Network Startup Resource Center Supplemental Proposal for NIE Bush and Klensin Overview and Introduction Under NSF Grant NCR-9216064, the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) has developed and extended technologies to enable the establishment of networks in developing areas in suppor of US scientific collaborations. Those technologies have focused on sustainable and easy-to-set-up network arrangements, rather than arrangements that assume high levels of initial technical expertise or financial resources. What the NIE effort has taught us about low-cost sustainable networks is as applicable to networks for K-12 as it is for those in developing countries. NIE efforts can, and should, take advantage of what we have learned. For K-12 schools, the key issue in installing and operating sustainable Internet connections is not the availability of service providers and bandwidth, although that has been a problem in the past and appears likely to continue to be a problem in many areas in the immediate future. Instead, the critical path includes training of leadership users who can train and "infect" others, network management skills and training in that area, and transitional tools for the natural Internet leaders who are now using other technologies. Many school administrations, faced with ever-tighter constraints on resources, are also very concerned about initial and continuing costs (especially the latter), lest they be faced with tradeoffs between Internet connections and other critical program objectives. As we pointed out in the original NSRC proposal (speaking primarily about developing areas), one of the difficulties with networking projects that start out as large scale, expensive, activities is The inability to create adequate demand to marshal the resources that are perceived to be necessary until the network is in place. In other words, building and maintaining networks costs money and other resources (and these costs are often overestimated as part of the process of resisting change). Unless there is significant demand, the investment may never be made. But the demand often does not arise until networks are actually seen to be in place and working. ... A very similar situation exists in the US K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade educational) community. Few of the innovative teachers, the potential initial users who perceive the benefits in advance, have the political and economic power to affect their networking destiny. Network inertia and data hoarding are rife in the administrative infrastructure, and trickle-down theories are regularly disproven in the data networking arena. ... But it has been shown time and time again that a minimal networking channel will quickly build a user base which soon fills that channel. As in the base proposal, our focus is on usable network infrastructure (installable and maintainable by scientifically trained people who are not computer experts) rather than on, e.g., instructional experiments. This work will provide sustainable infrastructure models on which other NIE efforts can be deployed: it is not a simple end product. Both of the tasks described below both have first-year payoffs. Indeed, if funding is available by late spring, we would expect to realize most of the results before the end of the fiscal year. We propose to supplement the NSRC work--some of which has already been applied to K-12 education in the US--with two specific activities that are complementary to the NIE program: o Adapt the FidoNet structure that underlies the popular K12Net environment for use on the Internet, enabling enhanced Internet use of K12Net facilities and, as K12Net users transition onto Internet transport, use of a wide range of Internet facilities from K12Net tools. o Help to establish a multi-school-district computer network, attached to the Internet, in a way that is adaptable to other systems, that will scale well--both to other areas and over time within this service domain--and that will create and utilize training materials that can be used in other locations. The Two Supplemental Work Items (1) Adapting K12Net, and FidoNet tools more generally, to the Internet. The teachers, administrators, and librarians who have created the existing "K12Net" network, typically using their own energy and resources, are natural leaders for the transition from different network environments to direct use of the Internet. This network now serves at least 550 FidoNet-compatible BBS systems on six continents; each system serves an average of 100 regular users. In addition, there are in excess of 7,000 regular Internet readers of selected K12Net newsgroups copied ("gatewayed" using NSRC facilities) from the FidoNet BBSs. Conversion of the FidoNet portion of K12Net into active Internet supporters and facilitators will require some tools and documentation that focus on a smooth transition between the "old" and "new" environments. This is especially important since their existing network technology provides some facilities that do not have exact Internet analogies. For example, the conversion of FidoNet echos to newsgroups should be supplemented by some very-simple-to-use newsreader software based on user experiences and oriented toward the K-12 community. We propose to (i) Create tools to faciliate routing of FidoNet traffic over the Internet, rather than having it be dependent on applications-level conversion gateways. (ii) Create tools to permit accessing FidoNet bulletin boards and "echos" from conventional Internet facilities. (iii) Create tools to permit accessing a range of Internet facilities and information resources from conventional FidoNet bulletin boards. (iv) Install these new facilities in two schools, one using a dialup service to the Internet point of presence and the other using leased line facilities that are already in place. (v) Train a number of teachers, librarians, and school technology specialists in the use of these tools, focusing on a smooth transition from already-understood network technologies. (vi) Test the tools and modify them as dictated by experience and user comments. (vii) Disseminate the tools and training materials via NSRC gopher and FTP servers and other depositories as appropriate, utilizing the existing K12Net distribution mechanisms to help make their availability known to the community of greatest interest. These developments and experiments will be carried out primarily in Western Oregon, where one of the K12Net founders has agreed to participate in this effort and where a local IP supplier is willing to supply service to the schools at cost to facilitate this effort. The two schools chosen are respectively rural and urban and connected by leased line and dialup IP. (2) Examining an expandable, core-installation-based school network model and the associated system management issues. School systems that are considering "connection to the Internet" today are faced with a surplus of confusing options. If administrators ask for advice from several sources, they are most likely to be offered system-wide terminal dialup access to a UNIX or VMS host or other midsize system with an Internet connection or possibly be given a bewildering selection of scenarios about hosts at various levels and different types of connections. None of these options are likely to include include adequate consideration of long-term scaling, i.e., how the network should be arranged to expand smoothly as the number of host devices rises. Those considerations include not only technical and wiring issues, but issues of assignment of names to hosts, logical location of servers, and so on. Educators do not understand the implications or consequences of configuration choices. For example, school systems are rarely informed until it is too late that some network configuration changes may require making individual configuration changes to each installed PC- or Mac-sized host in the system. In southern New Hampshire the Southeastern Regional Education Service Center (SERESC) will be installing an IP network for its members this spring and summer. The initial design calls for a 56Kb IP link to the consortium offices and dialup connections from the 40 schools (divided into 12 Districts and seven Supervisory Advisory Units). Their network management and training plans are still somewhat in flux. We propose to assist them with design and configuration decisions for their network, in deploying tools discovered or extended by NSRC to individual schools, and in training network managers both at the central hub side and in individual school districts. SERESC's existing model is to train educators as technical specialists and to have these people train each other, rather than to try to turn technical specialists into educators. That model is very attractive to us because it implies the ability to initialize a process that will then be self-sustaining. Specifically, we propose to: (i) Assist SERESC in network design, including location of dialup IP servers, assignment and management of name space, and development of expandable/scalable relationships of various network elements to schools and school districts. (ii) Train SERESC-designated network management personnel to operate the network as configured, to understand the design choices made, and to be able to train others in this material. (iii) Teach selected SERESC network management personnel and school district technical specialists about the options available for workstations and other devices installed in schools, and how to obtain, install, maintain, and trouble-shoot network software and hardware for those machines. These people would then be prepared to pass this knowledge on to others. (iv) Prepare notes on "choices in establishing and configuring school system Internet connections" based on the SERESC experience. (v) Prepare written copies of training materials and guides based on the training experience and problems encountered and solved. SERESC provides an excellent organizational structure for this effort for several reasons: o New Hampshire is well-known as the state with the greatest level of local control and finance (90%). Approaches that can work in New Hampshire will probably work anywhere. In particular, these approaches will be adaptable to nearly any school district since the need for state-level (or other large-scale) infrastructure is not a prerequisite. o The SERESC area contains a broad mix of institutions and arrangements. It contains both urban and rural districts, small and large schools, school districts that are already networked (using legacy technologies, not IP) and schools that have only recently begun to think about computer networks. Reflecting this, there are differences in experience and technical skill levels across the area, and differences in expectations about how rapidly a transition to Internet services can occur. o We have the enthusiastic cooperation of both SERESC administration and the NH Department of Education in this project. The latter considers the SERESC effort to be an important pilot and demonstration of a model that could be expanded to spread Internet arrangements across the state. The combination of these factors should permit us to develop and test materials that will be of benefit to many types of school networking situations across the country. Relationship to NSRC Progress The base NSRC effort is now entering its second year. As originally proposed, it represented relatively low direct time investments by Dr. Klensin and Mr. Bush, leveraging off of their previous volunteer efforts. Because it involves major programmming development and daytime teaching roles, this supplement will call for larger time commitments, but those can be carried out without impeding progress on the base effort. Conversely, the training materials and FidoNet-Internet tools to be developed here will have immediate application to NSRC's efforts to connect US scientists to collaborators in developing countries and to facilitate the networking efforts of US scientists abroad.