2021 Initiatives
Bridging the digital divide
About 6.5 percent of households in Indiana with school-aged children lack internet access—leaving about 80,000 students in the state unable to use online learning resources from home. This “digital divide” hinders academic success, especially when COVID-19 school closures force schools to move to remote learning.
Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations (IPBS), a nonprofit association of nine NPR radio stations and eight PBS television stations, and I-Light are collaborating to close that divide. IPBS uses datacasting, which mimics the internet experience by using the television broadcast spectrum to carry data to computers over airwaves and an antenna and receiver setup. Students connected to datacasting platforms receive instructional units from educational television libraries that go directly to their Wi-Fi-enabled device, such as a laptop, tablet, or cellphone. I-Light proudly provides network connectivity for the IPBS stations.
Continuing support for eduroam
This year, I-Light continued to help its members begin using the eduroam network on their campuses. A world-wide Wi-Fi network, eduroam is designed to provide a remote, secured wireless connection when at other eduroam-participating locations. So far, the I-Light team has helped eight schools start up their eduroam networks, bringing the total number of campuses in Indiana using eduroam to 23.
Providing discounted commodity internet services to members
In 2021, we rolled out a new perk: I-Light now provides commodity internet services to all I-Light members who supply higher educational opportunities within the state. In order to reduce commodity costs to members, I-Light has engaged multiple commodity internet providers at diverse locations to provide a number of caching and peering opportunities.
Offering cybersecurity services to members
With ransomware and other cyberattacks on the rise, Indiana’s colleges and universities need a way to quickly know about and mitigate cybersecurity incidents on their networks. That’s why I-Light and the Indiana GigaPOP partnered with OmniSOC to provide these services to its members—at no extra cost.
OmniSOC is a shared cybersecurity operations center for higher education and research and a trusted leader in the higher education cybersecurity community. Since forming in 2018, the center has made a name for itself delivering critical, actionable, high-quality alerts 24×7, at substantial savings.
Bringing border router service to members
I-Light’s primary goal is to help our members, so when a few institutions asked for additional redundancy for their campuses, we jumped right in. We created an add-on service where I-Light would procure, install, and operate a carrier-class campus border router for each institution who requested one. So far, three members have opted for the service, each with their own requirements for redundancy and various redundant providers.
Upgrading capacity for Indiana GigaPOP’s route to Chicago
For years, Indiana GigaPOP and its members (including I-Light) have used a single, unprotected route to Chicago. After a few decades (and name changes), what is now known as the Monon400 network allows for several 400G channels.
Naturally, with all of the increased capacity and dependency on the traffic that comes from Chicago to Indianapolis, a diverse route was a welcome addition. In 2021, Indiana GigaPOP was able to leverage I-Light network expansion into another Chicago location to create redundancy. I-Light was able to provide 400G capacity to Indiana GigaPOP completely separate from the Monon400 route.
Livestreaming IUPUI’s 2021 Commencement ceremonies
In spring 2021, continuing COVID-19 safety concerns prompted Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to hold its commencement ceremonies outdoors—and without guests to cheer on the graduates.
But a collaboration between IU Radio & Television Services (RTVS) and I-Light allowed an audience of more than 15,000 friends and family across the state and in 25 countries worldwide to watch via live stream. The event was so successful that we’ve been asked to do it again for IUPUI’s May 2022 Commencement.