C2IG Meeting Minutes October 8, 1998

Present: Kevin Barron, John Haskins, Ben Humphrey, Elise Meyer, Larry Murdock, Kevin Schmidt, and Jason Simpson

Infrastructure Tasks

1. We determined that there was no additional cooling needed in either the North Hall or Engineering 1 proposed equipment locations.
2. We decided that each location needed to provide enough rack space for: for a switch, UPS, media converters, and fiber panel. We estimated that this could take up half a rack. Also, there might be a future requirement for providing space for a diagnostic system, but that probably could be handled in Engr. 1. Kevin said that a new rack would need to be purchased for the Engr. 1 location.
3. We further defined the information that the research groups needed to provide to expand #11 e) and f).
   1. Where is the switch/router located that will connect to the C2 backbone?
   2. What fiber work if any, is required to get from that location to the most logical Building Termination Panel (BTP)?
   3. Where is that BTP?
4. We decided that C2IG should coordinate placing the work orders for f) even though the funding should come from the research groups.

Issues for Report

1. Who will operate the on-campus CalREN-2 Backbone?

   We discussed the fact that the status quo for campus backbone operation was the NOC, and so the NOC should also operate the CalREN-2 Backbone. There were concerns expressed over the split organization of the NOC and customer confusion because of the multiple support roles that the individual NOC members provided the campus. The best solution would be to have the CalREN-2 Backbone managed and operated by a unified Data Network Support Group (DNSG). A proposal for creating such a group has already been forwarded to the UCSB Senior Officers for their consideration. But until they decide on a change, the most appropriate group would be the current NOC.

2. Budget Issues
   1. Management Software Costs - From RFP
   2. Maintenance Costs - From RFP
   3. Equipment Costs - From RFP
   4. Infrastructure Costs - From Fiber Infrastructure Task List
   5. Operating Budget, for the following operational tasks:
      1. Connection requests
      2. Assistance with Router Configuration
      3. Troubleshooting & Diagnostics
      4. Go-between for CalREN-2/CENIC NOC
      5. VLAN management
   6. Staffing Costs
      1. Initial setup will be labor intensive, but then it should settle down.
      2. An addition of part time dedicated administrative staff could free up technical staff time.
      3. The staffing needs might average out to .25/year, but this couldn't really be provided by a single person, because they would have vacations, etc.
   7. Installation Costs
   8. If this backbone evolves into the campus Next-Generation Backbone, then their would be additional tasks and staffing needs.
      1. Operation/Management/Maintenance of centrally controlled building switches.
3. Expections for this Network
   1. 24x7 operation implies more staff support – what level of maintenance contract does this require?
   2. Is this a research or production network? – since we are not allowing hosts or subnets to be dual homed to both the CalREN-2 network and the FDDI network, participants will presume that it is a production network.
   3. What is an acceptable time to problem resolution?
4. Policies
   1. There are some issues that we know we are going to have to wait until the backbone is operational to establish their technical functionality, and then we may need to implement policies for their use, or we could have them disabled initially until there is a demonstrated need.
      1. Class of Service
      2. Multicast Support
   2. There are other issues that we can anticipate, but theat might be better handled by the BEG.
      1. New Connections
      2. Usage and/or bandwidth
   3. Then there are issues that we must clearly make policy from the beginning of the network.
      1. Requirements for research group connections (e.g., 802.1Q trunk ports)
      2. VLAN implementation and management
      3. Spontaneous VLAN membership
      4. How request ATM PVC for those research groups, if any, connected directly to the LS1010.
      5. Define when your connection might be cut from the network, e.g., you are adversely impacting the rest of the network.
      6. Security
5. Other issues
   1. The switch topology will require new techniques for data capture; this will affect security logging more than troubleshooting diagnostics via port mirroring.
   2. What services will require coordination with the CENIC NOC?
      1. Multicast
      2. Class of Service
   3. Will we also recommend a specific edge switch to the research groups?

Internet 2 Conference at San Francisco

Kevin Barron reported that the supporting high bandwidth multicast on the vBNS provided a rude awakening to the network support staff.

What's the Schedule?

Our hurdles are: (estimated completion date)

1. Technical evaluators need to score the vendor responses (10/27)
2. Financial evaluators need to develop the total costs for the vendor responses. (10/27)
3. The lowest cost per quality point response needs to be calculated. (10/28)
4. The evaluators need to ratify the results. (10/30)
5. The C2IG needs to ratify the results. (11/9)
6. The BEG needs to ratify the results. (11/10)
7. The CNC needs to be informed that an equipment decision has been ratified, and the equipment is being purchased. (11/11)
8. PO sent to purchasing (11/13)
9. Equipment ordered (11/16)
10. A final report needs to be produced including our design, equipment, budget and associated recommendations. (??)
11. Fiber infrastructure work needs to be completed.
12. The equipment arrives. (12/16)
13. Research Group connections begin. (1/4)

It was mentioned that E & F could be combined in a single meeting.

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