EduPop Background

The EduPop Project improves the networking system between the educational institutions connected to the Texas GigaPOP and commercial Internet Service Providers.

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The EduPop project, with seed funding from the Texas Infrastructure Fund board, is building a high-speed Internet bridge between commercial Internet Service Providers and the Texas GigaPOP. The Texas GigaPOP is a peering point for many educational institutions and serves as the gateway from this area into the next generation Internet, Internet2, for these institutions.

Instead of all Houston area ISP traffic leaving Houston and going through one of the crowded commercial exchanges to reach the educational institutions, the EduPop project would provide an alternate path.

We also expect the relationship with the EduPop to provide a marketable difference for ISPs in the Houston market.  Students, faculty and staff will select EduPop enabled ISPs who can provide a better connection to their affiliated institutions.

A consortium of major educational institutions in the Houston area have come together to jointly support and build the EduPop project.  This new Internet exchange will benefit Houston area ISPs and their customers who are educators, students and university affiliates.

The EduPop project is building high bandwidth connections into the Houston ATM cloud (operated by Southwestern Bell) and to the Houston MAGIE (Metropolitan Area Gigabit Internet Exchange; operated by Phonoscope).  So, the peering connection can be as simple as a PVC on the commodity ATM network in the Houston area or a VLAN on the MAGIE.

With a single EduPop peering connection Houston ISPs will be able to establish a high-speed network bypass with educational institutions meeting at the Texas GigaPOP.  This peering relationship will enable ISPs  to shed the Internet traffic between their customers and Texas GigaPOP connected institutions over a single peering link.

Equipment, power and appropriate machine room environment for the EduPop side of the peering connection is funded by the participating institutions.

The new EduPop peering point allows ISPs to provide excellent service to educators without breaking their budgets.  An EduPop peering connection will reduce the rate of growth in the capacity of the bulk Internet uplink connection needed by an ISP.