International Collaborations

1. International Collaborations Educause Seminars on Academic Computing, Summer 2006

2. 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

3. Purpose • “To discuss how institutions of higher education can leverage technology to develop, coordinate, and sustain strategic global activities”

4. 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

5. Agenda • Texas A&M International Operations • International Connectivity • Planning • Collaboration • Other Services • Questions & Discussion

6. 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

7. 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

8. Funding • Primarily by Texas A&M University • Center seeks out external funding where possible to increase the reach of its programs

9. 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

10. Study Abroad Programs for Students • Texas A&M University • University of Texas • Kansas State • Colorado State • Among Others

11. Funding • Primarily through Student Tuition & Fees • Scholarships, fellowships, and other student aid is available on an institution by institution basis

12. Texas A&M University at Qatar • Founded 2003 • Located in Doha, Qatar • College of Engineering • Petroleum • Chemical • Mechanical • Electrical

13. Education City Model • “bring the best” • Sponsored by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development

14. 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

15. Branch Campus • Higher Education Coordinating Board Approved • SACS Approved • Funded entirely by Qatar Foundation

16. Rationale for Education City • Qatar Foundation • Intellectual Capital • Qatarization • Prestige • Texas A&M University • International Presence • Industry Relationships • Research Collaboration

17. International Connectivity

18. 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.

20. 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

21. 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.

22. ManLAN – Manhattan Landing • East Coast peering and exchange point in New York City with connection to Abilene • International Peering • 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)

23. Pacific Wave http://pacificwave.net/)

25. A SDSC A UTEP Tijuana Cd Juárez A HOUSTON vBNS REYNOSA Monterrey CANCUN Guadalajara México 155Mbs Mexico - CUDI

26. 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

27. 78 Networks reachable via Abilene Europe-Middle East Asia-Pacific Americas Australia (AARNET) China (CERNET, CSTNET, NSFCNET) Fiji (USP-SUVA) Hong Kong (HARNET) Japan (SINET, WIDE, JGN2) Korea (KOREN, KREONET2) New Zealand (NGI-NZ) Philippines (PREGINET) Singapore (SingAREN) Taiwan (TANet2, ASNet) Thailand (UNINET, ThaiSARN) 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) Austria (ACOnet) Belgium (BELNET) Croatia (CARNet) Czech Rep. Cyprus (CYNET) Denmark Estonia (EENet) Finland (Funet) France (Renater) Germany (G-WIN) Greece (GRNET) Hungary (HUNGARNET) Iceland (RHnet) Ireland (HEAnet) Israel (IUCC) Italy (GARR) Jordan (JUNET) Latvia (LATNET) Lithuania (LITNET) Luxembourg (RESTENA) Malta (Univ. Malta) Netherlands (SURFnet) Norway (UNINETT) Palestinian Territories (Gov’t Computing Center) Poland (POL34) Portugal (RCTS2) Qatar (Qatar FN) Romania (RoEduNet)Russia (RBnet) Slovakia (SANET) Slovenia (ARNES) Spain (RedIRIS) Sweden (SUNET) Switzerland (SWITCH) Syria (HIAST) United Kingdom (JANET) Turkey (ULAKBYM) *CERN Africa Central Asia Algeria (CERIST) Egypt (EUN/ENSTIN) Morocco (CNRST) Tunisia (RFR) South Africa (TENET) Armenia (ARENA) Georgia (GRENA) Kazakhstan (KAZRENA) Tajikistan (TARENA) Uzbekistan (UZSCI)

28. Canada – ca*net

29. 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

30. GÉANT

31. EUMEDCONNECT • The EUMEDCONNECT project is an initiative to establish an IP-basednetwork 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.

32. UK - JANET

33. Nordic Countries - NORDUnet

34. Czech Republic - CESNET

35. Japan - Sinet

36. Planning

37. IT Planning for an International Branch Campus • IT involvement from the start • CIO visit to proposed location • IT planning • What services are provided from the home campus?

38. 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?

39. 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

40. 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).

41. 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 three-year 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.

42. 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).

43. Collaboration

44. 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

45. TAMU Internet2 Day Participation from Doha, Mexico City, and the Netherlands http://internet2.tamu.edu/

46. Types of Collaboration • Executive to Executive • Administrator to Administrator • Faculty to Faculty (academic) • Faculty to Faculty (research) • Student to Student • Expatriate to Family • Extracurricular Activities

47. Executive to Executive Collaboration • Polycom VXS 3000 • Polycom PVX Software • Residential VOIP • Cisco Hardware VPN

48. Administrator to Administrator Collaboration • Shared videoconferencing facilities w/ Polycom Equipment • Conference call bridging services • Administrative systems support • ImageNow document management • RedDot Content Management

49. Faculty to Faculty (academic) Collaboration • Videoconferencing Classrooms, Conference Rooms • Access Grid • Digital Library • WebCT, Turnitin, shared software licenses

50. >200 Global Sites Worldwide