Convening, Collaborating, and Partnering

October 2024 Updates:

• Internet2 continues its critical role of facilitating collaboration and engagement opportunities through in-person and virtual convening opportunities with the broad R&E community. Highlights for 2024 include a successful Community Exchange in Chicago in March convening over 520 CIOs, C-Level staff, and organizational policy makers from research and education institutions around the world, state and regional networks, industry, and governmental labs. In addition, we are currently planning our annual Technology Exchange this December in Boston, for the Internet2 technical audiences across cloud, security, advanced networking and information security themes. We expect approximately 700 attendees for this event. For both events, we continue to expand participation to new community participants through broader outreach and more inclusive programming.
• With the rising demand across multiple industries for in-person events, Internet2 has proactively secured future venues and city locations for both Community Exchange and Technology Exchange through 2026. Research is underway for 2027-2028 locations.
• Internet2’s Community Engagement team has been redesigning and implementing an enhanced onboarding experience for new members. This initiative will ensure that new members understand the scope and value of their membership, that they are aware of who to contact to obtain that value, that they feel comfortable articulating why they are a member of Internet to others – within their organization or external colleagues, and that they have a sense of belonging as a valued member of the Internet2 community.  Metrics will be implemented and tracked to measure our success in achieving these outcomes over the course of 12 months. For example, we will track quantitative measures such as response and interest in regular emails designed to ensure awareness of Internet2 value as well as interest and attendance at virtual and in-person events during the first year. We will also request qualitative feedback from members regarding the effectiveness of the onboarding process in improving their knowledge of Internet2 services, providing personalized assistance and resources for future reference, as well as their feeling of belonging to the Internet2 community after six or more months of membership.
• Specific action items included in this initiative include the development of new materials articulating member benefits (member ‘playbooks’ based on member type).  We will strengthen our relationships and awareness of Internet2 services through personalized introductions of community members to Internet2 staff and resources based on identified personas. For example, we will facilitate introductory conversations of community members such as identity architects to our InCommon team, cloud architects to our Cloud Services program managers, and community CISOs to our staff knowledgeable in Internet2’s security offerings. This will not only increase awareness of available Internet2 services and solutions, but provide members with personalized resources for future reference. For new members, we will be offering discounted participation rates for Internet2’s anchor events during their first year, and also doing outreach campaigns to highlight specific member value based on member type. Once fully implemented, these materials and campaigns can also be shared with existing members, strengthening relationships and providing opportunities to continually raise awareness of Internet2 services, solutions, and engagement opportunities.

Original Priorities Identified Before October 2024:

The Internet2 community continues to benefit from learning from one another and leveraging successful processes and solutions through awareness building, working together, sharing experiences and knowledge, and transforming those outcomes into tangible benefits for the entire community. As such, Community Engagement will:

1. Continue to deliver exceptional anchor events (Community Exchange and Technology Exchange ) and:
   1. Get ahead in setting locations and dates beyond 2024
   2. Continue to involve the community and stakeholders in the programming and content through active participation in program committee(s) and working groups that are engaged in the development of the programs for these events.
   3. Initiate a process for the potential expansion of these events to be more inclusive of additional stakeholder groups.
2. Upon prioritization of stakeholders, CE will evaluate and plan for new approaches to more fully engage those stakeholders (and cross-groups) in possibly new regional and more local events and through revamping offerings through I2online virtual events.
   1. We will work with the CE PAG and other PAGs and community groups and internally to evaluate cost models that are sensitive to the needs and desires of the communities that will be part of these events.
3. CE will take an active role in continually managing relationships, ensuring organizations are involved in and apprised of the persistent evolution of Internet2 services, solutions, and engagement opportunities.
   1. CE will develop a new member/participation welcome “kit” and personal engagement with any new members.
      i. Ensure that at least 1-2 phone calls or zoom meetings take place with each new member and that at least 1 time per year, a member is offered a review of their annual engagement and needs from and with Internet2.
   2. CE will work with other units at Internet2 to better track community interests and facilitate connecting individuals as they join the community.
      i. CE staff will work to examine potential new ways to engage new members, including exploring creating new member cohort calls (at least 1 per year) to orient new members on their Internet2 membership and services. With new CE staff, we may also set in motion enhanced approaches to support members with similar interests coming together.
   3. CE will plan and launch a member satisfaction survey for all members.  This survey will be developed with a 3rd party and with input from the executive leadership, leadership staff and as needed CE PAG and other external groups to inform a simple and effective survey and assessment.
      i. Data and findings from the survey will be shared with the community in an open and transparent fashion.
      ii. CE will work with community stakeholders and PAGs to get their feedback and ideas on potential recommendations moving forward.
      iii. CE will work internally with other units to evaluate any improvement(s) or areas to address and will work cooperatively to address any recommendations that may require budgetary and new investments.
   4. In partnership with other units, ensure that services, solutions, and engagement opportunities are designed to be as inclusive as possible from their inception.
4. CE will strive to work across all of Internet2 service units so that models that support organizational participation in the community are framed, regardless of current capabilities and capacities, focusing instead on needs and aspirations.
5. CE will continue to mature and evolve into a more reliable, robust shared services (marketing, communications, digital experience, engagement) organization that support the needs of Internet2 service areas.
   1. CE will identify and procure resources – funding, personnel, and professional services – to ensure robust services and support to address priorities from service units.
   2. CE will develop more mature project and portfolio management capabilities that are integrated with organization-wide project management efforts across the organization to ensure transparency and alignment.

October 2024 Updates:

Community Engagement-led activities:
In addition to planning two major anchor events each year (Community Exchange and Technology Exchange), the Community Engagement team has helped plan and support additional in-person community gatherings including the higher education cloud forum and the MS-CC annual meeting. On the virtual convening front, Community Engagement has helped support, run, and manage 59 virtual events in 2024 across multiple topics from identity and access management, cloud services and programs, professional development and training programs, network-focused webinars, and more.

The Community Engagement staff also helps coordinate the Internet2 presence at key regional, national, and global events such as the Annual EDUCAUSE conference, SuperComputing, TNC, PEARC, NANOG, among others.  

Internet2 continues to use convening to express the community and Internet2 value proposition and to create effective strategies to foster greater inclusivity and broaden participation across the research and education community.

Within the CE relationships team, organizational adjustments will ensure a continued focus on Internet2 membership while simultaneously redoubling efforts and attention to institutions and organizations across the research and education community that, while not Internet2 Members, are critical partners and participants in directing and developing Internet2’s services and solutions. 

With respect to our Research and Education Network members, CE recently partnered with FRGP in a presentation to Colorado higher education leadership (including both Internet2 members and non-members) regarding the value of RENs and the value that Internet2 provides to RENs directly as well as to REN members.  Looking forward to 2025, we will work with REN members to highlight Internet2 value to higher education institutions regardless of membership status — providing RENs the opportunity to highlight their partnership with Internet2.

Network Services-led activities:
Internet2 is proud to be a part of the NA-REX where seven advanced research and education (R&E) networks and exchange point consortia are collaborating to establish a new high-performance experimental network service connecting global exchange points in North America. Their collaboration promises enhanced capacity, coordination, and testing capabilities to develop next-generation network services, technologies, and foundational infrastructure supporting global science and innovation. The seven collaborators are AMPATH, CANARIE, ESnet, International Networks at Indiana University, Internet2, Pacific Wave, Starlight and the Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN). The NA-REX interconnects international exchange points in the U.S. and Canada using a common architecture, integrated services, shared tools, and aligned operations.

Internet2 continues to actively provide active support to the Open Science Data Federation (OSDF) through the acquisition and hosting of distributed high-throughput computing (dHTC) nodes on the Internet2 backbone. Internet2 is in the process of upgrading three OSDF nodes in Kansas City, New York, and Chicago with the goal of having this working completed in 2024. Additionally, Internet2 will be expanding the roles of its 40+ multi-role server nodes (originally intended to support perfSONAR operations) to also be available for use by the OSDF. This transition is expected to be complete in early 2025.

Original Priorities Identified Before October 2024:

October 2024 Updates:

The Internet2 Network Technical Advisory Council (NTAC) continues to meet monthly to discuss pertinent topics in the community. The NTAC also hosts several Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which are long-standing meetings around areas such as “Peering and Routing”, “IPv6”, and “Network Security”. It occasionally spins up short-lived Working Groups (WGs) to address topics where the community would like specific guidance, or an official stance by the R&E networking community. The current NTAC Chair is Byron Hicks (LEARN).

The Network Automation Special Interest Group (SIG) saw considerable growth over 2024, with total membership now at over 232 participants (up from 183 on 12/31/2023). By the end of 2024 the group will have conducted more than 20 remote meetings, including four recorded demos by members for their peers as well as many ad-hoc presentations and overviews included as part of the regular meeting rotation. The SIG also now includes its first industry member (NTC, which produces the Nautobot network source-of-truth open-source product). SIG members hosted the “Building a NetDevOps Team” panel at the 2024 Internet2 Community Exchange, and will be presenting two network automation workshops and nine automation-related talks at TechEx 2024, including “Fundamentals of Setting Up and Populating a Network Source of Truth” by NTC.

In May 2024, Internet2 became the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against our DNS infrastructure. This attack made it difficult to impossible for Internet2’s DNS services to respond to legitimate requests, thus impacting all services that relied on that service. These services included, but not limited to; the Internet2 and InCommon websites, InCommon Federated Identity, and the Internet2 Confluence/Wiki. Internet2 staff worked quickly with RADWARE to implement a DDoS Scrubbing service. This service has reliably mitigated the continued attacks. Internet2 is working to migrate our DNS infrastructure to a more robust and performant cloud-based system.

Internet2 created a committee of five community members to review and advise on a new service offering from Internet2 called Platform Flex. The committee met several times and provided Internet2 staff with ideas on how to improve the services, and provided several concepts on how the service might be used by community members. The report, which was approved by the NAOPpag, provides the results of the committee’s work, outlines the Flex service and the improvements suggested by the committee. 

Original Priorities Identified Before October 2024:

To identify effective methods of enhancing network operation capabilities and service advancements, partnerships are actively being cultivated. This includes ongoing support and expansion of Network Technical Advisor Committee (NTAC) working groups focused on areas such as Network Automation Special Interest Group (SIG), Insight Console Futures Committee, and Automation & Software Committee.

Current Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) offerings, initially designed in collaboration with Regional Education Networks and campus engineers, are being enhanced. The exploration of solutions for new attack vectors, such as Web DDoS Tsunami Attacks, is underway, along with the establishment of full Web Access Firewall protection. Simultaneously, a model that caters to the security and business model needs of the R&E community is being developed.

October 2024 Updates:

Community Engagement continually reviews and assesses our marketing and outreach efforts and continues to utilize data and analytical tools and insights to focus our marketing efforts on messaging and storytelling that resonates across the multiple audience types we serve. Priority campaigns have focused on new services such as NET+ Cloud services, event communications, network-related activities such as routing integrity, promoting professional development opportunities through CLASS and InCommon Academy, and member value campaigns.  Community Engagement staff optimize the best channels for outreach which include regular newsletter types, blog features, community highlights through our web properties, social media, events, and videos.

Original Priorities Identified Before October 2024:

Internet2 will continually evolve its marketing and communication strategies and frequently assess our marketing channels for effectiveness, impact, and overall community engagement. Internet2 will:

• Continue to improve Internet2 value propositions and ensure clear, regular articulation of those value propositions through strategic messaging, media relations, and marketing campaigns for priority services and programs.
• Strive to continually use data, metrics, and available insights to understand key channels for engagement and target specific audiences with communication strategies and content relevant to them.
• Continue to evaluate the Internet2 brand through periodic brand segmentation studies and customer satisfaction surveys.

October 2024 Updates:

Community Engagement has performed an initial analysis regarding the participation of Internet2 members across the Internet2 portfolio of services (InCommon, eduroam, NET+, etc). This analysis provides insights into areas where there may be the potential for additional participation or adoption of services by current members. The next steps will explore underlying factors driving the adoption and lack of adoption of various services within different member sectors. Additionally, the analysis will be extended to a broader swath of the research and education community to better understand participation in individual services by institutions and organizations that are not Internet2 members.

Internet2 created a committee of five community members to review and advise on the final consolidation of commercial peers into the I2PX services – previously, a small number of peers existed in the R&E table to serve NET+ customers. In 2019, the community’s Routed Services Futures Group recommended that Internet2 simplify its methodology for delivering both R&E IP and I2PX services; this work was delayed by the pandemic, NGI, and other higher-priority tasks. Internet2 is now working to remediate the last of its peers, AWS, through a series of capacity upgrades. The committee was instrumental in finalizing Internet2’s plans to complete this work and communicate with campuses. It is our hope that this committee will continue on to assist us within the Performance SIG with a focus on routed services. 

In step with the above effort, Internet2 staff also hosted several office-hours series to address routing, BGP, and route security. They were well attended. 

Original Priorities Identified Before October 2024:

Internet2 strives to welcome and support a more diverse and broader community and to help advance the positive impacts that Internet2 services, solutions, and capabilities have on the entire community.

Internet2 will work with broader groups of institutions to better understand how to build foundations upon which all those who aspire to be part of the Internet2 community can achieve their objectives.

1. Community Engagement will launch a task force with representation from across the Internet2 community:  inclusive of MS-CC campuses, CLAC and other groups to evaluate potential approaches.
2. Network Services will Assess the Research Data Challenge: Leverage ties to community organizations, assess the research data challenge, and consider reports like the forthcoming one from NIST and the proceedings of the October 2023 US Research Data Summit.
3. Network Services will Provide Direct Engineering Engagement: Through structured workshops and office hours, engage with community engineers and stakeholders to improve operations, debug problems, and develop new architectural solutions for both cloud applications and data-intensive science.