Present:

Apologies were received from:

1. Notes of previous meeting

With the correction of the MidMAN attendee to Jim Hendry, the notes of the meeting held on 23 October 2002 at the University of London were accepted as an accurate record of the meeting.

2.1 Business Development Managers

Mick Kahn circulated a paper covering the issues raised at the meeting of MAN business development managers held in Leeds in September 2002.

2.2 Risk Assessment

Mick Kahn had circulated the results of a lightweight survey carried out in the web. Three common concerns had been identified - single points of failure to SuperJANET, MAN Telco failure and unavailability of technical staff. Possible solutions were discussed. The single points of failures in the connections to SuperJANET could be removed by interconnection between MANs. A JISC contingency fund could be established to deal with MAN Telco failure. More funding will be needed if adequate levels of technical staff cover are to be provided. It was proposed that these issues could be addressed in SuperJANET5 and it was agreed that the issues should be raised with UKERNA and the Chairs of MANs Group.


Action: Mick Kahn and Ian Griffiths.

3. Liaison with JISC Chairs of MANs Group

Phil Brady reported on the meeting held in December in Glasgow before the Network Strategy Workshop. The Chairs of MANs Group had agreed that they and the UK MANs Group should both continue. It was also agreed that the groups will share their minutes, though some papers will be confidential. The Chairs of MANs Group agreed to meet every six months.

Issues covered were Sponsored Connections, the funding review, the conflicts between improvement and development for the SLA and widening the role of JANET.

Ian Griffiths reported on the discussions on Sponsored Connections and Connection Policy. Two papers from Robin Arak had been circulated. The September JCN had decided not to allow full commercial connections. It had been agreed that RNOs will be able to offer Sponsored Connections. Primary Connections will also be able to do so, but MANs will be able to charge if appropriate. Sponsored Connections will be monitored by netsight.

MANs will be charged for JANET and internet transit bandwidth provided to support of Sponsored Connections. This is likely to be in 10Mbps chunks, but a smaller starting point will be considered. MANs will be able to use 10% of their bandwidth for Sponsored Connections, but must not cross subsidise.

It was noted that any use (including commercial use) by Primary Connections was allowed.

Scott Currie reported that there was a need to clarify which JISC services Sponsored Connections can use.

4.1 Funding Review

Ian Griffiths and Dave Vinograd reported on their meeting with UKERNA. The proposed changes to the funding arrangements addressed three main concerns raised in the Summer survey: Shortfall on staff funding, delays and cash flow problems and inflexibility between the funding categories. The issues of capital funding would be considered in the SuperJANET5 planning.

The new arrangements were based on the trust established between the JISC, UKERNA and the RNOs. Each RNO would receive a single amount equal to the full allocation under the current formula. It would be up to the RNO how this was allocated between the allowable categories of expenditure.

MANs would be required to provide a payment profile in advance and would be subject to an audit (which will be kept as light as possible). Each MAN will be audited once within the next three years.

It is expected that the arrangements will be approved by the February JCN.

It was noted that UKERNA will no longer have a contingency funds, which will remove some flexibility currently available.

The Group thanked Ian Griffiths for his efforts.

4.2 SLA Review

Phil Brady and John Linn reported that an SLA review meeting had been held. The issue of service improvement versus development had been raised. The real practical problems of multicast and QoS had been noted. The need for 10 days notice for maintenance work was being reviewed.

4.3 Specific Issues

Ian Griffiths reported that he had talked to Tim Kidd about the Central Support Desk.

A number of MANs were concerned at the connection of RBCs at BARs as this was not covered by the RPAN contract.

5.1 GRID

Chris Cooper from UKERNA, and member of the Grid Network Team (GNT), gave a presentation on the GRID. The slides are available on the UK-MANs web site (http://www.lmn.net.uk/uk-mans/chris-cooper-jan03.htm). The GNT was well connected to the various parts of the community involved, including UKERNA, MANs (through Scott Currie’s membership of the GNT) and Computing Services. At present the requirements are not well defined. He asked MANs to tell the GNT about projects that they came across. The intention was that projects should use existing infrastructure, enhanced if necessary. There were various routes for project funding, but they should expect to pay for network resources required above the basic provision to an HEI. More information about the National e-Science Project is available at http://www.nesc.ac.uk.

5.2 Multicast

John Linn reported that there were no specific developments in multicast services.

5.3 QoS

Instrumentation of the JANET backbone had indicated that most MANs had some traffic marked as other than best efforts. It was not thought that its remarking at the BARs would be a problem, but this will be introduced gradually.

Fewer MANs will be involved in the pilot than originally expressed interest.

6.1 Funding Review

Bob Day reported that the tariff for new connections will be calculated from a transit charge for the MAN backbone, a fixed equipment cost, a standard staffing allocation and the actual access link costs.

He expected formal contract changes to be agreed by the end of March.

New schedules and the cost of living increase will be completed in 2-3 weeks.

The MAN funding can be used for capital equipment and MANs will need to consider their reserves policy.

6.2 Central Support Desk

Steve Percival circulated a draft paper from Tim Kidd on Central Fault Management. It will be formally circulated after revision taking into account points raised at the meeting.

The need for both the MANs and UKERNA to obtain contact information from sites was discussed and it was agreed that the information should be shared. It was agreed that UKERNA should agree with each MAN the annual letter sent on fault reporting.

6.3 Sponsored Connections

Bob Day reported that the intention was to introduce the new scheme and tariff from 1 April 2003 and that existing licences could run under the current scheme and tariff until the end of July 2004.

It was noted that the issue of funding for FEC upgrades still needed to be addressed, particularly in England.

6.4 Introduction of New Services

Dave Vinograd suggested that a clearer protocol was required for the introduction of new services. He suggested that in addition to impact assessment on the SuperJANET core that impact assessments should also be carried out on a small number of MANs. It would then be possible to form a global view on the cost and effort required.

The risk to production services of new developments was also discussed.

7. Dates of Future Meetings

It was agreed to move the date of the next meeting to Wednesday 23 April 2003 to avoid a clash with Networkshop. The meeting will be held in London.

The following meeting will be held in July and possibly outside London.

Scott Currie asked UKERNA to provide the performance report on the MANs to the MAN concerned.

It was noted that Steve Percival will be the primary UKERNA contact for liaison with the UK MANs Group on contractual matters in the future.

The following reports were received from MANs.

No changes to the network or major operational issues since the last report. The only worthwhile incident to report is an ongoing discussion with UKERNA/CERT about its (justifiable) blocking out from JANET of an FE college caught spamming but LeNSE wasn’t warned by either the college or CERT/NOSC of this action, thus causing us some un-necessary work. We’ve asked to be notified of future incidents and await UKERNA’s decision.

Not very much use of Multicast IP since it was delivered as a RP tunnelled solution through the underlying MPLS VPN. Still no QoS monitoring or configuration work has taken place yet. LeNSE is due to connect a designated "specialist college" by the end of January. LeNSE’s first non-core customer was connected to its non-JANET ISP service early January 2003. LeNSE has become a RIPE LIR (Local Internet Registry) in order to issue our own IP address space to non-JANET customers (not a trivial or cheap process!).

User Liaison

The first SWERN User Group meeting was held on 31 October 2002. It is expected that this and other MAN-related groups will replace the current SW Janet User Group.

Infrastructure Development

The re-construction of SWERN’s backbone network was completed by the installation of the interfaces required to make use of the full 622Mbps of bandwidth on the Plymouth-Exeter link.

SWERN submitted a request for funding to improve the resilience of its infrastructure. In its current implementation there are several single points of failure (both equipment and circuit), notably south-west of Bristol, that affect the service to large numbers of sites. Furthermore, external connectivity depends on three elements in Clifton: the SWERN boundary router, the UKERNA BAR, and the link from this to the UKERNA C-PoP on WorldCom’s premises in Bristol; failure of any of these would cut off internet access for all sites on SWERN.

Our proposal has been accepted by UKERNA, and funding has been provided to install:

• a 155Mbps circuit from Plymouth to UWE’s Bristol Frenchay campus
• a second SWERN boundary router at Frenchay
• a second BAR at Frenchay with a new LES1000 circuit to the C-PoP

Work has started on ordering the equipment and circuits.

The SWMAN is working well with the exception of the (wireless) Swansea to Aberystwyth link which continues to give problems. We have almost reached agreement with the TECO for a re-configuration.

Work is about to start on implementing Multicast on our Riverstone routers.

The Welsh Assembly have finally signed an Agreement with us for us to be the initial manager of their new Lifelong Learning Network which connects all LEAs in Wales.

We have just accepted a new managed Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure to deliver service to our University sites. The service is presented as a simple star of point to point Gigabit Ethernet links centred on Newcastle. However the implementation is over the redundant DWDM ring operated by Thus. There is dual entry into Newcastle University to two different TAP sites, and each circuit is provisioned both ways round the ring to the appropriate TAP site. Final delivery into the site is over a single fibre duct into the site. For each circuit, the only single points of failure are on the final duct between the TAP site and the University. Failure results in an optical switch within 50 mS to the other route, though the IP routing equipment insists on making this into a break of about 1 second. we are in the process of migrating over to the new service, and expect this to be complete some time during February.

Phase one of the MAN was accepted in early December but circuit transition was hampered by a failure of a radio link at Halkyn (east end of A55) following hail and lightning. We decided to defer till after Christmas.

A second attempt at transition for Bangor and NEWI was attempted on 8^th Jan but failed due to a router bug affecting removal of an item in an access list. The third attempt on Friday 10^th Jan was successful though the North Wales HE community could not access the FE community (and vice-versa) due to PoP router configuration issues. NOSC resolved these early on Monday 13 Jan.

An interesting statistic: mean time for a ping to our site at Wrexham is now 3 milliseconds. It was around 300 ms and effectively unusable.

Transition of three FE colleges and a NERC site is planned for next week if/when we can get a consistent story from the colleges, RSC, NOSC and NERC on IP address details. We are unexpectedly finding that being unable to see the tables in the NOSC administered PoP routers currently offering service is a problem.

Phase 2 is making good progress though I have warned C&W that if it isn’t all done and invoiced by 31 March I will be unlikely to get capital funds out of the FE funding body (now called ELWa).

A few weeks ago I sought advice from you all about dishes on listed buildings. I met the local councillor (also chair of every planning committee in sight) on Monday to tell him about the project but we also discussed his sheep herd. He sees few difficulties over the planning meeting next week, and thought that CADW (cf English Heritage) would be unlikely to object. Fingers crossed!

In the procurement for the operational management of LMN, a preferred commercial supplier has been selected. It is expected that LMN will move to RPAN status and the new operational arrangement in place during February. An Operations Manager, to be employed by LMN, will oversee the contract on a day to day basis as well as managing site liaison and project managing development.