Table of content

Participants

Stefan Liström -SL (NORDUnet)
Fresia Pérez - FP (NORDUnet/SUNET)
Jan Ferre - JF (Forskningsnettet)
Juha Oinonen - JO (FUNET)
Vegard Vesterheim - VV (UNINETT)
Håvard Kusslid - HK (UNINETT)
Marius Olafsson - MO (RHnet)

Minutes of meeting Thursday 30th of June

Introductions and setting the agenda

Stefan welcomed all participants
The agenda was accepted

NREN Operational updates  

• UNINETT - VV  
  Universities have now started using the UNINETT SIP service, around 7 universities have ported their number series.
  UNINETT now has a cloudstore service in production, promotion of the service has started.
  UNINETT also has a high availability service in testing, it is based on unicast and BGP. There will be a demonstration of this service in fall in connection with the service forum meeting.
  On the network side UNINETT is continuing to roll out 10G to customers and upgrading core to 10G.
  UNINETT have started placing Juniper MX80s in customer sites.
  They are also planing to increasing the capacity to NORDUnet and they are looking into 100G possibilities.
  Finishing tender for common supplier over routers and switches for customers.
• FUNET - JO  
  Interest from FUNET members to have a virtual router service.
  There are a number of cross border fiber connectionsbeing discussed. One to Sweden, Estonia and to Norway (The one to Sweden is the most concrete proposal right now).
  A kind of cloudstore service is under development in FUNET also
  FUNET is putting more emphasis on IPv6 and trying to get customers to adopt it.
• FSKnet - JF  
  The situation in Forskningsnettet has been very static since last meeting.
  FSKnet staff spend a lot of our time on getting the optical connection in the Alcatel equipment up and running.
  The interest in IPv6 is starting to pick up, but is still fairly low.
• SUNET - FP  
  SUNET has now changed all Ciena 4350 to juniper MX80 in the customer premises (for those customers that had them). From the customer point of view the way SUNET is provisioning lightpaths has not changed due to this change of equipment.
  The Media distribution system is being finalized (it was used for the NORDUnet conference)
  Development on the Lobber service is continuing.
• NORDUnet - FP
  Upgraded our IP network towards the peering points (see presentation later on the agenda)
  The Adobe connect service that UNINETT are using has been upgraded and the one SUNET is using will be upgraded in the upcoming weeks.
  FSKnet have now started using the NORDUnet MCU service
  We are continuing to develop the Network inventory, the first version is now in production.
• RHnet - MO
  Very little has happened in RHnet since last meeting.
  There was ofcourse some work involved in getting everything working for the conference.
  RHnet are continuing the buildout of optical network in Reykjavik.
  RHnet are investigating if it is possible to start using NAV instead of HP-openview

Customer portal (user outreach) discussion

• UNINETT
  VV started the discussion with presenting the plans and situation for a customer portal in UNINETT
  Customer portal discussion ongoing in UNINETT
  UNINETT currently have a mechanism to gather contact information from customers
  Goal is to have updated contact information for technical people at customer sites
  Send out information to customers they login to portal and update contact information and click button to confirm that info is ok, this automatically close ticket that was generated when sending out information.
  There is a separate portal for Feide services, where it is possible to see which services are connected to Feide.
• NORDUnet
  SL went through the user outreach topics disseminated before the meeting
  NORDUnet measurements are published on stats.nordu.net
  Agreements (e.g. SLA) with customers are specified in the contract sent out to the customer with new services.
  Customer contact information is documented on our wiki
  Faultreporting are primarily done using email or phone.
  General outreach is done using the NORDUnet conference and user forums like this one.
  Escalation procedure can be found on the NUNOC page, escalations are done from NOC manager -> Chief Network operating officer -> Chief Executive office.
  When it comes to scheduled maintenance we send out notifications for everything that has a customer impact. In some cases (e.g. reduced redundancy) it can be tricky to evaluate if the customer is affected or not.
  Outages information is published from ticket system using email, web and RSS.
  If a customer ask us to reschedule a planned maintenance we try to accommodate that request. However that very seldom happen, it is more common that NORDUnet request rescheduling of planned maintenance when our suppliers notify us about work they are want to do.
  MO asked if NORDUnet is measuring netflow? And if so if it is published.
  SL would investigate and send an email to the list with this information.
  UNINETT has a system that is named stager.uninett.no that is publicly available, however to get a detailed view (e.g. access to IP addresses) you have to login with an authorized account.
  VV mentioned that the toolbox service include NAV and netflow processing, the toolbox service (server) is sent out to UNINETT customers that ask for it.
• UNINETT
  VV discussed the user outreach topics
  Outages tickets from NORDUnet are automatically entered into the UNINETT ticketing system
  Measurements of customer connections are openly published.
  User outreach is generally done through UNINETT conference and a biannual publication of UNInytt is sent out to customers
  There is a procedures for escalation, but it is not sent out to customers by default.
  VV also noted that it is sometimes hard to define exactly how a customer is affected by certain outages (e.g. when the customer get reduced redundancy or customer traffic is rerouted).
  Customers report problems by email or phone
• FUNET
  FUNET has a extranet service with text information about FUNET services. It is a dual platform, static pages published using a webserver and information that is updated often is documented on a wiki. FUNET are discussing if they should use confluence for wiki part, there is also an idea to migrate the static part into wiki.
  Microsoft CRM will be used to document contact information for customers, this system might be hard to integrate with other systems.
  The current system (CRM) is unix based with standard interfaces
  Publishing monitoring information for router connection, not publishing optical system measurements yet
  Working on getting availability data shown for customers
  FUNET also publish a matrix of services used by customers
• RHnet
  Small network and few people involved, very information procedures
  Measurements are made publicly available
  The status of circuits can be found on the web
  RHnet are collecting netflow measurements, but they are not publishing that information
  Border values are emailed to individual customers
  No formal agreements with customers
  Customers report problems by phone or email
  Scheduled maintenance is decided on an informational level
• FSKnet
  FSKnet has a mailing list to announce problems
  There is no customer portal but a static webpage for general information
  Customers report problems by email or phone
  MO asked if it any of the participants publish information about connections and problems back in time
  FP answered that SUNET publish monthly reports since 2007 publicly on stats.sunet.se

TF-NOC update

The third official TF-NOC meeting was held in Zurich.
There were among other things some new presentations about how different NOCs are organized and presentations about tools developed or investigated by different organizations.
There was specially an interesting presentation about an inventory tool that GRnet has developed and that NORDUnet will look into if it is possible to include some of their features into our Network inventory.
HEAnet also presented their customization of the request tracker (RT) ticket system, UNINETT will investigate if it is possible to use the HEAnet development for their own RT instance.

NREN NOC tools and procedure development  

• UNINETT
  VV demonstrated the integration in UNINETT ticket system, monitoring system and inventory system (documentation)
  • KIND
    The KIND system contain information about the UNINETT services and equipment
    Dependencies are graphically modelled
    Responsibilities are assigned based on roles
    Tickets from RT (links to tickets) are displayed directly in KIND in relation to equipment.
  • RT
    Services from inventory imported each night into the request tracker ticket system. Which means the ticket tool is updated with the information the NOC needs to create ticket.
  • Hobbit
    Link from hobbit to service in documentation system. If there is an alarm the NOC can then find information about the service easier.
  • Redmine
    Redmin is a open source project planning tool. It has been in pilot for some time now and will probably be put in production.
    It is integrated with the UNINETT ticket system.
    One of the very nice features is the "kanban" interface, users can drag and drop issues between issue states and responsible people. Make it easy to for example distribute tasks during meeting.
  • Portal
    There is also a portal that the NOC can use to find information about customer contact info and role description, e.g. CERT, technical responsible or administrative
• NORDUnet
  Johan presented the NORDUnet network inventory
  The first version of the inventory is now in production and used by the NOC.
  The NI now have a search interface
  Alcatel network is in NI, automatically fetched and "connected", names of fibers are however manually entered into the system
  The documentation can be found on https://portal.nordu.net/display/NI/NORDUnet+Network+Inventory
• Other NREN tool development reports
  None

NORDUnet 2011 IP network upgrade

Frank showed and briefed the participants about the NORDUnet IP network upgrade

AOB and next meeting

There was no AOB
It was preliminary decided that the next meeting should take place on Iceland on the 25th-26th of August from "lunch to lunch". Each participant should check flight availability and then we can take a final decision.