...

...

2. Overview of Internet Connectivity at Pilot Schools

To better analyse and assess the statuses status of the initial pilot schools in terms of network connectivity and network policies, surveys were conducted targeted at the schools’ principals and technical managers. The surveys were carried out as a collaborative effort between Work Packages 3, 5 , and 6 and 7 to collect, from the initially known pilot schools, the necessary information relevant to actions undertaken by development planned in each of these from the chosen schools.

The population of interest were schools joining an initial phase of pilot activities. At that time, it was planned to involve about 30 schools for the initial actions, in line with the assumptions from the Description of Work. The goal of this research was to be able to generalise the survey results obtained for a sample to describe the whole population, i.e. initially participating schools. The sample consisted of the set of all schools known at that stage that had been invited to join future pilot activities. This sample may eventually prove to already include the whole population of interest or, more likely, represent a majority of the final population.

The survey was conducted in the form of a questionnaire. The list of questions was prepared and reviewed in a few cycles. The questions were simple but required some technical knowledge about schools’ facilities. Most of the questions were closed-ended. The questionnaire was first tested not only by project partners but also by some of the collaborating high school teachers.

Each surveyed school was contacted directly, and in some countries face-to-face meetings were organised with school representatives to present the project to them and invite them to join the surveys and future pilots. Following these meetings, the representatives were contacted by e-mail and provided access to online questionnaires built using Google Forms. The relevant connectivity and policy questions were addressed to the schools’ principals or appointed technical managers.

29 schools responded to the schools' connectivity and policies surveys (the questionnaires were answered by a single technical representative of each of these schools) from 6 different countries (Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Spain). Given the project’s assumptions on the number of schools joining initial pilots, these results were found to be representative of the whole population of initial pilot schools.

The results of the Up2U schools’ surveys are presented and summarised in this section.

Work Packages.

Please note that the goal of the general connectivity and policy questions was not to come to any conclusions that can be generalised to apply to all European schools. The results are provided to enable the consortium to solve a chicken-egg problem, i.e. learn first about the context of the initial pilot schools and, based on that, create the first version of the Toolbox with first use cases, to update them later based on feedback from pilots.

Please note also that requesting information on network facilities and policies at the initial pilot schools, apart from the eduroam analysis, is a step beyond the scope of this deliverable as defined in the Description of Work. However, the survey was considered to be a good opportunity to learn about the context of the first schools planned to join project’s pilots.

This overview is based on the same surveying activity as described in Section 1.1. That survey also contained questions about network connectivity and policies. All the questions can be found in Appendix B.

The survey results obtained The survey results provide information about the environment of the schools that are most likely to be engaged in the Up2U ecosystem. Before running with the planned MVP methodology (i.e. “Minimum Viable Product”, see Section 2.1 of Deliverable 4.1), it was necessary to learn how to fit the initial viable product, i.e. a first version of the Up2U toolbox, to its first users’ needs. Therefore, these results will inform the direction of further work within both WP3 and relevant tasks of WP4 and WP7 respectively in the areas of tools development and pilots setup preparation.

...

and are summarised in the following sections.

2.1 Bandwidth and

...

Connection

More than half (55%) of the schools who responded

...

to the survey access

...

the Internet thanks to NRENs.

...

Bandwidth of at least 80 Mb/s is present in

...

41% of schools for downstream and

...

31% of schools for upstream.

...

2.2 Internal

...

Network Arrangement

Most of the initial pilot schools have an internal wired network in all (52%) or some (28%) classrooms. WiFi coverage is very high

...

– 65% of schools who responded

...

to the survey

...

have 100% coverage in classrooms.

...

Finally, only 7% of schools

...

declared that there is no WiFi at the school at all.

...

2.3 Security and

...

Policies

Hardware firewalls, as well as UTM (Unified Threat Management) devices, are present in many of the initial pilot schools, although in a significant amount of answers school principals were not sure about the availability of these solutions at their schools. In all the

...

schools with a UTM device

...

, the most important features

...

, such as the spam filter, antivirus filter

...

and content filter, were turned on.

...

It is interesting to observe that only 1 of the 19 schools who responded to the question concerning

...

a bring your own device (BYOD) policy

...

does not allow students to use

...

mobile devices at school, but it is willing to change the policy if there is a good reason.

3. Network

...

Services Requirements

One of the purposes of this document is

...

to analyse how the ecosystem services can be

...

speeded up, or improved in terms of

...

availability, with the GÉANT network services. To this end, in the following sections, we

...

describe the characteristics of the network services

...

in the GÉANT service portfolio, and outline the different

...

types of services to be provided within the Up2U ecosystem, especially

...

in relation to the Content Delivery Network concept

...

, which strongly depends on

...

underlying network connectivity.

...

We then present suggestions on how to leverage the network services for the purposes of the ecosystem, and

...

consider network peering requirements.

In the following paragraphs, by

...

“ecosystem services” we mean the services and applications of the Up2U Application Toolbox to be delivered to users by the project, as described in Section 3.2, and by

...

“network services” we mean the lower-

...

level Internet connectivity services, outlined in Section 3.1.

3.1. GÉANT

...

Portfolio of

...

Network Services

The GÉANT pan-European backbone network offers outstanding service availability and service quality for R&E projects and entities. The network services most relevant to the Up2U ecosystem are:

• GÉANT IP
• GÉANT Plus
• GÉANT Lambda
• GÉANT MD-VPN
• GÉANT L3-VPN
• GÉANT Bandwidth on Demand

Each of these is described below.

GÉANT IP is an IP backbone network providing high-bandwidth connectivity between millions of users through National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). The GÉANT IP service supports both IPv4 and IPv6 natively using a dual stack routing structure. By default, there is no bandwidth or performance guarantee between any communicating pair of addresses. It has been designed to provide general-purpose IP transit services between participating NRENs and other approved research and education partners. Thus, the communication between two hosts is transited over

...

GÉANT IP if the hosts are connected by an NREN or other such R&E provider.

More

...

specialised network services are provided by GÉANT and its partners over the base backbone network and NRENs.

GÉANT Plus allows NRENs to request point-to-point Ethernet circuits between end

...

points at GÉANT

...

Points of Presence (PoPs). GÉANT Plus is built on a common infrastructure, but appears to its private users to be dedicated to that

...

user’s needs. The capacity of these circuits can be between 100 Mbps and 10 Gbps and potentially up to tens of Gigabits per second.

GÉANT Lambda provides transparent 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps wavelengths between GÉANT PoPs. It improves a point-to-point communication

...

based on a new physical connection that must be first requested and installed.

GÉANT Multi-Domain Virtual Private Network (MD-VPN) is designed to increase privacy and control over data transfers. MD-VPN enables end

...

computers to collaborate via a common private network infrastructure. It offers fast setups of new VPNs to clients and so can be used in a variety of ways, from a long-term infrastructure with a high demand for intensive network usage to quick point-to-point connections for a conference demonstration.

GÉANT L3-VPN provides a VPN in which each party can have an allocated bandwidth from 155 Mbps to 100 Gbps, according to its own requirements. This service allocates unique virtual local area network identifiers to each L3-VPN to ensure data isolation across

...

GÉANT IP, giving not only assured performance but also security of the transferred data.

GÉANT Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) is a point-to-point connectivity service for data transport that allows

...

bandwidth

...

between the end points to be reserved on demand. The data transport capacity dedicated to a connection can range from 1 Mbps up to 10 Gbps.

It is important to say that all these specialised network services are supported by a range of network monitoring, security and support services aimed at optimising the network performance. These services work to provide seamless access to the infrastructure and enhanced monitoring to identify and remedy any incidents that disrupt the data flow and to eliminate attempts to disrupt service by maintaining high levels of network security.

3.2. Overview of the

...

Ecosystem Services

One of the aims of the Up2U project is to provide an innovative ecosystem of Internet services that support learning based on formal and informal learning scenarios. The project

...

follows the

...

“minimum viable product” approach to development, i.e.

...

quickly

...

delivering prototypes to end

...

users,

...

evaluating them, and

...

deciding on

...

further development directions. Thus, the service ecosystem

...

will evolve during the lifetime of the project. However, at this stage we can indicate some of the services or

...

types of services that are planned for the initial iterations of the continuous service improvement process. This is based on plans provided by the relevant teams of WP4, WP5, and other tasks of WP3 in terms of the tools and services they expect to integrate into Up2U.

The ecosystem services we currently plan to provide are:

• file-based sync and share
,
• open access to rich digital multimedia content from federated learning object repositories
,
• real-time communication
like
• such as WebRTC-protocol-based one-to-one tutoring application
,
• recording
&
• and authoring apps
,
• Learning Management System (LMS), group management
,
• e-notebooks, collaborative work, social apps
,
• assessment of interactive learning paths supported by learning analytics, learning record store.

During the project lifetime, all the ecosystem services are going to be hosted at the infrastructure provided by some of the project partners: GRNET (Greece), PSNC (Poland), GWGD (Germany)

...

and CERN (Switzerland). Up2U is also going

...

to develop business plans and investigate appropriate business models to ensure the ecosystem

...

is sustainable after the end of the project and

...

can be easily deployed at another, possibly commercial, infrastructure.

3.3. Content Delivery Network

3.3.1. The

...

Concept

The idea of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is to distribute

...

services spatially relative to end

...

users to provide high availability and high performance. A CDN is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers. Its main goal is to deliver content more quickly and more reliably.

Image source: www.cdnreviews.com

One of the possible implementations is based on a geo-located Domain Name System (DNS) service that responds to a user’s domain lookup query indicating the IP address of the proxy (edge) server that is the “nearest” for the user. Then, the user communicates with the edge server and, if the edge server has the desired content (cache), no transfer to and from the

...

original server is needed. Otherwise, the edge server first fetches

...

the content from the

...

original server, and the first user requesting this particular piece of data waits for the response a little bit longer.

...

Using a CDN offers various benefits. From the end-user perspective, it

...

provides an

...

improved quality of

...

experience: data download time and latency are reduced, and availability of the service is improved (if

...

the desired data is available in an edge server, then

...

any downtime of the

...

original server does not prevent users

...

from accessing the data). From the network perspective, a CDN provides better network performance: the number of hops during the data transfers is reduced, the possibility of bandwidth saturation is lowered, and

...

traffic in the backbone network is also reduced. From the content provider perspective, a CDN

...

results in lower costs

...

, as there is less network load and a reduced possibility of service downtime.

3.3.2. Implementation for the

...

Project

As part of the Up2U ecosystem, the project is going to provide the eduOER Metadata Repository, which is a platform for aggregating and providing a federation of learning object metadata. The metadata is gathered from various learning object providers (content repositories) or other metadata federations. The eduOER

...

Metadata Repository will be the main learning object feeder to the Up2U LMS and other future Up2U services.

We have

...

gathered

...

an initial set of content provider repositories, which are physically based on some infrastructures in the pilot countries but also in other

...

European countries and even in America. The physical

...

locations of the origin content repository and of the end

...

users have an impact on access time, latency

...

and availability of the data for the users. The metadata of learning objects is going to be read by other ecosystem services from the eduOER

...

Repository, but the actual object content is going to be fetched from a particular federated object repository. The latter process is where the CDN concept could be leveraged.

It could be

...

beneficial to build a CDN

...

that handles users’ requests for content from content repositories. Accessing large multimedia objects physically located in one country by a user

...

in another country far away will result

...

in the drawbacks outlined

...

above, for instance, longer download times, larger latencies,

...

greater network load, and

...

increased possibility of service downtime. Consider the case

...

that 20 students from Portugal are running the same video, physically located in a content repository in Greece, during a class. The large

...

video file must be transferred through the backbone network 20 times

...

– the same data is sent across Europe 20 times

...

and all

...

20 users have to wait for the transfer. If there was a CDN with an edge server in Portugal, then the content would be sent once from Greece to Portugal, it would be cached at the edge server, and

...

19 of the students would be served more quickly with the cached copy. Note that the benefits scale with the number of students, classrooms

...

and pilot schools

...

– without a CDN, all requests for such a

...

video would be handled by a small content provider’s server from the other end of Europe. The overall technical architecture of the eduOER and CDN integration is presented in the Figure below.

We are currently

...

investigating a prototype

...

CDN with edge servers located in London, Poznan and Athens. The

...

preliminary tests

...

confirm that the physical locations of a client and a server strongly influence the data transfer times

...

and, as a result, the network load too. More tests will be conducted with the first content repositories federated with eduOER.

...

We will also analyse how to implement the CDN

...

to ensure it is easy to add new edge servers and new repositories in the future.

3.4.

...

Conclusions on

...

Network Services

First of all, it must be noted that the GÉANT network services can support data transfers that are sent over

...

GÉANT IP, i.e. between end

...

points connected by NRENs or selected R&E partners. The whole communication between an ecosystem service hosted at an NREN and a school connected by another NREN will be transferred through

...

GÉANT IP by default, and no further work is needed. However, we cannot influence routing between a host connected, for instance, by a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP), and thus we cannot do much to support such data communications.

As presented in Section

...

2, some schools invited to the Up2U pilot are connected by NRENs and some are not. Moreover, the

...

always-on education concept assumes that young users gain access to all the work or learning applications and data anywhere, at any time and from any device they choose. Thus, we

...

will also consider usage of the ecosystem services

...

from students’ homes or by mobile networks. In such cases,

...

GÉANT IP will not be used for transit.

...

In addition, we cannot focus only on NREN-connected users

...

because of the sustainability

...

perspective, i.e. because we need to engage commercial entities to support the ecosystem infrastructure after the lifetime of the project.

The point-to-point network services (GÉANT Plus and GÉANT Lambda) cannot support communication paths between end

...

users and the ecosystem services, and also between two end

...

users (e.g. for WebRTC tutoring sessions), because of the multiplicity of the end

...

points and because the set of

...

end

...

points taking part in communication will dynamically change. However, the point-to-point network services can be applied for static connections between some end

...

points that host the ecosystem, and are physically distributed among different locations. Such end

...

points could be an end-user service hosted in one

...

physical location and its required back-end service hosted in another location, if they exchange large amounts of data. For instance, if we provided an LMS service from the infrastructure in Poland and a sync

...

and storage service, being a back-end for the LMS, from the infrastructure in Switzerland, and assuming they sent heavy content between each other, then it would be beneficial to support the communication between these services with GÉANT Plus (or GÉANT Lambda, depending on particular bandwidth needs or predictions).

A communication that we can definitely improve is end

...

users’ access to static data. Most of the static data we deal with in the project can be found in content repositories of multimedia objects. As shown in the previous section, this is where a CDN can be successfully implemented, and the effectiveness of the CDN can be improved by the underlying network.

The point-to-point network services cannot be applied for this case, because it would then be

...

difficult and expensive to add new edge servers and set up circuits between a new server and all existing repositories. However, the VPN solutions from the GÉANT portfolio could be easily used to support the CDN. If we put all the content repositories (i.e. origin servers) and the edge servers in a common MD-VPN or L3-VPN, then it will be easy and

...

low cost to quickly manage changes: adding or removing edge servers or repositories. In this case, data isolation across

...

GÉANT IP and even an allocated bandwidth could be ensured.

If we choose MD-VPN, as the simpler VPN solution without bandwidth allocation, to support the CDN, we shall consider

...

manually

...

using GÉANT BoD when larger data transfers between

...

certain points in the CDN are expected. Such a common case could be adding new edge servers or repositories to the CDN. A new “empty” edge server can be “warmed up”, i.e. forced to fill up the cache with large amounts of data from the origin servers, to improve quality of experience for users who first request the cache for particular multimedia objects.

3.5. Network

...

Peering Requirements

Network peering is an interconnection of separate Internet networks that have a physical interconnection and freely exchange routing information in order to exchange traffic between the computers of each network. Peering is distinct from transit, in which an end user or network operator pays another, usually larger, network operator to carry all their traffic for them.

The main motivation for peering is reduced cost of data transport, but there are also

...

others: increased redundancy on communication paths, increased capacity by distributing traffic across many networks, and increased control over traffic.

The physical infrastructure, which is underneath the Up2U ecosystem, consists of the pan-European GÉANT backbone network for research and education and the public and private cloud platforms. The GÉANT Peering service ensures the cost-effective network traffic exchange between commercial clouds (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.) and the R&E community. GÉANT also connects all NRENs and big research centres (CERN, ESA, EMBL, SKA, etc.) in Europe and their private cloud platforms. Via the NRENs and their regional and metropolitan network peers, about 15,000 primary and 10,000 secondary schools are connected to the same pan-European network infrastructure.

The GÉANT backbone network obviously focuses on connections with the R&E networks more than on peering with commercial providers. Considering the Alwaysalways-on education concept promoted by Up2U and the necessary accessibility of the ecosystem from any network and device, we should monitor users' users’ types of Internet connections during the project lifetime. Depending on the future scale and the load generated by commercial ISP users, one could decide about required changes to GÉANT decisions can be made about whether to change GÉANT’s network peering policy to extend peering with commercial providers.

Appendix: Eduroam near schools - detailsAppendix II: Connectivity in the School Sector - GÉANT Study