate from ORION. It will be used as a private lab where users could then develop "tunnels" to make sure information can make it to the recipient.

Ontario's SuperBuild Corp. and Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation have invested $32.3 million in the ORION project. The federal government also contributed $3.4 million through Canada's Advanced Internet Development Organization, which operates [CA.sup.*] net4.

Jean-Louis is expecting a multiplier effect will occur, noting smaller companies who stand to benefit from ORION will provide cash, either through investments or contributions, discounts, or in-kind contributions throughout the three-year implementation period, raising the price tag to $78 million.

No immediate jobs will come from the project, although Jean-Louis expects new business will consider the North as a more viable location because of the very large bandwidth being installed.

He believes Ontario would not be on the cusp of one of the world's largest research health and education networks had it not been for "vision and leadership qualities that have been taken in a number of Northern Ontario communities."

"I think the North should be very proud of the fact that they set the pace for what is happening today."