Town of Arlington I-Net

by Glenn C. Koenig

This portion of the Open Eyes Video web site contains information regarding the Institutional Network (I-Net) in the Town of Arlington, Massachusetts.

Description:

The Institutional Network, or "I-Net" is the facility by which television signals can be originated at various public buildings and places within the town and carried to a central point, eventually for cablecast on one of the local cable channels. The I-Net consists of lines that connect each such location to the central point. For example, to carry coverage of Town Meeting live, signals originating in town hall are carried from there, by the I-Net, to a central point in the high school, whereupon they are sent out to the head ends of each cable TV company, and from there, carried out to subscribers in their homes.

Background

The first I-Net was installed and put into operation in 1981, when Arlington had cable TV service for the first time. It was installed by American Cablesystems, and maintenance of it was assumed by each successive cable company since then, including Continental, Media One, AT&T Broadband, and most recently Comcast.

This project began when the Town agreed to allow Comcast to cease its support of (most of) the existing I-Net, at the end of its most recent license (including a grace period), in exchange for a buy out sum. The Town now plans to utilize an existing fiber optic network, provided by RCN under a previous license agreement, to carry signals for the I-Net from the remaining locations, from now on.

Current Effort

There are five phases to my work on this project.

• Research on needs and technology
• Design
• Installation
• Testing
• Documentation (for now, these web pages are the documentation. Paper documents and diagrams will be prepared later.)

Each phase has its own page on this site, thus the five bullet points above are each a link to a separate page or set of pages on this site.

Note: These pages are a work in progress. I will update and amend them as I continue this work. Right now, as of 9 October 2006, there are a number of documents not yet posted, so please check back here often.