Common Systems Group (CSG)
Meeting Summary
Tuesday-August 28, 2007

Attendees: Julie Austin, Ross Bollens, Paul Craft, Carmela Cunningham, Jim Davis, Jackson Jeng, Max Kopelevich, Michelle Lew, Kathleen O’Kane, Sean Pine, Nick Reddingius, David Snow, Mike Van Norman, Don Worth, Kent Wada

Guests: Thomas Trappler

The meeting was called to order at 2:10 p.m. by Jim Davis.

1. CENIC and the NLR/I2 merger (Jim Davis, 30 minutes)

Jim Davis provided background information regarding the national controversy over the merging of NLR( National Lamdarail) and I2( Internet 2)—two networking consortiums that serve to promote, facilitate, and revolutionize information technology through research and education. The real issue from UCLA’s standpoint is finance and ultimate control. This merger can either integrate the two organizations together in a manner that can provide cost-effective high performance networking to advance research and higher-education goals, or become an impediment due to conflicting goals of the individual organizations.

Although both NLR and I2 share similar goals, their lack of compromise in the past from their individual terms and agreements, have sparked concerns over their ability to provide a viable national networking system for the future. Since 2005, I2 and NLR have been trying to merge, but their failed attempts have proven their adversarial approach and divergences in certain aspects as a major concern.

Internet2 is a nonprofit corporation comprised of members who are primarily individual institutions of higher education, certain other research entities, and selected corporations. NLR (National LambdaRail Inc.) is a formal consortium made up of regional and state networks whose members and/or owners primarily are Regional Optical Networks (RONs). NLR focuses more on network services and research support while I2 expands their efforts in other educational domains. Divergence in culture, structure, governance, partnerships, assets, and finance must be overcome in order to merge successfully.

CENIC (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California) serves to deliver cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking support to the state’s K-20 education community). There has been a great volume of email traffic regarding the NLR/I2 merger and CENIC’s position. Jim made the CSG aware of these communications by distributing copies of the following public exchanges that had occurred over the past two days:

  1. Some abstracted comments from Jeff Lehman commenting about the situation
  2. Message from Bill Clebsch at Stanford
  3. Jim’s message to the UC CIOs over the CENIC follow-up message
  4. A public message from the UC CIOs

Jeff Lehman, Chair of Internet 2’s Board of Directors, explains in his email the logic behind I2’s position on the merger proposal and the Definitive Agreement. Although “merger” should be distinctively separate from “definitive agreement,” last year’s failed negotiations made it apparent that the only way to move forward would be for both sides to compromise. This resulted in the formation of the Merging Planning Team (MPT), whose responsibility is to prepare the Definitive Agreement, a legal contract of terms from both organizations designed to mitigate all discords. Subsequently, the Definitive Agreement will be presented to both boards for their acceptance or rejection of the proposal.

Jeff explains that the process of negotiation among a score of individuals would reverse the attempts to move forward, which is why we are all constrained to an “up-or-down decision.” He expresses his strong conviction that this merger proposal will be the right direction to take for the research and education community, although imperfect as it may be.

However, Jim alludes to the lack of coherence and communication through the language of the agreement. The core of the Definitive Agreement is about 80 pages in length of legal contract, and about 50 pages of appendices, but fails to clearly evaluate what needs to be addressed. The agreement presents itself as fixed and inflexible to negotiation, which causes a dilemma. One must either accept or reject the proposals without having the option to discuss or improve the conditions of these terms.

Jim discusses CENIC’s strong support of the merger, but expresses their great concern regarding its approach to successfully merge. The pressure to vote yes on the existing merger agreement while planning to deal with the remaining issues later may be problematic for CENIC in terms of its relation with the state, segments, and education segments. CENIC is the organization with the largest number of institutions, and cannot afford to sign an agreement that has unresolved conditions.

From CENIC’s standpoint, there are still concerns regarding:

  1. The continued availability and use of assets that CENIC considers strategic and maintaining rights of usage among all universities.
  2. The transfer of those fiber assets that are co-owned through NLR, LLC for less than their market-based valuation (which practically means giving away assets)
  3. The deferred specification of the merged organization’s overall fee structure
  4. How the transfer and non-transfer of assets will be handled

Accepting the proposal without having these issues addressed may cause potential violation against their commitment to the state and institutions to maintain the lowest costs possible. These issues may negatively impact the critical relations that our K-12, Community College, California State University and UC systems have with the state. If fees are increased, CENIC can potentially be destroyed and fees will continue to increase if this occurs.

Although Bill Clebsch, Executive Director of IT Services, is in agreement with CENIC’s concerns, he fully supports the advancement of this merger despite these unaddressed issues. From his perspective, the assets will remain in control of the newly formed entity and adjustments can be made post-merger. Similarly, Peter Siegal vocalizes the University of CA CIOs’ advocacy for the merger while encouraging everyone to give their full support as well. According to Jim, we are at an impasse because everything comes down to a vote by the two boards despite the disparity between various positions regarding this merger. I2 voted to support the agreement and now the decision is in the hands of NLR.

Although the grace period for this merger is expiring, Jim’s major concern is that people are impulsively supporting the merger without carefully reading the Definitive Agreement because of time and cost-sensitive matters. Jim advises that the only way to move forward is to revise the merger agreement and reconcile these issues that the MPT seems to think have already been addressed to prevent future conflicts instead of hoping that these issues will be resolved post-merger.

2. Follow up on RFC1918 routing across the campus back bone

To follow up on the issue of RFC1918 routing across the campus back bone that was discussed at the May CSG meeting, Mike Van Norman asked the CSG if they had any questions or concerns regarding this matter; the members of CSG had none.

3. Follow up on DNS updates

Mike Van Norman gave an update on the Domain Name System. The project has been stalled, but is expected to be set up by September.

4. Policy changes on SMTP.UCLA.EDU to reduce spam

Mike Van Norman gives an update regarding the possible policy changes on SMTP.UCLA.EDU to reduce spam. About two to three years ago, the Information Technology Planning Board agreed to a blacklisting program wherein connections from dialup would not be accepted. Although this has eliminated viral traffic on SMPT Gateways, spam is still increasing and 70 percent of emails are still coming in to the SMPT. Again, policy changes are being made in an effort to lower the rate of spam.

Mike introduces a proposal to reject mail that has been coming in from a mail server that does not have a reverse mapping address or one emitting a false address, cutting the amount of incoming spam in half. However, this plan will only affect mail that is already classified as spam, and will not stop anything that does not meet the 5% spam threshold, meaning that not all spam will be eliminated. Mail that does not resemble spam will not be rejected. The goal is to alleviate problems regarding the blacklisting issue, while preventing an increase in spam.

Discussion

There was a consensus that spam assassin is a good idea and the members had requested to be emailed information regarding this devised plan. Spam continually evolves (i.e. viruses, postcards, E-cards) and needs to be constantly trained and controlled. Spam has started to disguise itself in the form of optical illusions, such as tilted letters—signifying the increasing importance of blocking spam. The aim is to get this into action by the start of the 2007 fall year. Mike requested any feedback, complaints, or response regarding this matter within the next two weeks so that this plan can move forward. The plan is not fixed and can easily be changed.

5. SpySweeper Discussion

Tom Trappler requested input from the CSG members regarding the SpySweeper Agreement, which will soon expire. Issues have been arising over the amount of resources the software takes from PC’s, resulting in stagnancy or even computer failure.

Discussion Points

Tom Trappler opened up discussion regarding this matter.

At the end of the meeting, Tom requested future feedback regarding this matter.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:17 p.m.