RINET BOD Meeting,
September 7, 2001
Review and approval of minutes from August 3rd meeting – Approved and accepted with change by Katie re: RINET accounts.
Attendees: Katie Miller, Jim Monti, Bill Fiske, Mike Shaughnessy, Sharon Hussey, Pam Christman, George Loftus
Introduction to Joe Caparco, Manager of Network Operations and Services:
Discussion of need for Verizon Service Level Agreement. Bill suggests a meeting with Verizon initiated at the State level so that Verizon will understand the service gaps. In addition, RINET should call Curt and our customer(s) may write letters.
Project Status reports:
Filtering Project Overview: Filter appliance in place. Documentation 1 (information and FAQ) in place. Documentation 2 in progress (categories and IP subnetting instructions). Community meetings may or may not use the category listings from 8e6 in designing their Internet policies. Community meeting will become unwieldy if it becomes an exercise in selecting categories. The policy should be limited to the decision to do filtering. Choosing categories is implementation, not policy. The upcoming update to the filtering software will give local control. Pam will do customization of the locally selected categories until the upgrade has been done, to avoid need to repeat the training and learning of all the details of the product. The upgrade and training on the product will be done next quarter. Subsequently, local filtering administrators will maintain their own rule sets, etc.
Core Rebuild: Motivation to rebuild the core was to allow in-line devices and redundancy of routers as well as to accommodate an insurance carrier. As a result of the rebuild, RINET will be able to maintain a spare router.
Modem consolidation: Phase 1 of modem consolidation is complete. Portsmouth, Cumberland and Little Compton modems/call forwards have been removed. Phase 1 introduced some ancillary issues to the project including the need to decrease the impact on out-of-State dialup users who were inadvertently affected and to remap the Centrex speed-dial destinations for schools still using dialup lines (5 free lines).
Phase 2 will begin December 31, when the Westerly modem banks will be taken down.
Portsmouth, Cumberland, and Westerly host sites should be notified that they will be charged for the complete rate for lines next year, in lieu of the discounted rates they received in return for hosting our modems.
LD ISDN & Video projects:
Joe will follow through with QWEST and order the long distance carrier service.
Pam has made contact with the Field Coordinator for Finance Academies. Can easily make a loaner Polycom available to allow them to participate in video training of students. BOD members agreed with this strategy for collaborating with educators who may not own similar equipment.
WSBE has offered video on demand services to a number of pilot schools. OSHEAN may be helpful in investigating streamlining implementation and any potential impact on statewide network since the implementation will use a huge amount of Internet bandwidth.
Network monitoring: Joe has installed and is using What’s Up Gold to monitor all of RINET edge devices (school routers), core devices, Internet connections, FRASI lines, ATM network. With this tool, a Web-based package, RINET is able to operate in a proactive mode. Joe will notify the technical support staff in the districts of the URL with password via the RICOORD-L, but is continuing to investigate security issues to determine whether further publicizing compromises network security. Joe will help Tech Coordinators purchase and implement this for the district clouds. In addition, because Atrion also uses this too, they may be able to provide training seminars for the Tech Coordinators on the use of the product. What’s Up Gold has e-mail notification abilities on a per poll site basis. Joe will be investigating notification options and methods (e.g., Verizon, contract with Atrion, ways to provide coverage outside RINET business hours, etc.).
Trouble ticket tracking: Joe is using a program to log Verizon activities regarding outages. Will let Tech Coordinators know that this information exists.
Insurance carrier – I1: George Loftus recused himself from this discussion.
Following a strategy to ensure network reliability in the event that RINET’s primary Internet carrier goes down or does maintenance, RINET is investigating purchase of 10Mb from another carrier. A Verizon/Genuity option with the lines coming from the Verizon pool is a practical and cost effective solution. The recently accomplished core rebuild allowed the use of an insurance carrier. In addition to ensuring that RINET’s K-12 network remains operational in the event that OSHEAN experiences downtime, having two carriers will allow RINET additional capacity and the ability to do load sharing. RIDE will fund the insurance carrier cost as a pilot project for the first year. Next year, RINET will need to decide whether and how to continue with the insurance carrier.
New connectivity strategies: When the ATM lines funded by the Working Wonders grants are installed, it will be possible to allow a single-drop, direct-connect site (not a frame cloud district) to run data and video on the ATM T1. Need to get a sub-group together to determine pricing and connection strategies to make sure that the pricing is fair and not complex. Can carve pipes or use QOS and both have different pricing implications. Also experimenting with FRASI to allow Frame-based schools to use video over Frame.
Establish subgroup to propose and revise schedule of charges: The establishment of a subgroup to propose and revise schedule of charges was approved. The charge to the group is to match pricing to existing and new services and to bring a proposal to the BOD for the November meeting in order to give schools the most lead time possible and to meet e-Rate deadlines. Suggestion was made that the subgroup include Joe C., Jim, and Melanie and anyone beyond these staff members with Joe leading the group.
Virus protection software for the desktop: Have investigated options for offering volume pricing to schools and districts. McAfee/NAI will offer an umbrella pricing agreement to all RINET members. RINET will be the aggregator but will not be required to provide support or billing pass-through in this model. Pam will arrange a group presentation for our members. We should look at extending this to individual teachers via RINET accounts and it should be available to all RINET members. Board approved moving forward.
Positioning activity: Promotional meetings, etc. Outreach beginning with examples being RIASA RI Assoc of School Administrators and upcoming RISTE meeting. Deferred discussion to next meeting.
Notes:
Sharon and George invited to present at RISTE meeting re: What I2 brings to K-12 schools. Rhode Island invited to participate in K-20 Initiative. October 11, 2001 event with the President.
Motion to Adjourn: 11:56am