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Meeting Minutes |
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February 23, 2001, 1:30 p.m. |
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Oklahoma
Educational Television Authority
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Vineyard
Center
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7403
North Kelley Avenue
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PARTICIPANTS
Kurt Snodgrass indicated that the marketing subcommittee had been trying to get together for the past few weeks but that members had been out of town quite a bit. He said the group would try to make some progress over the next few weeks.
Phil Moss related that, at the first meeting, the group talked about video conferencing and the different standards and systems that exist and said that discussions went very well. He said that discussions focused on online learning tools and software packages such as Blackboard and WebCT. He noted that the meeting included the working group and the Innovation and Technology Committee of the Presidents Council.
The chair indicated that the group was looking into delivering a certification class for librarians, as well as other professional development activities, over the Web. She added that she found that type of technology very interesting and a little different than some of the other long distance tools that are available but said she thinks it has a lot of promise.
Joe Kitchens was scheduled to present but was unable to attend. The update was given by Bill Shafer of OneNet
Bill Shafer indicated that the equipment for the VISION project was currently being tested in San Diego and that the goal within the next 2 weeks was to relocate it to Bill Johnson’s shop at ETN. He said tests were planned for 90–120 days and that it was expected that much would be learned during this time period. Once this equipment is in place, the process will begin of figuring out the production mode or building the plan on how we further extend that based on the information we get out of the testing.
Shafer said one of the big issues from OneNet’s perspective is since this information will be available 24 hours a day and virtually anyone can download multimedia, at approximately 1.5 MB stream, a determination much be made about how the bandwidth behaves. He added that it may make sense to have other locations with the equipment and to house multimedia-type classes in various regions of the state instead of having to send the traffic back to one particular point. He said they were looking forward to this test and that hopefully in the next couple of weeks the equipment would be installed.
Shafer also noted that all of the VISION schools were connected to OneNet except two. He said Tulsa public schools planned to come on in June and that they are currently wiring 90 locations with Williams Co. working on the lines. He added that the contract currently in place with Southwestern Bell for their telecommunications services is due to expire in late May. He said OneNet may try to speed up the June date so Tulsa can participate in the project. To insure a certain quality of delivery, he said everything must be in place from the bandwidth point of view. He added that there should be further updates throughout the process.
Kurt Snodgrass indicated that he had included some of the event information from a January 22 meeting at the state capitol. He said the VISION partners Intel, Dell, SAT and Microsoft were invited to talk about their respective rolls in the project.
Shafer related the exciting news that OneNet had been asked to participate in a panel with Microsoft on connecting learning communities to discuss Oklahoma’s infrastructure He said there would be approximately 100 – 1000 people there to help promote K-12, as well as technical schools across the country to attempt to address the issue of online curriculum and multimedia courses.
Shafer also mentioned that Chancellor Brisch has been asked to speak in Washington DC at the World Trade Center (Reagan Bldg.) in an effort to address top educators across the nation and to discuss classrooms of the future, as well as what types of courses, i.e., electronic, media type courses, will be delivered. He said President Bush had been invited but had not yet confirmed.
R. L. Beaty inquired about the possibility of making the broadcast available here, and Shafer said he assumed the trade center would have the kind of connectivity necessary. He added that the broadcast occurs March 9th which leaves enough time to check out transmission of the meeting to Oklahoma channels.
Regina Switzer, Assistant General Counsel for the State Regents presented for Ned Bastow, OSRHE General Counsel
Switzer indicated that, with regard to inquiries from non-traditional groups interested in OneNet service, the task/goal is to revise and sharpen the OneNet Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) in order to strike a balance between seemingly competing themes, i.e., the intention of providing maximum flexibility to users at the local level, economic development as a focus of those concerns, meeting OneNet’s needs of providing a fair and uniform service to protect OneNet from a legal standpoint. Striking this balance to the extent possible, she said the goal is to push the liability and responsibility onto the users. She added that the key issue seems to be tinkering with the definition of use and what that means. She said other issues include how to revise the AUP without making it unusable and exploring enforcement of AUP issues, i.e., do the State Regents want to enforce the issues or police use?
Switzer also indicated that advertising issues are a concern and that it is often difficult to determine what advertising is and what users may engage in with regard to advertising. She said there are also considerations of unintended business income tax. She added that the State Regents want to make sure that the users understand that is their responsibility.
She related that the modified AUP would be brought back to the group in the form of a recommendation.
Snodgrass stated that, since the network began, OneNet had tried to let everyone make their own policies and decisions and that in every case. when OneNet goes through this process, it tries to insure that those issues are pushed out to the user. He said security, advertising, etc., are really the responsibility of the client and that OneNet would prefer, as much as possible, to cooperate with that to the greatest extent.
Shafer pointed out that policy has always existed that makes OneNet an open network and that the agency tries to get from point A to point B and just be a support group. He added, however, that anything required from OneNet should be documented in the AUP.
Snodgrass said that advertising and economic development issues, in their most general form, did not seem like issues until OneNet started looking at them in detail. He and Moss detailed an e-commerce program at Northwestern in Alva that is considered a small business incubator program that OneNet is looking at in terms of acceptable use. They emphasized that there are many issues to explore and that Switzer and Bastow are committed to helping OneNet do that.
James Deaton, Chief Technology Officer for OneNet, thanked the people at OU, OSU and TU, the primary Internet 2 members, for enabling OneNet to submit its application for the state aggregate network and added that the application had been received by the directors of Abilene. He felt that the approval process was being put off until the spring Internet 2 meeting, approximately 2 weeks away.
Deaton detailed OneNet’s status with regard to peering arrangements the two bigger cable companies networks (At Home and Roadrunner) for residential access to OneNet. He stated that the negotiations had fallen apart in that Cox can no longer make those arrangements. He said OneNet had just been informed and was starting the process of working with Roadrunner and At Home directly and would later bring in Cox or whomever to help that happen. He added that the arrangements will provide the ability for cable modem users to have a better connection than OneNet alone and also not use up the commodity Internet.
Deaton mentioned that caching tests had been conducted over the past few months and that processes had been established for any issues that might arise with caching.
Deaton then mentioned that OneNet had begun a great deal of Sun upgrades at all the hub sites and said that had greatly increased the amount of drive space. He said OneNet plans to help distribute some of the other methods of getting optional cache out at the hub sites where people can use the local connectivity if they wish. He added that the increased processing would be mostly for the MCU’s for the Meeting Point software and that it was being actively deployed at that time. In terms of the core redesign, Deaton related that basically everything in the core of the network would be entirely redundant so it would require much effort from the network engineers. He said it would be several months before the redesign would be complete and added that the hardware had been received and that OneNet staff were trying to work it in with minimal down time.
Deaton mentioned that OneNet was working out the final arrangement on the Southwestern Bell connection to increase the current bandwidth by another 30 megabits to commodity Internet. Also, he mentioned I-Beam was installing a satellite dish. He said this would enable OneNet to downlink popular streaming content and reduce bandwidth requirements of commodity Internet.
Shafer mentioned some other projects such as the current move of the student loan program and the negotiations with Presbyterian Health Foundation for the development of a video conference center in the new building that the State Regents will be moving into in late summer. He also mentioned another initiative OneNet was working on with Ponca City. He said Rep. Ernest Istook had played a pivotal role in Congress approving $4.5 million for the city of Ponca City to increase bandwidth in the northern part of the state. He said that currently, part of the state is not in great shape as far as bandwidth and that OneNet hoped that this project would eliminate congestion and provide better connectivity in the region.
Johnson spoke briefly about the existing infrastructure that makes up the network and pointed to the network diagram included in the members’ packets. He noted the history of the decisions made to deploy DS-3s and Grass Valley equipment statewide. He then discussed the rationale behind the migration to H.323 and the need to re-provision the circuits to accommodate Internet-based videoconferencing.
Shafer noted that there was currently some testing and much discussion related to wireless. He noted that OneNet wanted to make certain that the technology integrated into the network properly and to determine if the bandwidth capabilities were acceptable.
Moss indicated that the last time the council met, OneNet shared the information from the Mingle/Hess report from 1999 specific to their recommendation that a shared vision of OneNet be developed and a mission statement be created. Moss indicated that OneNet had sought input but had not received any responses. He mentioned that OneNet had developed a single statement that would serve as a working draft described OneNet and what it is trying to accomplish.
Moss said that over the next couple of months, before the next council meeting, it would be helpful for the council members to share their thoughts or comments and that, at the next meeting, OneNet would have something for the council to act upon and endorse.
Deaton indicated that at the last meeting, OneNet talked about the N2H2 contract it was working on and, in his opinion, it was in the final stages of development. He added, however, that since the last meeting, some issues arose that stalled the process, and OneNet had now gone back to the drawing board. He related that most of the other options do not give as much control to the end user, which is seen as a key element in a majority of situations.
The chair related that last year the Gates Technology Center finished their installation of computers and software in most of the public libraries in the state. During the time that they were here for the grant award workshops, they stated that they did not have a stand on filtering but if the library/community made the decision to filter, they would like to be contacted before anything was installed.
The chair indicated that, in addition to the hardware and software, they Gates Technology Center provided technical support for the first couple of years. They had a list of vendors that they knew their products would work with, and in January 2001 the libraries received a list of products that they identified as compatible, and N2H2 was on the list.
The chair mentioned that the filtering legislation was written by three different authors, so it contradicts itself in a sense. She said the legislation is essentially tied to funding. She added that the requirements that go with e-rate are probably the broadest and most comprehensive and affects the majority of OneNet users. The chair indicated that the requirements were somewhat of a concern to her due to the unknowns related to filtering software’s ability to meet the expectations of legislation.
Deaton indicated that OneNet wanted to avoid issues with H.323.
The chair mentioned that there had been debate on when filtering is actually effective, i.e. in the year starting July 1, 2001, or if an organization simply has to be in the process of identifying, selecting and testing something that first year, but in the second year something would have to be secured and implemented. She said the timeline could be as long as 15 – 16 months or shorter because the state had a filtering bill introduced, House Bill 1864, which has an effective date of July 1, 2001.
The council discussed the possibility of the membership drafting some language specific to filtering and the implications and realities it has for the network and take it to the legislature. It was also suggested that information be sent out to the members who were not present at the meeting.
NEXT MEETING
A motion to adjourn was made by Aebersold and seconded by Beaty. The OAC adjourned at 3:10 p.m.
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