"The Institute staff and free math lab definitely helped me move from being a high school dropout working a production job at Dan River Mills to realizing my dream of earning a college degree. I give special thanks to Institute staff for introducing me to the free services at the Institute, encouraging me to earn a HS diploma through Danville's Adult and Continuing Education program, but mostly for encouraging me to attend Danville Community College. I am now a first generation college graduate thanks to the support of the Institute and my own hard work, and my life has changed for the better. Today, I am a college graduate and working professional with the Commonwealth of Virginia!" -- Felicia Myers |
| eDan Internet Infrastructure |
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eDan is the next generation Internet infrastructure that is currently deployed in the Dan River Region. It is capable of transmitting information at high speeds - up to a billion bits per second and uses optical fiber and wireless technologies. The infrastructure is designed to be "open access" which means that any provider of Internet or application services can choose to use this infrastructure. Service providers do not have to incur the considerable expense of installing their own high speed networks to provide their most advanced services to businesses, organizations and citizens in the Dan River Region. eDan as a Tool for Economic Growth The national, and to an increasing extent global, economy is rapidly moving toward being "knowledge-based" with decreasing reliance on manufacturing and agriculture. The "products" of a knowledge-based economy are primarily intellectual, rather than physical products, and are dependent on electronic highways, rather than Interstates or waterways, to reach their markets. Thus, to be a player in the emerging economy, the Dan River Region must rely on its highly capable electronic communications infrastructure.
Although the eDan infrastructure is attractive to existing large businesses in the Dan River Region, it offers incredible potential to other important sources of economic growth. eDan enables a "producer network," meaning that individuals in our community no longer need to think of themselves as primarily consumers of products and services available through a communications network, but can be empowered as producers of very rich multimedia products and services that they can offer to the network. In a national economy that is producing most new jobs in 1-25 person organizations, e-entrepreneurs and outsourced e-services providers can live in the Dan River Region and serve a distant market. Additionally, the bandwidth, or traffic carrying capacity, of eDan will be critical to research activities that Virginia Tech is looking to bring to the Dan River Region. Add this page to your favorite Social Networking websites         |
