Minutes of Working Group Meeting

CFHT Base Facility, Waimea

March 12, 2009

Present:

Absent:

Minutes

  1. Current Network Status

    2. On January 8, between 8:30am and 9:30am -- while UH-ITS was upgrading some routers -- the backup path was knocked off by accident along with the primary path. Connectivities to Mauna Kea were sustained by the Hawaiian Telcom circuit between UH Manoa and HP, but it was noticeably slower.

    As part of the effort to support IPv6, UH-ITS has been upgrading the IOS on many of the Cisco routers and switches within the Hawaii domain. No adverse effect was observed until the upgrade of the Catalyst 3750 switches at the IfA Hilo facility and at CFHT.

    On February 4 -- after IOS 12.2.44.SE3 was loaded and the SDM mode of dual IPv4/IPv6 routing configured on the CFHT 3750 -- Pui Hin and Chris Zane of UH-ITS started to notice some error messages:

    "%PLATFORM_UCAST-6-PREFIX: One or more, more specific prefixes could not be programmed into TCAM and are being covered by a less specific prefix."

    These error messages were at first disregarded as they are explained as temporary conditions at the Cisco website. However high latency and throughput issues started to surface at CFHT the following week. The same was reported by Bob Kibrick of UC, and other users in Hilo. According to Bob's logs, the problem actually started on February 4.

    On February 20, IPv4 only images were restored on both 3750 switches to fix the problem. Apparently, we exceeded the number of routes the 3750s are designed to handle with dual IPv4/IPv6.

    Although UH-ITS came up with some suggestions to offload the IPv6 routing to the Cisco 6500 at UH Hilo, it was decided that we will be better off to not worry about IPv6 until the equipment at the IfA Hilo facility can be upgraded.

    On March 4, between 3:00pm and 3:30pm, the main router at UH crashed, resulting in interruption to the commodity network. The Academic and Research network was preserved through alternate routes.

  2. Prospective new participants to the MKOCN

    3. Hoku Ke`a: the previous UH24 location is being renovated to house a new 0.9 meter telescope for research and education. Director David James has contacted Pui Hin and has asked for the use of the shared GE link to UH Hilo.

    The VYSOS project consists of two survey telescopes on Maunalani. The principal investigator, Bo Reipurth, has contacted Pui Hin to inquire about the possibility of setting up communication to Mauna Kea over a microwave system and the use of the shared GE link to the IfA Hilo facility.

    Pui Hin informed both groups of the shared maintenance cost and the share cost of the 1GE from the Summit to the IfA Hilo facility. In addition, Pui Hin has asked the VYSOS project to submit any microwave plans for evaluation by the working group.

  3. New UH-ITS Initiative

    4. UH is looking into the possibility of pulling fibers between the IfA Hilo facility and HP as part of an economic stimulus initiative for Science and Technology. Using the current infrastructure, we will need to pay Hawaiian Telcom another large sum of money for upgrade to higher bandwidth. In 2007, UH-ITS paid ~$400k for the upgrade to gigabit ethernet.

  4. Rewiring for Hilo LAN - brief update

    5. Pui Hin has obtained quotes from three vendors and the participating observatories are in the process of selecting the best proposal. Hawaiian Telcom, one of the three vendors, proposed installing a 3"- 3 Cell Maxcell innerduct throughout the entire conduit infrastructure. One cell will be used to protect the fiber cable to be pulled leaving two spare cells for future use. Pui Hin thought the Maxcell products might be of general interest. More information on the product can be obtained at

    http://www.maxcellinnerduct.com.

  5. Next meeting

    6. June 11th, Thursday, 10:00am at the Gemini Hilo facility.

    Note: This meeting has been rescheduled for June 10th since June 11th is Kamehameha day, a state holiday.

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Last updated June 08, 2009 by Miranda Hawarden-Ogata