News

Fall 2009 Internet2 Member Meeting

Thanks to all who attended the Fall 2009 Internet2 Member Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The meeting welcomed 230 attendees from 67 universities, 87 industry attendees from 27 companies, 34 Attendees from 13 affiliate member organizations, and 46 attendees from 14 REN member organizations, as well as 58 international attendees, and 44 first time registrants.

If you attended the meeting, please be sure to fill out the meeting evaluation for an opportunity to win either a $200 Best Buy Gift Card, or a $200 Amazon Gift Card. Winners will be selected on 6 November. If you presented at any session during meeting, please send your slides for posting to the event website to: presentations@internet2.edu. Finally, if you were unable to attend, please visit the Netcast Archive to see some of the outstanding program.

Internet2 gratefully acknowledges the sponsors of the Fall 2009 Internet2 Member Meeting. Internet2 would like to thank ADVA Optical Network, Brocade Communications Systems, Ciena, Fujitsu Network Communications, Level3 Communications, LifeSize and Qwest for their generous sponsorship of this meeting, and Cisco Systems and Ekinops for providing supporting equipment. The generous support of these sponsors has helped to make this Member Meeting possible!

Identity and Access Management at EDUCAUSE

Fans of identity and access management will find no fewer than 14 related sessions at the upcoming EDUCAUSE annual conference, 3-6 November, including a pre-conference workshop for CIOs on Tuesday, 3 November. Sessions will cover identity management and governance, federating with federal agencies and the National Student Clearinghouse, and other topics related to identity and access management. You will find a complete list and timeline at www.incommonfederation.org/educause2009.html.

CalREN Helps Exploratorium Shoot the Moon!

Is water ice present or absent in a crater near the moon's south pole? The Exploratorium, the museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco, California, presented a live webcast of the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission from the 36" Refractor Telescope at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton in the Diablo Range east of San Jose. A team of Exploratorium scientists were on hand to watch the impact alongside the audience and help explain to the viewing audience how this intentional crash could reveal the existence of water ice on the moon.

The webcast was also streamed live into Second Life, with a viewing event at the amphitheater on Exploratorium Island. Complete details are available online. A complete archive of the “Shoot the Moon!” webcast can be found at http://www.explo.tv.

Connectivity between the Lick Observatory and the Exploratorium is provided by CENIC, one of the 39 SEGPs connected to Internet2. CENIC is the nonprofit organization behind the California Research & Education Network — 2,900 miles of fiber-optic cable that runs throughout California and provides ultra-high-performance networking to the Golden State’s research and education institutions, from kindergarten to post-graduate school. For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

Events

Winter 2010 Joint Techs

The annual Winter Joint Techs will be held from 31 January to 4 February in Salt Lake City, Utah, hosted by the University of Utah. The meeting's focus areas are Performance Measurement & Monitoring, Support for Big Science/Computing, and Campus Networking. Submit your  proposals now. Registration is also open, so register now!

CANS 2009

The Chinese-American Networking Symposium is celebrating its 10th anniversary and we would like you to celebrate with us.  Whether you have participated in past events, have a campus in China, or are just interested in learning more about the state of research & education networking in China, CANS 2009 is the place to be.

Internet2, in partnership with CSTNet, our host, CERNET, and CAST-USA, is pleased to announce this year’s Chinese-American Networking Symposium to be held 3-5 December in Beijing, China. Networking experts from both China and the United States will gather at CANS to discuss new ideas and advancements in networking technologies. In keeping with our focus on working together to promote interoperability, the 2009 Symposium theme is A Decade of Collaboration: Looking back, looking forward. 

Governance Updates

AOAC

The Architecture & Operations Advisory Council (AOAC) held calls on 23 September and 14 October and had a face-to-face meeting on 5 October in San Antonio. The AOAC had recently endorsed the Internet2 Architectural Directions document and their main focus remains on that document as well as two scenario-framing questions posed by Internet2 staff (what is the optimal number of nodes in the network; should the IP and circuit infrastructures be combined or separate). These questions were considered during the open AOAC discussion at the FMM and are two of many that will be considered as the plans for the next Internet2 network progress. The AOAC welcomed the community into this discussion and encouraged the community to provide further comments to the AOAC (aoac@internet2.edu) and NTAC (ntac@internet2.edu). The design of next Internet2 network is a priority for the AOAC so it is expected that this will be an on-going discussion item and that, as appropriate, the NTAC will be charged with making technical recommendations. In other business, the AOAC also learned that the new ION service represents significant progress on the three goals articulated for the production service by the AOAC in the spring: simplify the service, lower costs and foster community adoption of the service. To learn more about the ION service, visit www.internet2.edu/ion.

ERAC

The External Relations Advisory Council (ERAC) met in an open meeting on 5 October in San Antonio. Heather Boyles updated the ERAC on Internet2's international activities, including personnel transitions, the upcoming meeting of members developing overseas campuses, review of MANLAN, and the work of the Standing Committee on International Strategy (SCIS). In the context of MANLAN, Tim Lance discussed the issue of "path diversity, threat or opportunity." ERAC then discussed the National Participation issue as debated in the Sunday connectors' business meeting, a brief update on network policy advocacy and events within EDUCAUSE, and a brief update by Jay Pflasterer on corporate relations. In the closed meeting that followed, Dave Lambert elaborated on the work of the SCIS and next steps for an international strategy.

RAC

The Research Advisory Council (RAC) had a face-to-face meeting on 5 October in San Antonio. Matt Zekauskas presented an update on the Network Research Review Committee, and the RAC discussed disclosure of sensitive information (including the work of the DHS PREDICT project), IPv6 anonymization policy, and the Network Science and Engineering Research Agenda published by the NSF NetSE Council. The RAC next considered network capacity and usage relevant to support for research; this introduced some of the ideas in the Internet2 Network Architectural Directions document being considered by the AOAC, as well as introducing some thoughts on what Internet2 should do once the current agreement with the GENI Project Office to supply GENI with backbone capacity expires at the end of next summer. The RAC then discussed outreach to researchers for the ION service, and how RAC members might help identifying science communities that should give some input on future network design. Steve Cotter from ESnet presented the planned ESnet 100Gbps testbed, and plans for research projects to use the testbed.

The RAC then focused on the Internet2 Network Architectural Directions report. Emphasizing the importance of getting input and requirements from the research community for the next network, the RAC discussed ways to elicit such input and requirements effectively. The RAC noted that applications researchers outside of large science communities often lack spokespersons who articulate their research needs in network-centric terms; the group agreed that the large science communities were likely to represent issues that would significantly benefit the broader academic research and scholarship, including the humanities. Despite this likely alignment, the RAC recommended reaching out to campuses (research offices) and to a somewhat broader range of large communities beyond the DOE community. The RAC identified coordination with AOAC on the vision and the directions of the network as a key priority for the coming months. The meeting ended with the RAC proposing to review its own mission and status, and how to improve engagement with the broader research community.