Enclosed are the minutes from the May 24, 2004 DC-TAC meeting. Thanks to Mick Holsclaw for taking the minutes.
The DC-TAC web page has also been updated.
http://tac.cenic.org/
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Chris Taylor
Director, Collaborative Technology Initiatives
Office of the CIO
California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB)
Phone 831.582.3557 / FAX 831.582.4701
chris@csumb.edu
http://it.csumb.edu
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Agenda
CalREN-DC Technical Advisory Council
May 24, 2004
10:00 am – 3:00 pm
California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office
1102 Q Street Third Floor
Conference Room 3
Sacramento, CA
- Logistics and Introductions
- CENIC Migration Reports — Ed Smith
Ed handed out a report that shows that data migrations are complete for the UC. CSU sites are 74% complete, DCP sites are 91% complete, and CCCs are 69% complete.
All the data migrations for CSU will complete by the end of June.
A variety of construction delays and individual campus issues have delayed completion of the cutover for the campuses not yet complete.
Community colleges are doing well. The project was more complicated because many were upgrading from T-1 copper connections to DS-3 fiber along with the additional complications of the more rural districts. For colleges not yet migrated by August, continuing service will be provided until the migration is complete.
- Status Reports
- Report from the HPR-TAC — Michael Van Norman
HPR-TAC met at UC Davis and heard a presentation from Pacific Wave concerning the west coast fiber optic network designed to support peer networking among educational institutions.
Discussions about the TCP/IP bug that potentially allowed denial of service attacks, especially with regard to BGP sessions.
They also heard about Cisco’s problem resolution and RMA policies as they affect CENIC.
- Report from the CENIC COO – Jim Dolgonas
Jim reported that the Board of Directors is in the process of transition as about half of the membership’s term of service expires. As the replacement board members are fully identified, officers will be elected.
Advisory boards are also re-forming. The DC-TAC will be seeking a vice- chair as Mick Holsclaw moves into the position of committee chair in September. The position is a two year appointment, as the person serves for one year as vice-chair then as committee chair the second year.
Jim also briefly discussed the acceptable use policy, to let us know that the board and the BAC are considering any changes necessary to conform to the DMCA responsibilities. There will certainly be some updates. Comments can be sent to your BAC representatives.
QOS training by Cisco in Southern California is being discussed. Jim is looking for a suitable location in the south that would be convenient for those who would attend.
Tom West has resigned as president of CENIC to become president of the National Lambda Rail organization. The CENIC board is discussion organizational options, and this has delayed recruitment of a replacement.
The Governor’s budget proposal for Digital California Project (DCP) was to move the dollars to local prop 98 funding with the funds to come directly from the K-12 districts. Last week both the Senate and Assembly education committees have voted to continue the funding for CENIC through a system level funding mechanism.
Jim handed out a list of the charges from the Board to CENIC for the current operating year. He thought it would help us understand the concerns of the board. For instance one item addresses the relationship with Cisco and the elements of the partnership that went beyond the provision of optical networking equipment. There is a request for proposals on the CENIC web site to do network research funded by Cisco.
There is intent to form a group to discuss Voice over IP and its relationship to CENIC, and whether CENIC needs to play a role other than providing network infrastructure. If anyone would like to participate in this discussion, contact Dave Reese.
Jim wanted to review the document to inform us of the direction they were working under this year, and let us know that there is another planning session coming up toward the end of the summer. If there are issues/concerns that DC members would like to suggest as priorities for the coming year, these could be sent to Chris Taylor or Mick Holsclaw.
Chris also asked if CENIC was interested in selling dark fiber and/or light waves to public agencies other than educational entities. Jim responded that CENIC’s focus in limited to educational entities at this time.
Bill Hamre asked about the change proposed in community college funding for the telecommunications. Catherine McKensie reported that CCC governance groups have agreed that this was an undesirable change. The Chancellor’s Office is working with the Assembly and Senate budget committees to retain the categorical approach. The representatives of the Department of Finance seem supportive.
- Report from the CENIC CTO – Dave Reese
Dave reported that National Lambda Rail is in the process of bringing the various fiber links into service. NLR will be able to light the link across the lower tier of states to create a loop across the upper and lower portions of the country and up and down both coasts.
ISP – There is an ISP program. The Quilt is a consortium for purchasing ISP bandwidth. The Quilt purchases from several ISP providers. As the proposals are evaluated it looks like the set of providers will be changing as some have lowered their costs and others have remained the same.
UC Santa Cruz does the monitoring and calculations to distribute these costs among the CENIC users. The cost per megabit will likely decrease from $126 to $99 per megabit. Check http://calren2.ucsc.edu/ for information concerning how these data are collected and analyzed, especially the last three links of the page.
Dave Reese reported at some length about the complicated process used to calculate and distribute the ISP costs. The costs are decreasing per unit but the usage grows. Dave showed the reports for CSU and CCC. The CCC reports show very high growth due to the fact that while formerly on 4CNet the CCC traffic was not disaggregated from CSU, but now it is. This year, even as the CCCs are disaggregated from CSU the total CSU usage on the report is growing due to increased use. For CSU usage is going up, but costs are decreasing.
Dave also asked whether CENIC should point out to colleges when they have an unusual usage pattern that results in excessive or uncharacterized ISP drain usage.
Each college or perhaps someone for the central office of a system should have staff that monitors usage for unusual traffic and sends out alerts. Or should there be a “for cost” CENIC service. Dave will inquire whether UC Santa Cruz could define a “solution” that each college could implement in a fairly straight forward manner.
- Discussions
- CENIC Acceptable Use Policy – Mick Holsclaw
Jim Dolgonas thinks that the functions and activities identified in the e-mail distributed at the meeting are part of the institutional mission of the campus and its role in the community. Jim and the committee are convinced that a wide variety of activities are supplemental and complimentary with the educational mission of the institution. An activity that is considered consistent with the educational mission of a campus is assumed to fall within the appropriate use guidelines of CENIC. This is a decision of the educational organization.
- ISP Drain Reports – Dave Reese
- Protection from excessive and uncharacterized ISP-drain traffic. This item was discussed as part of Dave’s report, above.
- Dave provided an update that two of their ISPs do allow user identified black hole identification, so we should hear more about how we can identify a source of traffic that should be consigned to a black hole rather than forwarded to our network.
Lunch
Discussions (continued)
- CalREN Video Services (CVS) – Sherilyn Evans
Note the name change from CalVIP to CalREN Video services (CVS).
Video migrations have taken longer than expected. Additional analysis has been done, drawing upon the expertise of a CVS steering group to better understand and more effectively communicate with the college and university video users.
There are two sub-groups:
The user group is re-evaluating the scheduling software.
CENIC is going to try to expedite the migration over the next six months. There are many sites, and significant complications. The schedule has not yet been built. A transition plan will result in new T-1 lines to a variety of sites to continue operation when the legacy 4CNet backbone comes down at the end of June. No loss of video services is expected during this transition.
The LA MCU doesn’t work, and the vendor has not been able to make it work. The Fresno MCU is going to be moved to LA because that is where the greatest need exists. When the vendor fixes or replaces the LA MCU it will be re-deployed.
At the end of June, CENIC will assume full support responsibilities for all video conferencing activity and infrastructure, including both the remaining H.320 and the new H.323 services.
One of the challenges in deploying video services is determining campus contacts. There is a desire to update the contact information by asking the Chief Executive Officer of each university and college district to specify the individuals CENIC should contact regarding video or data project coordination.
- NOC Information Services — Michel Davidoff
- NOC advisory subcommittee
A discussion paper was distributed containing a draft list of information services the DC-TAC may want to recommend that the CENIC NOC provide to its associate campuses. No consensus was reached regarding the items on the list.
Michel invited discussion about the process by which the group makes recommendations. How do we clearly communicate to CENIC what needs to be done?
Jim added a thought about the difficulty of developing clear and representative consensus given the varied attendance at the DC-TAC meetings. The importance of posting meeting minutes and using the dc-tac@lists.cenic.org were re-emphasized given recent reductions in travel budgets.
Michel reported a NOC Working Group (formed from a previous NOC RFP Subcommittee) is also reviewing the NOC RFP to determine what deliverables specified in the RFP have been met, and what have not yet been met.
There was continued discussion about what sort of metrics should be requested, and can be provided. There are some suggested metrics that may be valued, and others that may be less valued.
It was agreed that the draft list of possible NOC information services will be posted on the web for general review. In addition, the NOC Working Group will take these potential recommendations, as well as comments from various other constituencies, and develop a minimum set of information resources for the DC-TAC’s consideration at its next regularly scheduled meeting.
- CENIC 2005 Conference — Jerry Keith
Jerry shared that conference planning is beginning now, and passed out a sheet inviting suggestions of topics for conference content. Suggestions for topics, and for people who would be good members of a program committee are welcome and can be sent to Jerry Keith, or to one of your system’s representatives.
- What do we call ourselves in this partnership? — Jim Dolgonas
- Not “vendor” and not “customer”
- What to call the “provider of network services”?
- What to call the “consumer of network services”?
Jim shared that the nature of our community of service is such that the colleges who are using the system are not thought of or properly referred to as customers. Jim suggests that we are “associates” of CENIC, and are involved with and contributing to the development and delivery of services.
- Individual Campus Reports — 3 minutes per campus
- Future Agenda Items and Next Meeting
- July 23, 2004 at LAX Radisson ?
- Adjourn
Notes taken by Mick Holsclaw (thanks Mick!)