By Melinda J. Overstreet / Glasgow News 1
Glasgow Electric Plant Board directors approved the purchase of three new routers Tuesday that are anticipated to allow the flow of vastly more information, faster, through its broadband system.
Superintendent Dave Puskala said the purchase was part of the $2.5 million first phase of the fiber-to-home project that was generally approved in September.
GEPB’s internet manager, Daniel Mooney, internet manager, said that about five years ago, the demand peaked at around 3 gigabits per second in the evenings, and now they’re peaking at around 18 gigabits per second in bandwidth use.
“That number is ever increasing, and right now, it’s increasing exponentially. We have around 20 gigs of capacity so we’re almost even hitting the margin and the limits where we are at this time,” he said.
And the planned fiber-optic upgrades are likely to significantly increase usage on top of that.
“We have 10-gig links and we want 100-gig links,” Mooney said, adding that they must have one central device for them to come into.
After checking with a trio of vendors, the staff chose to recommend an Arista device, which has a “far better” track record in terms of not being as subject to common vulnerabilities and exposures over the past five years, Mooney said.
The lead time to get these devices new is about a year, though, so the plan is to purchase a used one that can be in place by around Christmastime until the two new ones arrive, with one intended as a backup.
To give the board members more perspective on how much more powerful these will be, Mooney said they have two routers now that pull in 10-gig connections and they have an extra one on board.
Each Arista device has eight 100-gig ports on it and forty-eight 25-gig ports on it.
“This device can pass, basically, what’s in the Library of Congress every two minutes,” he said. “That’s how much bandwidth can go through here.”
Puskala added that Mooney and Josh Francis, chief technical officer, had done a lot of homework on the products and pricing before making the recommendation.
Chairman Glenn Pritchard verified with Puskala this was not an additional expense to what had already been approved and then made the motion to approve the purchase of the three routers and associated equipment for a total of $143,621.61, plus any additional shipping charges, and it was approved unanimously with all current members present.
In other business, the board unanimously approved:
— A Programming Committee recommendation to renew for two years the agreement with Media Logic, the company that provides the weather information aired on one of the EPB’s public access channels. The new agreement calls for an increased price of $10 per month for the utility, which translates to roughly 8 or 9 cents per subscriber.
— A financial report summary provided by Melanie Reed, chief financial officer, who concluded after explaining a few anomalies that at the end of October, four months into the fiscal year, that they are essentially “hitting all our targets and where we need to be” for the year.
Before the meeting adjourned, Puskala noted that, like the November meeting that was a week later than normal, the one in December that normally would have been Dec. 27 is also rescheduled due to a holiday.
The next meeting is at 5 p.m. Dec. 20.
NOTE: This report was compiled after the writer viewed the meeting on the Glasgow Electric Plant Board’s You Tube channel after the actual meeting and then verified some factual information.
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