News
JANET is the first National Research and Education Network in the world to successfully complete a 100Gbit/s network trial. The trial was conducted over a 103 km section of fibre between JANET core network points of presence (PoPs) in London and Reading during April 2009. Further 100Gbit/s trials are envisaged as the standardisation process heads towards completion in 2010 and manufacturers develop their first commercial products.
For further details please see: http://www.ja.net/company/news-2009/100g.html
The OpenSEA Alliance, of which JANET is a participating member, announced its 802.1X supplicant has been accepted into the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) testbed.
For full details please see: http://www.ja.net/company/news-2009/wifialliance.html
Opportunities to get Involved
The UK federation currently uses a WAYF (where are you from) discovery service to establish that a user is from a member organisation and therefore authorised to access a protected on-line resource. The recommended method, however, to identify which organisation the user is from, is to use a web-based portal from the user’s home organisation. JANET(UK) would like to help organisations to develop their own web-based portals as an alternative to the current WAYF service. We would therefore like to invite interested members from the education community to take part in an expert working group to define best practice guidance in this area.
For details of how to take part, please visit: http://www.ja.net/development/middleware/uk-federation.html
Events
JANET(UK) will be hosting a UK federation event at the ICO in London on 14th October 2009. The event will include speakers from a range of organisations within the education sector (HE, FE, Regional Broadband Consortia and Local Authorities) who will share their experiences of implementing federated access management.
For further details and to book on to the event, please go to: http://www.ja.net/services/events/2009/federationinpractice_london/index.html
Project Updates
JANET Talk Trial was launched in August 2008 to trial a voice, video and collaboration application. Feedback from trial participants and wider independent market research showed that the appetite for a service like JANET Talk had diminished due to increased availability of commercial solutions that are deemed easier to use, reliable and free.
For further details on the wind down of JANET Talk, please go to: http://www.ja.net/development/talk.html
With the JANET Talk Trial now drawing to a close, the important lessons learned are now being incorporated into a strategic review of how collaborative services are provided to the JANET community.
JANET is investigating the potential use of Ultra HD Video by the education community to establish the implications of streaming Ultra HD content over the JANET network. Following a call earlier this year, JANET has now established an Ultra HD special interest group consisting of 9 participants from Universities and Research organisations who have an active interest in this area. The aim of the group is to establish the requirements of the JANET community and to explore and understand the technology, equipment and how it works on JANET; the first meeting of the group will take place in July 2009. From the knowledge gained from the group’s activities it is hoped to establish a plan of action and to run a demonstration streaming Ultra HD content over JANET. Progress in this area will be reported on the JANET website: http://www.ja.net/development/ultrahighdefinition.html
Videoconferencing will be the focal point of the Strategic Review that JANET will be conducting on its Collaborative services. The aim of this review is to ensure that JANET Videoconferencing Service is fit for the future requirements of the JANET community. Part of these investigations will include market research conducted by an external company. Your organisation may be contacted during this process; any contribution you could make to this research would be gratefully received. A link will also be made available shortly from the JANET website for those wishing to take part in the review. For further information on the collaborative strategic review please contact Roger Bolam, Voice and Video Development Manager: roger.bolam@ja.net
There are a number of developments already in place to improve the existing JANET Videoconferencing Service (JVCS). There are three new features developed for users of JVCS. New equipment at JVCS will allow High Definition (HD) videoconferencing; JANET’s Videoconferencing Recording Service is now available; and the capability exists to offer live streams of JVCS videoconferences.
For further details please see: http://www.ja.net/services/video/jvcs/jvcrs.html
Since 2007 JANET has been working with the OpenSEA Alliance to develop a client which will allow secure access to Local Area Networks using the 802.1X standard. The current development phase of the OpenSEA supplicant has now been completed, with porting for XP now available. Vista and Linux porting is currently in development.
For further information, please see: http://www.ja.net/development/middleware/802.1x-supplicant.html
JANET has recently undertaken a review of the strategic direction of its Network Access programme. As a result of this, an updated statement of strategy has been drafted; this can be found online at http://www.ja.net/development/network-access.html.
JANET(UK) would welcome any feedback you might have on the revised Strategy. It is an evolving document, open to revision should a need from the community that is not currently addressed come to light. Feedback should be sent to mark.o’leary@ja.net.
JANET(UK)’s 08/09 trial programmes in Mobile IP and Location-Aware Wireless Infrastructure are drawing to a close and the results are being prepared for publication to the JANET community. The participant organisations in these projects explored various aspects of the respective technologies in both lab environments and production services, and engaged in cross-JANET testing where a roaming context was relevant. Both projects have generated detailed technology overview documents to bring the reader up to speed with the potential benefits of these techniques, critically evaluating any security weaknesses and the precautions required to ameliorate them. The documentation for both areas is available at: http://www.ja.net/development/network-access.html
Carrier Ethernet technology is being hailed as a more cost effective way of building networks of the future. Through hands-on trials over JANET we aim to gain an understanding on the part this technology will play in building future versions of JANET.
A Call for Participation was made to members of the JANET community to participate in a Carrier Ethernet Trial; this was completed on the 8th April 2009. From the responses received, four were selected to participate in the practical trials and one to undergo theoretical activities. The project, divided into two stages, is expected to run for approximately two years. Stage one, which will include development of the testbed (Core and Local) should be in place by early September 2009, with the trials starting shortly thereafter. The contents and timing of stage two will, to some extent, be dependent on the results of stage one.
JANET will be working with experts within the community to investigate the use of this technology over the JANET network. The participants taking part in this project are: University of Manchester (Net North West Ltd), Practical Trial. University of Essex (School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering), Practical Trial and Theoretical Activities. University of Lancaster (CANLMAN and Lancaster University ISS), Practical Trial. University of Oxford (OUCS), Practical Trial.
For further information, please see: http://www.ja.net/development/optical-networking/carrierethernetproject.html
Launched at the beginning of 2008, JANET Aurora is a dark-fibre network to support research on photonics and optical systems. It interconnects research groups at five Universities. At the end of 2008 funding was achieved to include Universities of Southampton and Aston and work to extend the network has recently been completed.
Early work supported by Aurora was based on the transfer and expansion of existing work, but other projects are now starting to take shape, enabled by the new infrastructure; these include those awaiting submission to research council funding programmes. The existing users of the network (research groups at Cambridge, Essex and University of Central London (UCL)) have already conducted a number of trials. To find out more, please see:
For further details please see the June issue of JANET News:
http://www.ja.net/company/news-2009/fieldtrial-aurora
Find out More
The current Update bulletin has been sent to you in plain text format. For the next issue, we would like to send you the bulletin in a richer format via html. If you would prefer to continue receiving this document as ‘text only,’ please email Rachel Freeman at: rachel.freeman@ja.net
‘Development Eye’ has been created as an area of the website where the development team can share with the community some of the knowledge they have gathered during the course of their work. This may include feedback from an event, a particular article they found of interest and would like to share, or an opinion or update on a particular piece of technology. We hope to develop this as a more dynamic tool in the future, and will keep you informed of any developments; we hope you find the information interesting. http://www.ja.net/development/development-eye.html