News

Spring 2011 Internet2 Member Meeting

Registration is now open for the Spring 2011 Internet2 Member Meeting—which will be held from April 18-20, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia.

The theme for the Spring Member Meeting is "The Path Forward, Envisioning Opportunities," which is the message Dave Lambert, Internet2's new president and CEO, shared with members of the community at the Fall 2010 Internet2 Member Meeting in November. Track sessions will focus on developments, designs, implementations and experiences across the meeting's focus areas, and that incorporate elements of the Path Forward. Register by March 10 to take advantage of the lowest registration rates.

Schedule Changes: As you begin to make your travel arrangements for the meeting, we also want to make sure you are aware of some significant changes to the traditional meeting schedule. Among the changes, Governance meetings will be moved from Monday to Wednesday, April 20, track sessions will be held on Monday, April 18 and Tuesday, April 19, and the Welcome Reception will move from Monday to Tuesday night, April 19. Full details concerning these changes are available at the meeting website, as well as the complete general meeting schedule.

Special Passover Holiday Accommodations: Additionally, Internet2 understands that the member meeting overlaps with the Jewish holiday of Passover. On behalf of the entire organization, we sincerely apologize for this very unfortunate schedule conflict. Internet2 is committed to ensuring that the diversity in our community is both respected and celebrated and we can assure you that similar scheduling conflicts will not occur again in the future. Internet2 has and will continue to explore a number of others ways to help accommodate attendees that are celebrating Passover. A Passover resource page has been posted to our member meeting website with the accommodations we have developed so far.

Richard Rose Award: Call for Nominations Now Open

The call for nominations for the 2011 Richard Rose Award is now open. The annual award recognizes outstanding individual efforts aimed at extending the benefits of advanced networking to the broadest education community. The award will be presented at the Internet2 Spring 2011 Member Meeting in April. Nominations will be accepted until March 15, 2011. For nomination details and more information, please visit internet2.edu/rose.

Anchor Innovator: Kemi Jona

Anchor Innovators are individuals from within the Internet2 K20 Initiative community doing good work in support of community anchor institutions such as K-12 schools, libraries, community colleges, museums, science centers, and other cultural organizations.

Meet Anchor Innovator Kemi Jona from the Office of STEM Education Partnerships at Northwestern University:

1. Which of your current endeavors are you most passionate about? What is the biggest challenge you face?
I’m really excited about the promise of our remote online labs cyberlearning tool. Remote labs allow students to use real experimental equipment located around the world via their web browser. We studied the remote labs with about 1000 students around the country and found some really impressive learning gains. A neat finding was that the students who used it from home did more trials and had better experimental design than students who used it in class. This shows the power of technology to really transform how, where, and when learning happens. The biggest challenge now is building out more labs. Everyone who sees the remote lab we built asks me how many more are available. That’s what I’m working on now.

2. Who inspires you these days? Learn more about Kemi Jona and read the full interview online.

Certificate Service Expands to 88 Subscribers

The InCommon Certificate Service, a community-driven offering rolled out during the summer of 2010, now has 88 subscribers. The cert service provides unlimited SSL certificates for all of the domains a college or university owns or controls, and will soon provide client (personal) and extended validation (EV) certs as part of the annual fee. Internet2 members receive a 25 percent discount on the fixed annual fee. Campuses report significant cost savings and appreciate that there are no hidden fees or requirements.

EVENTS

InCommon Advance CAMP: Identity Services Summit III

InCommon Advance CAMP will take place May 25-27 in Westminster, Colo., drawing leaders and practitioners from the open source and identity management community. Advance CAMP will focus on better provisioning, access management and other identity-related problems. Participants will work with identity leaders and developers across higher education to help design the next generation architecture. Registration is now open at www.incommon.org/camp. Participants can come early and attend Jasig’s Spotlight on Open Source Conference just prior to Advance CAMP at the same location.

Day CAMP: Getting Started with InCommon

The next in a series of InCommon Day CAMPs will take place in Arlington, Virginia, Thursday, April 21, immediately following the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting. Day CAMP: Getting Started with InCommon, features technical and management information for higher education institutions that are considering joining InCommon or who prefer an intensive setting to get their implementation started. Details and registration information will be available at www.incommon.org/camp. InCommon sponsors Day CAMP with support from Internet2.

Winter 2011 ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs

The Winter 2011 ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs, hosted by Clemson University, got off to a running start on Sunday, January 30 with four community expert-led tutorials. The day-long MPLS tutorial generated the largest crowd, but a significant number of Joint Techs registrants attended either the 1/2-day hands-on tutorial for Colo/Telco Facility Installations or the two 90-minute afternoon tutorials on DNSsec and IPv6. Track sessions began on Monday, January 31, with a welcome from Internet2 Board of Trustees member and Clemson University CIO Jim Bottum and Clemson Provost Doris Helms also provided welcome remarks. Sessions focused on three themes: Advanced Infrastructures, Convergence, and Emerging Technologies. Working groups and BoFs on various topics, including cloud computing, performance, security, and IPv6 issues also met. Participants were also treated to tours of the Clemson NOC and the backstage technology tour of the Clemson Football Stadium. As always, the event was followed by co-located hands-on workshops (IPv6 and Network Performance), the ESnet Site Coordinator Committee (ESCC) meeting, and other community group meetings (NOAA Advisory Board and NetGurus) to maximize face-to-face opportunities. The Summer 2011 ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs will be hosted by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in early July.

Governance Updates

AMSAC

The Applications, Middleware, and Services Advisory Council (AMSAC) has been looking at Internet2’s focus areas as they relate to the Council’s responsibilities for the first half of 2011. These include supporting research and innovation that leverages advanced network services, and supporting the development and deployment of services above the network—including security. The council has also developed and approved some significant updates and enhancements to the IDEA Award process which will be announced this spring.

AOAC

The Architecture and Operations Advisory Council (AOAC) met on February 9. The AOAC unanimously endorsed two recommendations related to the operation of open colocation facilities, proposing that Internet2 formalize its investment in facilities that assure open cross connects. The AOAC heard the charge for the AOAC fee subcommittee, which will help guide the development of wave and connector fees on the new network. The sub-committee members are Roy Campbell, Dave Gift, Ron Hutchins and George Loftus. Two requests were granted to allocate unused wave capacity to LEARN to extend their network to an underserved part of Texas in support of K12 and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The AOAC also heard a brief summary of the LHC OPN work related to an evolution in the LHC data distribution architecture. An update on U.S. UCAN and the new Internet2 Network upgrade were also provided.

RAC

The Research Advisory Council (RAC) has been discussing Internet2's participation in the development and deployment of the NSF-sponsored Dynamic Network System (DYNES), and how to best ensure that it meets community requirements and expectations. They have also been reviewing ways in which Internet2 can better support and engage the research community. A key topic is how Internet2 might best define and articulate the range of services it provides to various constituents in support of the research community. These include CIOs, Chief Research Officers, leaders from disciplinary communities, regional and campus networking organizations, as well as individual faculty. Given limited resources, it is critical to evaluate and rationalize these services in terms of innovation, value to the community overall (intellectually, or in terms of building infrastructure), and impact on research excellence for the individual faculty member and the nation.