The N3 JANET Working Group

The N3 JANET Gateway Working Group was set up in the summer of 2005 to take forward the proposal that one or more network Gateways should be created between the new NHS network in England, N3, and the Joint Academic Network, JANET. It was chaired by Dr Mark Ferrar, Director of Infrastructure Architecture, Security & Information Governance at NHS Connecting for Health.

Terms of reference

Membership

The Working Group met a number of times during autumn 2005 and through to early summer 2006. A proposal for a pilot of NHS HE gateways in England was developed. The idea was to pilot:

a. one, or two “national” gateways between the NHS network N3 and JANET
b. a group of communities in further developing local NHS – JANET connections in an effort to improve the education, process and support for such connectivity

The funding required from the NHS to proceed with this was not available given the difficulties with the overall NHS budget in England at the end of the 2005/06 financial year. The HE community remained keen to progress this initiative however.

It was therefore agreed with JISC that JANET(UK) will fund one basic N3 JANET Gateway, as an early adopter scheme rather than a pilot. This will allow some of the most interested potential users to be confident that the service can continue rather be withdrawn after the pilot period. Communities in the NE (University of Newcastle lead) and in Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire (University of Bristol lead) have been particularly strong in their support for this initiative and have immediate uses for the gateway.

At some point a separate proposal may be developed for the pilots of local NHS-HE Connectivity but this is currently on hold. Such connectivity will still be important for high usage transfers between local NHS and HE organisations where this is required – ie where there is sufficient demand that it is worth setting up a separate link that avoids traversing N3 and to a lesser extent JANET

The N3 JANET Gateway Working Group now forms the Advisory Group to the N3 JANET Gateway Project Board which is overseeing the implementation of the early adopter N3 JANET Gateway.