Ohio Ix

March 2024 Board Meeting

March 1, 2024 – Ohio IX Board Meeting

Attendees:  Doug Payauys, Brent Beatty, Nancy Tiemeier, Jason Gintert, Rob Shema, Matt Moran, Luke Skidmore, Josh Rowe, Aaron Holtz, Chris Cameron, Gregg Dunn, Duanne Powell, and Chris Tovar

Roll call and Approval of Agenda – Completed

Secretary Report – Minutes Approved 

Next meeting – April 5th at 9:00 at Cologix 

Governance Report – We are meeting with Peter Voderberg at Broadband Ohio today at 2:00.

Associate Membership Application – Choice IT Global LLC – similar to Fiber Store, they want to meet more people in Ohio.  Motion was made to approve them for associate membership pending payment.  It was voted on and approved.

Senior Membership Applications – Great Plains Communications – They have been around for a long time; they are located in Indiana and building fiber for Verizon.  Motion was made to approve them for senior membership pending payment.  It was voted on and approved.

Content Sourcing –

  • Reached out to Northcoast Wireless and Wellington
  • Breezeline is still figuring out the fiber into Cologix so they can connect
  • We are looking at other cache opportunities
  • Discussed sending out an questionnaire on connecting to Amazon – can be tricky to connect to them so we can help
  • Hospitals are good targets

Marketing Committee –

  • The last happy hour was the best one yet.  Had 20 to 25 people there and was a lot of discussions. 
  • The next newsletter and press release will feature the founding members.
  • Still working on the website updates.  We need to remove some of the logos that are not part of the IX anymore.  Josh made some updates.
  • Will look at Columbus and Cincinnati for the next happy hours.  Will try and invite healthcare companies to the next Columbus happy hour.  Possible date is April 4th.
  • Look at being a sponsor for the Ohio Association of Community Healthcare conference.

Government Committee –

  • Grant funding coming in April for ACP. Looking to make sure money is going to who needs it.
  • Digital Equity Grants are starting soon.
  • Department of Agriculture – reconnect grants rolling out soon

Technical Committee –

  • Edgio/Edgecast shutdown
  • Everstream is upgrading today or tomorrow to 100G
  • Cloudflare is upgrading to 100G
  • Josh brought the 100G optics
  • Dual 40G NIC to Microsoft cache
  • Installing Arista management switch
  • Rack new patch panels
  • Pull any and all old unused cross connects

CTO Report –

  • 272Gbps peak on Tuesday February 6th, 2024
  • CacheFly cache coming soon
  • Charter/Spectrum still coming but no ETA
  • Moving Cloudflare to new 100G cross connect today
  • Edgio/Limelight has declined to connect this year
  • SFMIX Meeting

New/Old Business –

  • Membership status – past due – Discussed who is outstanding. 
  • Insurance for 2024 – We received 2 quotes for insurance.  Telecom Insurance Group was $4159/year for liability and DNO insurance.  We also worked with Unitel who provided quotes from Hartford for liability and Cincinnati Insurance for the DNO.  The total for both was 2390.  We also want to check with Unitel to see if one company can provide both.  A motion was made to finish reviewing quotes and then the committee (Doug Payauys, Brent Beatty and Rob Shema) will make the final decision on which insurance policy to choose.  This was voted on and approved.
  • Code of Conduct – No update
  • Board Seat Resignation – Brian Riley left Horizon.  He could keep his board seat if his new company would join the IX, but he will be working for a company in the southwest United States so will not make sense to join.  For the available seat, the board can identify an individual to take that spot.  The board had a meeting yesterday to discuss and made the following motion – We would like to reach out to Aaron Holtz to see if he is interested in the open board position.  This was voted on and passed.  Doug reached out to Aaron to discus and he accepted.  Another motion was made at this meeting to accept Aaron Holtz as a member of the board.  He will replace Brian Riley’s spot and will hold the position until his term is up.  This was voted on and passed.
  • Annual Meeting – The date for the meeting will be May 16th.  We have 2 options: Top Golf and Star Lanes.  Top Golf would be $3956.12 plus alcohol for 50 people and Star Lanes would be $3466 plus alcohol for 50 people.  Soda is included in this option.  The meeting would be from 10:00 to 11:00 and then the social portion would be from 11:00 to 1:00.  We discussed the options, and a motion was made to move the annual meeting to Star Lanes on May 16th.  This was voted on and passed.

Meeting adjourned