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9. Development

9.1 Federated Access Management [more information]

This area is now reported on as part of 4.10.

9.1.1 Expert Group on Portal Design [more information]

The project team met on 27 January 2010 to discuss a paper to provide guidance on the use and deployment of a WAYFless URL format. Project Team members will now consult with colleagues on these proposed recommendations and report back at the next meeting in March.

9.1.2 WAYF Interface Development [more information]

Following the presentation of the consultants' usabilty and accessibilty reports the project team have discussed the findings with a view to providing a set of recommendations for design. The team is currently considering further user experience scenarios and will be meeting in February 2010 to bring all these elements together.

9.2 Certificate Service [more information]

See Section 7.

9.3 Roaming & Mobility [more information]

9.3.1 802.1x Supplicant [more information]

Dot1x Special Interest Group
The 802.1X Special Interest Group (SIG) held its first meeting at the IOC London on Friday 20 November. The outcome was quite positive and a programme of work was established to look at various areas including communications, user experience focus and widening eduroam adoption.

Progress of Supplicant
The outsourced development work to Mindtree has now been accepted but further progress to incorporate this work into the Open1X supplicant has been slow due to a change of circumstance for the lead developer. Development once again is progressing and a contract with the lead developer and his team has now been established.

There has been no further version release of the supplicant from 2.1.9.704. The only changes are the availability of the X64 version and Linux installer version. Both are available at http://open1x.sourceforge.net/.

9.4 Network Access [more information]

9.4.2 Local-Loop Unbundling [more information]

All deliverables for this project were completed during the last quarter and will be published over the coming months on the web.

9.4.3 Location Aware Wireless Infrastructure

In the course of the ongoing PWLAN trials, activities during the last quarter have included: fieldwork trials on environmental change by the Open University team during a residential school in Durham; Lancaster University has prototyped novel hardware that uses MANEMO techniques to allow entire meshes of devices to be globally addressed via a standard commercial uplink that sees only a single device; and Leeds Metropolitan ran trials as part of a teacher education module in Langdale.

9.4.4 Mobile Broadband

Third party consultants have conducted an extensive survey and ran focus groups over the past quarter to give an objective picture of the community requirements, market capability and opportunities for JANET(UK) to add value. The outcome of this work is due in January 2010, which will then inform strategic decisions to identify future activities in this area.

9.4.5 Southampton Group Design Project

The engagement with the Southampton Group Design Project successfully concluded in December 2010 with the delivery of a prototype visualisation tool for the JANET Roaming Service. The outcome of this project is to be reported to the JANET community and at TF-mobility and TNC, and the code will be shared with any interested NRENs. We are now considering ways to take forward this prototype into a production service and to adapt it to visualise usage of other services.

9.5 Network Engineering [more information]

9.5.1 IPv6

During January 2010, RIPE announced policy changes to the allocation of IPv4 address space. Further details can be found at: http://ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2009-03.html.

9.6 Voice [more information]

9.6.2 Future work

We continue to monitor developments in ENUM to identify any potential JANET can offer within this space. Early work to understand any potential synergy with the mobile telecommunications industry is under way. The main aim is to identify whether it is possible to introduce any cost savings to the JANET community.

9.7 Video [more information]

9.7.2 Content Providers

Work continues with a number of content providers including JISC, IET, Move Networks (formerly INUK) and SUB TV. Activities in this area are focused on understanding how these and other services and resources may be suitable for deployment in the JANET environment.

9.7.3 Ultra High Definition [more information]

The Ultra High Definition Special Interest Group is exploring the use of this technology and is helping to understand how this technology can be connected over JANET. With the help of this group we are also continuing investigations into the role Ultra High Definition may play within the JANET community.

9.8 Measurement & Monitoring [more information]

9.8.1 Netsight [more information]

The phased rollout of the new Netsight system is now complete. The project has now entered a period of consolidation whereby several minor changes focusing on user interface and performance improvements will be made.

In parallel, work on longer term developments has restarted, including trialling the use of additional measurement types imported from external monitoring equipment, and making use of Netsight within JANET(UK) for network planning activities.

9.8.2 Flow Monitoring

JANET(UK) is looking to replace its existing flow monitoring systems with a consolidated system which provides additional functionality. Following various supplier meetings, we have completed three of the four commercial product evaluations. It is hoped that the evaluations will give us greater understanding of the state of the NetFlow product market and help inform our requirements capture.

9.9 Support for Research [more information]

9.9.1 JANET Aurora [more information]

The core infrastructure for JANET Aurora has been extended to connect Aston University and the University of Southampton. The dark fibre extensions were undertaken by JANET(UK)'s contractor for this project, ntl:Telewest.

9.9.2 JANET Lightpath [more information]

This area is now reported on as part of section 7.7.

9.10 Optical Networks [more information]

9.10.1 Technology Tracking

Discussions with vendors continue for both Carrier Ethernet and optical transmission equipment.

9.10.2 Carrier Ethernet [more information]

Three Ciena switches have been deployed at CPoPs in Reading, Warrington and Telecity in order to form the core testbed for the project. They have been configured to accept traffic from JANET organisations that are participarting in the project. The first tests, which will be point-to-point between pairs of partners, will take place in February 2010. The partners have all established local testbeds consisting of three boxes apiece and are in the process of conducting local tests prior to the start of practical test across the core testbed.

Optical trial

Last year JANET(UK) was the first National Research and Education Network in the world to complete a 100Gbit/s network trial successfully. 100Gbit/s circuit technology will play an important role in underpinning the requirements of providing a scalable and reliable JANET network service and it is therefore important that JANET(UK) is fully prepared to exploit this technology at the earliest opportunity. With this objective in mind, JANET(UK), working with Verizon and Ciena completed a successful trial of Ciena's first generation 100Gbit/s optical transmission product. The trial took place over a live operational section of the JANET backbone between the Reading and Bristol network Points of Presence, with a 100Gbit/s wavelength injected into the fibre as an alien wavelength alongside wavelengths carrying operational traffic.

Verizon Business are the supplier and operator of the JANET backbone optical transmission network. The network is constructed using Nortel and Ciena optical equipment. Last year's 100Gbit/s trial was conducted using Nortel transmission equipment on an isolated fibre pair away from fibre carrying live JANET operational traffic. This latest trial not only looked at the 100Gbit/s development from the other manufacturer equipment that is used to build the JANET optical transmission infrastructure, but also tested 100Gbit/s technology in an operational environment.

9.11 Schools Services [more information]

9.11.1 Content [more information]

The NEN Services Group has continued to work closely with the NEN community and Becta on a National Digital Learning Resource Strategy.

9.11.2 Videoconferencing [more information]

The take-up of videoconferencing by schools continues to grow. By the end of January 2010 the total number of schools sector endpoints registered with JVCS was just over 4100 (as compared with 3600 at the end of January 2009). Over 4000 videoconferences were undertaken this quarter (as compared with just over 3800 in the same quarter last year), approximately half with national content providers. Of the conferences, 75% continue to be for teaching, tutorials and related educational activities; other purposes include administrative meetings, system testing and quality assurance. The growth in schools videoconferences, managed by JVCS throughout since September 2004, is illustrated below.