[LINK] Vocational Network proposal without AARnet or IPv6

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations has issued a Request for Expression of Interest for a $80M
Vocational Education Broadband Network (VEN). The RFI is deficient in
not addressing inter-working with Australia's existing educational
network (AARnet) and not providing IPv6.

The network was announced by the Prime Minister 22 April 2009, in
response to the 2020 Summit. The new backbone will interconnect the
state TAFEs and other vocation training organisations. There is a
requirements document available for downloading (366 KByte, Ms-word
format): Document ATM ID DEEWR EOI PRN24590, 18 February 2010:
<https://www.tenders.gov.au/>.
Some excerpts at:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2010/02/vocational-education-broadband-network.html>.


NO MENTION OF AARNET

What is not clear from the RFI is why Australia needs a second national
education network backbone. The Australia Academic and Research Network
(AARNet) is run by a not-for-profit company to connect Australian
universities and the CSIRO: <http://www.aarnet.edu.au/about-us.aspx>.

AARNet already connects many vocational educational providers in 
Australia, were these are provided in conjunction with universities. The 
RFI document does not explain why this existing network should be 
duplicated and does not even mention AARnet.

NO REQUIREMENT FOR IPV6

The RFI document specifies the use of the IPv4 address space. This
address space is reaching its limits. Other deficiencies with IPv4 have
been identified, particularly security and IPv6 was developed to address
this. AARnet supports IPv6 and IPv4. The lack of any mention of IPv6 for 
the  vocational network appears to be a serious flaw.

LACK OF COORDINATION OF VOCATIONAL AND HIGHER EDUCATION POLICES BY THE
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT

Data networking is one example of a general lack of coordination of
resources between vocational and higher education in Australia. The
Australian Government is funding duplicated programs for e-learning in
the vocational and university sectors. These separate parallel programs 
are working on essentially the same requirement and coming up with the 
same answers. This is a waste of resources.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890