Let It Snow

The location for writing this week’s blog update (I admit they’re starting to stray from being weekly at the moment) is a pub that sits in the shadow of the Centre Point building in central London. Part of the scope of the Janet6 project is to provide fibre connectivity to a group of ‘Strategic Research Facilities’, these are Janet customer sites from the research sector that have a specific demand for high capacity network connectivity. This afternoon we have a meeting with a selection of such institutions on the 12th floor of Centre Point, so I’m taking a break and having lunch before the meeting starts.

In terms of the fibre rollout, we’re now in the formal acceptance process for the core element of the fibre infrastructure. Last week as planned SSET provided us with acceptance documentation for all fibre routes and PoPs that make up the core of the network, and we’re now in the thick of assessing and evaluating what’s been issued. Barring any issues with the documentation we've received  there should be some good news to report in the next couple of weeks in that a key milestone should have been reached.

The Ciena rollout continues at pace – all equipment (minus a few minor components) is now in the UK, with a third already deployed on site and the other 2 thirds going through the staging process in Newport. We’re in the thick of the deployment now so every week is a case of scheduling, rescheduling, and reacting to the various niggles that arise. The bottom line here is that Ciena hasn’t come across anything it didn’t expect to so there is no cause for concern regarding the intricacies of the equipment deployment, just a few ‘snags’ to deal with.

As for the picture, you’ve probably guessed that nothing much photo worthy has happened over the past week, it did however snow in Oxfordshire which proved to be the usual cause of mass hysteria and traffic chaos. I managed to avoid the madness by taking my dogs for a walk.

I suppose a photo of Centre Point might have been more interesting...