RMDCN 22 August 2013 NEWSLETTER No. 11

Dear Colleagues, installed and running, there has not been a single outage of Interoute’s core network. It is now around 8 months since the last newsletter when, shortly after the December Before leaving the subject of the Pilot Network meeting of the ECMWF Council, we informed we would like to pass on our sincere thanks to you of the decision to select Interoute as the all our contacts at the pilot sites, without whose supplier for the next generation of the RMDCN patience and stamina the pilot phase would not (RMDCN-NG). have succeeded.

The purpose of this newsletter is therefore to update you on progress towards migrating to RMDCN-NG and the timescale going forward. The “Initial Deployment” As described in the previous newsletter, the main group of sites to be connected to the Pilot Network RMDCN-NG is known as the “Initial Deployment”. A deadline was set (1 July 2013) As described before, migration to the new for sites to place an order with Interoute and network began immediately after contract thereby be part of the Initial Deployment. signature in December 2012. A Pilot Network ECMWF signed one large order on behalf of all consisting of 6 sites - , , Member States and Co-operating States. , , Japan and ECMWF - was However, all other sites had to sign an deployed in the first half of 2013, with new Accession Agreement to the contract in addition Cisco routers being installed and handed over to signing and submitting their own individual for testing during April and May. The order. Table 1 contains the full list of all 47 sites Functional and Reliability Acceptance Tests (including the 6 pilot sites) which make up the took place during June, culminating in formal Initial Deployment, together with their chosen acceptance of the Pilot Network on 30th June - site configuration. Note that neither Australia the agreed date in the Contract. nor Lebanon, who are currently connected to the It is fair to say that the testing period during OBS network, are part of the Initial Deployment June was not all “smooth sailing”. For instance, due to administrative delays. We expect these we found several issues with the way in which two sites to join RMDCN-NG shortly after the the routers had been configured. However, main migration has finished. working closely with the Interoute technical Interoute has now placed orders for all circuits staff we finally managed to end up with a fully with their local in-country providers. We expect functioning Pilot Network. the formal handover of circuits and network One of the main purposes of establishing a Pilot equipment to take place between mid-October Network was to get used to the working and mid-November, which will then be processes of our new network provider and to followed by a period of testing. If all goes to expose and correct any problem areas. In this plan, the majority of sites will have been regard the Pilot phase of the project was formally accepted by 20 December. At this certainly a success. We have recently held a point sites will be connected to both the “lessons learned” meeting with Interoute, where RMDCN (operated by Orange Business we were all very open about what could have Services) and the RMDCN-NG (operated by gone better and agreed on what to improve Interoute). However, operational traffic will still before the main rollout coming up over the next be flowing over the RMDCN. few months. One particularly encouraging point to note is that, since the new routers have been

RMDCN Newsletter 11 1 Migration to the Interoute network is left until a few days after the site’s transfer of We use the term “migration” here to mean the operational traffic to the Interoute network. transfer of operational traffic from the OBS In all cases, it should be noted that there will be network to the Interoute network, a process that a notice period of 90 days between requesting will take around 4-5 weeks. Rather than attempt disconnection and it actually to begin the migration before the Christmas and occurring. New Year holiday period, we plan to migrate all sites during the period 6 January to 6 February 2014. Next Steps During the migration, ECMWF will act as a All sites in the Initial Deployment have already gateway between the current RMDCN network been asked to complete a Data Capture Form and the RMDCN-NG network, thus enabling all (DCF), which is an Excel spreadsheet designed sites to continue to inter-communicate during to be used by the Interoute technicians to the migration period, whether they are still configure the network equipment that will be operating through the RMDCN network or have deployed on site. Many of you have already already migrated to the RMDCN-NG. engaged with us to fill out this form but there are still a few left to be finalised. It is important that these are completed as soon as possible so Decommissioning the OBS network that we can send them on to Interoute; any There will clearly be a cost overhead in further delay could result in the equipment maintaining connections to both OBS and being delivered late, putting the whole Interoute networks, so from a financial point of migration timetable at risk. view the sooner a site can cancel its connection Based on the information provided to us by to OBS the better. In the case of the ECMWF Interoute so far, most of the circuits will be site here in Reading, it is planned to cancel the installed during the month of October 2013. OBS connection shortly after completion of the Therefore, you need to make sure that your test one-month migration window (6 February PC is ready to be connected by early October. 2014). Taking into account the 90-day notice . period, ECMWF’s gateway function will continue to be available for a further 3 months (until early May 2014). If you have any comments and suggestions for future issues, or any other concerns, please do In the case of ECMWF Member States and Co- not hesitate to contact us at our new address, set operating States, who are parties to the main up specifically for the RMDCN migration: contract with OBS, the date of the [email protected]. decommissioning will need to be agreed between ECMWF and the individual site. ECMWF will propose a date to the site with the reasons why this date was chosen.

However in the case of all other sites, who are invoiced directly by OBS, the decision to request the termination of the OBS access lies with the local site, although we propose that it

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Bandwidth Site Site Type (Mbps) Austria 8 Gold Belgium 10 Platinum Bulgaria 10 Silver Canada 2 Copper China 8 Platinum Croatia 1 Gold 7 Gold Denmark 50 Platinum ECMWF 200 Platinum Estonia 2 Silver EUMETSAT 20 Platinum Finland 5 Platinum 50 Platinum 50 Platinum Greece 4 Platinum 1 Platinum Iceland 2 Platinum India 4 Platinum Ireland 10 Platinum Israel 10 Platinum Italy 10 Gold Japan 10 Platinum Jordan 1 Iron A Latvia 1 Silver Lithuania 1 Silver Luxembourg 8 Platinum Macedonia (FYR of) N/A (local ISP) Iron B Morocco 2 Bronze The 4 Platinum The Netherlands-DR 3 Copper Norway 20 Platinum 1 Silver Portugal 4 Platinum 10 Platinum Russia 10 Platinum Serbia 1 Gold 1 Gold Slovenia 4 Platinum South Africa 2 Bronze South Korea 4 Platinum Spain 4 Platinum Sweden 10 Platinum 4 Platinum Switzerland-CSCS 4 Platinum Turkey 8 Platinum 20 Platinum United States of America 50 Platinum

Table 1: The Initial Deployment of RMDCN-NG

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