The Works of DANTE

A bi-monthly electronic newsletter reporting on the activities of DANTE, the company that organises pan-European research network services for the European research community.

No.22, August 1997

TWO MORE COUNTRIES CONNECTED TO TEN-34

The core of TEN-34 has been up and running since April 1997. 10 Mbps connections between Frankfurt and Prague (for CESnet) and between Athens and Milan (for GR-NET) became operational last week. The CESnet connection is likely to be upgraded to 16 Mbps in November 1997.

There are still a few more countries to connect: Belgium (BELNET) is joining with SURFnet to share an access in Amsterdam that will be upgraded to 45 Mbps - a link from Brussels to Amsterdam is being provided outside TEN-34; Slovenia will get a 10 Mbps connection to Austria in September 1997 and Luxembourg a 4 Mbps connection to Frankfurt in October 1997. The latest plan for Portugal is a 10 Mbps satellite connection between Lisbon and Geneva.

TF-TEN: FINAL RESULTS OF TEST PHASE ONE AVAILABLE

The TEN-34 project consists of two parts: a high-speed production IP network, and the testing of mostly ATM based advanced network services for future usage on the production network. These tests are being carried out on the JAMES network. The final results of first phase of the experiments, carried out by the Task Force TEN, are now available.

The conclusion of the Task Force for the more advanced ATM services was in most cases that they are not stable enough yet to be run on a production network. This remains a serious concern and is holding back deployment of advanced services. More research into the reasons of the unreliability of some services such as SVCs is needed. This will be carried out in the second phase of the Test Programme, along with experiments on other technologies, such as ABR. Generally the second phase of the tests will concentrate on the more advanced ATM features and on ways of providing - albeit limited - additional network services.

A web version is available of the first phase Test Report. Paper copies can also be ordered by sending 'send TF-TEN Test Report' in the body of a message AND your postal address to dante@dante.org.uk.

TEN-34 AND USER GROUPS

At the moment TEN-34 connects National Research Networks and CERN, European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. No User Groups have direct connectivity to TEN-34. DANTE has received expressions of interest in a direct connection from several User Groups that have a requirement for guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) and for some form of resource reservation facilities. One possibility which is being examined is the creation of virtual private networks (VPN) within a general purpose pan-European network configuration to be used by defined sub-sets of end user organisations. However, the use of VPNs raises new issues which will require extensive discussion before detailed plans can be announced.

DANTE is interested in maintaining contact with discipline or project oriented user groups which require international network services. User groups which wish to provide input into the discussion and to be kept informed of plans as they develop are invited to register their interest. A registration form is available for this purpose.

RESPONSE TO NSF SOLICITATION

On behalf of the European NRNs and as part of a consortium led by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), DANTE has responded to the NSF Solicitation for the establishment of high-performance connectivity between the NSF's very High Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) and high performance networks of major international research partners.

In the response DANTE and its UIC partner have tried to address and overcome the dissimilarities between the US and the European research networking situations. Whereas the NSF funds a high speed research network (vBNS) which connects a limited number of approved research organisations, the European National Research Networks offer a backbone linking their entire R&D communities. In addition there is a pan-European network, TEN-34, which connects the National Research Networks together. Also the NSF solicitation limits itself to connectivity for one particular type of research collaboration: into advanced research applications.

In total European Research Networks spend currently around 40 Million dollars per year on connectivity between Europe and the US, which covers in excess of 90% of the total costs. With a total budget of 5 Million dollars per year for all of its intercontinental connectivity the NSF solicitiation goes some limited way to redressing this imbalance but the need remains for an equable cost sharing approach to connectivity with US Internet service providers, who provide the bulk of connectivity to the US research community. With increasing capacities the demand for a fair solution is becoming more urgent.

EUROCERT TAKING SHAPE

The contract for the provision of a European Incident Response Coordination service between TERENA and the DANTE/UKERNA partnership has been in effect for over 3 months. The service is delivered under the name EuroCERT. Initially EuroCERT consists of an information resource, primarily targeting European Incident Response Teams (IRTs). This includes a point of contact available during normal office hours. Work on the Web site has progressed and most of the basic information and facilities described in the contract (including an FTP server and mailing lists) are now available.

EuroCERT aims to cover all European IRTs. Therefore we are in the process of collecting the up-to-date contact information of all European IRTs. Currently we have details of 22 IRTs. We are still seeking information from another 15 that we know about while there may be others of which we are as yet unaware. The list of the European IRTs known to EuroCERT can be found here. For IRTs who want to provide EuroCERT with contact information a template is available.

During the next few months the EuroCERT team will be concentrating on producing a revised proposal to TERENA for a Basic Incident Coordination service for European IRTs. In this next stage of the pilot EuroCERT will become actively involved in coordinating security incidents that effect more than one Incident Response Team.

NEW STAFF

On 7 July Roberto Sabatino (IT) started work for DANTE as Network Engineer on Network Planning and Implementation. Roberto previously worked at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

On 1 October 1997 Cathrin Stoever (DE) will take over the position of External Relations Manager replacing Josefien Bersee who will leave DANTE on 22 August 1997.

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