A while back, after almost a decade of making (and sometimes breaking) networks at a university, I began searching for the next chapter in my career. My past experiences have been with large network vendors, small resellers and end customers, but never a service provider. The connection with the sector I’d grown to know and love, combined with the appeal of learning new areas of technology, drew me towards what I thought was the “ISP for universities.” I soon discovered that this label is misleading in many ways.
Jisc is More Than Janet
When involved in networks at a university or college the ‘Janet network’ is the part of Jisc that garners all the attention. As someone who managed a data centre that houses a Janet PoP, I could see with my own eyes a tiny part of that infrastructure. I’d heard Jisc did some things to help others like my colleagues in the library, but I wasn’t sure (or interested TBH) in what that involved. Week one at Jisc included a full day of learning about the wider organisation and the breadth it’s of services became apparent.
Jisc is big. At my last place, I was one of around two hundred IT staff with many being part of teams I had no contact with. In contrast, Jisc has around 1300 staff with a three figure number involved in network connectivity. Meeting and learning from the array of highly skilled network engineers during my induction was both overwhelming and inspiring.
The Complexity of the Default Route
For more than two decades, I lived with a luxury I never fully appreciated: the default route. Like a junior team member who always has someone to escalate issues to, the default route allows you to send traffic towards a service provider and trust that the magic happens. I quickly discovered that this magic is more complicated and requires more skill than I imagined.
However, in some respects it is just a large-scale version of the networks I’ve worked with for decades but on a massive scale. I used to work with routers that were 2U high and maintained around a thousand routes. Logging onto a router in the middle of Janet (which can fill an entire rack), I can see 1,162,319 active IPv4 & IPv6 routes. I used to be able to walk across the physical extent of the network where as with Jisc there are around a thousand sites across the entire of the UK. I rarely come across a 10Gbps links anymore but I’m involved with moving from 800Gbps to 1Tbps+ links in some areas.
That said, at this layer it is just pushing more packets to more places.
The Physical Layer
One technology aspect that is very different is the physical layer. To transmit hundreds of Gigabits/s of data down a single dark fibre requires an optical line system. This expensive equipment has the sole purpose to convert traditional LAN data signals into precisely engineered light signals capable of travelling large distances. When I used to think of Janet I visualised a mesh of big routers connected together with long strands of fibre. In reality it is better described as a mesh of optical equipment spanning the UK forming a high-speed low-latency underlay. The routed network I knew about previously relies entirely on this layer. Rarely do routers in the core directly connect to each other physically; instead, they plug into this underlying optical layer to be multiplexed and amplified before transmission over long distances.
Operating this lower layer requires an understanding of degree-level optical physics and a whole new dictionary of acronyms. There wasn’t much cause to understand the effects of Stimulated Raman Scattering or Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing during my decade of connecting students Playstations to the internet. Thankfully, Jisc employs a small team of skilled engineers dedicated to this discipline.
The Pace of Change
It would be easy to think that everything at Jisc is bigger and better, but that isn’t true. Change happens very slowly. This is the downside of huge scale and huge responsibility. Design mistakes cost millions, and operational mistakes affect thousands of people. While infuriating for someone who was used to making relatively large improvements within days, I’ve come to understand that this slow pace ensures Jisc’s reputation for providing an ultra-reliable network.
Cultural Similarities
I may have given the impression that everything is different at Jisc. Actually, some things are unsurprisingly the same. The culture at Jisc mirrors that of our member institutions. Concepts like putting respect at the forefront of everything Jisc does and not just accepting but celebrating everyone’s differences. It should be no surprise that the cultures are aligned because a large portion of Jisc staff came from its members or associated organisations.
Shared Challenges
Jisc faces many of the same challenges as the university environment I’m familiar with. The aversion to change by risk-averse colleagues, the increasingly difficult decisions enforced by decreasing budgets, and the need to make IT security a primary principle of every design.
Conclusion
I’ll close with a nod to what I wish I’d known as a customer. One thing would be that Jisc is there to help with all aspects of connectivity, not just internet. That includes connecting small sites like satellite campuses, international locations and student houses.
It would have been good to better understand Jisc’s not-for-profit nature with its entire purpose being to serve members and the wider community. It was easy to consider Jisc as a company you pay a large chunk of cash for high-speed internet. Most elements of this huge organisation, including the Janet network, were started by individuals from member organisations coming together to collaborate in order to serve the community. That ethos hasn’t really changed over the decades. There are just fancier logos.