Wholesale: Products & Services

Archived System CR SCR090414-1 Detail

CenturyLink NOTE: Customer also submitted the completed SCRP form inconjunction with this CR.

Expected Deliverables/Proposed Implementation Date 10/17/2014

Status History

Project Meetings

3/18/2015 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink stated this CR has been in CLEC Test as of February 7, 2015. SATE Testing began early January 2015 with Production testing in February and March. DishNET currently plans to implement live in Production on Thursday, March 19, 2015. Mark said we will revisit this CR in April.

2/18/2015 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink stated that this one has been in CLEC Test as of February 7, 2015 and that there has been some SATE Testing since early January 2015 with continued testing in Production. Implementation is planned for February.

Doris Lutrell – CenturyLink stated that Dish has delayed implementation on their side. Until they have finished their testing and verification, CenturyLink IT is On Hold.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink stated that the CR will remain in CLEC test.

1/21/2015 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting ATTACHMENT I Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said we sent a system courtesy notice on January 7, 2015 with an effective date of February 7, 2015. In early January, testing in SATE went well. Mark said connectivity testing in Production is scheduled for the end of January and the full Production date for DishNET is expected to be February 11, 2015.

ATTACHMENT K Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said we talked about this CR under Attachment I and will consider moving it to Completion next month.

12/17/2014 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink provided the update. He said he has been working with dishNET and that SATE Testing is planned to be available as of January 8, 2015 for both sides. Once all testing is complete, dishNET will be able to go live at their convenience in Production. Rich asked if there were any questions. There were none.

11/24/14 Clarification Call Attendees: Joel Mitchell – dishNET Brian Doak – dishNET Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink Jim Rearden – CenturyLink Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink Denise Martinez – CenturyLink Mark Coyne – CenturyLink John Hansen – CenturyLink Susan Lorence – CenturyLink

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink gave a brief history of the CR and then identified that the purpose of this additional clarification call was to review the revised draft response sent to dishNET on November 13, 2014. Susan said the response indicated that CenturyLink accepted the CR with the understanding that the approach does not replace the current TLS/ SSL encryption and to relay that CenturyLink could not meet the dates initially requested by dishNET. Susan said Joel Mitchell – dishNET had replied to CenturyLink on November 19, 2014 that dishNET was in agreement with the approach laid out by CenturyLink. This call was to allow the CenturyLink SME team to ask questions before proceeding with the planned implementation and not to add any delays to the completion date.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said his SMEs were not available during the holiday week and that anything he could not answer, he would get back with Rich.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said that the dishNET response provided clarity that dishNET was not looking to implement a native standalone VPN and that the double encryption was not an issue for dishNET. Rich said he mainly wanted to confirm that understanding so CenturyLink could move ahead.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said that today dishNET has SSL with certificates over an encrypted internet and once VPN is implemented, all that would be wrapped in the VPN technology. Joel said they did not plan to change the current structure.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said the double encryption could impact performance but he was not sure if it would or not. Rich said he wanted that to be clear up front.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he was aware that the current plan could impact performance but did not think it was an issue until dishNET was shipping hundreds of orders per minute to CenturyLink. Joel said his security team was aware of it and wanted the private tunnel.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said the other path was much more complex and his team wanted to be sure before moving forward.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he wanted to confirm that the plan is to develop a point to point VPN between dishNET and CenturyLink and that routing will need to be modified. Flexibility is also required depending on the production date because of how dishNET is doing their development.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink confirmed that the initial testing of the tunnel will be in SATE.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said absolutely. He would like this in production sometime in January and if that was not going to occur, he will need to start working on some waivers. Joel said with the upcoming holidays and some time out of the office on his part, there may be some challenges.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink asked if the VPN can be established in SATE in December, would dishNET be able to test.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said yes. He said when the move is then to production, two data centers are involved.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink asked if the January date was to be coordinated with their big release.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said their big release is January 11, 2015 so implementation would need to be by January 4 or pushed out since there is a soak period with no changes. Joel said the CenturyLink VPN might be the beginning of February which was fine.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said testing could likely begin in December and will figure out that date soon. He asked who to contact in dishNET while Joel was out.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said Rich should work with Brian Doak – dishNET during his out of office in mid December. Joel said he would provide Rich with several SME contacts including someone from Network.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said that will work and that he wants to keep this moving forward. Rich thanked Joel for the clarifications.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he would get the contact information to Rich and said he wanted to keep the active/active scenario for disaster recovery in mind as this moves forward.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said the next steps are for Rich to establish a date in December for SATE testing to begin and to also try to establish a date for production implementation by mid December. Susan asked if there was any thought of trying to make a January 4, 2015 date or whether the plan is to work toward early February 2015.

Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink said he was not sure about the January 4 date. He thought he could have a date for both dishNET sites by mid December. His next activity is to work with Joel and Brian to establish a test plan for December.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said it would be tough on the dishNET side to be installed in production by January 4, 2015 and would need to look at that.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said meeting minutes would be out by the 5th workday but that everyone knew what was on their TODO list. She asked if there were any questions. There were none.

The clarification call concluded at 1:45 PM MT.

11/19/2014 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said a revised CenturyLink Draft Response was sent to dishNET on November 13. He then provided a high level review of the revised response that indicates that CenturyLink accepts this CR with the understanding that this implementation of VPN will provide an additional layer of encryption and security and does not replace the current TLS/ SSL encryption. Mark indicated that the implementation date would be mid to late first quarter of 2015 based on the date the CenturyLink response is approved to move forward with the proposed approach. Mark said Rich Rockwell – CenturyLink would review the key points in the response in more detail.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said that an email had been received from Joel Mitchell – dishNET that he had to drop from the call. Joel indicated in the email that he was accepting the CenturyLink response but some further clarification was required from CenturyLink. Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said we would set up a follow-up clarification call with dishNET.

10/15/2014 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said a draft response was sent to the CR originator on October 8, 2014 and then reviewed response included in the package. Mark said we are awaiting the results from the SME team investigation. Once that is available, CenturyLink will set up an ad hoc call to review the work required and establish next steps.

9/17/2014 Monthly Systems CMP Meeting Joel Mitchell - dishNET presented the new walk on CR which is to establish a VPN for ordering capabilities.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR was originally requested as an Exception CR and also included a completed Special Change Request Process (SCRP) form. A clarification call was held on September 15 and the SME team is evaluating the request to determine if there are IMA coding impacts and what other work will be required. Mark said during the clarification call, there was some discussion whether it was appropriate to move forward with the exception and the SCRP portion of this CR or whether those portions would be placed on HOLD while consideration is given to what CenturyLink work is required.

Joel Mitchell - dishNET said he sent an email that morning to put them on HOLD.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said we may need to conduct another ad hoc call as the SME team continues to review the CR. Mark asked if there were any questions. There were none.

9/15/14 Clarification Call Attendees: Joel Mitchell – dishNET Manish Dhankhar – dishNET Laurie Roberson – Integra Michelle Faamausili – CenturyLink Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink Vinodh Prasanna – CenturyLink Monideep De – CenturyLink Denise Martinez – CenturyLink Lori Burchett – CenturyLink Jim Rearden – CenturyLink John Hansen – CenturyLink Susan Lorence – CenturyLink

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink opened the call, reviewed the high level agenda and recapped the purpose of the clarification call. Susan said the dishNET Change Request indicated the request should be handled as an exception and that it also included a completed Special Change Request process (SCRP) form. Susan said that she has not started to process steps for the SCRP form until we know more about the requested changes.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET provided a background on the CR indicating that dishNET currently uses a third party vendor for provisioning via IMA and they plan to move away from the third party vendor. dishNET wants to open the connectivity directly with CenturyLink using a VPN tunnel. They would like to eventually have this tunnel for their Production environment as well as their SATE test and development environment. Joel said the Release 37 SATE environment is not yet established nor is their Release 37 production environment. They would like to run parallel to the current environment for a period of time. Joel said their test/development environment is a physically different location than their production environment.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said the CR indicates that dishNET would like the work done by 10/17/14.

Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink asked if the October date is for both environments.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he prefers October to be for both but that it could be just for SATE and that the Production date can be pushed back to December. Joel said he would have to provide an exact date in December. dishNET has not finished the certification with CenturyLink for SATE. Joel said he would defer to CenturyLink as far as the production date.

Jim Rearden – CenturyLink said it would be easier to work out connectivity issues in the test environment first. He also expressed concern that the October date for Production would conflict with the IMA Production Release 37 implementation date in October.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he was OK with that and would work with Service Manager Michelle Faamausili to come up with a new date. Joel said dishNET would have a change freeze in November.

Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink asked if dishNET was looking for one or two VPN tunnels.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said they are looking for two separate tunnels – one for test/development and one for production.

Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink asked who would send the information for the tunnels.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said in working with other companies, they send forms with information that must be completed. If CenturyLink has such a form, he will send it to his contacts. If no form, Joel will need an email from CenturyLink as to the data that is required.

Vinesh Vijayan Leela – CenturyLink said he will work on that when the CR is approved.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink asked if there were any other questions about the CR? There were none. Susan then relayed information about the Exception process as contained in Section 16 of the CMP document. Susan said we need to clarify the exception and then revise the CR with that information. A CMP exception vote will need to be taken by the CLEC community and will require a unanimous vote to move forward once there is a clear statement available as to what will be voted on.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET asked if there is a need for an exception process at this time otherwise he was fine with cancelling the exception request. He said if there is need to meet the dishNET dates, then he wanted to continue with the exception.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said she does not think we know enough about the CR yet to know what the impacts are to IMA and whether there are code specific impacts. If there are no coding impacts and only network changes between the two companies are required, it does not seem that an exception would be required.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET asked if whether the EIS team will provide a response as to whether code is impacted.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said more work is needed by the EIS team and then we may need to set up a follow-up clarification call to relay findings. Susan asked the CenturyLink team if they agreed and they did. The SCRP was then discussed which is typically a process for IMA associated with prioritization. Until the CenturyLink team knows more as to whether there is code changes or this is network configuration work only, this might be too early also – especially as it relates to a particular customer. Susan asked Joel if they were OK to HOLD on the SCRP process until more information is known.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he was fine with that.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said if the SCRP is then required, we will follow the process laid out in Section 10.4 of the CMP document. The next steps will be for Joel to present the CR to the full CLEC community on Wednesday, September 17. Susan said if Joel agrees that the Exception and the SCRP portion of the CR be placed on HOLD, he should send an email to the CMPCR mailbox.

Joel Mitchell – dishNET said he would do that.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink asked if there were any questions. There were none. As more information is available, another call will be established.

The clarification call concluded at 2:30 PM MT.

CenturyLink Response

Joel Mitchell – dishNET Wireline

This letter is an updated response to dishNET Change Request SCR090414-1, entitled “Establish Point to Point VPN Connectivity to Dish Network”.

CR Description: Dish would like to establish point to point VPN connectivity for both a test/development and a production environment. The proposed implementation date for this Change Request (CR) is October 17, 2014. NOTE: dishNET originally submitted this CR as an Exception CR and also included a completed Special Change Request Process (SCRP) form as part of the CR submission.

History: The CR was received on September 4, 2014. A Clarification call was held on September 15, 2014 with dishNET, Integra and CenturyLink representatives present. The CR was initially requested to be considered an Exception CR. During the Clarification call, there was discussion that until a clear description was available as to what the exception was to the Change Management process, the exception portion of the CR would be placed on Hold. A similar discussion was held in regard to how the SCRP would be addressed. Until the CenturyLink SME team knew more about what work on this CR would be specific to a particular customer, dishNET was agreeable to placing that portion of the CR on Hold.

In support of that discussion during the Clarification call, on September 17, 2014, CenturyLink received the email from Joel Mitchell, as the CR originator, to remove the Exception request and Special Change Request Process (SCRP) from the CR while the CenturyLink SME team reviews the requirements.

During the Clarification call, it was identified by dishNET that the preference is for both SATE and the Production environment to be available October 17, 2014 but that the October date could be just for SATE and that the Production date can be pushed back to December. There was an indication that dishNET had not finished the certification with CenturyLink for the SATE environment at the time of the Clarification call.

The CR was presented in the September 17, 2014 monthly CMP meeting.

An initial draft response was sent on October 8, 2014 and was reviewed in the October CMP monthly meeting. The response identified that CenturyLink was continuing to review the requirements associated with this CR. Because this is the first request for a VPN in the SATE and IMA Production environments, this CR required extensive investigation across multiple CenturyLink work groups, including Security Risk Assessment, IT Architects, and Network infrastructure personnel.

Updated CenturyLink Response: CenturyLink accepts this CR with the understanding that this implementation of VPN does not replace the current TLS/ SSL encryption for security purposes. Instead it will provide an additional layer of encryption and security. If dishNET agrees with this implementation of VPN, the CR could be implemented in mid to late first quarter of 2015 based on the approval date to move forward with this approach. The exact date for implementation will be determined if we move ahead with this project.

Key points: • We do not currently have VPN’s readily available for CLEC implementation in IMA-XML and IMA-SATE. They have to be built which requires the involvement of several IT teams as identified last month. • There are configuration changes within IMA that will be need to be made.

Additional information: - Native VPN connectivity has not been adopted as a Telecommunication industry standard. The approach for Wholesale applications is to follow a security standard approved by TCIF to insure a common single interface for all customers.

- CenturyLink follows the Telecommunication industry standards (i.e., TCIF) using TLS/ SSL security protocol with digital certificates. VPN point to point connectivity has its own digital certificates with the encryption and security which would be a duplicate security protocols.

Alternatively, if this dishNET Change Request is for CenturyLink to provide native VPN point to point only (with no TLS/SSL security), CenturyLink will need to develop a new, additional interface and security protocol and thus would require a totally different analysis and LOE.

Sincerely,

Susan Lorence CenturyLink Wholesale CR Project Manager

**

October 8, 2014

Joel Mitchell – dishNET Wireline

This letter is in response to dishNET Change Request SCR090414-1, entitled “Establish Point to Point VPN Connectivity to Dish Network”.

CR Description: Dish would like to establish point to point VPN connectivity for both a test/development and a production environment. The proposed implementation date for this Change Request (CR) is October 17, 2014. NOTE: dishNET originally submitted this CR as an Exception CR and also included a completed Special Change Request Process (SCRP) form as part of the CR submission.

History: The CR was received on September 4, 2014. A Clarification call was held on September 15, 2014 with dishNET, Integra and CenturyLink representatives present. The CR was initially requested to be considered an Exception CR. During the Clarification call, there was discussion that until a clear description was available as to what the exception was to the Change Management process, the exception portion of the CR would be placed on Hold. A similar discussion was held in regard to how the SCRP would be addressed. Until the CenturyLink SME team knew more about what work on this CR would be specific to a particular customer, dishNET was agreeable to placing that portion of the CR on Hold.

In support of that discussion during the Clarification call, on September 17, 2014, CenturyLink received the email from Joel Mitchell, as the CR originator, to remove the Exception request and Special Change Request Process (SCRP) from the CR while the CenturyLink SME team reviews the requirements.

During the Clarification call, it was identified by dishNET that the preference is for both SATE and the Production environment to be available October 17, 2014 but that the October date could be just for SATE and that the Production date can be pushed back to December. There was an indication that dishNET had not finished the certification with CenturyLink for SATE environment at the time of the Clarification call.

The CR was presented in the September 17, 2014 monthly CMP meeting.

CenturyLink Response: The CenturyLink SME team is continuing to review the requirements associated with this CR. Because this is the first request for a VPN in the SATE and IMA Production environments, this CR requires extensive investigation across multiple CenturyLink work groups, including Security Risk Assessment, IT Architects, and Network infrastructure personnel. Once the analysis has been completed and the technical, operational, infrastructure, and application requirements have been determined, CenturyLink will be able to assess the level of effort.

At this time, the requested date of October 17, 2014 for the SATE environment to be available is not possible. CenturyLink will not be able to determine a realistic date to implement the VPN for both SATE and Production until the full discovery and evaluation is completed. Similarly, at that time, CenturyLink will then have the ability to delineate the generic VPN work applicable to all customers and the customer specific work that is/will be required.

CenturyLink understands that dishNET would like this functionality delivered this year and we are working diligently to establish the requirements so an implementation date can be determined. We additionally believe the VPN capability will be requested by other CLECs going forward.

Sincerely,

Susan Lorence CenturyLink Wholesale CR Project Manager