NJEDge.Net - The New Jersey Higher Education Network

VRG Meeting Minutes - October 10, 2001

The meeting was held at four locations; Passaic County Community College, Mercer County Community College, Middlesex County Community College, and the College of St. Elizabeth.

Tony Selimo - opened the meeting, explained the agenda, and discussed the schedule for future meetings.

Charlie McMickle - was introduced in his new position as Assistant Director of Technical Services for NJ EDge.Net. He explained that he would focus on video and making sure that it works. He contrasted NJ EDge.Net to Access New Jersey. We will own our network and have control of its services and future development. Access New Jersey is operated and owned by Verizon. He will be doing lots of coordination with vendors and participants in our network including Cisco, Verizon, OIT, New Jersey Network, First Virtual Corporation, etc.

Internet 2 is of much interest to us. It is a very high bandwidth network that may join, and implement a connection. Some New Jersey universities are members of I2, but do not have connectivity to it. NJEDge.Net would provide that connectivity, and, when NJEDge.Net is a member, NJEDge.Net member could participate in I2.

We are in Phase 1 of the NJ EDge.Net rollout. The Master Services Agreement (MSA) is not signed yet because we are waiting for the grant from Verizon. Charlie explained the grant request and how the funds will be used. Tony Bruzaitis mentioned that Verizon and the BPU must legally reach some decision/agreement by December 21, 2001.

Charlie detailed how NJEDge.Net and Access New Jersey would interconnect. There will be two Accord MCU's in the Verizon building at 540 Broad Street in Newark, one for Access New Jersey and one for NJ EDge.Net. The physical and logical connection of these units is being worked out now. There will be a need for the gatekeepers on each network to interconnect, and administrative procedures will need to be put in place.

Charlie spoke with Accord and learned that one can be made available to NJ EDge.Net for a 30-day trail. Regarding Codec certification, Charlie noted that considerable progress has been made. Cisco has initiated a program called the Cisco Avvid Partners Program (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/largeent/partner/esap/). Under this program, various vendor products are tested and "verified" to work with Cisco products. On behalf of NJEDge.Net, Verizon is going to "urge" Cisco to specifically target our needs through this program. As a first step already underway, Cisco is using Forgent's test labs in King of Prussia, PA for this purpose. Verizon is also doing its own "Proof of Concept" reviews of vendor products supporting H.323 for Access New Jersey. Charlie said three other areas needed to be dealt with: video bandwidth usage, recommendations for a scheduler, and recommendations for a suitable video dial plan. Tony Selimo said the architecture team needed to work on these Charlie is doing some review of video dial plans, and will share that information. Ron Loneker questioned the status of "Click to Meet" interoperability, and Charlie said it was now working with Cisco's gatekeeper, and Verizon was testing it for Access New Jersey.

Tony Selimo suggested that a representative from Verizon join the VRG to help key the group informed.

Interest was expressed in MPEG 1 and 2 for high quality point-to-point needs. George Carroll was asked to review the RFP and the MSA to see if MPEG provisions had been carried over, and to discuss the question with Verizon representatives. Charlie said the key issue is likely QoS vs. best effort for video over the network, and we need a solution that will support QoS for MPEG.

In response to concerns expressed about time being taken to test components, George Carroll commented on the support being gained by George Laskaris with the Presidents' Council and the Commission of Higher Education (CHE).

Tony Selimo commented that colleges need interoperability on Codecs and equipment right away, so that they can make informed purchase decisions. He also briefly reported on plans for the IT Conference to be held in Spring 2002 and asked for ideas for video demonstrations.

Finally, Charlie led discussion of upgrade directions for the ITV classrooms. Several institutions may not have the latest control system software release installed. A test of the existing Crestron software release was given (press V/O button for 10 seconds and the routing switcher should visibly reset) to determine this. Provisions will be made to get the latest release to those who do not have it. Also, Charlie and Tony Selimo will test a computer controlled routing switch solution.

Next Meeting: It will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, November 15th at Brookdale Community College. There will be a special demonstration of Miranda MPEG 2 equipment. . This equipment is used in the Maine network and is the only Codec that can transmit MPEG2 over a T-1. It also has QoS provisions for use over an IP network.http://www.miranda.com/en/products/Media_Networks/Mac500ip.htm