This report is produced and published by the United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association (JANET(UK)) for use within the JANET Community. We welcome comments on all aspects of this document and on any other JANET(UK) publications. Please direct feedback or any complaints about the content to JANET Customer Service (JCS), at the contact given in section 3.2.1, or email: service@ja.net
This report broadly follows the sequence of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between JANET(UK) and the funding bodies represented on the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), for the financial year 2002/2003.
The numbering follows the numbering of the SLA, and apparent omissions reflect the fact that there is nothing to report at present.
This report covers the period January to March 2003 (Spring).
Electronic copies of JANET(UK)'s Quarterly Reports to the JANET Community
can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/quarterly.html
This reporting period has seen a total of 24 new or enhanced customer connections completed and made ready for service:
For information regarding current upgrades or connections, please
contact JCS at:
connections@ja.net
A list of all primary sites connected to JANET may be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/janet-sites/
The initial programme of provision of JANET connections to FE colleges throughout the UK is complete.
England
Mergers within the sector have reduced the total number of colleges,
but many merged colleges have elected to retain JANET connections
to their second sites. A pilot project to connect six specialist colleges,
funded by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), is in progress, with
five connections currently in service.
Northern Ireland (NI)
College access circuits and the connection to the SuperJANET backbone
have been extremely reliable. Most college access circuits continue
to be used to capacity during peak hours.
Scotland
All Regional Network reprocurements are complete and Scottish colleges
are now benefiting from enhanced bandwidth to JANET.
Wales
All college connections continue to perform well. Implementation of
the North Wales Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is progressing, and
delivery of higher bandwidth connections to colleges in North Wales
is underway.
The core network has run smoothly over the past quarter. The access link to NI was upgraded to 2.5Gbit/s in March. A new Dublin Regional Point of Presence (R-PoP) was established in March, which connects to the Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) R-PoP in Belfast and the Telecity R-PoP in London via a 155Mbit/s link. This arrangement is in co-operation with Ireland’s National Education and Research Network (HEAnet), which provides resilience for NI. The NI-HEAnet link has been configured so that it now serves as a fallback route for the NI JANET sites in the event of the default link via Glasgow failing.
Two major service problems were recorded during this reporting period. The access link from the Midlands Metropolitan Area Network (MidMAN) to the SuperJANET core suffered an intermittent connectivity problem for over seven hours on 5 February 2003. The problem was caused by a faulty interface card on telecom equipment. A long service outage also occurred on the links to the Oxford Backbone Access Router (BAR) at the end of February. This was also caused by faulty control cards on telecom equipment.
Major outages are reported on the JANET web server at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/cgi-bin/index.pl/outages/
The Northern Ireland (NI) - Great Britain (GB) connection experienced no outages throughout the reporting period. The upgrade to the NI-GB link from 622Mbit/s to 2.5Gbit/s, which had been scheduled for October 2002, is now planned for January 2003.
In Scotland JANET(UK)'s involvement in Regional Network and Regional
Support Centre (RSC) meetings continues with a focus on network resilience,
development of services and the possible growth of the JANET community
in Scotland.
A request for information was issued to the Regional Network Operators (RNOs) to assess the current extent of deployment of multicast transport across JANET. This was done through an online questionnaire and to date most of the RNOs have responded.
The majority of the RNOs have deployed or are in the process of deploying multicast.
A multicast beacon server for JANET is now operating. This has been
advertised to the AccessGRID community only. It will be formally announced
to the wider JANET community in the near future. In the longer term
JANET(UK) will work towards establishing a dedicated beacon system for
AccessGRID within the support framework for e-Science videoconferencing
that has been approved by the JISC Committee for the Support of Research
(JCSR). JANET(UK) has drafted an addressing policy and beacon architecture
for multicast on JANET and has defined a model for how beacons might
be used to give visibility of the status of the multicast service
and assist with end-to-end testing of multicast transport.
JANET access to European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) is via a 2.5Gbit/s connection to the Gigabit European Academic Network (GÉANT) from Telecity. Traffic over the link peaks at around 400Mbit/s.
Further information about GÉANT can be found at:
http://www.dante.net/geant.html
JANET access to the global Internet is provided by Sprint®, Level3 Communications™ and MCI from Telehouse®, TeleCity® and St. Pancras in London. This provides a high resilience to the service.
Aggregated peak traffic reached 2.2Gbit/s over these connections.
The topology of current external connectivity can be found at the
following:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/topology/external.html
JANET private peerings with US research networks Abilene and ESnet
are provided via GÉANT. Customers experienced some long round
trip times during this reporting period. This was due to GÉANT
relocating their New York Point of Presence (PoP) and re-routing JANET
traffic.
The London InterNet eXchange (LINX™) is the facility that allows
the transfer of traffic between Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
within the UK. JANET access to the LINX™ is achieved via two
GigaEthernet connections from Telehouse® and Telecity. During
the reporting period, traffic peaked at around 800Mbit/s and the service
was reliable. A private peering with BTnet was upgraded to 1Gbit/s.
Total peering traffic is currently about 500Mbit/s.
JANET has started peering with Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
via the Manchester Network Access Point (MaNAP).
The peering connection between JANET and CERNET was well used during
this reporting period. The link was saturated throughout the reporting
period. More information on CERNET can be found at:
http://www.edu.cn/HomePage/english/
The existing fault reporting mechanism remains unchanged. JANET(UK)'s
Reporting Problems web page has been recently updated to clarify the
procedure.
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/reporting_prob.html
Announcements relating to major service outages can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/cgi-bin/index.pl/outages/
The JANET Operations Desk is the main point of contact for fault reporting and can be contacted as follows:
| Telephone: | 020 7692 1111 |
| Facsimile: | 020 7692 1234 |
| E-mail: | operations@ja.net |
The network monitoring service, JANET Netsight, has been developed by JANET(UK) to provide an easy to understand view of the status and performance of JANET. The service comprises a number of UNIX® based machines deployed around the edge of the backbone that will in the long term provide an overview of all the JANET Regional Networks.
The deployment of the Netsight systems has continued and there are now 21 in place on the network. The RNOs are now managing all the deployed Netsight systems. The majority of the systems have now had all their respective regional connections added. Individual connection details such as traffic, reliability and latency figures are available to those connections via a username and password on each system. Work has commenced on making the Netsight facility available to the Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC).
The development of the Netsight system is very much a dynamic process
with enhancements being incorporated continually. The Network Resource
Group at JANET(UK), which is responsible for the development of the monitoring
system, maintains an internal and customer based ‘wish list’
for desired improvements and enhancements to Netsight. The future
will see Netsight being developed further to provide a monitoring
service to other developing services within JANET. More details are
available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/services/netsight/
There has been no increase in the number of sites requesting the
MRS during the quarter. There are currently 16 sites connected to
the MRS. JANET(UK) continues to work closely with Synstar on completing
the installation to sites that have already requested the service.
Further information about this service is available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/services/managed_router/
JANET(UK) administers the domain name approval service for both the
ac.uk and gov.uk second level domains, along with any modifications
required to register entries in the Domain Name Server (DNS) for these
domains. The procedure for gaining names in both domains is detailed
at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/naming/names_ac_gov.html
The modifications procedure for domain names under ac.uk and gov.uk
already registered in the DNS is available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/naming/naming_mods.html
The rules on eligibility for registration under ac.uk are available
at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/naming/ac.uk-naming-rules.html
During the reporting period 577 requests for new domain name registrations and modifications to existing entries were received. The rate of applications for new domain names averaged 123 per month, with an average of 62 modifications for each month.
The charge for a new name request is £94 including V.A.T. (including
the first two year’s maintenance charge). The biennial maintenance
charge of £47 including V.A.T. for all modification requests
is not applicable to organisations while they remain connected to
JANET. Further information on domain name charging can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/naming/ac.uk-naming-procedure.html#payments_charges
The JANET DNS service continues to run reliably.
The model for delivery of a Primary DNS hosting service to certain JANET customer organisations has been defined. A contract has been agreed with The University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) for them to manage the operating system and name server software, to maintain the security for the platforms, and to update zone data. JANET(UK) will be responsible for routing interaction with customers such as requests for use of the service and related enquires. The order for name server hardware has been placed, and currently the customer-supporting document is in preparation.
The Secondary Name Servers Service is currently available, without
charge, to any customer with a Primary Connection to JANET. Under
this service JANET(UK) will arrange for a secondary name server to be
run on the customer's behalf at a remote site on JANET. By the end
of this reporting period the number of organisations using the service
had increased to 447. Further information about the service can be
found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/services/secondary_nameserver.html
There have been no known failures to the whois service during this
reporting period.
The WHOIS server database of existing names in both the ac.uk and
gov.uk domains is in place, and is currently updated approximately
once a month. An automated updating system of the WHOIS server database
is progressing and it is anticipated that this will be in place and
operational within the next few months. The current server can be
queried using one of the following UNIX commands:
whois -h whois.ja.net domainname.ac.uk
whois -h whois.ja.net domainname.gov.uk
The JANET Network Time Service delivers a stable time reference to customer organisations using the Network Time Protocol (NTP) specified in RFC 1305. It consists of four ‘stratum-1’ servers distributed across the network, located at London, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh. This mesh of communicating systems gets ‘true time’ from external references such as MSF time signals broadcast by the UK Time and Frequency Standard Station, and the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation system. The result is that clock settings across the whole mesh are very closely synchronised and a single rogue system with the wrong time will have very little effect. A synchronised time service is important for some services, such as distributed file systems.
Fourteen more sites registered to use the JANET NTP service during
the reporting period. At the end of the reporting period the clock
in London appeared to have developed a fault, which is being investigated.
Overall, it is a stable and well-used service. Details of the service
are available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/ntp/
The JANET Mailer Shield pilot service will run until April 2003.
It will then be reviewed and a decision taken about what service,
if any, to offer. The supporting documentation is now available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/mail/mailer_shield/
During this reporting period, one more organisation registered to
take part in the pilot, which makes a total of eight participant sites
to date. The service provides a shield to site mailers, that are vulnerable
to Spam (Unsolicited Bulk E-mail or UBE) hijacks and attacks. JANET(UK)
is currently looking at the possibility of developing a Spam filter
to be incorporated into the pilot service.
The JANET Usenet News Service enables JANET customers to receive Usenet News feeds from a backbone of JANET News servers. The service is available free to all organisations with a Primary Connection to JANET, and can provide a full feed of all the newsgroups available worldwide, except for geographically limited hierarchies and groups excluded because they have a record of containing illegal material. A customer organisation may choose to be provided with a News Feed that does not include all the newsgroups available.
There are currently two ways of receiving Usenet News over JANET
and the JANET Usenet News Service documentation reflects this. The
documentation is linked from:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/usenet/
The News Feed Service continues to function well. In this reporting
period, one new site joined the Service and one moved to the News
Reader Service. There are a total of 93 sites connected to the Service.
More information is available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/usenet/feed.html
Three sites have joined the News Reader Service during the reporting
period. There are now 38 sites connected to the service. The service
is documented at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/usenet/reader/reader.html
The project to procure the Videoconferencing Management Centre (VCMC) has been completed and a contract has been signed with the University of Edinburgh to continue its operation of the VCMC. The new service starts on 1 April 2003 and will initially operate for three years. The VCMC will provide support for videoconferencing over IP and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), as well as gatewaying between videoconferencing technologies.
The operation of the JANET Videoconferencing Service over IP (JVCS-IP) began on 17 February 2003. Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) capacity is provided for up to 48 sites to participate in IP videoconferences at bandwidths of up to 2Mbit/s (full transcoding between 384kbit/s, 768kbit/s and 2Mbit/s is provided). Gateways capable of 24 IP and ISDN mixed sites have been provided along with a central gatekeeper hierarchy.
There are 394 videoconferencing venues registered to use JVCS over
ISDN (JVCS-ISDN) and a further 144 venues registered to use JVCS-IP.
During the reporting period 1288 conferences took place that used
ISDN over 4301 hours. In addition 815 conferences took place using
IP and the IP/ISDN gateway over 1886 hours.
A contract has been signed with the University of Edinburgh for the maintenance and development of the JVCS Booking Service. The work to make functional enhancements and improvements to the user interface has begun. It is envisaged that the enhanced Booking Service will be launched in the final quarter of 2003.
This is a JANET(UK) service that provides unbiased technical advice
to JANET-connected FE, HE and Research Organisations. VTAS has maintained
its schedule of product evaluations, most recently examining the Polycom®
iPower™ 9800. This evaluation report, together with the testing
schedule and previous evaluation reports, can be found at:
http://www.video.ja.net/evaluation/
One of the aims of the advisory service is to develop documentation of interest to the JANET community. Four new Factsheets have just been released:
An Overview of H.323 Videoconferencing PB/INFO/035
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/035_H.323.pdf
H.323 Terminals for Videoconferencing PB/INFO/036
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/036_Terminals.pdf
Planning Rooms for Videoconferencing PB/INFO/037
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/037_Planning_Rooms.pdf
H.323 Videoconferencing Components PB/INFO/038
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/038_IP_Components.pdf
The VTAS guide 'Data Sharing Within Videoconferencing' has been updated
and is available at:
http://www.video.ja.net/datasharing/
Work is continuing to facilitate the integration of the VTAS and
JCS helpdesk systems.
Further details about the service can be found on the VTAS web pages
at:
http://www.video.ja.net/
A Factsheet outlining the features of the service is available from
JCS or online at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/vtas.pdf
JANET(UK) is responsible for administering the procedure for the approval
and commissioning of new and upgraded connections to JANET. This involves
liaising with customers to report progress on their new or upgraded
connections. All sites connected to JANET must fit the JANET Connection
Policy which can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/connection_policy.pdf
Requests for new or enhanced JANET connections should be made via JCS.
A list of organisations connecting to JANET during the reporting
period is provided in section 2.1.1. For information
regarding current upgrades or connections, contact JCS at:
connections@ja.net
Peering agreements with the following companies were reached and implemented during the reporting period:
LINX™ Peering (London)
MaNAP Peering (Manchester)
Over the past three months JCS has issued six new Sponsored Connection
licences and three new Proxy Connection licences. Further information
about Sponsored and Proxy Connections can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/connect/types_connect.html
There were a total of 12 at-risk sessions for the reporting period during which planned work and maintenance activities took place.
Major activities that took place include:
The JANET/JANET(UK) web server was successfully upgraded this quarter and continued to perform well. A new style that addresses the findings of the Bunnyfoot accessibility audit has now been approved and is being implemented.
Work on the web server mirror is on schedule and it will be deployed at a remote location in the near future. This will provide increased resilience to the service.
Any comments or suggestions on the web server structure and page
appearance will be gratefully received and should be directed in the
first instance to JCS at:
service@ja.net
This provides the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning
JANET services and requests for information. Contact information is
provided below.
The number of enquiries received and logged by JCS in this reporting
period was 1757. As in previous quarters a large proportion of these
queries related to the Domain Name Service, Sponsored and Proxy Connections,
general enquiries and JANET access/connection.
A total of eight complaints were received in this reporting period.
Of these, two are currently awaiting final resolution.
JCS is staffed from 08.00 to 18.00 Monday to Friday, with voice-mail available for calls outside these hours, and if staff are temporarily unable to answer a call.
During the next reporting period there are two UK-wide public holidays,
May Day (5 May) and the Spring Bank Holiday (26 May) when JCS will
not be staffed.
Enquiries may be made by e-mail, telephone, fax, post, or in person as follows:
| Email: | service@ja.net |
| Tel: | 01235 822212 |
| Fax: | 01235 822397 |
| Post: | JANET Customer Service, JANET(UK), Lumen House Library Avenue, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0SG |
Unless otherwise stated, paper copies of these documents can be obtained from JCS, but please note that some documents are now produced primarily for publication on the web and are better read online. If an electronic version of a document is available, the URL is given. Electronically available documentation is in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), PostScript or Portable Document Format (PDF) format.
JANET(UK) welcomes feedback from the community on the usefulness of all documentation produced and encourages suggestions as to which areas require additional documentation.
Comments should be sent by e-mail to:
service@ja.net
During the reporting period, JANET(UK) produced the following documents.
Computers and the Law (update)
PB/INFO/05 (03/01)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/Computers_and_the_Law(0301).pdf
H323 Terminals for Videoconferencing
PB/INFO/036 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/036_Terminals.pdf
H.323 Videoconferencing Components
PB/INFO/038 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/038_IP_Components.pdf
Internet Protocol Quality of Service (IP QoS)
PB/INFO/032 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/QoS1.pdf
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
PB/INFO/031 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/IPv6.pdf
JANET Netsight April 2003
PB/INFO/013 (03/04)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/Netsight0304.pdf
JANET Services
PB/INFO/029 (03/01)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/JANET_services.pdf
An Overview of H.323 Videoconferencing
PB/INFO/035 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/035_H.323.pdf
Planning Rooms for Videoconferencing
PB/INFO/037 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/037_Planning_Rooms.pdf
Threats to Passwords
PB/INFO/026 (03/01)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/Threats_to_Passwords.pdf
Two-Way Satellite Trial
PB/INFO/034 (03/03)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/Satellite_Trial.pdf
Using Passwords
PB/INFO/026 (03/01)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/factsheets/Using_Passwords0301.pdf
Newsletters
JANET(UK) News 22 (March 2003)
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/JANET(UK)_News/index.html
Service Documentation
Bandwidth Management Advisory Service
PB/SERV/005 (03/02)
JANET Videoconferencing
PB/VIDEO/005 (03/04)
JANET Videoconferencing Service - IP (JVCS-IP)
http://www.jvcs.video.ja.net/docs/jvcsip.shtml
Reports
JANET(UK) Quarterly Report to the JANET Community
October 2002 - December 2002
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/documents/quarterly.html
Other
JANET Marketing Booklet (A5)
PB/JANET/002 version 4
Proceedings of Networkshop 31 (2003)
BETT, 8 - 11 January 2003, Olympia, London
JANET(UK) had a stand for the four days of this major educational show. Staff from various departments within JANET(UK) attended the show and found it useful to meet staff from many organisations connected to JANET. The stand was conveniently located next to the Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC) stand with whom we are currently progressing the RBC interconnects.
Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) Training Course, 15 - 16 January 2003, Thistle Hotel, Bloomsbury, London
A two-day course for Incident Response Teams was presented in London in January. This used materials developed by European Incident Response Teams, including JANET(UK), that are now maintained as part of the EC-funded Training of Network Security Incident Teams Staff (TRANSITS) project in which JANET(UK) and the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA) are partners. 20 delegates from a variety of JANET-connected organisations discussed the current best practice in incident response and how to apply it to their own situations.
JANET IPv6 Conference, 12 February 2003, The Conference Centre, Church House, London
Fifty nine people attended this one day conference. The aim of the
event was to provide the UK education and research community with
details of the JANET experimental IPv6 service, JANET(UK)’s participation
in the IPv6 project and future IPv6 work and deployment. Presentations
from the conference can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/conferences/ipv6/feb_03/prog.html
Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) Management Conference and Exhibition, 12 - 14 March 2003, Harrogate International Centre
JANET(UK) had a stand at this annual event where recently published documentation was displayed.
Videoconferencing Technical Seminar, 27 March 2003, Pippard Lecture Theatre, Imperial College London
This was a joint production with the RBC Technical Group. About 60
representatives from the Schools Community attended this event in
London. The programme and presentations can be viewed at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/conferences/video_2003/prog.html
With the maturing of videoconferencing technology and the fact that good practice in this area is now common place, it is felt that Video-TAG has done its job and that it is now time to draw the group to a close.
It is equally clear that development work being undertaken in the areas of Voice over IP (VoIP) and the development of content delivery services is not being adequately represented in the JANET technical advisory groups. JANET(UK) are therefore considering launching a technical advisory group charged with covering developments in voice, video and content services.
The Video-TAG mailing list will be retained until a new group is
established at which time JANET(UK) will transfer the membership of those
who wish to join to the new group.
Further details on Video-TAG can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/video/video-tag/
The Training Section delivered seven courses over the quarter.
In London
In Bristol
Details of courses and a timetable can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/training/
JANET User Groups represent the views and needs of all users of
JANET, both to the bodies that fund JANET and to the providers of
the network. The JANET User Groups include those representing geographical
regions, those representing particular interest groups and the National
User Group. User Group meetings are usually held two or three times
a year. JANET(UK) also sends representatives to these meetings, as this
is a good way of disseminating information concerning the latest changes
and developments, as well as distributing recent publications. The
meetings also provide a forum for informal technical help, and discussion
with people doing similar jobs. Please ensure that your organisation
is represented at your regional user group, and that appropriate people
know about the various special interest groups, details of which can
be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/usergroups/
The number of user groups has reduced as a result of decisions made at previous meetings.
During the reporting period JANET(UK) attended the following user group meetings:
JANET(UK) also attended the UCISA Networking Group meeting on 18 February 2003.
Further details about UCISA can be found at:
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/
This period has seen further significant increases in the number of incidents and informational reports received. Known vulnerabilities exploited in systems that have not been adequately patched and / or secured have continued to cause problems. It must be emphasised that even a small amount of patching and security put in place beforehand can save a significant amount of time after a system has been affected.
There have been a large number of incidents involving Structured Query Language (SQL) worms. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) agents and warez servers. The persistent problem of insecure mail relays also continues to cause difficulties.
During the reporting period, the JANET-CERT responded to 808 requests
for assistance, 50 (6%) of which involved only JANET sites, 752 (93%)
involved both JANET and other networks while 6 (1%) did not involve
the JANET network and were passed to other agencies for action. In
the same period 36,952 informational reports of unauthorised activity
from the Internet were reported.
The JANET security course has been presented twice this quarter, in Bristol and London. Internal trial runs have taken place of both the management and technical aspects of the re-written course materials and once comments from these have been incorporated it is planned that this updated course will replace the original one in the JANET(UK) training course schedule.
A two-day course for Incident Response Teams was presented in London in January as reported in section 3.4.1.
The Chief Security Adviser attended the JISC Services Conference
and was able to talk to a number of staff of JANET-connected organisations.
The application of legislation to computers and networks has been the subject of much debate and some progress has been made in the past three months. In January the Home Office published guidelines on how Internet services could be made safer for young children. Although JANET(UK) has no services that are specifically designed for children it is recognised that the JANET network may be of interest to them. A review meeting was therefore held to confirm that the Usenet News Service (a particular focus of the guidelines) met the recommended standard and to identify improvements in documentation that might further the aims of the guidelines.
Two consultation documents on Data Retention and Access to Data by Law Enforcement were published by the Home Office at the end of March. These include some of the suggestions that have been made by JANET(UK) through informal contact and a European Network of Inner Mission Movements (EURIM) working group. At a consultation meeting the week after the guidelines were published, the opportunity was taken to discuss these in more depth with the Home Office teams. A JANET(UK) response to the consultation documents will be sent later in the consultation period.
KERNA has also raised with the Home Office concerns that the draft Sexual Offences Bill does not provide legal protection to those at JANET sites who have to investigate network misuse as part of their job. It is hoped that this will be addressed during the progress of the Bill through Parliament.
As most security incidents are now international in scope, CSIRTs have for many years been seeking information on what incidents may constitute crimes in other European countries and how evidence needs to be collected and handled to support prosecutions. It is gratifying to note that after raising this problem with the European Commission, they have funded a project to develop a legal handbook for CSIRTs. JANET(UK) has attended two meetings with the project team to identify the requirements for the handbook as well as the limited existing materials, and look forward to using the handbook after the project is completed in the Autumn.
Within the JANET community we have attended meetings of the Universities
and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) Networking Group
and the Irish Universities Information Systems Colloquium. At the
national and international levels we have attended meetings of the
UK Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) group, the Internet Crime
Forum and TERENA's CSIRT Task Force as well as a meeting between European
CSIRTs and staff of the European Commission who are concerned with
network security and incident response.
Each month a summary of recent security activity is sent to site security contacts through the UK-security mailing list. Nine messages containing new or updated security information were sent to the list during the quarter including new vulnerabilities and ‘Trojaned’ code found in some popular products used within the community.
Further information on JANET-CERT can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/CERT/
The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA) was formed in October 1994 by the merger of the Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne and the European Academic and Research Network '…to promote and participate in the development of a high quality international information and telecommunications infrastructure for the benefit of research and education'. TERENA carries out technical activities and provides a platform for discussion to encourage the development of a high-quality computer-networking infrastructure for the European research community.
On 16 December 2002, the TERENA Technical Committee approved the Mobility Task Force charter. The TERENA Mobility Task Force met in Amsterdam on 10 February 2003. The meeting began with a general update from NREN representatives on developments in the area. A summary of the joint JANET(UK)/University of Southampton Wireless Networks Survey results was also presented.
The latest version of deliverable B (a glossary of ‘mobility’ terms) was reviewed with contributions from all attendees. The first draft of deliverable C (Inter NREN roaming requirements) was reviewed and debated at length.
Initial drafts of deliverables D, E and F were also reviewed and discussed, however, the deadline for these items is not until April 2003.
Further information about the TERENA Mobility Group can be found at: http://www.terena.nl/tech/mobility/
The TERENA Mobility Task Force charter is available at:
http://www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-mobility/docs/TFMobilityCharter.pdf
The analysis of the Wireless Networks Survey is available at: http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/network_access/wireless/uk_activities/
JANET(UK) staff attended the meeting of TERENA's CSIRT Task Force in Zagreb in January. JANET(UK) staff are active in a number of the activities of the Task Force including the TRANSITS project to provide training courses for CSIRT staff, in which JANET(UK) is a partner with TERENA, and the European CSIRT Network (eCSIRT.net) project to develop the structured exchange of incident data between teams.
The proposal to create a handbook of European Law on computer crime to assist the work of CSIRTs, which was initiated by JANET(UK) more than four years ago, has been taken up by the European Commission and a contract placed with a commercial company. This quarter JANET(UK) have attended meetings to establish requirements for the handbook, and significant progress has been made.
JANET(UK) continue to lead the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) project of the joint TERENA/DANTE TF-NGN through Dr Tim Chown of the University of Southampton. JANET(UK) and Dr Chown are also working internationally on demonstrating the use of the Less than Best-Effort (LBE) traffic class for bulk data transfer and simultaneous live User Datagram Protocol (UDP) based applications.
JANET(UK) will be attending the next meeting of TF-NGN, in Poland in
May 2003.
Further details about the TF-NGN activities can be found at:
http://www.dante.net/tf-ngn/
JANET(UK) staff and other members of the UK academic community are
members of the TERENA programme committee for the 2003 European Networking
Conference. This conference will be held in Zagreb, Croatia from the
19–22 May 2003. The preliminary programme for this event can
be found at:
http://www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2003/programme/
Bookings for the conference are now taking place and details can
be found at:
http://www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2003/registration/
The TERENA General Assembly did not meet during the last quarter but will meet again immediately after the TERENA Conference in Zagreb on the 22 - 23 May, 2003.
TERENA is working on the next version of the compendium. Data is being collected and will be presented on the web.
5.2.1.1 Broadband Scotland
JANET(UK) continues to provide consultancy to the two Pathfinder
project procurements for public service networking in the Highlands
and Islands and the South of Scotland regions. JANET(UK) has also been
working closely with the Spark project of the Scottish Executive Education
Department (SEED), that aims to provide broadband connectivity to
all schools in Scotland through the 32 Local Authorities. A Statement
of Requirements document for circuits was issued in February. Procurement
is currently underway for routing equipment for the Local Authority
sites. It is anticipated that the Spark Interconnect will be in place
by the end of July 2003.
5.2.1.2 Welsh Video Network (WVN)
Funding has been confirmed for the continuation of the WVN Support
Centre for a further three-year period. The Support Centre provides
a single point of contact for support and maintenance for 90 videoconferencing
studios across the FE and HE sectors in Wales. The majority of studios
are now able to use IP based videoconferencing. Since the launch of
the JANET IP Videoconferencing Service WVN Studios have made considerable
use of these facilities and have thereby eliminated the direct cost
of usage associated with the use of ISDN.
Further information about the Welsh Video Network can be found at:
http://www.wvn.ac.uk/
5.2.1.3 The Lifelong Learning Network for Wales
Since the rollout of the Lifelong Learning Network for Wales (LLNW)
core was completed at the end of July 2002, it has been used to connect
20 of the 22 Unitary Authorities in Wales to JANET
. The remaining two are in the approval stage. It is hoped that all
22 authorities will be connected to JANET by the end of April 2003.
Around half of the 20 connected authorities are already using the new connection for many of their schools, libraries and Information Communication Technology (ICT) centres, as well as their own traffic. The remainder are well underway with the necessary upgrades to their local network infrastructure and are testing the connection to JANET. This constitutes Phase 2 of the Welsh Assembly Government's LLNW rollout and enables the authorities to switch all of their sites over to the new JANET connection.
The RSC Wales continues to be instrumental in assisting the authorities
with the administration of their connections, on behalf of Welsh Networking
Ltd.
UKLight is intended to be a research friendly facility that provides bandwidth channels that can be managed through appropriate interfaces on network equipment. It will interconnect national UK organisations and partners to international collaborators in the US and Europe. At this stage the facility is a foundation for research and development into optical networking and it is hoped that if successful, and as technology develops, the facility itself will develop into a truly optical test bed.
A scientific case and a supporting proposal for the infrastructure of UKLight was presented to the JISC Committee for the Support of Research (JCSR). The JCSR approved the proposal; however funding approval was required from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) due to the nature of the funding stream targeted. HEFCE gave funding approval for UKLight in February 2003.
There are three elements to UKLight:
JISC has asked JANET(UK) to manage the procurement, commissioning and subsequent operational management of all three components of UKLight. JANET(UK) are in the process of setting up the management structures for the project. It is planned to have the first meeting of the requirements and other groups identified, in April.
All information pertaining to the project will be posted on the JANET(UK) Web site as soon as possible.
JANET(UK) continue to work with the Managing Agent and Advisory Service (MAAS), the JISC Committee for the Information Environment (JCIE) and the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) on the Content Delivery Infrastructure project. The project comprises six trial sites from both the HE and FE communities. During the equipment deployment phase of the project a number of issues were realised mainly concerning the functionality of content delivery software. As a result the project is now using alternative software and platforms on which to deliver content. The re-configuration and deployment of core trial equipment to use the alternative platform has resulted in a delay in the trial sites being able to use the content delivery infrastructure.
Work is underway to identify a suitable location for a third co-location facility. The current facilities are based at the Reading and Leeds C-PoPs on the SuperJANET backbone. The third location aims to provide more flexible accommodation for equipment together with direct access to the SuperJANET backbone.
Details of this service are available at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/co-location/
A JANET(UK) representative will be attending the Spring Internet2 member
meeting.
The JANET QoS Development Project held its third meeting with partners (who replied to the Expression of Interest issued in April 2002) on 26 March 2003. At the meeting JANET(UK) provided an update on the status of the JANET backbone, and each of the partners gave an update on their intentions and work carried out to date. Contractual agreements were also discussed at the meeting and JANET(UK) is working to get contracts agreed and in place with the partners early in the second quarter of 2003.
Instrumentation is the first stage in implementing IP Premium (one
of the QoS classes of services that has been chosen to deploy as part
of this project), and has been completed on the JANET backbone. The
next stage is to remark the Diff Serv Code Point (DSCP) of non-participating
traffic entering the JANET backbone. Remarking of non-participating
traffic is planned to start during April 2003.
JANET(UK) is planning to have the JANET backbone QoS enabled for IP Premium
by the end of December 2003.
Further details of the JANET QoS Development Project can be found
at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/qos/
The JANET IPv6 Experimental Service has been running for some time
now and applications continue to be received from the JANET community
to use the service and to request IPv6 address space. Details about
the JANET Experimental Service can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/ipv6/
During the last quarter, investigations into deploying IPv6 / IPv4 dual stack across the SuperJANET backbone were undertaken. Appropriate testing was carried out by the JANET Network Operations and Service Centre (NOSC) and an implementation plan devised with the aim of introducing IPv6 / IPv4 dual stack by the end of May 2003. The two native IPv6 peering arrangements between JANET, British Telecom's UK6x and the LINX™ IPv6 infrastructure will terminate by the end of March 2003. To ensure that IPv6 connectivity remains with these two peering points until dual stack is implemented a tunnel will be established.
JANET(UK) is a partner in a European Commission funded project called
6NET. The aim of this project is to establish a pan European native
IPv6 network to gain practical experience of managing and implementing
an IPv6 network. The project officially began in January 2002. JANET(UK)
has installed and commissioned the 6NET infrastructure in the UK to
provide IPv6 connectivity to the UK Universities (University College
London, University of Southampton and Lancaster University) that are
participating in this project. During the last quarter a 6NET consortium
meeting was held in Lisbon, Portugal, attended by JANET(UK). Further
details about the 6NET project can be found at:
http://www.6net.org/
HEFCE has formally approved funding for the UKLight project following a recommendation from the JISC Committee for the Support of Research. Developments within the UKLight project are reported separately in section 5.2.2.
Earlier this year a meeting was held at the National e-Science Centre
(NeSC) to discuss support for e-science projects, representative from
NeSC, JANET(UK), the GRID Network Team (GNT) and the GRID Support Centre
(GSC) were present.
To support the development activities and the requirements of the
research community a flexible network development infrastructure that
is separate from the production network has been deployed. The SuperJANET
Development Network is fully operational. Two guides which provide
information on the facilities being offered by the development network,
and a user guide for those development projects that have arranged
time to use the development network can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/SJ4Dev_Network/
The Managed Bandwidth - Next Generation (MB-NG) project is currently
using the development network, full details about this project can
be found at:
http://www.mb-ng.net/
A meeting of representatives from the projects within the JISC AAA programme was held in London on 4 February 2003. For each project a brief presentation was delivered to introduce its area of work and this was followed by a general discussion. Significant debate was generated by the differences in approach to certificate management and certificate revocation issues.
Several aspects of certificate management were touched upon, including the scale of certificate creation and destruction at the start and finish of the academic year, and how to cope with people forgetting pass phrases for certificates - should new certificates be generated or should private keys be stored in a secure database to enable the existing certificates to be maintained?
With regard to certificate revocation, some groups were in favour of explicit revocation whenever necessary, while others planned to leave certificates active, but to change or remove the rights (authorities) associated with the certificate.
These differences will be explored as the projects progress and the results should be reported later this year.
JANET(UK) has been delivering an ADSL trial service to connect off-campus learning centres directly to the JANET network.
During the last quarter, JANET(UK) submitted a proposal to the JISC Committee for Networking (JCN) recommending the launch of a JANET ADSL service. The JCN however decided that the launch should not go ahead. The factors that led to this decision involved the uncertainty of the take up of the service that in turn led to an unacceptable risk associated with funding the costs of the service. In addition, there are a number of commercial service providers who are offering a range of wider competitive services. An end-of-trial report is currently being produced and will be available during the next quarter on the JANET website.
Following an internal JANET(UK) meeting, a project to decommission the trial and the associated trial infrastructure has been initiated. This project will involve decommissioning the trial infrastructure and migrating the trial organisations to other ADSL providers. The aim is to complete this project by the end of May 2003.
Further information about the JANET ADSL trial can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/network_access/
JANET(UK), in collaboration with the JISC Satellite Working Group, are piloting two-way satellite connectivity to the Internet. During the quarter the infrastructure for the satellite pilot was established. DC-Sat.NET completed the installation of Gilat (for individual users) and Broadband Interactive (BBI) (for connecting local area networks) satellite connectivity to 16 sites. In addition, the University of the Highlands and Islands Millenium Institute has created a Virtual Private Network (VPN) of five sites over the two-way satellite connection. DC-Sat.NET’s support services (customer and technical helpdesk and dedicated website area) are established. JANET(UK) actively monitors and logs the performance of the BBI and Gilat satellite networks to each pilot site via its BBI satellite connection at its central offices in Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.
Bridge Broadband Enterprise has been selected to pilot a Hughes Network Systems™ Europe two-way satellite service that would support up to 150 PCs at Cornwall College Duchy campus. The service is scheduled to be operational in early June 2003; however, timescales and operation are subject to Radio Agency license approval.
JISC has appointed Audiovisual Technologies Informatics and Telecommunications (ATiT) as the preferred supplier to act as the independent evaluation team for the satellite pilot. The team will be responsible for producing an evaluation report of the technology pilots with recommendations. ATiT has attended a satellite installation as part of their evaluation process. ATiT is conducting questionnaire analysis and telephone interviews to gather feedback from pilot sites.
Further information about the satellite trial can be found at:
http://www.webarchive.ja.net/development/network_access/satellite/trial.html
The Business Division is continuing to discuss e-Learning developments with the JANET community, and with organisations involved in aspects of the promotion, development and use of technology in teaching and learning.
JANET(UK) has been represented at events promoting the development of e-Learning in specific sectors including:
There has been continued involvement with the Content Delivery Infrastructure
Trial. The report for this project is due to be published in quarter
two.
The account managers have contributed to various RSC Technical Forums/events, a National Information and Learning Technologies Association (NILTA) conference on Disaster Planning and the RSC Annual Conference. There has also been involvement in evaluation of bids in the recent Learning Skills Council (LSC) Intersite Funding for Colleges. Funding of £1m was available and some 160 bids were submitted of which about half received either the full amount asked for or a ceiling £30,000 partial funding. The National Learning Network (NLN) has recently launched a single national FE events web site and JANET(UK) are ensuring that its events and training courses are available from that site.
The Adult Community Learning (ACL) implementation group have finalised and submitted a proposal to the LSC that is awaiting approval. The recommendations cover connectivity, staff development and content development as major themes over the next three years. The primary model is to provide a single connection to each Local Authority, which then takes that forward to its own Wide Area Network (WAN)/Local Area Network (LAN) and thus to learning centres. Visits have been made to each of the Local Authorities with the highest numbers of FE Students to further understand the current arrangements for connectivity and to gather feedback on the proposals. A series of regional events has been planned by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) on behalf of the LSC between April and June where Business Development staff will be presenting and running workshops.
The Business Division as a whole is looking at the issues involved
in widening the JANET community. Eight visits were made to Local Education
Authorities across England in March with a view to identifying the
requirements of the Adult & Community Sector and how a JANET connection
could be implemented and utilised.
The following staff changes were recorded during the reporting period.
Leavers
New Staff
Internal Changes
Further information on any aspect of this report can be obtained
through JANET(UK)'s general enquiry point, JCS. They can be contacted
using e-mail at:
service@ja.net
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