MERC

MERC Board of Director’s Meeting

Oct. 27, 2004

Attending: Greg Burris, Don Doucette, Bill Elder, Kelli Garrett, Russell Helm, Mark Mabe, Bill Mitchell, Nancy Piringer, Greg Wirth

Budget Overview — Piringer

The budget presented is reflective of the one time discount in membership fees approved by the Board to bring down the reserve total by $200,000.00 in FY’05 and also of the $30,000.00 allocated to the HELIX 2005 conference. If not all of the $30,000.00 is expended in support of the conference, the remainder will be returned to the reserve fund. Piringer mentioned the revenues are currently low because MOREnet is slightly behind in invoicing.

Public Higher Education Size-Appropriate Connection Policy – Mitchell

The MOREnet Council budget subcommittee has endorsed the concept of size-appropriate bandwidth for MERC public 2-year and 4-year institutions whose circuits are paid for out of HB3. This topic was first broached in FY’04, but given the timing of circuit expirations and accompanying penalties, it was deemed not to be cost effective and the decision was made to revisit the issue in FY05. Niederhelm noted that MOREnet is bidding on both protected and unprotected DS3 and Ethernet circuits. The bids are due by December 9, 2004. Currently there are some institutions not using a majority of their DS3 line. Some institutions are at 45 Mb currently and will soon require more bandwidth, and a couple who are paying for bandwidth in excess of 45 Mb. Mitchell mentioned that MOREnet is trying to move away from the “one size fits all” concept in bandwidth and that the goal is to meet the needs of the institution.

Mitchell noted that most institutions are doing the best they can to control and manage traffic. Mabe brought up a concern regarding residence hall traffic. Discussions on issues regarding future budget restrictions, growth, equity and what constitutes “appropriate use” ensued. The Board agreed that meeting the Dec. 1 deadline for having a policy in place that was previously set by the Council was unachievable. The Board requested that MOREnet provide them with data including trending statistics, budget, demographics, and that they would continue the discussion at the Board and IR level.

Security and Bandwidth – Piringer

With the presentations given at HELIX 2004 conference by the security and bandwidth management task forces marked the completion of those task force groups. The hard work of those groups was recognized and their results will feed into future discussions including the size-appropriate bandwidth policy request.

HELIX Conference Update – Piringer

The HELIX 2005 conference theme is Information Waves. The four tracks will be: Administrative Systems; Energizing Teaching and Learning; Security/networking/User Support; and Web Development. The MoTEC group is going to sponsor the “Energizing Teaching and Learning” track and the “MO HigherEd Web Development group will be assisting with the Web Development track. The call for presenters has gone out. Still looking for ideas for the keynote speaker, please submit any suggestions to Piringer.

Security Operations – Raw

Raw announced the Advanced Technical Security Symposium, Dec. 6-7, 2004, to be located at MOREnet . The keynote speaker from the Missouri Office of the Attorney General will present on the topic of evidence needed to successfully prosecute a cyber crime.

Raw presented a PowerPoint highlighting the roadmap for Security Operations at MOREnet. Security has become increasingly important to MOREnet customers. MOREnet’s focus with regard to security will include: vulnerability assessments, managed services such as the Good Net Neighbor Service, anti-SPAM, managed firewall service, basic, intermediate and advanced training in the areas of awareness, security tools, hands-on training through face-to-face and Centra sessions, and other services including daily security newslinks on the MOREnet Security web site, security offerings through My MOREnet, manual log analysis and forensics services.

Raw told the board to watch for new Security Services that will be available in the next six to twelve months.

External Performance Measures Oversight Committee Meeting – Elder

Dr. Bill Elder, Director of the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis at the University of Missouri briefed the MERC External Performance Measures (EPM) Oversight Committee on the progress of the project thus far and introduced the group to the rationale and data gathering tools that will be used. The third week in December is being targeted as a time for the EPM Oversight Committee to meet again and members will be receiving more information on meeting details soon.

Respectively submitted by Kelli Garrett