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LMN3 contract signed with Thus plc
LMN Ltd has signed a contract with Thus plc to deliver our next generation network. The network will initially have a 20Gbps core delivering Gigabit JANET internet production services as well as research bandwidth for our member's research community. Using wavelength technology the powerful new LMN3 core will be able to delivery physically seperate networks and have 99.995% availability. More information will be available soon in the forthcoming newsletter. Click here for a diagram of LMN3 (for the best view zoom in within your browser by a single click on the image).

Professor Roland Rosner, Chair of LMN Technical Group and LMN board director (seated left) signs the new 5 year Thus plc contract. Robert Clark (seated right) from UCL signs as witness, Pete White (behind) and Geoff Cooper (on right) from LMN Ltd were also in attendance.

Use of LMN IP addresses

The IP addresses of the link between site router and the LMN core should only appear as source addresses of packets generated directly by the devices directly connected to the link. All other traffic should have a source address belonging to the site's IP address own space. Packets generated by Network Address Translation at the site boundary should also have a source address in the site's IP address space.

Apart from being good practice, this is required so that any accounting system (such as the recently discontinued transatlantic charging) will work properly.

Access for network management

In order to effectively monitor the status of the network, the Network Management Centre for LMN will need to be able to ping the site's interface that is connected to the LMN link. This is needed in order to determine if the connection is working or not. LAN extension circuits offer very limited diagnostic facilities and it is not usually possible to work out the state of the line by looking at the interface on the core router.

Any access filters on the device connected to the LMN link should not block ICMP from the list of addresses specified by the LMN Network Management Centre to the site interface to the LMN link. It is allowable for the filters to block access to any other addresses in the site's IP address space.