Thursday, November 08, 2007
« NOVA presents Judgment Day: Intelligent ... | Main | Dan Cassidy How The Irish Invented Slang... »
Merger talks between Internet 2 and National LambdaRail the leading high-speed networks for researchers fell apart
The end came last week, and it wasn't pretty: Long merger talks between Internet2 and National LambdaRail, the leading high-speed networks for researchers, fell apart after a meeting of LambdaRail's governing board. The union that never happened has spawned dark mutterings from both sides about bad behavior, and has left universities with the unhappy prospect of having to split scarce resources between two high-performance Internet providers, instead of consolidating them. Talks had been going on for the past eight months, often cloaked in secrecy mandated by a legal agreement between the two sides, so people familiar with the negotiations have provided information to The Chronicle on the condition that their names not be used. "But it's bad, it's a real train wreck," said one chief information officer at a major university. Erv Blythe, chairman of LambdaRail, said in a message posted on the organization's Web site that LambdaRail had asked Internet2 for some changes in a previously approved merger document, but that Internet2's board had declined. "Left without the opportunity to obtain what it considered the absolute minimum but necessary changes" to the merger agreement, the board did not approve it, wrote Mr. Blythe, who is vice president for information technology at Virginia Tech. People familiar with the document in question, however, said that one of the rules set up this past spring, when the merger talks began, was that the document not be changed. So the Internet2 board was merely abiding by those rules. The breakdown in talks seems to center on the legal structure of National LambdaRail and some fundamental incompatibilities with the structure of Internet2. Sources have differing opinions about the legal requirements and what they mean. But given the outcome, the incompatibility of the two organizations seems one thing that is beyond dispute. --Josh Fischman

Internet  | NetHappenings Mailing List | Network Newsletters | Science
Thursday, November 08, 2007 10:37:31 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |  Related posts:
MedWatch - 2% Chlorhexidine Gluconate Cloth Patient Preoperative
Scout Report July 4th
NetHappenings
Nationwide recall of selected lots of Rize 2 The Occasion Capsules and Rose 4 Her Capsules
Effectiveness of rhBMP in the cervical spine have not been demonstrated.
Med Watch - Health