C2IG Meeting Minutes October 1, 1997

Following is a report presented to the Campus Networking Committee (CNC) on October 1, 1997.

CalREN-2 Implementation Group Status
July 18-October 1, 1997

The CalREN-2 project consists of two gigapops, one in northern California and one in southern California. These gigapops connect the UC campuses, Stanford, Cal Tech, ISI, and USC. The gigapops will support network traffic at OC-48 (2.4 Gb/s) and they will be interconnected via the vBNS at OC-12 (622 Mb/s). UCSB will be connected to the southern gigapop via an OC-12 (622 Mb/s) connection. The plan is to have the CalREN-2 network replace UCNET.

We identified for each participating research group project their network requirements and locations.

Research Group	Bandwidth Needed	Quality of Service	Multicast	Building(s)	Fiber to Building
Alexandria	40 Mb/s	Yes	Yes	Library, Girvetz, Engr I	Yes
Computer Science: SuperWeb	80 Mb/s	Yes	No	Engr I	Yes
Computer Science: Multimedia	10 Mb/s	Yes	Yes	Engr I	Yes
Electronic Art Technology Lab	5 Mb/s burst; 3 Mb/s sustained	Yes	Yes	Arts	No
High Energy Physics	44 Mb/s	No	No	Broida	Yes
ICESS		No	No	Ellison	Yes
ITP: Free Physics Radio	40 Mb/s	Yes	Yes	Kohn	Yes
Music: Next-Generation Networked Multimedia	2-180 Mb/s	Yes	No	Music	Yes

We are investigating implementing an ATM backbone that would provide OC-12 (622 Mb/s) bandwidth between backbone switches and OC-3 (155 Mb/s) bandwidth delivered to the individual research groups.

1. We validated a list of requirements for doing ATM Quality of Service with the Gartner Group, and we have sent out an RFI to vendors to determine what products are currently available that provide for all our requirements. - Responses to our RFI indicate that vendors have the OC-3 & OC-12 interfaces, but they don't yet implement the standards that allow for either standards-based Quality of Service, or efficiently bypassing routers.
2. We have also sent queries to other CalREN-2 campuses to determine how they are dealing with the Quality of Service issue. Responses so far indicate that other campuses are looking at bandwidth overkill or priority queues and RSVP.

The intercampus CalREN-2 network is planning to be operational on January 2, 1998. Our plan is to present our recommendation to the BEG for technical review and approval by the end of October. The approved recommendation would then be forwarded to Communication Services for implementation. At this point, we are considering three options:

1. Wait until standards-based ATM Quality of Service is implemented. (Probably Q2'98)
2. Increase our current campus backbone bandwidth with inexpensive network equipment and try to provide QoS via network media independent solutions.
3. Partner with a vendor and use their proprietary solution for on-campus QoS now, and work with them to develop a standards-based solution to enable QoS off campus.

Discussion

I asked if the CNC had any recommendations about which option we should pursue, saying I would be happy to bring their recommendation back to C2IG. No recommendations were made at the meeting, but everyone was given the opportunity to read our web page and send comments at a later time.

1. Are there any plans to provide single mode and multi mode fiber to Arts and the rest of the campus?
   Answer: The BEG has a draft report regarding that issue, and the CNC is discussing other issues that relate to it.
2. Are there any projects that would like Quality of Service, but could still function without it?
   Answer: All but Music.
3. Is there any point in trying to QoS if the destination sites are off campus and we can't control what networking technologies exist end-to-end?
   Answer: That is why we are focusing on standards-based ATM QoS, or looking at network media independent options.
4. What protocols do they plan to run on the inter-campus backbone?
   Answer: Maybe ATM, but they are currently talking about Packet over Sonet.
5. When will the intercampus backbone design be decided?
   Answer: Unknown.
6. QoS is both a technical and policy issue. Have you thought about the policy issues, e.g., if someone wants to reserve half of the OC-12 bandwidth, how does that person get billed for that resource?
   Answer: CENIC plans to form an academic advisory council to address the policy issues, but it hasn't occurred yet. C2IG hasn't addressed that problem.

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