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10. Community Update

(a) Regional Networks

JANET(UK) has been conducting a review of the regional delivery model of JANET services, to ensure that the model continues to serve customer needs, now and in the future whilst also improving overall value for money. Following this review, an announcement was made in July that we would, over a period of time, seek to implement a more directly managed regional delivery model. At the same time, a period of formal consultation was announced, to allow institutions and regional network operators to express their views and concerns.

Following the initial discussions with Regional Network Operators and the feedback received from customers, a White Paper has been produced giving details of the review process. It also responds to feedback from the community and describes the way JANET(UK) plans to move forward.

The White Paper is available at: http://www.ja.net/documents/regional-delivery-review.pdf.

(b) FE Liaison

JANET(UK) attends regular meetings with the LSC to raise awareness of new JANET initiatives, report on current progress with the English upgrade programme and discuss future developments within the FE community.

(c) Specialist Colleges

The Specialist Colleges sector are looking for a hosting facility for a new sector-wide in-Folio, the Independent Specialist College e-Folio which has been produced for Colleges with funding from the Learning & Skills Council (LSC) working with JISC TechDis.

(d) Scotland

As well as attending the annual members conference of Universities UK, the annual conference of SOCITM and the Scottish Learning Festival, JANET(UK) also gave a talk on "25 years of JANET" in Edinburgh at the request of the Computer Conservation Society.

The Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) rollout of the new schools interconnect is nearing its conclusion with connections migrating across to the new network. LTS and JANET(UK) are continuing to work closely together to offer Scottish Local Authorities and schools the full range of JANET services.

(e) Northern Ireland

NIRAN has undergone a procurement and successful implementation of its new network.

Representatives from JANET(UK) and from NIRAN met with C2K, the NI schools network. Both parties offered presentations on their network infrastructure and services and an overall view of networking in Northern Ireland education was achieved.

(f) NHS/HE Connectivity Project [more information]

NHS Connecting for Health has formally approved the business case for a jointly funded full N3 JANET Gateway service to follow on from the current early adopter. The order has been made and we are waiting on confirmation of the implementation date, expected in April 2010. The new N3 JANET Gateway will consist of a 250Mbit/s "active" firewalled and monitored connection in London and an equivalent "standby" link in Manchester for resilience. All traffic between N3 and JANET-connected organisations will be routed through this new Gateway (traffic is only routed to the early adopter organisations with the existing Gateway).

The quality issue with JVCS running over the N3 JANET Gateway has been resolved. This issue was preventing the early adopter NHS Trusts in the North East of England gaining the benefit of NHS University H.323 videoconferences as part of the Cetl4HealthNE project led by the University of Newcastle with the Universities of Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust and North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust are now planning to make use of this service.

The next NHS-HE Forum takes place on 19 November 2009 in London.

(g) Libraries, Musuems and Archives

Visits were made by the Local Authorities Business Manager to the East Midlands Museum Service, discussing moving their hosting of the service; and also to the British Library, Euston and the Imperial War Museum. The Videoconferencing Service Co-ordinator also came to the latter meeting as the museum is seeking to ramp up its videoconferencing presence in the community. The National Media Museum has requested a 100Mbit/s connection for the Internet Gallery Bradford and the Tower of London is a 100Mbit/s JANET Primary Connection.