Present:

Morning only

Afternoon only

1. Administration

Dave Vinograd told the meeting that he would be going part time at City University from October, but would continue to be active in the London Metropolitan Network. The Group agreed that it would be appropriate for him to continue as Convener.

Tim Robinson of NetNorthWest was welcomed to his first meeting. He is replacing Pete Mills who has moved to a new job, heading up a university company.

2. Notes of Previous meeting

Mick Kahn and Dave Vinograd apologised for not circulating the minutes of the previous meeting, held on 3 May 2000 in Edinburgh. Mick Kahn highlighted the matters arising.

The Group was very concerned that there had still been no indication of capital funding that would be available to MANs in order to deliver the SuperJANET4 service to HEIs, the bandwidth that they would be required to deliver to HEIs or the recurrent funding that would be available to maintain the service.

The matter had been raised at various JISC, JCN and UKERNA meetings, but the Group agreed that a formal letter on behalf of all MANs should be sent to the Chair of JCN, copied to UKERNA. The letter would also ask about provisions for delivering managed bandwidth services.

Action: Dave Vinograd and Mick Kahn

It was understood that a total of £15.2M capital funding would be available from JISC to MANs of which 75% would be allocated based on total HE and FE funding for the institutions connected to the MAN, with the remainder as a contingency fund. It was hoped that the allocations would be made by the end of July. The MANs would be asked to make proposals to improve resilience and capacity for endorsement by UKERNA.

Linda McCormick reported that Mike Tedd had agreed for his document to be used as the basis for an issues document, that she would now edit and Mick Kahn would place on the web.

Action: Linda McCormick and Mick Kahn

Dave Vinograd reported that he would not be able to arrange a lawyer until UKERNA had produced a draft contract. It was likely that Garrets would be used, following their good reception by the community at the 2 June meeting to discuss the Principles of Agreement between UKERNA and MANs.

Action: Dave Vinograd

The meeting on 2 June to discuss the Principals of Agreement for the contract between UKERNA and MANs was well documented in Tim Kidd’s notes, which are available at http://www.superjanet4.net/regionalisation/notes_020600.pdf.

David Harrison reported that whilst there had been some support at the SuperJANET4 Advisory Group for the production of template company documents for MANs, this had not met with universal support. One issue was that there was not a single right way in some areas (e.g. as to whether the company should be limited by shares or guarantee). An alternative proposal was that two existing sets of company documents should be made available via the UK MANs Group web site with a commentary that highlighted the difference and identified the issues that had not been straight forward in drawing up the documents. London Metropolitan Network Limited and YHMAN Ltd were proposed as examples.

Action: Mick Kahn and Ed Carter

There had been no further communication from DTI or Oftel regarding licencing.

3. SuperJANET4

Rolly Trice gave a presentation on the plans for SuperJANET4 Rollout, which is on http://www.superjanet4/regionalisation/ukmans04-07-00/R.Trice_040700.htm.

There was discussion on the need for UPS for the UKERNA equipment and it was agreed that this depended on an environment risk analysis at the MAN level.

The development network would be used to pilot DWDM in the first instance. Suggestions for future use would be welcomed by UKERNA. It was noted that it did not extend outside WorldCom’s sites at present.

The Operational Standards group had met on 8 June, but the output document of that meeting was not yet available.

4. The People’s Network

David Potts and Oliver Gilman from the People’s Network Team were welcomed to the meeting.

Mick Kahn reported that a UK MANs Subgroup of Phil Brady and himself had met with Chris Batt and other members of the People’s Network Team on 30 May 2000. Two librarians with an involvement in MANs (suggested by SCONUL), Clive Field from Birmingham University and Andrew McDonald from the University of Sunderland, had also attended. Chris Batt had explained that the New Opportunites Fund (NOF) funding was issued to individual authorities. Regional collaboration was welcomed, but could not be mandated. Proposals for academic MANs to provide the connectivity of the People’s Network would be welcomed. The meeting also included representatives of the other parts of Resource (the successor to the LIC and the MGC), though the current funding only covered public libraries.

David Potts reported that the data gathering phase (PN1) was almost complete and that allocations would be made to library authorities during the summer. Public libraries would then have a number of opportunities to bid against these allocations. The allocations would be based on the number of PCs required, but would also cover local and wide area networking and internet connectivity. 2Mbps was seen as the minimum level of provision to a library service point.

Mick Kahn reported that UKERNA had said that public libraries could connect to JANET through MANs in furtherance of a learning agenda. There was no problem with museums and galleries connecting to JANET and a number are already connected. The links between higher education and some museums is very strong.

Other issues discussed included providing Internet access to unregistered users in either university of public libraries (JISC Senior Management Briefing Paper 10 - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub00/smbp10.pdf is relevant), the links with the DfEE Broadband Initiative and interactions with RDAs.

5. News from MANs

The North Wales MAN had issues a document requesting expressions of interest from suppliers.

The Kentish MAN would be placing an order for routers soon.

LeNSE was in the final stages of contract negotiation with a supplier who would connect 10 HEIs. They were talking to SEDA (the RDA).

YHMAN had been awarded the JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) contract and were recruiting staff for this. The regional broadband initiative was carrying out a separate procurement. They had attended a regional AOC (FE College principals) meeting.

EMMAN were talking with the regional NILTA (FE equivalent of UCISA) Group.

The Broadband Initiative was treating EMMAN as the preferred supplier.

ClydeNet were looking at the reasons for forming a company.

EastNet were in the middle of a EC restricted procurement and expect to be operational by March 2001.

London Metropolitan Network were about to launch their re-procurement. Plans were being made to avoid congestion when the SuperJANET4 and the third US link come on line. They had been approached by the London Grid for Learning, the region’s DfEE Broadband initiative.

South Wales MAN had placed a contract for a 155Mbps link to Aberystwyth. Their courseware now included Windows 2000.

Northern Ireland reported that all FE Colleges had now been connected and that a single proposal had been made for the RSC.

SWAN and BWEMAN were continuing merger discussions.

AbMAN was ramping up for re-procurement, with an OR to be issued in January 2001.

NetNorthWest had appointed a Business Development Officer and was placing selling material on the web. GMING was upgrading to Gigabit ethernet. The North West Learning Grid was suffering from fragmentation.

There were no reports from some MANs as their representatives had to leave before the end of the meeting.

6. Dates of Future Meetings

The next meeting of the Group will be held on Tuesday 10 October 2000 in London.

Future meetings will be held on Tuesday 6 February 2001 in London and in May 2001 in Cardiff.