Edinburgh (10 Questions)

Answers for Edinburgh

Question 1

Provide the name and contact details of your local (Departmental) and Institutional network support staff.

• My Departmental network support contact is: Not a straightforward question. ScotGrid-Edi consists of machines on the .epcc.ed.ac.uk sub-net, some of which are based in the Physics department (James Clerk Maxwell Building at Kings Buildings campus), others which are based at the ACF, an offsite facility. Problems with the epcc.ed.ac.uk domain go to Systems Support support[at]epcc.ed.ac.uk. Issues with nodes at the ACF are addressed to scotgrid-adm[at]epcc.ed.ac.uk. Problems within the department are generally dealt with by either Greig, Steve or Mòrag.
• My Institutional network support contact is: science.support[at]ed.ac.uk in the first instance. A full list of contacts for Networking at the University of Edinburgh is available here: http://www.ucs.ed.ac.uk/nsd/nsd-who.html

Question 2

Provide details of the responsibilities, together with the demarcation of those responsibilities, of your local and Institutional network support staff.

• The departmental contact is responsible for: See question 1.
• The institutional contact is responsible for: Problems arising on the University network, i.e. beyond the ScotGrid switch at ACF, or the departmental switch in JMCB.

Question 3

What is a Regional Network Operator (RNO), and why does this matter to you?

• An RNO is: Edinburgh and STirling Metropolitan Area Network http://www.eastman.net.uk/
• I care because: The EaStMAN provides high speed connectivity to the JANET network, although we also have a direct link to JANET.

Question 4

What is SuperJANET4? And more importantly what is SuperJANET5?

• SuperJANET4: Currently connects all Further and Higher Education institutions and the research councils. This community continues to expand and includes Regional Broadband Consortiums (RBC) within England, a similar initiative in the Scottish Schools Digital Network and the Lifelong Learning Network for Wales. The core of this network is referred to as SuperJANET (Joint Academic NETwork). This backbone provides a highly resilient and fast access to all JANET organisations and ensures they can communicate effectively. To ensure the network continues to meet the changing needs of its community this backbone is procured under a fixed term contract. These individual versions of the backbone are identified by number, with the current version being referred to as SuperJANET4. The contract UKERNA holds for the provision of SuperJANET4 ends in December 2006. In March 2001 SuperJANET4 saw the implementation of a 2.5Gbit/s core backbone from which connections to regional network points of presence were made at speeds ranging between 155Mbit/s to 2.5Gbit/s depending upon the size of the regional network. In 2002 the core SuperJANET4 backbone was upgraded to 10Gbit/s. SuperJANET4 also saw a increase in the userbase of JANET with the inclusion of the Further Education Community and the use of the SuperJANET4 backbone to interconnect schools networks.
• SuperJANET5 is: The next version of SuperJANET, due to begin rollout at the end of 2005.

Questions 5, 6, 7 and 9 (part)

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Note, more information:

EdLan

Switch Status

Question 8

What is the average and peak traffic flow between your local (Departmental) network and the Institutional network?

• Average traffic:
• Peak traffic:

What is the average and peak traffic flow between your Institutional network and the RNO?

• Average traffic:
• Peak traffic:

What is the total capacity of your Institutional connection to the RNO?

• Our total capacity is:

What are the upgrade plans for your local (Departmental) network; your Institutional network and the network run by the RNO?

• Departmental plans:
• Institutional plans:
• RNO plans:

Question 9

Do you believe in IS Security? Does your Institute believe in IS Security?

• I'm a believer: YES
• We're collective believers: YES

Do you believe in firewalls? Does your Institute believe in firewalls?

• I'm a believer: YES
• We're collective believers: YES, in general. Main backbone is protected by firewalls, individual departments can make their own firewalling decisions.

Provide information of how changes are made to the rule set of the firewall.

• Firewall rules are changed by: E-mailing request science.support[at]ed.ac.uk. Note there are port filters on the srif routers, and firewalls on local machines.

Provide a note of the capacity of this device and what happens when that capacity is exceeded.

• The capacity is: Dependent on the router.
• When it goes over-capacity, the following happens: Packets are dropped. UECS will address. Given the current setup, over-capacity is unlikely except in the case of a malicious or unintentional denial of service attack.

Question 10

What is the best performance you can achieve from your end-system to an equivalent system located in some geographically remote (and friendly!) Institute?

• Best performance is:

For your end-system:

Do you understand the kernel, the bus structure; the NIC; and the disk system?

• I understand: YES/NO

Do you understand TCP tuning and what it can do for you?

• I understand: YES/NO

Do you understand your application and what it can do to your performance?

• I understand: YES/NO