Meeting Minutes
February 9, 2004 (Minneapolis, MN)
Members and guests attending: I2-R.Summerhill, MN - S.
Cawley, MT - R. Ford, ND - B. Neas, SD - W. Wilson, WI – A.Stunden,
M. Lombardi, WI - M. Schlicht
- CHICAGO TO MADISON/MINNEAPOLIS (M.Schlict). M.Schlict described progress
on the purchase of the fiber from the Chicago area through Minneapolis
and Madison to Fargo.
- LARIAT REPORT. R.Ford described NIH’s $10M investment
through the BRIN (Biomedical Research Infrastructure Networks) program
in a project called LARIAT to provide high-speed network connections
for biomedical researchers in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada,
and Wyoming, which apparently is all the western BRIN states except
New Mexico. However, within the included states LARIAT will initially
(with this round of funding) provide high speed connectivity to some
universities – others do not stand to be connected initially,
and this is causing some contention. LARIAT leaders are agreeable
to working with the NTNC to leverage the LARIAT network, but no concrete
proposals have been made or considered for exactly how to do that.
Procurement is beginning for LARIAT, but major questions and concerns
remain in several areas.
- Overall cost and specific infrastructure. It is not clear
whether long term fiber IRUs are available in all areas, whether
LARIAT may be forced to lease “lambdas” in some places,
and what effect this all has on the overall budget.
- Distribution
of initial and on-going costs. It is unclear
how far the initial budget will stretch in coving all infrastructure
costs (e.g., to a site, into a site through edge equipment, and to
particular labs at a site). The business plan distributing
operating costs across the connected institutions is equally vague. In
the best case, it appears that current funding might pay all
basic operational costs, but any service costs (say for moving
from 45Mb service to 1Gb service) will apparently be outside
of current funding.
- Redundant connectivity. The first concern for western
NTNC sites is getting high speed connectivity. The second concern for
individual sites but major issue for NTNC as a whole is whether this
will help leverage a second, backup path from Montana to the Dakotas
(i.e., where Montana’s primary path goes west and the Dakotas’ primary
path goes east or south).
- “GOLDEN SPIKE” REPORT: B. Neas reported on speaking
with her congressional delegation regarding possible grant support
for fiber pathways from Montana to Grand Forks, from Grand Forks to
Fargo, and from Fargo to Minnesota. She was advised that each
member of the NTNC approach its own state’s congressional delegation
with a request, while letting the federal agencies know that the northern
tier states have formed a consortium and are working in unison. She
also recommended that each member institution send its congressional
delegation a map of the Abilene network showing the lack of coverage
for the Northern Tier states. She noted that lighting the fiber
and purchasing/maintaining the hardware is the major expense. Accessing
congressional delegations for seed money is the strategy B. Neas recommends. Members
discussed the problem of long-term funding for the project. Should
members ask for upfront costs for fiber and equipment from the federal
agencies and go to each state of the consortium individually for coverage
of the continuing costs? People also noted a difficulty with
pursuing funds on a state-by-state basis, namely that some sites
will find it easier to connect to hubs outside the state than to
those within the statewide network (e.g., Las Cruces, NM is closer
to El Paso, Texas than it is to Albuquerque).
- “NORTHERN TIER – EAST COAST” REPORT. A.
Stunden updated the members on the effort to light the path from Chicago
to Minneapolis, through Madison. The Wisconsin Department of
Transportation has leased four strands to UW with a 20-year IRU agreement
on the fiber for $1.6 million over five years.
- CHICAGO METRO ACCESS
REPORT. S. Cawley updated the members
on the effort by CIC universities to gain Chicago Metro access to the
National Lambda Rail. Non-Chicago schools have a “last
mile problem.” They must negotiate with Looking Glass for connections
to four or five different spots in Chicago. The CIC is now considering
the use of I-WIRE as a buying club for collective bargaining. This
is a critical issue for the non-Chicago CIC schools and Annie believes
it might be easier for those schools to bypass Northwestern, the University
of Chicago, and the University of Illinois in order to arrive at an
agreement with Looking Glass. An agreement signed between Looking
Glass and the Northern Tier could probably be folded into any later
agreement that Wisconsin and Minnesota negotiate as members of the
CIC.
- FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING INITIATIVES: Members discussed
various issues surrounding federal and state support.
- B. Neas informed
the group that NSF is very aware of the Northern Tier consortium
and interested in it, so the group should talk with Kevin Thompson
at the next Internet2 meeting since Internet2 will be speaking
with NSF’s
Cyber Infrastructure (CIS) Group shortly.
- R. Summerhill will report
back to the Executive Committee following his meeting with NSF
this Friday (2-13-04). He noted that NSF
had no active solicitations for the purchase of equipment and the
lighting of fiber, etc. Instead of soliciting proposals for
campus-wide and regional research networks, they have been funding
connectivity needs of individual or groups of researchers. One
suggestion is to get a researcher to study traffic along the Chicago-Madison-Minneapolis
path and put the cyber infrastructure costs into that researcher’s
budget request to the agency. R. Ford asked R. Summerhill to
question NSF concerning the way in which the national Internet2 project
favors certain regions over others. As a result of the
5-year Memo of Understanding between Internet2 and Qwest, certain
universities can reach the Internet2 GigaPop backbone easily
and at gigabit speed, while others cannot.
- S. Cawley recommended
raising the connectivity issue with the Federal Relations representative
of the CIC. A lot of the CIC universities
have already solved this problem for themselves, but the CIC doesn’t
always have to act as a block, and so it can represent the
needs of those who have yet to finding a funding source for
regional network initiatives.
- A. Stunden will contact Larry Landweber,
and will decide on whether to go to NSF, NIH, and the Department
of Homeland Security after receiving the advice of R. Summerhill
and Larry Landweber.
- Members noted that the Department of Homeland
Security might fund the creation of a redundant link across the
Northern Tier, i.e., with national security through redundancy
as the main selling point.
- S. Cawley will contact researchers
at Minnesota to find out what they would do with the capabilities
NTNC’s advanced optical
network would provide. For example, some may be involved in
NSF’s Next-Generation Middleware and Grid Middleware
Program.
- HOPI REPORT. R, Summerhill described Internet2’s Hybrid
Optical and Packet Infrastructure Project, a testbed to model future
architectures based on Internet2’s access to NLR and upgraded
Abilene backbone.
- INTERNET2 AGREEMENT. NTNC’s response letter accepting Internet2’s
offer of “incubation” for a startup period for the NTNC
was approved, signed, and given to Rick Summerhill of Internet2.
- NTNC
MEMBERSHIP AGREEMENT. R. Ford distributed the final copy of the “Letter of Agreement” template. Institutions
should adapt this to local needs, then use it commit to tentatively
participate in the NTNC initiative. All Internet2 sites in the
northern tier states are invited to join, along with any other Entity
in those states that wishes to participate. Agreement letters should
be sent to M. Lombardi at the University of Wisconsin. R.
Ford will contact western universities such as Washington State, Idaho
State, Boise State, etc. to invite them to become paying members; A.
Stunden will contact potential participants in the east. Invitations
will be extended at some point to the Tribal Colleges. Each entity
signing a Letter of Agreement commits to pay $1,000, which will be
billed by Internet2 as part of the agreement under which they serve
as the legal and financial agent for NTNC.
- NTNC CHARTER. R. Ford will
refine the NTNC Charter and attempt to get a draft in the hands of
B. Neas before she speaks with federal agencies on March 2, 2004.
The Executive Committee members discussed the Charter and offered the
following recommendations:
- NTNC will accept Internet2’s offer
to be the legal and financial agent for the network consortium.
- Voting members of the NTNC are dues-paying members.
- Only
voting, dues-paying members may be represented on the NTNC Executive
Committee.
- Each officer on the NTNC Executive Committee must
represent a different state in the consortium.
- The NTNC Steering
Committee will be made up of one representative from each of
the voting (dues paying) members and each of the non-voting (non-dues
paying) affiliates.
- A paragraph in the NTNC Charter must be included
to grant the Executive or Steering Committee the power to create
new types of members (such as corporate or NLR members).
- The Charter
will call for meetings of the Steering Committee to be held twice
a year.
- The Charter explicitly says that it is not a binding
agreement among the entities involved. The
Charter is merely the operational rules
document.
- INTERNET2 MOU. R. Ford will produce
the next draft of a Memo of Understanding between
NTNC and Internet2, which will complete the process of formalizing
the agreement (now represented by only an exchange of letters). Hopefully
this can be approved by the NTNC Executive Committee, then considered
by the Steering Committee at the next general meeting scheduled for
April. Upon approval, the MOU will be sent to L.
Burns of Internet2.
- The Executive Committee members agreed that NTNC requires one or
more simple “Vision Statements,” modified depending on
the audience. They raised possibilities such as leveraging the
HOPI project.
- NEXT STEPS.
- A. Stunden and S. Cawley will ask to present on the NTNC to the
next meeting of the Provosts of the CIC.
- Each member will write a Federal Initiative document describing
the NTNC and these will be collected into a book we can share.
- R. Ford and staff will take on the task of producing and managing
the NTNC Web site, consulting with M. Lombardi as needed.
- R. Ford will meet with representatives from the western universities
prior to April’s NTNC Steering Committee meeting.
- Drafts of the NTNC Charter and the MOU between NTNC and Internet2
will be ready for approval by the Steering Committee, scheduled to
meet in April.
- R. Ford will send B. Neas a draft of the NTNC Charter before her
March 2, 2004 meeting with federal agencies.
- As soon as the NTNC Charter is completed, it should be distributed
to the broad membership a few weeks in advance of the Internet2 meeting
on April 19-21, 2004.
- B. Neas and A. Stunden will speak on NTNC to a general audience
at the April 19-21, 2004 meeting of Internet2.
- A. Stunden will send a progress report out to the entire group
of contacts on the NTNC mailing list (including Kevin Thompson, et.
al.) and alert them to the next meeting for current and potential
members, which will be on the Internet2 agenda: Monday, April 19,
2004 at 2:30-6:00 pm.
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