The Quilt Wraps Up Verio

Verio, an Englewood, Colo.-based provider of IP services, yesterday announced that it has been selected as an authorized provider of broadband network services for The Quilt’s Commodity Internet Services (CIS) project, which is sponsored by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), a university-led research and development consortium.

The goal of The Quilt is to provide a forum for communication among nonprofit advanced regional network organizations, UCAID and other organizations dedicated to advancing research and education in the United States. Those organizations include institutions of higher learning and research universities. CIS takes on the pragmatic role of aggregating the buying power of The Quilt participants to get the best value and lowest priced commodity Internet services.

“The Quilt participants serve over a hundred institutions, whose aggregated bandwidth requirements for commodity Internet service are expected to grow to more than 17 gigabits per second in the next year,” said Gwendolyn Huntoon, executive director of The Quilt. “The high performance, NTT/Verio advanced networking solutions designed for large organizations will provide the speed and capacity The Quilt’s institutions require to move large amounts of data quickly and reliably, and bring the power of this technology to bear on their organizations’ service delivery.”

Prior to being selected as an authorized provider for the CIS project, Verio reports that it needed to meet specific parameters, including the following:

• National pricing for The Quilt participants.
• Peering, including number and location of public and private peering points.
• Availability of advanced services such as Multicast and IPv6.
• Backbone and support services.

“NTT/Verio advanced network services are gaining tremendous traction in the education and research sectors as we continue to enhance our portfolio,” said Mike Stewart, president of Verio Broadband Services business unit. “The Quilt’s CIS project is at the forefront of networking technologies for the educational and research sector and we look forward to working with the top institutions in the country to deliver on their objectives.”

Do you have a comment or question about this article or the ASP industry in general? Speak out in the ASP Discussion Forum.