BT/JISC  University Research Initiative 
Management of Multi-Service Networks
Management Meeting No.1
Location: UCL - 13 October 1994

Present:-

BT			UCL		Cambridge	
			
Ian Marshall (Chairman)	Jon Crowcroft	Derek McAuley	
Mick Mulvey (Secretary)	James Cowan
Simon Ritchie
John Adams
Andrew Grace

Lougborough	Oxford Brookes	IC

David Parish	Avril Smith	Jeff Magee
Iain Phillips			Nat Pryce
				Emil Lupu

Lancaster

David Hutchison
Andrew Campbell


1. Introductions

John Crowcroft introduced himself as technical manager/co-ordinator of 
the SJURI and each of the universities gave a brief review of their 
associated work packages. 

Cambridge were to work on security and switch management: Lancaster 
were to look at end-system QOS management but David Hutchison 
indicated that the terms of reference needed to be scoped out to 
include monitoring, policy and QOS adaptation aspects: Loughborough 
were initially to concentrate on performance measurements of the 
SuperJanet SMDS network with later work to address ATM measurement 
capabilities: UCL were to look at policy based traffic management. IC 
were covering configuration management and would be interworking with 
UCL on the closely related subject of policy management:  Oxford 
Brookes were to investigate the control mechanisms needed for the ATM 
available bit rate (ABR)  service.

2. Management of the University Research Initiative

2.1 Management and Technical Committees Structure/Organisation

Two top level management meetings are to be used control the project. 
The Management Committee and the Technical Committee.

2.1.1 Management Committee

Ian Marshall was introduced as Chairman to the management committee. 
This committee would meet six monthly to discuss general management 
issues covering such items as financial monitoring, intellectual 
property, publications etc.. ( Secretary's Note: The terms of 
reference of the committees are attached to these notes.). BT expected 
that as a minimum Simon Ritchie,  Ian Marshall  and Mick Mulvey would 
attend. 
Jon Crowcroft agreed to prepare a technical summary report for 
submission to the management committee one month prior to the 
management committee meeting. AP1-1/UCL/JC

It was noted that a JISC representative, Ron Rogerson, would be 
invited to future management committee meetings. 

BT would take the responsibility of setting the dates and location of 
future management meetings. The intention would be to have a rolling 
host/location. AP2-1/BT/MM


2.1.2 Technical Committee

The first of the technical committees was to be held at the end of 
this initial management meeting;  

It was noted that technical committee meetings would be arranged on a 
six monthly basis, chaired by Jon Crowcroft, with the dates 
sufficiently in advance of the management committee to allow a 
technical summary report to be forwarded one week prior the management 
meeting. A UKERNA representative would be invited to attend future 
technical committee meetings.
It was noted that more frequent informal technical meetings would be 
arranged on a work package basis as and when necessary. 
Further detailed discussion of the technical meeting issues was 
postponed until the formal meeting session to commence after the 
management meeting. (Secretary's Note: A separate set of minutes cover 
the issues discussed at the technical meeting)


2.2 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

Simon Ritchie indicated that agreement of the MoU, which outlined BT's 
longer term SJURI investment plans had recently had a setback. Paul 
Labbett of Imperial College was currently in discussion with the 
Universities concerned and BT hoped to reach agreement on the wording 
of the MoU through Paul Labbett as soon as possible. 

Avril Smith indicated that Oxford Brookes were in the process of 
recruiting an additional staff member to resource the SJURI work. 
Without a signed MoU they could only advertise the post as a one year 
contract which would be unattractive to possible applicants. Rapid 
agreement of the MoU would help them draft a more attractive job 
specification. Simon Ritchie agreed to talk with Paul Labbett and the 
BT commercial unit to speed up the agreement. AP3-1/BT/SR

2.3 Publications

It was agreed that potential publications should be vetted, in the 
first instance, by the BT technical representative who would check for 
potential intellectual property. If necessary the publication may have 
to be assessed in more detail by BT's intellectual-property lawyers 
who would check for patentable material.
It was noted that abstracts for future conferences may have to 'skirt 
around' potential patentable material until the BT technical 
representative receives guidance on intellectual property issues - 
some 2 to 4 weeks would be needed for a priority patent date. 

2.4 Technical Reports

It was agreed that technical notes should be numbered and would be 
made available electronically. Details would be discussed in the 
technical committee.

2.5 Problem Reports

It was noted that first indications of problems would arise at the 
working group level and that any issues should be flagged to Ian 
Marshall and Simon Ritchie via the BT technical representatives, and 
to Jon Crowcroft by the university with primary responsibility for the 
work package.
It was noted that any problems requiring major changes to any of the 
work packages would need to include agreement from JISC. 

David Parish was keen that JISC be made aware of Loughborough's shift 
of emphasis towards  SMDS performance measurement and away from the 
multi-bitrate video and audio service development. Copies of the 
management and technical committee minutes would be forwarded to them 
to keep them informed. AP4-1/BT-UCL/MM-JC
 
In response to a question by David Hutchison, Simon Ritchie indicated 
that financial monitoring will be, in all probability, limited to 
ensuring that universities invoice BT within the correct time scales.

3. Plans

Ian Marshall indicated that the intention here would be for the 
management committee to look at a summary of the sixth month plans 
from the work packages together with the longer term plans as part of 
a management tool set. The details of the work package plans having 
been discussed and agreed at the technical committee meeting.

It was noted that the plans should not be rigid commitments but should 
allow for necessary flexibility as increasing knowledge in the various 
research areas provides scope for re-direction. Deliverables 
identified would not be flexible in date but may be flexible in terms 
of their detailed content through negotiation with the BT technical 
representatives. If any radical changes were needed these would have 
to be discussed at the sixth monthly technical and management 
meetings. Any changes needing more rapid change would have to be dealt 
with by off-line discussion of the technical and management 
committees.

Ian Marshall indicated that the universities would have to start 
thinking about drafting work package scopes and deliverables for year 
two of the SJURI by Christmas 94, since, by the next six monthly 
management meeting these would have to be submitted for formal 
approval. Simon Ritchie added that as well as the technical proposals, 
costs need also to be thought about and the complete proposals passed 
through the university commercial and contract people before 
submission to BT.

Ian Marshall asked for some initial thoughts from each of the 
universities as to what may be achievable in the year two time scale. 
The following paragraph summarises the response.

Year 2 (Tentative) Plans:-

WP1 - Configuration Management - Imperial college - Jeff Magee thought 
that IC would be looking for a two site implementation of the 
configuration management tool set to be developed in year one.

WP2 -  Policy Based Traffic management - UCL -  Jon indicated that the 
future direction was linked to whether or not a standard interface 
would be developed for the ATM switches within SuperJanet to allow 
policy downloads.  As such it was difficult, at present, to plan the 
year two options. Jon Crowcroft agreed to discuss off-line with Ian 
Marshall possible future direction.

WP3 - End-System Q.O.S - Lancaster - David Hutchison indicated that 
year two work would likely comprise an extension into the wide area 
network. Year one work having centred on Q.O.S management of the local 
area using Lancaster's own ATM LAN. Lancaster's QOS architecture was 
likely to be extended to look at multi-peer QOS, QOS filtering, and 
group working with experiments over the wide area dependent on 
available infrastructure. In addition to these Andrew Campbell 
indicated that QOS issues relating to multi-domain environments (e.g. 
ATM vs Ethernet) may also be included. It was noted that Andrew 
Campbell was soon to work for a period at Columbia University focusing 
on network management of Gbit/s networks. 

WP4- Traffic Monitoring and Measurement - David Parish indicated that 
following the change of emphasis towards performance measurements of 
both the captive and live SMDS network in year one, Loughborough would 
be keen to move on to develop a more generic ATM measurement 
capability tool set in year two. 

WP5 - Security - Cambridge - Derek McAuley was keen to emphasise the 
view that given a 5 year project base some effort ought to expended in 
the first year to evolve to a common network platform on which to 
apply existing security techniques. The establishment of a common 
platform at all sites would then allow more novel techniques to be 
tried since it would be easier to down load the software through a 
common interface. Both Ian Marshall and John Adams were keen that the 
universities not spend too much effort in developing a common 
interface for all SuperJanet ATM switches since management interface 
standardisation was not the main aim of the BT SJURI project. Any 
effort to bring commonality within the SJ ATM network would need to be 
shared by other projects.


WP3/4 - QOS issues - Oxford Brookes - Avril Smith reported on a major 
change of strategy in which Oxford Brookes would now be looking in 
some detail at the ATM available bit rate service. The first year 
would involve simulation of call control and the network edge 
interaction with call control. Year two would involve the study of 
migration towards a full intelligent network architecture i.e. the 
moving the service away from the switch.

4. Related Work

Jon Crowcroft indicated that he had a list which could be made 
available of JISC and EPSRC technology initiatives. Jon agreed to keep 
a list of what was available on a central server. 
AP5-1/UCL/JC

Simon Ritchie indicated that BT/JISC would be putting out a call for 
further proposals for applications on Super Janet. It would not be 
realistic to invite proposals from everyone so BT/JISC would be 
focusing on a limited number of areas that BT/JISC would be prepared 
to fund. 

Jeff Magee reported that Imperial were involved in a number of  
related projects including  SYSMAN and IDSN related to policy and 
configuration on distributed systems, and a ROPA project ROLEMAN to do 
with structured management using roles.

David Hutchison reported that Lancaster's QOS architecture project was 
now entering its final year. Lancaster were also involved with the 
SUMO project looking at; distributed open system kernals which 
involved Steve Rudkin at BT; the COST 237 project looking at group 
communication support, including transport protocols and QOS 
guarantees - this project had no associated funding; Project Munster, 
a BT project looking at providing course material over the SMDS 
network; and two ROPA projects, obtained by relation to the URI 
project, on QOS filtering and distributed virtual laboratory over 
SMDS.
It was noted by Simon Ritchie that the BT URI project was already 
proving to be useful to universities in attracting additional ROPA 
funding.

David Parish reported on two projects which were currently winding 
down. The first, the Charisma project involved the development of an 
experimental ATM platform, media storage chips, and cell loss 
concealment techniques; the second an EPSRC project looked at possible 
charging methods for VBR video utilisation by statistical means based 
on the Orwell network protocol. David Parish went on to report on two 
new projects the first a ROPA project looking at hybrid modelling, 
comprising the integration of analytical and numerical techniques to 
obtain higher accuracy; the second looking at the connection of 
surveillance cameras from multiple sites.

Avril  Smith reported that Oxford Brookes were involved in the 
Charisma project as reported by David Parish above. Oxford Brookes 
were also involve in Project Yeats which involved work to allow the 
immediate start up of an Available Bit Rate service - the first year 
work involves the set up of a simulation model of the dynamic 
bandwidth controller the requirements of which were to be incorporated 
into the rate based ATM Forum option for Available Bit Rate. Oxford 
Brookes were also involved in a Project with the Ashmolean Museum.

Jon Crowcroft reported on UCL's involvement with three RACE projects 
including development of a Network Management platform using a 
multi-domain ATM platform in Copenhagen, and project DRAGON looking at 
service management above the VPN level. A further project involved 
looking at the next generation internet protocol which was to include 
guarantees of delay and bandwidth - Sun Microsystems in the US and 
QPSX in australia were said to be using these next generation internet 
routing codes. Other projects were; an ESPRIT project looking at 
multi-media communications over ISDN or Internet Protocol; a JISC 
project EMMA looking at how to promulgate the multi-media work 
throughout the UK academic community; an information systems division 
project requiring the set-up of a 3-ATM switch 100Mbit/s backbone; and 
UCL were also involved in the Martlesham MSc - some of the output of 
the above projects would be incorporated in the course modules.

Derek McAuley reported on a BTL project involving network modelling 
and measurements; a ROPA project HATs looking at authority management; 
an EPSRC project looking at comparative performance of applications 
including ATM versus 100Mbit/s switched ethernet etc; a project 
looking at signalling on dumb devices; and Cambridge were also hoping 
for access to the PNO ATM pilot to experiment with M-Bone and various 
management tools.

John Adams reported on the Race Exploit project which involved 
performance measurements on an  ATM  test bed; internal BT studies 
were looking at the available bit rate service.

Ian Marshall reported on the futures test bed at Martlesham, known as  
the common broadband applications testbed (ComBAT). This will provide 
10Mbit/s ethernet connection between individual workstations and an 
ATM backbone and is intended to be linked to SuperJanet. The mangement 
system is being developed by the ComBAT team lead by Ian Marshall and 
will involve real time distributed processing to make the system very 
responsive.



5. Date of Next Meeting

The next Management Meeting will be held on Tuesday 28th March 1995 at 
Imperial College.



BTL/BMSN/Mick Mulvey/Draft A/Disc Ref:BTSJRI/Issue 1			
18 October 94



Attachments:-

Appendix 1 - Action Point Summary
Appendix 2 - Participants List
Appendix 3 - Management Committees Scope of Work 

******************************************************
					Appendix 1
Action Point Summary

AP	Comment					By Whom

1	Prepare a technical summary report for 
	submission to the project management 
	committee one month prior to the 
	management committee meeting.		UCL/JC

2	Set dates and location of future 
	management meetings.			BT/MM

3	Talk with Paul Labbett and the BT 
	commercial unit to speed up signature 
	of MoU.					BT/SR

4	Copies of these minutes and those of 
	the technical committee to be 
	forwarded to JISC.			BT/MM
						UCL/JC
 
5	 Jon agreed to keep a list of available 
	JISC initiative documentation on a 
	central project server - (Note: to be 
	set up as part of technical committee 
	requirements)				UCL/JC

*******************************************************
					Appendix 2
Management Committee 

Partcipants List


Name		Affiliation	Phone 		e-mail

D. McAuley	Cambridge Uni.	01223-334416	dm@cl.cam.ac.uk
D. Hutchison	Lancaster Uni.	01524-593798	dh@comp.lancs.ac.uk
A. Campbell	Lancaster Uni.	01524-593020	
campbell@comp.lancs.ac.uk
J. Crowcoft	UCLCS		0171-3807296	jon@cs.ucl.ac.uk
J. Cowan	UCLCS		0171-3807296	j.cowan@cs.ucl.ac.uk
A. Smith	Oxford Brookes	0865-483697	
avril@dsrg.brookes.ac.uk
D. Parish	LUT		0509-222832	D.J.Parish@lut.ac.uk
I. Phillips	LUT		0509-263171x4190  
i.w.phillips@lut.ac.uk
J. Magee	IC		0171-5948269	jnm@doc.ic.ac.uk
E. Lupu		IC		0171-5948249	e.c.lupu@doc.ic.ac.uk
N.Pryce		IC				np2@doc.ic.ac.uk
I. Marshall	BTL		01473-646951	
marshall@drake.bt.co.uk
S. Ritchie	BTL		01473-642710	
ritchie_s_t_d@bt-web.bt.co.uk
J. Adams	BTL		01473-642082	
adams_j_l@bt-web.bt.co.uk
A. Grace	BTL		01473-644257	
grace_a_p@bt-web.bt.co.uk

***************************************************

				Appendix 3

Management Committees - Terms of Reference

BT UNIVERSITY RESEARCH INITIATIVE 
MANAGEMENT OF MULTISERVICE NETWORKS

Project management


Management Committee

Members

Technical manager of the contract (chairman)	Ian Marshall
Secretary					Mick Mulvey 
BTs University Research Programme Manager	Simon Ritchie 
BT representative(s) from the Project Technical Committee
(as necessary)
The Academic Coordinator			Jon Crowcroft
A representative from each university:		the university's 
						primary contact 
A representative from JISC			Ron Rogerson 
						or delegate		

Frequency of meetings

Twice a year; BT to organise, chair and be responsible for notes.

Activities

The following issues will be discussed at each meeting:-

- General management of the project
	Monitoring of financial position
	Intellectual property
	Publications
	Links with JNT and JISC
	Publicity

- Technical issues
	Six-monthly report
	Notes of Technical Committee meetings
	To discuss linkages between work packages
	Monitoring timescales and deliverables
	Other relevant associated work at BT and at universities

- Future work and new proposals

Where appropriate, presentations will be made on progress of a 
particular work package - to be agreed between the Academic 
Coordinator and the BT Technical Manager

Reports

The Academic Coordinator will prepare a report summarising progress on 
the project over the past six months. This will be sent to the 
secretary at least a week before the management committee meeting - he 
will then send it to all management committee members with the agenda.



Technical Committee 

Members

The Academic Coordinator
The BT Technical Manager
The university people actively engaged on the work
The BT technical contact for each work package

Frequency of meetings

Six monthly, held a few weeks before the management committee meeting 
to allow the Academic Coordinator to acquire the information needed to 
prepare the six-monthly report. The Academic coordinator to organise, 
chair and be responsible for notes.

Activities

- To present and discuss work carried out over the previous 
six months

- To review deliverables prior to being submitted to the 
management committee

- To agree future work



Work package groups (WPGs) - one for each work package

Members

Workers on each work package

Frequency of meetings

As required - every 3-6 months?

Activities

To discuss technical progress within individual packages

Technical Contacts

Work	Topic			BT	 	University
Package			
1	Config. management	Julian Hill	Nick Pryce, IC
2	Policy based management	Ian Marshall	James Cowan, UCL
3	Quality of Service	Steve Rudkin	Andrew Campbell, Lanc
4	Traffic Monitoring	John Adams	Iain Phillips, LUT
5	Security		Steve Hubbard	Derek McAuley, Camb