Present:

Apologies were received from:

1. Notes of Previous meeting

There were no corrections to the minutes of the previous meeting.

A letter had been sent to the JCN regarding funding. Progress was dealt under a later agenda item.

Linda McCormick had now drafted the issues document on MAN companies and this would now be placed on the UK MANs web site.

Action: Mick Kahn

Obtaining legal advice on the UKERNA contracts on behalf of MANs awaited the production of a draft contract and was dealt with under a later agenda item.

The example company documents and a brief description of the reasons for choosing different types of company had not yet been placed on the UK MANs web site.

Action: Ed Carter and Mick Kahn

2. Principals of Agreement with UKERNA

Tim Kidd reported that the draft RPAN contract was expected by 13 October from the UKERNA solicitors and would then be circulated to MANs. The lighter weight RDN contract was expected a week later. The two contracts should be considered together. The review process would be in three stages. First, the UK-MANs Group will discuss the document electronically and a subgroup will meet with UKERNA, provisionally the week of 13 November and produce a second draft. Second, a meeting with the UK MANs lawyer will be arranged for the week of 17 November, resulting in a third draft. Third, the layers of individual MANs will review the contract. It was recognised that the timetable may slip. The objective is to have contracts signed by March 2001.

It was agreed to use Garrets to advise on behalf of the UK MANs and Dave Vinograd will now arrange this.

Action: Dave Vinograd

Whilst the legal review of MANs by the JISC had encouraged the establishments of companies, it was now becoming clear that the issues of VAT, corporation tax and the HEFCs financial memorandum had implications on the appropriateness and structure of MAN companies.

One area where there did not appear to be consistency was the payment of funding council grants to MAN companies. There is also little consistency between tax offices and HEIs operate in very different ways in relation to tax. Another problem was the potential for corporation tax to be charged on equipment replacement.

UKERNA will be seeking financial advice following an action from the 4 October meeting. It was agreed that there was not the same conflict of interest between the MANs and UKERNA that there was with legal advice and that this was the best first step. However, it was recognised that UKERNA’s financial adviser may not be expert on all HEI issues.

It was agreed to write to the JISC to ensure that they are aware of this issue and its importance.

Action: Dave Vinograd.

The visits to MANs by UKERNA had been very useful. Tim Kidd would include issues from visits to EastNet, EMMAN and FatMAN in a revised summary of comments on the Principals of Agreement.

3. Payments to regional networks

Tim Kidd had produced notes of the meeting on 4 October and Update #1 on his earlier paper "Payments to Regional Networks". The various papers prepared for the meeting of 4 October were also referred to.

By way of clarification of the notes of the 4 October meeting, the PoP staffed hours are 09:00 to 17:00 and the MAP staffed hours are 08:00 to 17:00. It was agreed to use the latter as the basis for the contract, but this might cause some difficulties for some MANs.

There was a need to clarify the definitions of public and agreed holidays. There may be issues of health and safety for access to closed buildings. Scott Currie requested that New Year’s Day be excluded from the extended cover.

It was agreed that the required response during extended hours should be procedure based so as not to require too high a level of staff. The Group felt that whilst a target of 30 minutes response was desirable, 1 hour would be more realistic if this was to be contractual.

UKERNA funding for staff would be for JANET primary connections. If institutions have multiple MAN connections then they should fund any staff support costs for other connections themselves.

It was suggested that large changes in number of connections would be an increase of more than 10%.

It was noted that the UKERNA staffing model of 6 staff did not allow for any accommodation or support overheads which were typically 40-50%. With MANs being separate companies, the JISC expectations that these would be absorbed did not apply.

There was an inconsistency in that UKERNA were funding a single connection for each institution, but wanted to measure all connections.

Tim Kidd reported that the v-PoP host institution had not been included in the transit bandwidth calculations. This had a noticeable effect on the leased line model, but not the v-path model.

It was noted that high capital, low recurrent options such as microwave links did not fit the telecommunications model unless funds could be vired between telecommunications costs and equipment replacement. UKERNA will look at this.

Action: Tim Kidd

It was not clear what the implications of providing additional bandwidth to FE Colleges, either as more bandwidth to a single site or connections to multiple sites. Tim Kidd will ask his UKERNA colleagues for clarification.

Action: Tim Kidd

UKERNAs would like to provide MANs with a single figure which they could use as they wished to provide the service. However, there had to be additional checks on telecommunications cost (which makes up 75% of the MAN funding) and equipment replacement (because of the HEFCs).

One problem identified with the overall financial model was that it did not include capital funding.

There was a need to check the implications of the short term BT connections for FECs. UKERNA was looking at how the capital cost of replacement of more cost effective MAN connections could be funded.

Action: Tim Kidd

Within the funding limit for telecommunications costs, resilient links and additional bandwidth could be provided to give better value for money. Links between MANs were not allowed for technical reasons.

It was not clear what financial reporting would be required from the MANs by UKERNA and the HEFCs.

It was not clear how equipment for FEC connections transferred to MANs would be handled. In some cases existing equipment would transfer, but this was not always appropriate.

The Group then turned to the Update #1 paper.

There was a need to clarify whether real PoPs or v-PoPs were used in the new equipment funding model and whether which PoP was being used would be taken into account. The contribution to chassis costs should only apply once per card. It was proposed that the out of band and power management equipment was fully funded when needed rather being part funded with each router.

No contribution to UPS costs were included.

It was noted that maintenance on GSR routers was considerably more than 10% per annum. Also the equipment funding model did not provide for routers operating at SuperJANET4 bandwidths.

The figure of 80% 2Mbps connections was not correct. It was more like 65%.

It was not clear where the capital for the network management equipment was coming from, but the SuperJANET4 budget was suggested. No provision was made for traffic measurement for planning purposes.

4. Communications issues with UKERNA

Tim Kidd explained the communications failure relating to the 4 October meeting. It was agreed that the UKERNA mans-liaison list and the uk-mans list should remain separate to allow private communication between MANs. UKERNA would ensure that all relevant communication was copied to the mans-liaison list and Mick Kahn will remind people that they need to be on both lists.

Action: Mick Kahn

5. MAN licensing

The DTI had not yet produced a proposal, so there was nothing to discuss.

6. Connections to other communities

A number of MANs were planning to connect public libraries, schools and UfI hubs. Whilst UKERNA had now made it clear that this was now acceptable, the funding arrangements and whether primary or secondary connections were appropriate was far from clear. The different models had inconsistent financial models. In particular it was not clear if a MAN company rather than an HEI could offer sponsored connections. Some conflicting advice had been received from UKERNA. It was now urgent that the situation was clarified and written down as there was a need to make firm proposals for connections. Mick Kahn will raise this with Bob Day.

Action: Mick Kahn.

Denis Russell reported on discussion with UfI, whose requirements were far from clear. It was agreed that Dave Higgins should be invited to the next UK MANs meeting.

Action: Mick Kahn

7. Reports from MANs

NorMAN were procuring NorMAN2 which will provide resilience and were near to completing the FE connections.

NetNorthWest were connecting FE Colleges and bidding to provide the North West Learning Grid with their own network.

The Scottish MANs were preparing for re-procurement.

AbMAN are involved with all the UKERNA stuff, company formation, re-procurement of AbMAN, re-procurement of the Scottish Network, Digital Scotland, ATM resilience with PNNI, but otherwise doing very little.

EastNet is negotiating a telecommunications contract.

MidMAN is connecting FE Colleges and has ambitions for rural areas. Two HEIs are considering merger.

North Wales has had 6 tender returns.

The connection of Aberystwyth to SWMAN will go live this month. SWMAN are planning re-procurement and setting up a company.

EMMAN are implementing the last HEFEC MAN initiative with microwave.

BWE have announced their re-procurement in the OJEC and are working on forming a company jointly with SWAN.

LeNSE have signed a contract with Scottish and Southern Electricity for a managed service. LeNSE Ltd has been set up.

YHMAN is connecting FE Colleges in three groups at speeds of up to 100Mbps.

The radio core of the Kentish MAN is up and running and the hardware is being put in place. They are an RDN, but are becoming less certain as to whether this is appropriate.

LMN is in the middle of re-procurement, is well advanced on the connection of public libraries and has had fruitful discussions with a consortium of all London LEAs.

8. Dates of future meetings

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 6 February at City University and the following meeting on Monday 14 May 2001 in Cardiff.