Hello GREN Mappers,

I am at the Internet2 Technology Exchange conference, along with several other members of our working group.  The schedule is ramping up to be pretty busy here!  Consequently, we feel it would be best to postpone 2019’s last Map WG meeting, currently scheduled for tomorrow, to next week.  Tom and I have proposed Tuesday, December 17, but slightly later than usual at 14:00 UTC.  I will follow up to this e-mail with a meeting invitation containing a Zoom URL.

If you’re also at TechEx and we haven’t yet connected, please reach out!

While I have your attention, I’d like to briefly recap the activity of the group over the last couple of quarters, and give a sneak peek into our next steps.  We have begun to review and mature the GRENML specification drafted earlier this year under the tutelage of John Macauley at ESnet, to make sure it’s in line with NML best practices.  The Working Group has reviewed and accepted a proposal presented by CANARIE to guide development of a distributed database system to implement the data-related requirements established by the WG.  Essentially, this distributed database would provide a set of tools to allow and encourage each REN in the GREN to maintain their own data, and publish and consolidate this data hierarchically.  Visualisations (actual maps!), including a reference example we will create later in the development roadmap, could be written or adapted to retrieve their data from an instance of this distributed database.  CANARIE will begin development of this system in January, and has committed to continue development through 2020.  It is the hope of this WG that other RENs will also join the effort, and CANARIE has offered to co-ordinate the development effort.  To this end, we have prepared a document that outlines a request to participate in this implementation initiative, which I will distribute later today under separate cover — we hope this document will support your attempts within your organisations to secure commitments to participate!

I’ve uploaded a couple of documents relevant to the update above to our wiki:

https://wiki.geant.org/display/GlobalMap/Documents+in+Progress

I’m also in the process of updating the rest of the wiki to reflect our recent activity and status, and will be updating the GNA-G with a slightly more thorough version of the above recap this week.

Cheers,

Ryan