Tags: William H. Morgan

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

(more…)

Tags: Paul Schopis, OARnet

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Transcript:

Host: Paul Lancour - PodTech
Guest: Mike Journey - GCI

Paul Lancour - PodTech
I’m Paul Lancour with PodTech.net and I’m speaking with Mike Journey. He is Telehealth Systems Manager for GCI and he’s joining us from Anchorage, Alaska. Mike, how are you doing today?

Mike Journey - GCI
I’m doing fine, thank you.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Great, now I’m going to talk to you about you’re named a Master of IT and I want to ask you first of about the area in which you work, which is telemedicine. What does telemedicine encompass?

Mike Journey - GCI
Telemedicine is used up here in Alaska, specifically for getting out to remote villages, so that we can have small clinics consult with specialists at regional hospitals or even in Anchorage here where the main hospital and they do that through a video conferencing, so they can see the patient or see the injury and help in those manners.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
This kind of telemedicine has been to going on for sometime without the assistance of GCI or deployment of the Junipers Network. So, how has it been done in the past?

Mike Journey - GCI
Well, in the past they would basically get on the phone or they would do it remotely or have the doctors fly out or have the patient fly in, back to a regional hospital, so they can get the proper care; with the advent of telemedicine and before the deployment of the Juniper, IP accelerators, it was fairly problematic to get a good video signal out and back again because the applications that they used to record patient data and things like that would be slow and cumbersome and that would be very difficult for them to do that.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
So, you were given the charge of upgrading the Network and making this telemedicine more effective essentially and what kinds of barriers did you face, I mean you are in Alaska and these are some pretty far flung places. So, I imagine terrain is one of the barriers, you would have dealt with?

Mike Journey - GCI
Yeah, these villages that are outs in the remote areas of Alaska have very little infrastructure. They are ranging from 200 people to 700 people and there’s no roads into these places. You can get to them via a snowmobile or dogsled in the winter time and the summer time you either hike in or most of these places have an airport. So, they’ll have a small bush pilot to fly in. So it’s very difficult to bring an infrastructure, so we do everything with satellite and because of that with a round trip delay time, the satellite being in geosynchronous orbit, 23,000 miles out, there’s quite a bit of latency on the network and we were looking for something that would alleviate the latency.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
So, I would imagine in the course of deploying this that you — will you get on snowmobiles and going out to some of these remote locations yourself?

Mike Journey - GCI
Yeah, but actually not snowmobiles, but I have flown in the most of the villages here in Alaska, small six-passenger planes, it got interesting at times.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
So, your dealing with so many issues, that a lot of most people who are in your position don’t necessarily have to deal with and you are given the charge of deploying this Network, obviously satellites were pretty much the only option at this point and as you said, latency is a huge problem. So, how do you deal with that and perhaps you could give us an example of specifically some of the telemedicine that was going on and how you specifically dealt with the issues with those remote locations?

Mike Journey - GCI
Well, I’ll pick on one hospital that we have about in Dillingham, it’s a regional hospital and it’s connected to 27 remote clinics and villages scattered all over the Bristol Bay Area and each of these villages have airports, but they don’t have any roads and they have very little infrastructure. So, there is a clinic in each one of these villages and there is a trained nursing aid or a clinician there that can do all the basic stuff, but when the time comes for special aid treatment, then they have a cart there with a video camera on it and a small TV monitor and a video camera can be remotely controlled from a hospital and so a specialist of hospital connects up to the camera, looks at the patient, ask the questions, focuses in the camera on a wound for instance, or whatever is necessary to do to help diagnose what the patient is. Now, the problem with that is that when you have such high latency, then that becomes problematic.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Now, when we talk about high latency, what kind of times are we talking about with satellite?

Mike Journey - GCI
Satellite is generally about 700 to 700 spin milliseconds on a day. It can be longer, just a matter of physics. You’re going to have it 700 milliseconds away, no matter what you do. However, with the Juniper IP accelerators, what we do is we alleviate the effects of that delay and we do that with a feature called TCP acceleration, which works quite well for our applications.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Now, as you say there is an inherent delay, just given the 23,000 mile journey that the signal makes up to the satellite and then back down again. How do the accelerators then defy the laws of physics essentially? What kinds of things do they do to make it so this latency is not a problem?

Mike Journey - GCI
Well, one of the things about the TCP protocol is that it has this feature called TCP slow start, which is basically programed into the protocol and TCP slow start’s available and you can Google it and look up on a quickie if you want more information about it, but what the Juniper IP accelerators essentially do is they spoof the camera or they spoof the servers and clients on each end of the link and they’re thinking that they are talking to something local, which they are, they’re talking to the IP accelerators and so the IP accelerators essentially act as proxies for the other end of the circuit and then what the IP accelerators do is, they bundle up that TCP traffic and feed it into a pipe between the accelerators and fill that pipe unlike what a computer can do with TCP slow start, it can fill a complete (Inaudible), for instance; but the IP accelerators can and so they make much more efficient use of the bandwidth.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Your client’s been pretty happy with the results?

Mike Journey - GCI
They have been very happy and I can give you an example of that. We have a client down in the Eastern (Inaudible) area that when we put these IP accelerators then he was not convinced that the accelerators were doing what. We said they were doing and so I set up a test and I turned off the IP accelerators and had him transfer from the server, a really large file, the FTP and we timed it. It took about 7 minutes to transfer the file and we then turned the IP accelerators back on, I had him transfer the file again which primed the IP accelerators and then the third time he transferred it, his response was, “Wait a minute, something’s wrong” and I said, “What?” He said that was too fast and I said well delete the file and try it again. So, he deleted the file and he is the client, tried it again and the file across in about two seconds. Well, what that really meant was the IP accelerators had the data dictionary built up on both sides and it copied it not from the remote site, but from the local site, which made it about two seconds of time.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
If he is thinking that the fact is that it’s not working properly because it went so quickly, then you’ve done your job I suppose.

Mike Journey - GCI
Exactly.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Now, I’m sure there is a lot of satisfaction in a job well done in general and the kind of work you do, but there has to be some special satisfaction in knowing that as a result of deploying this, that people in which sound like really remote locations are getting specialized medical care in a way that they never could have even a short time ago.

Mike Journey - GCI
Yes, its very satisfying, especially when you are hear some intonations that they solved a difficult pregnancy or there was a particular nasty snowmobile accident and somebody got patched up correctly, all because of the video conferencing and talking to a specialist back in the regional hospitals.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Well, Mike thanks for taking some time out today and talking to us and congratulations once again on being maybe a master of IT from Juniper,

Mike Journey - GCI
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Mike Journey is Telehealth Systems Manager for GCI.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Mike Journey, GCI, telemedicine

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Transcript:
Host: John Furrier - PodTech
Guest: Eric Walters - 7-eleven

John Furrier - PodTech
Welcome to the PodTech.net, Master of IT Podcasts, we are here with Eric Walters the 7-eleven Manager of Network Services, is that your title, what’s your title Eric?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Manager of Network Services.

John Furrier - PodTech
Tell us what’s involved in being the manager of network services for 7-eleven, big corporation, lot of activity, lot of locations?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
It is, I am in charge of the Network for North American Stores including the continental US and Canada as well as, we have 60 yard field sides around the continental US and Canada as well.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, tell us how did you get to where you are as Master of IT, tell us about what led you to being a Master of IT at 7-eleven?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, I have always been in IT; I have worked in many areas of IT in the network side specifically, done a lot in the areas of security and networking from large corporations.

John Furrier - PodTech
Eric, tell us something a little about managing the 7-eleven network, I mean it’s not your standard corporate organization, I mean every one knows 7-eleven, who has had to have make quick stops, talk about the security environment over there and a little about the network.

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, the challenges are wide spread, depending on if you’re talking about stores or just the general corporate network, but the biggest challenge, we have today is really our stores, where we have a lot of change going on, we’re using a lot of technology in our stores and providing a robust network to support those new requirements as an ongoing challenge.

John Furrier - PodTech
What kind of technologies are we talking about over there?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, we are implementing a lot of new technologies for, we have a particular technology called vCom, which is a virtual commerce and that is an ATM machine that does a lot of transactions including check cashing, money orders as well as carrying standard ATM transactions.

John Furrier - PodTech
You must have had a lot of challenges, how many stores do you guys have?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
We’re trying about 53 hundred in the US and 500 stores in Canada.

John Furrier - PodTech
And your network includes all of those?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Yes, correct.

John Furrier - PodTech
Tell us about your security challenge, that you guys face over there at 7-eleven.

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, I think with any company doing financial services or financial transactions, PCI certification has to be the largest challenge and we’re currently implementing a lot of different technologies to make sure that our network is highly secure and that we can carry customers transactions without any compromise of their data.

John Furrier - PodTech
Can you give an example of something that happened recently?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, one of the things is we are adding into our stores, a wireless network, that we’re using for a running use, not for a wireless hotspot, but we’re using it for carrying a wireless device in a store called MOT and it’s a Mobile Operations Terminal, it’s used to do store ordering and product check-in and the like and obviously implementing a technology like that in our stores we wanted to do it very securely, but also giving some flexibility to expand the capabilities of it.

John Furrier - PodTech
Eric, tell us about some of the access challenges, is wireless a challenge as everyone wireless these days, so talk about that?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
The biggest challenge is making sure that the wireless network in a store is secure against any outside access, obviously wireless Sting what it is, it can be accessed from both inside our location, as well as in outside of our location so we have to be careful in making sure that the level of security is at — what it needs to be to prevent access and not only that to monitor against access by an outside party.

John Furrier - PodTech
Juniper has the Master of IT program and also you’ve been designated as one, talk about a little about what Juniper has brought to the table, what they’ve done with you?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well they’ve tapped out significantly both internally with our network as well as, all the way down to the stores, where we’re rolling out those wireless access points. The Juniper product is working out very well for us in that area, provides a very robust wireless access point, basically it’s a firewall with wireless access point built on top of it, as to our a lot of the other applications, there’re our other access points that are out there in the industry are really kind of the reverse, but there was an access point first and they kind of bolted some security on top of it.

We’re already very familiar with the platform that Juniper added this wireless capability too, so that was obviously a big benefit to us because we knew the capabilities of the device from a security perspective. So adding wireless on to that was a natural fit and really met the challenges that we had facing is quite well.

John Furrier - PodTech
Eric, you’re a master of IT, which is a great accomplishment, share with the folks out there about some of the things that you’ve learned, share with them something that you could help them way, so someone is out there who may have some of the similar issues that you had, what could you tell them?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, I think the key is being flexible. In today’s changing IT world, things are changing very rapidly, being able to be flexible and being able to have a vision towards where you want your organization or where you want your network to go and marrying that up with, what the executives at the organization are looking for is really challenging. It’s quite fun, but there’s a lot of challenge with staying up in IT these days, so really staying intend with the industry and with your peers in the industry is key to understanding the different ways that other organizations are addressing their security and network concerns and being able to carry that in your own organization as well.

John Furrier - PodTech
As you go forward, for the next few years, what do you see out there as the future challenges around the corner and the security and being just a master of IT, what does that outlook look like to you?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, I think the future challenges are that we are continuing to become more and more a Webified world and we’re seeing a lot of security challenges, all around the industry and in point security has become a really hot topic and how do you protect the in points in your network, whether it be an individual, whether desktop or a laptop mobile user, or our systems down in our stores, so security is really continuing to be at the fore front of every network manager’s mind.

John Furrier - PodTech
What you’re doing out there to keep on the cutting edge of the security issue, because security is really not going away, it’s always changing in morphing thing, what are the some of the things that you’re doing?

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Well, I think the biggest thing is staying in touch with my vendors and making sure that the manufacturers of the products that I use within our network are really in tune with what my issues are and also identifying whether the issues that I’m looking at are marrying up with where the products are going and making sure that I can address everything that we need to with as fewer vendors as possible and making sure that the security that they provide marries up with what we want to do.

John Furrier - PodTech
Eric, what do you enjoy the most about your job obviously being a Master of IT is a great accomplishment, what do you like the most about what you do?

John Furrier - PodTech
Well I think the thing that’s — the most intriguing is that it’s an ever changing world, there are constantly new challenges, which require you to stretch your thought process and coming up with new and creative ideas and ways of dealing with those challenges, this industry, there’s no way you can know everything there is to know about technology. And so there is always more to learn and more to get to know and that is the thing that enjoy the most about this, the work that I do is that you can never know it all, there’s just way too much that is out there.
We’re here at the Juniper Networks, Master of IT Podcast, talking about all masters of IT across the board.

For more information just see where all the Masters of IT are located, there’s a website www.masterofit.net, we’re here with Eric Walters, Manager of Network Services for 7-eleven, great company, good business, IT is a big part of it, a lot of locations. Eric thanks so much for the Podcast.

Eric Walters - 7-eleven
Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Eric Walters, 7-eleven, Juniper Networks, Master of IT, PodTech, John Furrier

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Transcript:
Host: Paul Lancour – PodTech
Guest: Craig Collar – Juniper Networks

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Welcome to the Juniper Networks Master of IT Podcast, recognizing Juniper customers who deliver strategic value to their organizations, by solving complex networking challenges. I’m Paul Lancour with Podtech.net. Today’s guest is Craig Collar, Manager of Networking at the University of Alaska. As you might imagine, he faces some unique challenges, designing and maintaining a network. I started by asking him to describe his role.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
I’m responsible for the network design, new network implementation, and I would say network expansion for the University of Alaska System Office, which is sort of a governing body for the University of Alaska and its three major campuses. The three major campuses are the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Anchorage, and University of Alaska in Juneau, and my role at the System Office is fundamentally to develop a network from a wide area network service point of view, whereas we provide network services to the various campuses. I’m also recently started working on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus Network Engineering as well.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
And so what are the specific challenges as the Manager of Network Engineering for the University? What are the specific challenges you face?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, being in Alaska our challenges, I think are different than some other major universities in the United States. Simply because our geography, we face some challenges in terms of the amount of infrastructure that’s available to us and when there is infrastructure available to us, the cost that infrastructure has for us. So, with any university our three primary challenges for IT, is to serve the research community, to serve the students, and to serve the communities, specifically in terms of community outreach.

In the research area, we do some high performance computing. We have a fairly prestigious science community here and they’re doing a lot of large date set transfers to sites in lower 48. And for our students, one of the challenges we have is the expectations that they come into the university with and for IT specifically. A number of our students of course live here on campus and they’re expecting and indeed deserving to have Internet access and network access, equal to any other university in the nation.

So, that puts us in a different sort of operational mindset than some other’s education environment might be, and that we’ve to provide 24×7 365 days a year access to our network resources, both commodity Internet resources and Internet2 resources for all these people, just like any mission critical network or a mission critical operation.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
We were joking, just before we got started that everybody who first speaks to you when you’re in Alaska, asks you about the weather, but it’s true that the weather conditions in the terrain probably present you with unique problems up there, as well as the far-flung nature of the various campuses you deal with.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Absolutely, absolutely. We still serve remote campuses using satellite feeds, which universities in the lower 48 might not have to do with and that presents problems of latency and delay that we have to overcome. And these are actually very low bandwidth circuits here of course. So, we can’t provide the amount of bandwidth, say to a remote campus that some of the university might, but we have to make sure that that bandwidth is used to its utmost potential. And of course there is the cost issue as well. Satellite bandwidth remains to be very, very expensive.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Is that the only way you connect with some of your campuses is with the satellite you have no fiber lines or anything like that?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
For some of our remote campuses, satellite is the only connection available. Most of them, however most of our remote campuses we connect to via a frame relay like network that’s delivered either via carriers, fiber-optic, infrastructure or over microwave links.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
In what ways is Juniper Networks assisted you in facing these challenges?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, Juniper has been instrumental in the development of our network. About three years ago, we received a grant from the National Institute of Health, to upgrade the core network infrastructure of our network. And we turned the Juniper first and foremost to help us out in the design and deployment of the network.

Juniper has an excellent name in the education and the research market and Internet2 of which we’re a member, uses Juniper extensively. And so it was fairly easy for us to look at Juniper for a core network, routing platform. And they were very helpful in that regard; plus in terms of a community outreach prospective for the university, we are involved in a program called Sponsored Education Group Participant called SEGP, and basically it’s an Internet2 program that allows us to connect non-Internet2 member entities on the Internet2 backbone.

And Juniper was instrumental in helping us allocate some equipment from them throughout the State of Alaska, to deploy this new network that will connect these individual communities with. So, what we’re talking about specifically is, Connecting K through 20 schools, connecting libraries, connecting museums, connecting certain other education organizations, throughout the state to the Internet2 backbone over Juniper routing equipment.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, it sounds like you’re overseeing the network connection of a large segment of the education system in the State of Alaska?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Absolutely and it seems to be growing daily to tell you the truth.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
When did you receive this grant money and you started to deploy your new network?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
We received the grant money about three years ago, and that’s when we upgraded the universities core network. And then in conjunction with Juniper and a number of the carriers here in Alaska, we recently deployed what’s called the AK20 Network and we just finished that deployment before 2007. And we’re now in the process of connecting the other educational organizations up to that network.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, as you move forward with this and with other aspects of your work, what do you see is the challenges in the future?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, I think our challenges are; well, there is technical challenges and I think there is policy challenges. Of course, some of the technical challenges we are up against are like many enterprises or many large service provider networks in that we can no longer rely just on destination-based IP routing.

What we really need to do and this is one of the reasons we chose Juniper as a partner here, is we need to able to control packet forwarding in a way that isn’t say the default way of packet forwarding and of course Juniper’s hardware is renowned for this ability. And Juniper offers, in my mind, a very rich policy language, and through the use of that policy language, we’re able to control packets in ways that a couple of years ago wouldn’t be possible.

And so, we’re also looking at so called advanced services in terms of QoS, in terms of bandwidth reservation and in terms of in the specific areas, compression and local cashing, particularly with the satellite sites. We have to make sure that, that bandwidth there, is used properly and used to its best affect; and the only way you can do that is through some of the new technologies, in terms of compression and certain amount of cashing.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Well, it sounds like you’ve a lot of challenging and rewarding work going on up there in Alaska, and I just want to thank you for taking the time out today Craig and talking to us about it.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Okay, great.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Craig Collar is Manager of Network Engineering for the University of Alaska.

Join us for the next Podcast in the Juniper Networks series Masters of IT. Thanks for listening.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Craig Collar, Juniper Networks

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Tags: Robert Bell, IT, GHAFARI, Juniper Networks, Master of IT, PodTech, John Furrier

For more on Master of IT visit Juniper’s website at:
www.masterofit.net

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Tags: triPRACTIX

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Tags: network security, David O’Berry

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Tags: Shopzilla, Burzin Engineer

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Tags: Ron Danielson

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

What was fascinating was the notion of “homegrown” VPNs that Glenn is doing … and how it saved them millions.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

MGM owns half the strip in Las Vegas and running the networks and IT capabilities is no easy task. Laura talks about the IT life in Las Vegas.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals.

Master of IT was created by Juniper Networks to highlight successful PROs so that they can share their voice with other IT professionals. To browse the nominated list of Juniper ’s Master of IT or to nominate someone to become a Master of IT please visit www.MasterofIT.net

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.