Compendium 2002 Country Information

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BASIC INFORMATION

Full name of the organisation (in English:) United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association
Postal address: Atlas Centre
Chilton
City/postal code: DIDCOT, OX11 0QS

United Kingdom
Year founded: 1993
Year operations started: 1984
Short description of the history of the NREN: www.ukerna.ac.uk/company/history/history.html
Fax: +44 1235 822 399
Phone: +44 1235 822 200
Website: www.ukerna.ac.uk
General e-mail address: service@ukerna.ac.uk
Convention used for e-mail addresses: [initial].[lastname]@[Company_name].[Second_level_domain].[Country_code]
e.g., a.name@ukerna.ac.uk


ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION

Form of organisation: Separate legal entity /
Other non-profit organisation /
Brief description of the governing structure: The 280 members are individuals representing the customers.

UKERNA is a not for profit company funded by the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils in the UK. It operates under a Service Level Agreement with the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Funding Councils.
UKERNA manages the JANET network.
Involvement in cctld or domain names: UKERNA is responsible for the allocation of names under ac.uk and manages the allocation of names under gov.uk.

Ms Shirley Wood sits on the on the Nominet Policy Advisory Board. Nominet are responsible for the .uk domain.
Name(s) of Chief Executive Officer(s): Dr. Robin Arak
Chief Executive
Head of the Technical Staff: Dr. Bob Day
E-mail: r.day@ukerna.ac.uk
Name of contact person for PR matters: Ms. Shirley Wood Customer Support Director
E-mail: S.Wood@ukerna.ac.uk


STAFFING

Total number of staff directly employed by the organisation: 77
Number of directly employed staff in Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): 75.5
Number of directly employed Technical Staff in FTE: 37.5
Average number of people (in FTE) working for the organisation as subcontractors or on outsourced basis: 3
Number of subcontracted/outsourced technical staff in FTE: 3
Number of administrative and financial staff in FTE: 15
Number of user support and training staff in FTE: 23
Total amount of effort in person/months per year: 942


FINANCES, BUDGET

Budget year: 1 August to 31 July
Total budget of last financial year (in euro): 67.8 M
Total budget current financial year (in euro): 68.6 M
Source Percentage of income Restricted Free
Government/public bodies: 85
Users: 10
Other sources: 5


Method of client charging: We charge a flat fee, based on bandwidth
 
Expenditure category: Percentage:
Salaries and general office costs 12
Equipment and software costs 6
Transmission (data communications) 71
Other 12
Method of obtaining national data communications capacity: We have contracts with several providers
Method of obtaining international data communications capacity: Through the GÉANT project
Remarks: For international connections, we also have contracts with several providers.


USER BASE

Total number of students in tertiary education (x 1000): 2081, year: 1999
Percentage of University students with internet access through the NREN: 100
Percentage of further education students with Internet access through the NREN: 99
Percentage of secondary education students with internet access through the NREN: 5
Percentage of primary education pupils with Internet access through the NREN: 5
External traffic per university student in 2001 (in GB/yr): 1.8
Congestion in the national network: rank from most (1) to least (5) congested; est. percentage of clients experiencing congestion
Campus LAN 1 50
Metropolitan or regional network 3 5
Access network 2 10
NREN backbone 5
External connections 4 1


Manner in which institutions are connected to the network:
Directly connected to a POP on the NREN: 10%
Connected via a regional or metropolitan network managed by the NREN: 30%
Connected via a regional or metropolitan network managed by a third party: 60%
Number of institutions with a permanent connection: 730
Number of connected Universities: 120
Percentage of total number of Universities that is connected via the NREN: 100
Number of connected institutes of higher or further education: 560
Percentage of all institutes of higher or further education that is connected via the NREN: >99.7%

CAPACITY AND PLANS



Current core network capacity in Mbps: 2500
Total volume of traffic through the network in 2001 (in TB): 6539
Volume of outbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 1622
Volume of inbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 2099
Total traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 605
Volume of outbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 201
Volume of inbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 219
Typicial large-site access capacity (in Mbps): 155 Mbps
Expected access capacity in two years time: 4 times as much
Map of network topology: www.ja.net/topology/
Recent network traffic statistics: bill.ja.net/
Operational external connections in January 2002 (usable capacity in Mb/s:)
GEANT, 2500
Abilene, 2500
2*2.5Gbit/s via KPNQwest
1*1Gbit/s to UK peering via LINX
500Mbit/s (approximately) via private peering, 1*512k to China.
Planned additions or upgrades to the external connections in 2002:
None envisaged
Expected operational external connections in January 2004:
Global research networks, 10 Gb/s


Technology used for the core network: DWDM
Planned technical changes: No change.
Expected core capacity in two years: Moving the backbone to 10Gbit/s mid 2002 with probably further move to 20Gbit/s.
Involvement in Internet Exchange Point: No
 


SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Services provided:
- Basic IP provision: Done by NREN
- User support: Done by NREN
- NOC: Done by NREN
- Directory services: Done by NREN
- Security incident response: Done by NREN
- Annual Conferences: Done by NREN
Summary of or URL to Acceptable Use Policy: www.ja.net/documents/use.html
www.ja.net/documents/connection_policy.html
Current interests:
Diffserv/Qos /
IPv6 Development /
Multicast /
CERT services /
CERT incident coordination /
Video Conferencing /
Streaming Media /
Traffic Monitoring /
Web Server content management /
Information Content indexing
Essential future interests: Lambda Testbed access /
Lambda Service Deployment /
IPv6 Service Deployment /
Mobile Access (Persistence of presence) /
Teaching and learning methods /
Charging / billing systems /
Web Server usage analysis /
Potential future interests:
Giga Ethernet /
MPLS Service Deployment /
User authentication /
In house PKI development/deployment /
In house Certification Authority /
Directory Services /
Caching, Indexing, Mirroring /
Not interested in: SDH /
Wireless LAN /
Joint projects with/on: 6NET www.6net.org/
SEQUIN www.dante.net/sequin/