UK MAN Managers Group

Notes of Meeting, 5 July 2004 at Bangor and Edinburgh

Present in Edinburgh:

Apologies were received from:

1. Notes of Previous meeting

   1.1 Accuracy

There were no corrections to the minutes of the previous meeting held on 28 April 2004.

1.2 Annual Report

It was agreed that the annual report on activities of the Regional Networks should be published on the UK MANs web site by the October meeting. Each MAN should send Mick Kahn one or two paragraphs on its activities over the last year.

Action: All, Mick Kahn

2. Liaison with Chairs of MANs Group

The May meeting of the Chairs of MANs Group had been cancelled due to lack of business.

The draft terms of reference were still awaited from the Chairs of MANs Group. UKMMG will agree its revised terms of reference by email to be compatible with the Chairs of MANs Group.

Action: Mick Kahn

3. Broadband aggregation

Ian Griffiths reported that John Armley from Adit East Midlands would be attending the October UK MANs meeting.

Most English MANs had had some contact with the Adits, but this had varied considerably. In a small number of cases, MAN upgrades (e.g. FE upgrades) were being included in Adit procurement bundles. In other cases it was unclear what benefit involvement with the Adit would bring, given the large loans that the Adits would have to repay. The contractual arrangements for purchasing through Adits were also unclear.

In a number of regions the Adit was exploring how the MAN could be used as a supplier. This was difficult, as MANs had not been considered in the initial supplier selection exercise.

4. SuperJANET5

4.1 Connections reliability paper

Mike Whitehead tabled a paper recommending a study on end-to-end dependability for JANET. The general approach of the paper was agreed. A few minor amendments were proposed and further email comments were invited within the next week. Mike Whitehead will produce a revised version for submission to the Chairs of MANs Group and UKERNA within a further week.

Action: Mike Whitehead

It was agreed that the study should be completed by the end of March 2005 so that it could feed into the SuperJANET5 process.

4.2 Development Task Force

Mick Kahn reported that the Development Task Force had held its first meeting, which had been very productive. A process for co-ordinate end to end service development across SuperJANET and the RNs was being developed and an advisory joint steering group to co-ordinate this process will be proposed. The minutes for the first group will be available soon.

4.3 Negotiating team for SuperJANET5 Changes

It was agreed that the team to negotiate the SuperJANET5 changes would be Dave Vinograd, Mike Byrne and Mick Kahn. The team will elect a chair to ensure effective operation.

5. UKERNA issues

   5.1 Publishing MAN availability figures

   Steve Percival reported that the UKERNA Board wished to publish detailed reports on MAN availability that identified individual MANs. The Group had no objections this in principle, though would like clarification in a number of areas. In particular explanatory notes of how the statistics were calculated will be needed and an explanation of any poor figures will need to be added as a note.

   It was noted that all the poor figures at present were due to radio and that this was being addressed by replacement technology where possible, funded from the remains of the SuperJANET4 money.

   There was a discussion on the mechanism for reconciliation of UKERNA’s figures and the RN’s own figures. The reporting to RNs was not the same across the whole of the UK and Steve Percival will investigate.

   Action: Steve Percival

   Steve Percival invited further input from the RNs on the reconciliation and reporting of availability figures.

   Action: All