It's been fun....

As some of you already know, the Internet2 transition to Level3 has been complete for the past few weeks. The first clue was probably all the remaining Abilene nodes disappearing from the weathermap last week. They've been shut down and the first is coming out tomorrow. The other nodes will be removed over the next few weeks. 

With everything complete, these little updates will cease. This was a wonderful experiment into the benefits (and perils) of direct communication between the Internet2 NOC engineering staff and the community. We learned a bit and may do more in the future in a more ongoing operational capacity, but don't look for that to happen anytime soon. 

There are really too many people behind the scenes to thank. I'd like to acknowledge several individuals in particular that spent many sleepless nights on the road helping to make this transition a success. These are the true heroes of the upgrade that really made this all come together. 

• Hans Addleman
  
• Andrew Lee
  
• Caroline Carver
  
• Jay Duncan
  
• Tom Johnson
  
• Aaron Pagel
  
• AJ Ragusa

In addition the following people found other ways to assist. My thanks go out to them as well:

• Steve Peck and Nathan Lucas for keeping the NOC service desk in the loop and assisting with procedural work
  
• Matt Davy for pinch hitting for me when I was out in late March and keeping the CPS network on track throughout the upgrade
• Caren Litvanyi for wading through countless spreadsheets and analyzing the minutiae of the suite buildouts
• Luke Fowler and Ed Balas for their support on the database and documentation systems
• Chris Small for keeping the observatory in step
• John Graham for managing the entire Ciena network and alleviating hundreds of hours of concern
• Jon-Paul Herron for keeping everyone's sanity at bay

This truly was a team effort and I'm proud to work with such high caliber individuals. If you see them in the hall at a conference, give them a pat on the back. They all deserve it. 

So long....