Occasionally connectivity is provided directly between ESnet and a University, usually with the University paying the connection cost. In the earlier days a few Universities became ESnet backbone sites and the connectivity was funded by ESnet. There were questions on how large the university component is for the ER program. The ESnet Project - Jim Leighton, Program Manager One remark Jim made was that PIM is not ready for rolling out into the backbone. Someone at SLAC may wish to follow up on this.
Planning is an art and very dynamic, so one has to stay flexible.
For example, one has to understand the politics, the sociology, and procurement, budgetary and AUP constraints, one has to be ready to jump on new opportunities such as HPCC, NREN, NGI, I2, and new technologies, pricing and architecture. There were many questions on International link strategy. Such a strategy is very difficult to come up with due to cost asymmetries, program requirements, national policies etc. Will probably have to come back to this later. They are developing a highly available, production quality set of high-level services with a common look and feel.