MJTS -Feb 8 Meeting agenda

[John R. Vollbrecht]

The following is a tentative agenda for the mjts meeting to be held at
the Union at Michigan State in the Ohio State Room.  The meeting will be
on Feb. 8th from 9:30 till 3:30.

The main focus of the meeting will be the dial out service. In the
morning we will have a brief review of network status by Jeff Ogden, a
review of roll out status of the NAS, and an introduction to X500.

The X500 presentation is review X500 capability and initiate discussion
on whether we should have a statewide X500 directory capability.  Tim
Howes from UM will lead the discussion and will be available at lunch to
talk about implementation and support questions.



9:30  Coffe/Coke and donuts
10:00 MichNet Overview -Jeff Ogden
10:20 X.500 presentation - Tim Howes
11:00 NAS rollout status - John Vollbrecht
11:30 Authentication/authorization update
11:40 Dumb terminal interface - Richard Conto
11:55 lunch 

1:15  Breakout groups
2:30  Breakout group report/large group discussion
3:25  Plan next meeting time
3:30  Close

Some explanation/ direction for Breakout groups.  The times for the
groups are guesses.  I would be willing to lengthen breakout time and
reduce the large group discussion by 15 minutes if that seems a good
idea at the time.

At the last merit board meeting the board passed a resolution - I will
get the exact wording to you next week - asking that a committee of
"computing center directors" be created to put together a recommendation
for what we want to do in the future about dial in policy.  The
afternoon breakout sessions are meant to provide input to that group.

The proposal is to have three groups dealing with three (overlapping)
questions.

  1. what does the service look like 
  2. who is the service for
  3. who pays for the service

Each group will appoint a secretary to write down issues and ideas.  The
goal is not to make a specific recommendation, but to lay out the range
of solutions and the issues associated with each.  If some clear
recommendations come out that would be fine, but it is not a necessary
outcome.

After the groups meet we will get back together and each group will
report out and we will have discussion in the large group.

Some input for each of the areas is given below.  This is not meant to
be exclusive, and any discussion of this on the list before the meeting
would be helpful. 

1. What does the service look like

   One major question is whether all dial in ports should look exactly
   alike or whether some differences are acceptable.  What should be
   common?  

   In my mind there are two models of how dialin might get rolled out
   in the future.  One is where there is a common interface and all
   "MichNet" ports conform to this interface.  This makes it easier for
   users that travel, makes MichNet look more coherent, is better for
   statewide applications that have distributed users, etc.  In this
   model a location might have both "MichNet" and local access, where
   local access is set up specifically for the local institution.

   The second model is where all dialin ports are the same and there is
   no distinction between "MichNet" and local ports.  This would seem to
   make a bigger pool of ports available as "MichNet", but may be
   difficult because of the need to limit access by non-local users.

   Some issues that should be addressed by this group -

	 - what does the user interface look like - what features are provided
	 (dumb terminal, PPP, SLIP, help, etc)
	
	- how is authentication and authorization done

	- what billing requirements

	- who monitors what

    - can we just provide PPP access as the common denominator and then
	publish or distribute software to take advantage of it?

	- do we need and equivalent of help at which host?

2.  Who is the service for

   This raises the question of what dial in is meant to provide around
   the state.  Merit Members and Affiliates provide dial-in for their
   own users.  They also allow others - other Members and Affiliates
   as well as the general public - to use some of the dialin ports.

   Should we continue to provide free access to the general public?  If
   so, should we limit access for them more than we do currently?

   How much sharing between institutions should be allowed?  If we had
   different useage tracking abilities would we handle this differently?

   Should everyone at Members/Affiliates that uses dial in be required
   to authenticate themselves?

   Having a statewide dial in capability is a real advantage for some
   services.  Is this a capability we want to continue to provide?  Do
   these services need to provide authentication for all their users?
   (State Libraries or perhaps some State provided K-12 resource service
   might be examples)

3. Who pays for Dial in facilities

   Each institution now funds dial in on its own.  Are there ways to
   supplement funding with grants, or by using funding from services
   that use statewide dialin access to help pay for some of the
   facilities?

   Should we look for grants for additional dial in - eg rural
   datafication, State of Michigan etc.

   Should we set up useage tracking and bilateral agreements to share
   costs of facilities.  One institution could provide facilities at a
   location and then recover costs from others based on %use.

   How are new facilities funded to keep from having excessive busies?

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Please make comments to the mjts list on the set of questions.  If you
are interested in being in a specific group, please let me know.  I will
try to identify some potential discussion leaders in the next few days.


  - John

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