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10. Community Update

(a) Regional Networks

Procurement of the new network for the East of England is close to completion. Senior engineers are now working on the detailed configuration and specification of equipment.

(b) FE Liaison

JANET(UK) attends regular meetings with the LSC, FE organisations and others 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

JANET(UK) attended the Specialist College Advisory Group Meeting. Doncaster Deaf Trust is looking into options for increased bandwidth and additional resilient connectivity.

(d) Scotland

JANET(UK) continues to liaise with the LTS and its supplier, Thus, to enable a smooth transition to the new SSDN network.

JANET(UK) was represented at the JISC Winter Fayre held in the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, a successful event which attracted delegates from both FE and HE communities. The conference was addressed by Professor Derek Law, Chair of the Board, JISC Advance. JANET(UK) was also represented at two conferences held in Scotland in November: the UCISA CISG Conference held in St Andrews and Scotland's Colleges Conference in Glasgow. The company also attended regular meetings with the SFEU (now part of Scotland's Colleges) and the RSCs in Scotland to raise awareness of JANET services, and the Regional Delivery Project Manager addressed the AbMAN Mini-Networkshop event in Aberdeen in January.

(e) Northern Ireland

The rollout of the NiRAN II network was completed at the beginning of November 2009. The new network now provides 1Gbit/s connection to all HE and FE colleges in Northern Ireland.

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

Work has continued with NHS Connecting for Health on the implementation of the jointly funded full N3 JANET Gateway service to follow on from the current early adopter. It is expected to be in place 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). Initially only sessions initiated in N3 will be supported. Further development and agreements are needed for sessions initiated in JANET. The use of JVCS videoconferencing across the new Gateway will remain as an early adopter project until it is clearer whether the proposed N3 videoconferencing service is to be developed.

The NHS-HE Forum on 19 November 2009 in London was well received by the 44 attendees. The next Forum is on 19 May 2010 at the same venue.

(g) Local authorities

Connections and upgrades are progressing for Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, North Yorkshire and City of York. JANET(UK) held meetings with a number of authorities including Essex County Council, Kirklees, Bedford, North Lincolnshire, Leicester City and Oxfordshire, and an event was held for the West Midlands Local Authorities.

(h) Research Councils

A new 1Gbit/s circuit has been installed at NERC’s North Star House, and is pending official handover from BT and work to bring it into service. NERC is also investigating high bandwidth provision for its BGS Keyworth site.

(i) Other services

JANET(UK) met with UCAS to provide a demonstration of and to discuss options for using JANET videoconferencing services, and demonstrated the new JVCS Desktop videoconferencing service for the Royal College of Anaesthetists. The company also met with a group of West Midlands University IT Directors to discuss JANET services and future regional strategy options.