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7. Administration Services (SLA J7)

7.1 JANET Service Desk (SLA J7.1) [more information]

JSD provides the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning JANET services and requests for information. Contact information is provided below.

During this reporting period the total number enquiries received was 1752. Most of these queries related to the Domain Name registration service, requests for JANET connections, and applications or queries relating to other JANET services.

Two complaints were received, one of which has been successfully concluded in this reporting period.

7.2 Connection Services Administration (SLA J7.2)

JANET(UK) administers the procedure for the approval and commissioning of new and upgraded connections to the JANET network. This involves liaising with customers to report progress on their new or upgraded connections. All sites connected to JANET must adhere to the JANET Connection Policy that can be found at:
http://www.ja.net/documents/publications/policy/connection-policy.pdf.

Requests for new or enhanced JANET connections should be made via the JANET Service Desk.

A list of organisations connected to JANET during the reporting period is provided in section 3.1. For information regarding current upgrades or connections, contact JSD at service@ja.net.

7.3 Licence Administration (SLA J7.3)

Over the past three months there have been 2 new Proxy Connection Licences and 3 new Sponsored Connection Licences issued.

7.4 Domain Name Service Administration (SLA J7.4)

7.4.1 Domain Name Registration Service (SLA J7.4.1)

During the reporting period a total number of 280 requests for both new domain name registrations and modifications to existing entries were received. The rate of applications for new domain names averaged 37 per month, with an average of 56 modifications for each month.

7.5 IP Address Assignment (SLA J7.5)

During the reporting period 14 applications were received and completed, including one application for IPv6.

IPv4 address allocation
The RIPE NCC, one of the five Regional Internet Registries that provide Internet resource allocations, has implemented a new policy regarding IPv4 address allocations. Previously, Local Internet Registries (LIRs) such as JANET(UK) could assign enough address space to end users to meet their needs for a period of up to two years. The new policy now reduces this time period to 12 months with immediate effect, with a gradual reduction in the assignment period being applied over the next 18 months. As of 1 July 2010, LIRs will start assigning enough address space to end users to meet their needs for a period of up to nine months: this is to be further reduced to a period of six months in January 2011 and finally down to 3 months as of 1 July 2011.

There has been much speculation in recent years with regards to the prediction of when the unused pool of IPv4 addresses is likely to run out, with current best estimates suggesting this will happen by the end of 2011 or early 2012. The new policy reduces the assignment periods in step with the expected life time of the IPv4 unallocated pool in order to address the perception of unfairness once the pool has run out.

The impact of this upon JANET-connected organisations is that with immediate effect, JANET(UK) can only issue organisations with enough IPv4 addresses to fulfil their needs for the next 12 month period. Subsequently, we will only be able to issue address space to fulfil organisations' needs for 9, 6 and 3 months in advance. The anticipated effect is to reduce the size of IP assignment requests as these planning periods are reduced, but we expect an increase in the number of IP requests over the longer term. It is also likely to mean that as the assignment period reduces, organisations' planning address requirements over the longer term will instead receive smaller, non-contiguous ranges of address space over that period of time.

7.6 urn:mace:ac.uk Namespace Administration (SLA J7.6)

There were no new applications during this quarter.

7.7 JANET Lightpath (SLA J7.7)

No JANET Lightpath connections were made this quarter.

JANET Certificate Service [more information]

The new JANET Certificate Service was launched on 18 November 2009. By the end of this reporting period a total of 1493 certificates had been issued under the new automated system.

The enhanced JANET Certificate service offers a range of features through a simple online interface. This enables the automated processing of certificate requests for all .ac.uk and gov.uk domains, along with the ability to monitor and manage new certificates that are issued. This includes certificate revocations and automated alerts when these certificates are close to their expiry date. The online interface also allows federated access for nominated contacts.

While normal certificates are issued through the JANET Certificate Service at no charge, these cannot be used to secure financial transactions. However, the service now also issues Extended Validation (EV) certificates at a discounted price of $150 (US Dollars) per annum, which are well suited for this purpose. EV certificates are high assurance certificates that require stricter checks during the request validation process. Browsers with EV support display more information to the website visitor regarding the EV certificate than for previous SSL certificates.

The old Server Certificate Service (using GlobalSign) closed on 18 December 2009, by which time the number of processed Server Certificate requests had increased by 296 to 11,480.