Transcript Dropped in the Dessert

International Collaborations
Educause Seminars on Academic
Computing, Summer 2006
Who We Are
• Dr. Pierce E. Cantrell
– Vice President and Associate Provost for
Information Technology, Texas A&M
University
• Dr. Timothy M. Chester
– Chief Information Officer, Texas A&M
University at Qatar
Purpose
• “To discuss how institutions of higher
education can leverage technology to
develop, coordinate, and sustain
strategic global activities”
Key Texas A&M University
International Operations
• Latin America
– Mexico City Study Center
• Europe
– Santa Chiara Study Abroad Center,
Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy
• Middle East
– Branch Campus, Doha, Qatar
Agenda
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Texas A&M International Operations
International Connectivity
Planning
Collaboration
Other Services
Questions & Discussion
Mexico City Study Center
• Founded 1992, made possible by generous
donation by Pablo Marvin
• Serves as Texas A&M’s official representative
in Mexico
• Focuses on institutional linkages with
government and academic institutions in
Mexico
• Seeks out research collaborations between
Texas A&M faculty and colleagues in Mexico
and Latin America
• Activities
– Faculty development seminars
– Study abroad opportunities
– Outreach to former students living and
working in Mexico
– Special seminars on economics, history,
politics, food science, business
– Research collaboration between faculty,
industry, and institutions in Mexico
• Funding
– Primarily by Texas A&M University
– Center seeks out external funding where
possible to increase the reach of its
programs
Santa Chiara Study Abroad Center
• Founded 1982, Moved to Castiglion
Fiorentino, Italy in 1989
• Primary focus on the arts
• Includes dormitory space, design
studios, classrooms space, a small
theater, library facilities, student
lounges, and dining areas
• Study Abroad Programs for Students
– Texas A&M University
– University of Texas
– Kansas State
– Colorado State
– Among Others
• Funding
– Primarily through Student Tuition & Fees
– Scholarships, fellowships, and other
student aid is available on an institution by
institution basis
Texas A&M University at Qatar
• Founded 2003
• Located in Doha,
Qatar
• College of
Engineering
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Petroleum
Chemical
Mechanical
Electrical
• Education City Model
– “bring the best”
• Sponsored by Qatar Foundation for
Education, Science, and Community
Development
Education City Partners
• Virginia Commonwealth University
– Fine Arts
• Weill Cornell Medical College
– Pre-med, Medicine, Medical Residency
• Texas A&M University
– Engineering
• Carnegie Mellon University
– Business, Computer Science
• Georgetown University
– Foreign Service
• Branch Campus
• Higher Education Coordinating Board
Approved
• SACS Approved
• Funded entirely by Qatar Foundation
Rationale for Education City
• Qatar Foundation
– Intellectual Capital
– Qatarization
– Prestige
• Texas A&M University
– International Presence
– Industry Relationships
– Research Collaboration
International Connectivity
International R&E Networking
• Abilene International peering is excellent
– See Heather Boyles, Ana Preston, and
Christine Siroskey’s presentation from the May
2006 Internet2 User’s Meeting
– http://www.internet2.edu/abilene/international
– http://international.internet2.edu/
• This is an area where Internet2 has done an
excellent job.
Education City Network Connections
• Original model was each campus in Education City
would lease a dedicated E1 (or two E1’s) back to
their home campus.
• Number of downsides to this option
– Not enough bandwidth for many multimedia services that all
of us wanted to use
– Need for backup circuit on a true alternate path
– Very expensive as the number of campuses increases
– Local commodity Internet from QTel was filtered
– Other R&E Institutions in Qatar also wanted both R&E
network and commodity Internet access
• Since all of the US institutions were connected to
Abilene, it made sense to share high-speed circuits
and then use Abilene to get to our home campuses.
– Excellent support from the Qatar Foundation and QTel
Qatar Foundation Education City Connections to
Abilene and Commodity Internet
• Two STM1’s (150 Mbps) from Teleglobe (VNSL International
purchased Teleglobe in Feb ‘06). These circuits are incredibly
expensive.
• Atlantic STM-1 terminates in NYC and provides commodity
Internet and a 1 Gbps connection to ManLAN which provides
Abilene and international peering.
• Pacific STM-1 terminates in LA at Pacific Wave for backup
Abilene service. Currently, commodity Internet still goes back to
NYC via leased OC3.
• The Pacific STM-1 is essentially only a backup, which is not very
cost effective give the high cost of these circuits.
– The network engineers at the Education City institutions would like
to have backup commodity Internet in LA.
– TAMUQ would like to route commodity Internet to NYC and Abilene
traffic to LA since delay is about the same to College Station in
either direction.
• Currently vulnerable to a single point of failure on undersea
cable from Qatar to landing point in Fujairah, U.A.E.
ManLAN – Manhattan Landing
• East Coast peering and exchange point in New York City
with connection to Abilene
• International Peering
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Qatar Foundation Network STM-1 (150 Mbps)
CA*net (Canada) (2 x 1 Gbps)
CERN (Switzerland) (10 Gbps)
GÉANT (Europe) (2 x 10 Gbps)
MCIT (Egypt) (622 Mbps)
SINET (Japan) (10 Gbps)
SURFNet (Netherlands) (2 x 10 Gbps)
TANET2 (Taiwan) (1 Gbps)
Pacific Wave http://pacificwave.net/)
Mexico - CUDI
A SDSC
Tijuana
A UTEP
Cd Juárez
A HOUSTON vBNS
REYNOSA
Monterrey
CANCUN
Guadalajara
155Mbs
México
Texas A&M Mexico City Center
• Originally, E1 from Mexico city to Laredo, conversion
to T1, and T1 from Laredo to College Station. Cost
was $9K/mo.
• CUDI allowed TAMU to affiliate for $5K/year and our
colleagues at UNAM connected an E1 from our center
to CUDI. CUDI peers with Abilene in San Diego and
El Paso.
• We tunnel everything back to College Station,
providing all services from College Station including
VoIP with 5-digit dialing.
• The first couple of years there were problems, but
performance and reliability have been good the last
few years
78 Networks reachable via Abilene
Europe-Middle East
Asia-Pacific
Australia (AARNET)
Austria (ACOnet)
Malta (Univ. Malta)
China (CERNET, CSTNET,
Belgium (BELNET) Netherlands (SURFnet)
NSFCNET)
Croatia (CARNet)
Norway (UNINETT)
Fiji (USP-SUVA)
Czech Rep.
Palestinian Territories
Cyprus (CYNET)
(Gov’t Computing Center)Hong Kong (HARNET)
Japan (SINET, WIDE, JGN2)
Denmark
Poland (POL34)
Korea (KOREN, KREONET2)
Estonia (EENet)
Portugal (RCTS2)
New Zealand (NGI-NZ)
Finland (Funet)
Qatar (Qatar FN)
Philippines (PREGINET)
France (Renater)
Romania (RoEduNet)
Singapore (SingAREN)
Germany (G-WIN)
Russia (RBnet)
Greece (GRNET)
Slovakia (SANET)
Taiwan (TANet2, ASNet)
Hungary
Slovenia (ARNES)
Thailand (UNINET, ThaiSARN)
(HUNGARNET)
Spain (RedIRIS)
Iceland (RHnet)
Sweden (SUNET)
Ireland (HEAnet)
Switzerland (SWITCH)
Israel (IUCC)
Syria (HIAST)
Algeria (CERIST)
Italy (GARR)
United Kingdom
Egypt (EUN/ENSTIN)
Jordan (JUNET)
(JANET)
Morocco (CNRST)
Latvia (LATNET)
Turkey (ULAKBYM)
Tunisia (RFR)
Lithuania (LITNET) *CERN
South Africa (TENET)
Luxembourg (RESTENA)
Africa
Americas
Argentina (RETINA)
Brazil (RNP2/ANSP)
Canada (CA*net)
Chile (REUNA)
Costa Rica (CR2Net)
Mexico (Red-CUDI)
United States (Abilene)
Panama (RedCyT)
Peru (RAAP)
Uruguay (RAU2)
Venezuela (REACCIUN2)
Central Asia
Armenia (ARENA)
Georgia (GRENA)
Kazakhstan (KAZRENA)
Tajikistan (TARENA)
Uzbekistan (UZSCI)
Canada – ca*net
RedCLARA
• CLARA
– CLARA – Cooperación
Latino America de Redes
Avanadas (Latin America
Cooperation of Advanced
Networks)
• RedClara
– Redes de Educación
(Networks of Education)
– The RedCLARA network
connects the NREN’s of
Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Columbia, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Panama, Peru,
Uruguay, and Venezuela
• Significant EU Funding
GÉANT
EUMEDCONNECT
• The EUMEDCONNECT project is an initiative
to establish an IP-based network that serves
the research and education communities of
the Mediterranean region and is linked to the
pan-European GÉANT network.
• Countries in the Mediterranean region able to
benefit from the EUMEDCONNECT project are
Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan,
Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, the Palestinian
Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey
• EUMEDCONNECT is funded by the European
Commission through 2006 at 10M Euros.
UK - JANET
Nordic Countries - NORDUnet
Czech Republic - CESNET
Japan - Sinet
Planning
IT Planning for an International Branch
Campus
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IT involvement from the start
CIO visit to proposed location
IT planning
What services are provided from the
home campus?
IT Involvement from the Start
• There needs to be IT representation from the start of the planning
process for an international campus or collaboration
• Many issues to consider…
– What kind of commodity Internet and R&E networking is available, what
does it cost, and how reliable is it?
• We have seen one or two undersea cable failures per year that can take
days or weeks to repair. Do you or your ISP have alternate paths?
• Can you afford the amount of bandwidth you want?
– What are the IT services you are going to provide and who will provide
them?
• We provide support for faculty and staff home IT configurations in Qatar
• We elected to have our own IT staff at TAMUQ rather than use the shared
services from the Qatar Foundation.
• We provide and support Tablet PC’s for our TAMUQ students
– What services will you provide from your home campus and what will
you provide at the remote location?
– Are there local sensitivities that might affect your IT policies?
• Does the host country filter the Internet?
• Are you willing to alter any of your university IT policies to accommodate
local issues?
IT Participation in Site Visits
• Senior IT representatives should participate in site visits and
negotiating sessions
– We had IT representation on all the site visits to Qatar, with the
exception of the first visit.
– There was an IT representative at all of the negotiating sessions (we
had to use videoconferencing for several days of negotiations after
9/11).
• If there are U.S., International, or local universities in the area, visit
with their CIO’s.
– There were two other U.S. universities already in Education City when
we made our initial site visits, and their CIO’s gave us lots of useful
information.
– Ask about how they connect to home campus; commodity Internet
costs, and reliability; local R&E Networks, how they purchase computers
locally, local maintenance, etc.
– Investigate opportunities to share commodity Internet or R&E
Networking.
• Visit with representatives of the local ISP and telephone company
• Get cost estimates for your preliminary budget planning
IT Project Planning
• Dedicate a senior person to the project during planning
– We were lucky to have recently hired a project manager for our
upcoming ERP project who was available.
– Nearly full-time for six months, and he also prepared the business plan.
– The IT budget and staff worked out well, but some of the other groups
are now sorry they didn’t invest more effort in the planning process.
• IT Budget items to think about
– We prepared a start-up plus five-year budget that consisted of narrative
and 20 spreadsheets.
– We have a much larger staff size at TAMUQ than we have for an
equivalent sized unit in College Station or at our branch campus in
Galveston because they provide more services.
– IT Training/Professional Development - we included one international
trip (Europe or U.S.) per year for each professional staff member in
addition to local training in the region.
– Commodity Internet and R&E Networking; cell phones for all faculty and
staff; and long distance charges to call main campus (VoIP may be a
good alternative, but local PTT monopoly may block or packet shape).
IT Project Planning Budget Items
(continued)
– We included both computer labs and individual Tablet PC’s
for students; desktop and laptop computers for faculty and
staff; servers to support local functions; additional classroom
instructional technology not included in the building; desktop
videoconferencing for much of the senior staff; and a threeyear technology refresh on everything.
– Site licenses – do not assume that all you campus site
licenses will apply in a foreign country, some will and some
will not.
– Faculty and staff high-speed Internet connections for home
included in the budget. With an eight hour time difference,
your faculty and staff end up working at home.
– Funding for main campus IT support of remote campus:
student system, course management system,
videoconferencing & streaming support, etc.
What services are provided from the
home campus?
• TAMUQ uses the Student, Payroll, Finance, Library,
Course Management, and multipoint
videoconferencing systems from College Station
– The more the remote campus is dependent on the home
campus IT infrastructure, the more important sufficient
bandwidth and reliability becomes.
– At TAMUQ, we have seen one to two major undersea cable
problems per year. Education City has two STM-1 circuits,
one running via the Atlantic and the other via the Pacific,
and we routinely see failover to the backup circuit. An
undersea cable cut can take weeks to repair.
• TAMUQ IT staff provide everything else, and they
have developed custom applications, e.g., recruiting,
admissions, human resources, instant messaging
(while everyone in Qatar has a cell phone, they use
SMS and not voice mail).
Collaboration
Video Applications to Doha
• Videoconferencing
– Added a number of desktop videoconferencing units
(Tandberg 1000, Polycom VSX 3000, and Polycom PVX) in
both College Station and Doha.
– Added or adding videoconferencing to conference rooms in
College Station in Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical, and
Petroleum Engineering as well as Qatar Support Office and
College of Engineering Conference Room.
– Added two Access Grid locations in College Station in the
College of Engineering videoconference room and Chemical
Engineering conference room and one in Doha.
– vBrick MPEG2 encoders in College Station and Doha for DVD
quality
– Path1 and LifeSize High Definition codecs in College Station
and Doha
TAMU Internet2 Day Participation from Doha, Mexico City,
and the Netherlands http://internet2.tamu.edu/
Types of Collaboration
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Executive to Executive
Administrator to Administrator
Faculty to Faculty (academic)
Faculty to Faculty (research)
Student to Student
Expatriate to Family
Extracurricular Activities
Executive to Executive Collaboration
• Polycom VXS 3000
• Polycom PVX
Software
• Residential VOIP
• Cisco Hardware VPN
Administrator to Administrator
Collaboration
• Shared
videoconferencing
facilities w/ Polycom
Equipment
• Conference call bridging
services
• Administrative systems
support
• ImageNow document
management
• RedDot Content
Management
Faculty to Faculty (academic)
Collaboration
• Videoconferencing
Classrooms,
Conference Rooms
• Access Grid
• Digital Library
• WebCT, Turnitin,
shared software
licenses
>200 Global Sites
Worldwide
TAMU
• TAMU at Qatar
• TAMU – Wisenbaker
Engineering
• TAMU – Chemical
Engineering
• TAMU – Educational
Broadcast Services
• TAMU – TTVN
Network Operations
Deployments
Faculty to Faculty (Research)
Collaboration
• Supercomputing
• 100 Node XSERVE
G5 Cluster + 5TB
XRAID Data Storage
• Faculty users from
Texas, Qatar, and
Europe
Student to Student Collaboration
• Videoconferencing
for student council,
“sharing and
learning” sessions
• Student Exchange
Programs
Expatriate to Family Collaboration
• ADSL Service
• Home Computing
• Videoconferencing
for special events
Extracurricular Activities
• VBrick Codec,
MPEG-2 Broadcasts
• Participation in
Special Events
vBrick CODEC
• Allows Broadcast
Quality Audio & Video
Transmission
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MPEG-2, variable rate
IP connection
Two-Way
Multicast Enabled
• Informal Standard of
Internet2 Community
• DVD-quality link
between Doha and
College Station
vBrick Model 6000
Encoder / Decoder
vBrick
vBrick
Other Services
HDTV Using Path1
• Path1 CX-1000 IP Video
Gateway
– Input is 19.2 Mbps ATSC
Stream
– You need an expensive HD
encoder in addition to the
Path1 (we have one at the
TV station).
– Our experience in a
multiple week test of PBS
programming broadcast
from Mich. State to TAMU
over Abilene was
• 21 Mbps required with
about 6% FEC
• Pixelization no worse than
rain fade
LifeSize HD Videoconferencing
• H.264-based and
downward compatible
with H.323
• 1280 X 720 resolution
with 22 KHz spatial
audio
• 1 Mbps
• Quality is very good at
1 Mbps.
• Does not have error
correction, so you need
a network with little
packet loss.
Other Important Technology Services
• Remote access to applications (Citrix)
• Remote access to files and documents
(webvpn, Imagenow)
• Workstation support while traveling
• Secure data (laptops, traveling)
• Slingbox
• Enhanced training & support
• Liaison between campuses
• Enhanced home support services
Questions & Discussion
Contact information
• Dr. Pierce E. Cantrell
– [email protected]
– http://apit.tamu.edu
• Dr. Timothy M. Chester
– [email protected]
– http://technology.qatar.tamu.edu