In 1980, Washington State University was one of 6 land-grant institutions which came together to form a consortium called AGNET. AGNET provided electronic mail capabilities and on-line information. The information included agricultural marketing, market interpretation, and family living subjects. Users could also run specialized computer programs for analyzing agricultural problems. This service was provided to all employees of Washington State University Cooperative Extension and was accessible within Washington State as a toll free, 1-800 dial-in service.

The College of Agriculture and Home Economics Wide Area Network

From those early beginnings, we’ve continued to invest in system upgrades to maintain a state of the art data communications system and expand the reach, reliability and speed of our system. Today this system is part of a larger system called the College of Agriculture and Home Economics Wide Area Network (CAHE-WAN). This system includes a new infrastructure for email, file sharing and Internet access primarily based on a technology called “frame relay.” This technology is a “packet-based” technology which sends information in intermittent bursts or packets, rather than in a continuous stream. The advantage is since we do not use the entire capacity of the network, we only pay for that part of the capacity that we use. Currently the system is providing access at speeds ranging from 56 kilobits per second to 1536 kbs (T-1 speed) at 25 locations within the WSU CE system. As we put more and more of our central CE information onto the World Wide Web and as more of our county offices begin to use the WWW as a new method to provide information to their local clientele, the importance of this high speed connectivity becomes more obvious. We began installation of the system in 1997, have completed some locations this year and are planning for additional system expansion next year.

This frame relay system is linked to the WSU on-campus network thereby allowing communication with any part of the WSU system. In addition, at various points in the CAHE- WAN, the system connects with the state’s K-20 telecommunications system thus reducing the transmission costs borne directly by WSU-CE.

Another feature of our current CAHE-WAN is the RAS system. This is a Remote Access Server that allows CAHE faculty who are not at their offices to dial into the CE electronic communication system at speeds up to 56 kbps. This service allows access to email, the Internet, and the World Wide Web from anywhere in the continental United States and some parts of Canada. The value of CE providing this was heightened recently when WSU decided to stop providing Internet Service via its campus network to anyone dialing it from outside the campus infrastructure.

The RAS service is connected to a local 335 dial-in and to a 1-800 WATS line. The RAS server is a Windows NT computer connected to an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line and can connect up to 23 simultaneous users. The system is currently handling anywhere between 6000 and 9000 calls per month from 175 different CAHE faculty and staff.

The Cooperative Extension Satellite Network

In the late 1980’s, WSU-CE took its first steps into the age of satellite communications when we installed our first set of analog satellite dishes and receivers at selected county CE offices and some of CAHE’s research and extension centers. In 1989, we upgraded the system by installing new analog, C/KU-band receivers and some new additional satellite dishes within the CE system.

In 1999, we began another upgrade of the system which involved the addition of digital satellite receive capability to selected county, R & E centers and WSU Learning Centers. This is a future looking effort aimed at making our equipment capatible with the new digital satellite technology that will be used in the industry in the next few years. New satellite dishes and receivers were installed in the following locations: the learning centers at Colville, Port Hadlock, Yakima, Goldendale and Kelso/Longview. New satellite dishes were also installed at the Cooperative Extension county offices in Republic, Ephrata, Bellingham and Asotin, as well as the Western Washington Research and Extension Center in Puyallup. At the time we went to press, we were still trying to finalize installation plans for new dishes and digital receivers at Wenatchee Valley Community College, Central Washington University (for access by our CE office in Ellensburg), the Energy Extension office in Olympia and the local WSU-Extension office at the new location in King County.

In addition, new digital receivers have been installed at the WSU Cooperative Extension offices in Chelan, Pierce, Mason, Pacific, Franklin, Benton, Clark, Okanogan, and Grant counties. We hope to complete the remainder of the installations in early 2000. Since the original system was installed in the late 1980’s, we have used it to distribute a wide variety of information via satellite, including administrative updates from the CAHE, in-service education and professional development for CE faculty and staff and training/workshop sessions for CE clientele.

Computer Based Videoconferencing

The latest addition to the arsenal of educational technologies available to Cooperative Extension is the Washington Educational Conferencing Network, know as WECAN. This is a system of hardware and software that enable videoconferencing to run across internet based protocol computer networks and uses the H.323 videoconferencing standard. This system currently has 42 systems in the same number of different locations, at learning centers, WSU branch campuses, county offices and in departments on campus. Eighteen of the WECAN units are located on the Pullman campus and 24 are located off campus. On-campus systems owned by the CAHE are also on loan to the Student Advising and Learning Center (where it’s being used for student advising and interviews with potential employers) as well as Educational Telecommunications and Technology, where the unit is used to meet requests by other colleges for this technology.

The system was originally purchased and set up under the direction of former Associate Dean for Academic Programs Larry James.

In July of 1999, the system and the one employee supported by the Academic Programs office to run the system, were placed under the direction of the Information Department. This system is currently being used to support a variety of activities within the Academic Programs area, as well as for administrative conferencing for Cooperative Extension. Just recently the system was used to deliver a training session on “Capitalizing on WSU CAHE’s Communication Technology Capacities” during the 1999 winter meeting of Washington Extension Agents and Specialists Association. Through the use of this technology the meeting was actually held in multiple locations throughout Washington and included a speaker from Kentucky who spoke to the group via his computer from Kentucky.

It is also being used for internal training for business and finance employees at WSU-Pullman and WSU-Spokane. Experts are predicting that with the advances brought by Internet 2 and a growth in the overall computing speed and power available at most desktops, the use of internet based video-conferencing will grow dramatically in the future.