Management

Our consortia of organizations from across North and South America have come together to develop and operate a distributed exchange model for international peering and shared network infrastructure that will foster increased collaborative research and advance education throughout the Western Hemisphere. The primary responsibilities of the consortium’s AmLight ExP Steering Committee will be to collectively oversee the assignment and management of lightpaths, and the development of a flexible distributed operational structure to support the scheduling and provisioning of lightpaths based on user service level requirements. The AmLight ExP Steering Committee will establish assignment and management decisions based on the advice and counsel of the Research Advisory Committee (RAC), the Engineering Committee (EC) and the Consultancy Board.

The AmLight ExP Steering Committee represents organizations that provide network resources to the AmLight-ExP Consortium. The primary responsibility of the AmLight-ExP Steering Committee will be to collectively oversee the assignment and management of spectrum and leased capacity, and the development of a flexible distributed operational structure to support the scheduling and provisioning of lightpaths based on user service level requirements. The AmLight ExP Steering Committee will establish assignment and management decisions based on the advice and counsel of the Research Advisory Committee and the Engineering Committee.

The Research Advisory Committee (RAC) will be comprised of representatives from various research communities (high energy physics, astronomy, geology, and seismology, etc.) who are conducting collaborative research activities requiring AmLight-ExP networking resources. Dr. Luis Lopez, medical faculty of the University of Sao Paulo and Co-PI of AmLight-ExP, will chair the Research Advisory Committee. The RAC will provide input and advice to the Steering Committee on program and network needs and requirements of the broad research community. Once established, the chair will take on the role of fleshing out the membership of this group.

Given the extensive use of AmLight-ExP by the astronomy community, the AmLight PI will continue the South American Astronomy Coordination Committee (SAACC). The SAACC comprises representatives from the various astronomy projects who are conducting projects or operating observatories in S. America.   The chairs of the SAACC are Cristian Silva, Senior Manager, Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and Dr. Julio Ibarra, Asst. VP Technology Augmented Research, FIU. The SAACC will serve not only to provide input and advice to the AmLight PI and the Steering Committee on the program and network needs but will also serve as a venue for coordinating the needs of these astronomy projects and institutions to improve their resource planning and implementation of operational connections between these distant facilities and users in the continental US.

The AmLight ExP Engineering Committee (EC) will be comprised of network engineering managers from the networks participating in the AmLight-ExP Consortium. Eduardo Grizendi will chair the EC. Grizendi is the Director of Networking to the Brazilian National Research & Education Network (RNP). The EC will provide a venue for the sharing of information and coordination on activities related to the operation of the AmLight-ExP network and its interoperability with peer international networks. Information gathered from the EC will be reported to the AmLight-ExP PI for interpretation and for the development of reports to NSF.  The Chair of the EC will convene the EC once every month. The AmLight-ExP Consortium will act as an ongoing virtual cooperative. The Consortium will have an open call for proposals of new use and will act as an open vehicle to discuss planned network interconnections and developments. Much like the Joint Engineering Team (JET) in the US, this will be accomplished through regularly scheduled Web conferences managed by the AmLight-ExP Project Manager. Email follow-ups and agendas will support week-to-week tracking of activities. Annual meetings will be scheduled with simultaneous events of interest (such as Internet2 or TICAL [7] meetings) to reduce travel.

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