R2 — Deploy at least one protocol-level preservation node

Audience: Research institutions (research IT, institutional repositories, research libraries).

Action: Deploy at least one Tier 3 preservation node — a BitTorrent seeder, a Tor relay, a Forgejo instance, an IPFS pinning node, or an AT Protocol personal data server — on existing institutional infrastructure within twelve months. Document the deployment as a reference configuration for subsequent institutions.

Rationale: Tier 3 is the only architecture that generates preservation redundancy and compliance verification as structural byproducts of operation (C-0007, C-0013). The marginal cost on existing infrastructure is effectively zero (C-0006). The deployment establishes the institution's capacity to participate in protocol-level preservation before the mandate regime requires it (C-0025), and produces the operational experience necessary to scale subsequent deployments.

Reference configurations from existing deployments at TU Dortmund, TU Dresden, and MIT (E-0057) demonstrate the operational overhead is within the capacity of existing IT staff or student volunteers. The deployment is operationally trivial; the recommendation is to do it before the mandate regime requires it, not after.

R2 is the operational hinge. Without one deployed node, R1's audit cannot be tested against an alternative; without R2, R3 (compliance evidence into deposit workflow) has no Tier 3 endpoint to deposit into.