Present:

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 9 July 2003.

1.2 Freedom of Information Act

Paul Kentish had circulated the version of the Kentish MAN Publication Scheme that he intends to submit to the Information Commissioner. All MANs will need to submit their publication schemes by the end of December 2003. Whilst it is not appropriate to develop a formal model publication scheme, MANs can indicate that their publication schemes are based on an informal model publication scheme as agreed by the UK MANs Group on 9 July 2003.

1.3 Grid issues paper

Tim Robinson and Ed Carter are still working on their paper.

Action: Tim Robinson and Ed Carter

There was a discussion on provision and funding of bandwidth for Grid projects which resulted in questions to be put to UKERNA later in the meeting. David Hayling reported that some institutions did not feel able to bid for Grid projects because they did not expect to have sufficient bandwidth.

2. Liaison with Chairs of MANs Group

The relationship of the UK MANs Group was discussed. The exchange of minutes was noted. Attendees at the UK MANs Group represent their respective MANs. The relationship will be discussed further at the December meeting in Cardiff.

3. Broadband aggregation

Ian Griffiths reported that a Chief Executive had been appointed for the East Midlands Regional Aggregation Board (RAB), but that they had not yet met. Similar appointments were being made in other regions. Mixed messages were still being received about broadband aggregation.

4. RPAN contract

Mick Kahn reported that the negotiation team had held cordial reviews with UKERNA. The only issue of concern was that only collective negotiation on the SuperJANET 5 changes was proposed and that the normal change control procedure was circumvented. It was agreed that this should be discussed further with UKERNA and that legal advice should be taken.

Action: Dave Vinograd, Mick Kahn, Phil Brady and Denis Russell

5. NHS-HE connectivity

Roland Rosner made a presentation on NHS-HE connectivity which is available at http://www.lmn.net.uk/uk-mans/roland-rosner-oct03.pdf .

The appointment of a co-ordinator still awaited formal NHS support. Roland Rosner was hoping to expand the activities to Wales and Scotland and he requested assistance in identifying a Scottish NHS contact.

The Group welcomed the initiative and agreed to promote the work of the NHS-HE Forum within their regions.

6. SuperJANET 5 reliability

Roland Trice made a presentation on reliability issues for SJ 5 which is available at http://www.lmn.net.uk/uk-mans/roland-trice-oct03.pdf .

This was followed by a discussion which provided useful input on the issue. Roland Trice encouraged further input from the MANs during November and encouraged institutions to complete the reliability survey.

7. UKERNA issues

7.1 Multicast

Steve Percival reported that Henry Hughes was producing a draft multicast strategy later in the year and that he would attend the January UK MANs meeting to discuss it.

The addressing policy proposals had been passed to Henry Hughes for incorporation in the strategy.

A multicast technical guide had been issued and circulated to MANs.

The grant for providing a multicast beacon was still available for a short while.

7.2 Sponsored connections

          Steve Percival provided answers to the specific questions raised at the last meeting

1. Sponsored sites will not be permitted to use IP numbers from outside the JANET range
2. Transit bandwidth will be sold only to individual JANET primary sites if they are not connected to an RPAN, or if the RPAN to which they are connected is not itself offering sponsored connections.
3. Organisations with sponsored connections to more than one RPAN will require separate licences for each connection. Licences are issued for connections (not per organisation).
4. UKERNA are not planning to align sponsored connection invoicing with the academic year. This was considered when formulating the new scheme, but rejected for reasons of managing workload in the Jul-Aug period, which is also UKERNA's financial year end.
5. It is suggested that sufficient transit bandwidth is purchased to cope with the aggregate actual traffic load of the sponsored connections.

Further questions on the interpretation of points (ii) and (v) were raised. Mick Kahn and Ian Griffiths will work with Steve Percival to provide clarification that is simple to implement.

Action: Mick Kahn and Ian Griffiths

7.3 Audit programme

Steve Percival reported that UKERNA had written to the RNOs regarding the audit programme and that a report on the two pilot audits (the MANs concerned had been informed) would be made at the Network Strategy Workshop. He also stated that the audit process can be reported on by the MANs amongst themselves

7.4 Update of schedules

Steve Percival reported that revised schedules and details of payment calculations had been sent to MANs. The clarity of the information was welcomed.

7.5 Grid connections

Steve Percival indicated that to HE entitlement remained at 8Mbps. UKERNA’s view was that large specific projects such as e-science projects should plan to fund the additional bandwidth they need.

Steve Percival will report back on the status and funding of the special connection to SWERN provided to HP labs.

Action: Steve Percival

8. SLA negotiation

It was reported that there were no current SLA issues. The current JANET SLA was on the web. It was expected that there would be no change in the SLA next year due to the SJ 5 project. Similarly no changes were planned to the MANs SLA other than the improvement of the reporting format in the proposed contract extension.

9. Meeting on unified development programme

Ian Griffiths and Mike Byrne reported back on the positive discussions at the meeting held on 26 September 2003. Tim Kidd will be producing notes.

10. Dates of future meetings

There will be joint meeting with the Chairs of MANs Group around the network strategy workshop in Cardiff in December, but the precise date and time was not yet certain. This will be communicated by email within the next 2 weeks.

The UKMANs Group will meet in London on 22 January 2004, in London in April 2004 and probably in North Wales in July 2004. Mick Kahn will fix dates.

11. Any other business

11.1 Connection to other ISPs

A number of MANs were planning to connect to other ISPs for connections who would not be eligible to be sponsored connections. Mick Kahn asked if the MANs could peer with JANET so that traffic from these sites, destined for other JANET sites could go directly to JANET. He will discuss the issue further with Steve Percival and report back.

Action: Mick Kahn

11.2 Voice connections

Ian Griffiths reported that Keycom had connected to JANET and that some HEIs were sending voice over IP traffic to Keycom over MANs. There was concern that this might invalidate some telco agreements. The view was that this could not be distinguished from other IP traffic so was unlikely to be a problem.

11.3 Disaster recovery

Ian Griffiths reported that a framework agreement for disaster recovery for JANET sites was being negotiated with two suppliers. One was likely to connect to JANET directly.

12. News from MANs

The following news from MANs was received for inclusion in the minutes

WNL (running the SWMAN)

Although we are consistently meeting our RPAN Availability target, we are consistently failing our RPAN Incidents target. The main reason being the relatively poor service we get from our wireless links to the far corners of rural Wales. Our land-line links are fine and very rarely give us any trouble, and (now we have upgraded the operating system) so are our Riverstone routers, but we are being let down by our wireless links. To date, UKERNA have been very understanding.

We are about to start our re-procurement planning since the contract for most of our links runs out in Spring 2005.

We have implemented Multicast and now offer a Beacon service. We await UKERNA’s payment for the latter.

We are debating whether or not WNL should sponsor connections or whether we should leave this activity to our members. Sponsored organisations usually want more that simply a communications link. Should WNL offer these extra services?

We are also giving thought to the most appropriate form of WNL’s involvement with the Welsh Assembly’s Life Long Leading Network (LLNW) as we come up to reprocurement. There are potential difficulties arising from us currently being seen by the Assembly as a "supplier".