_____________________________________________________________________ * * A bi-monthly electronic news bulletin * * reporting on the activities of DANTE, * the company that organises international * network services for the European THE WORKS OF D A N T E research community. No.24, December 1997 Editor: Cathrin Stover _____________________________________________________________________ * HTML version: http://www.dante.net/pubs/works/24.html * _____________________________________________________________________ TEN-34 UPDATE Between June 1997, the first month in which full operational statistics were collected, and November 1997 total IP traffic in the TEN-34 network has increased by a factor of 1.77 - the normal Internet rate of growth. Performance continues to be very good with minimal packet loss even on those paths which are starting to become heavily loaded. A couple of potential bottlenecks, the UK - France circuit and the access to the Unisource sub-network in Frankfurt, have been identified and ways of relieving them are being examined. RESTENA (Luxembourg) has joined the network with a 2 Mbit/s connection to Frankfurt. A contract has been signed with Portugal Telecom for a 10 Mbit/s satellite circuit from Lisbon to Geneva; the circuit is due to be installed in January/February 1998 and this will complete the configuration that was originally planned. Attention is now focused on what happens when TEN-34 comes to an end. The contract with the EC for the TEN-34 Project (and associated funding) is being extended until 31 December 1998 but, by that date, it is expected that most of the TEN-34 service will have been replaced by ........... QUANTUM and TEN-??? Following the positive evaluation by the EC of an outline proposal for a new project named QUANTUM (Quality Network Technology for User-Oriented Multi-Media), the EC has invited the participants to submit a detailed proposal with a deadline of 25 December 1997 (Happy Christmas for some). In parallel with the EC's evaluation process, DANTE and the NRNs have already been planning the successor service to TEN-34 which has the working name of TEN-155. A specification of the service as seen by the NRNs which will use it has been agreed. In addition to a conventional IP-based service with access capacities up to 155 Mbps, the specification provides for additional services with guaranteed Quality of Service which will be supported by a combination of ATM technology and new developments from the IP world. The possibility of creating multiple Virtual Private Networks (VPN), with the highest capacity VPN being used to support the IP service, has been allowed for. A new consortium has been created to submit the detailed QUANTUM proposal to the EC and to create the TEN-155 network. The consortium includes all the TEN-34 NRNs and again has DANTE as the co-ordinating partner. The proposal for QUANTUM includes a programme of testing of new techniques for supporting defined QoS as well as funding support for the operational network. DANTE, acting on behalf of the NRNs, issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (the first stage of the standard procurement procedure under EC rules) on 10 November 1997 and will issue an Invitation to Tender on 23 December 1997 to organisations selected from those which have confirmed their interest. The deadline for responses will be early in February 1998. The intention is to start replacing components of TEN-34 as soon as possible after 31 July 1998 when many of the TEN-34 contracts with PNOs terminate. It is expected however that migration to the new service will extend over several months and it may be that some of the TEN-34 circuits (eg those to countries where there will continue to be a PNO monopoly for international services) will continue to be used in TEN-155. TEN-34 USER SURVEY The TEN-34 user survey was executed in November 1997. It addressed TEN-34 users in non-telematics and telematics related research, as well as scientists in European-wide operating research sites and individual users at Universities and research sites all over Europe. We received an overwhelmingly positive response about the performance of TEN-34. Almost all respondees had witnessed significant improvements in the communication with their European partners since the launch of TEN-34 in May 1997. This response clearly shows that TEN-34 is on the right track regarding European networking for research purposes. However, it was frequently pointed out that TEN-34 was performing well now and had - for the first time in Europe - provided researchers with an adequate European backbone, but that application developments and an ever-increasing use of the network will in the near future lead to congestions in the network, thus lessening its performance. For this reason a vast majority of researchers would like to see TEN-34 upgraded to a higher bandwidth backbone. An extended report on the user survey will be published on the web on http://www.dante.net/ten-34 in mid-January. TF-TEN PROGRESS The Task Force TEN carries out the experimental programme of the TEN-34 project. The first phase of the test programme, the results of which have been available for some months, has shown a number of problems in operating ATM services. Currently, the Task Force is working on the second part of the testing programme, which includes more advanced ATM features. Recent trials have shown that most of the instabilities of the SVC implementations on workstations and switches have been rectified in the most recent software releases, and that SVCs in the wide area are now fairly reliable. However, the access control (regulating who is able to set up which type of SVC) remains an open issue. Tests of the RSVP protocol across Europe have shown that the basic protocol works as expected, although instability is still a problem. TF-TEN is also currently testing the PNNI protocol, which seems to work well on a European scale, although there are some implementation issues. TF-TEN activities are supported by a Network Management experiment, which monitors the TF-TEN ATM overlay network running over the JAMES network. In the near future more experiments are to be carried out. The Task Force will examine label based switching, the ATM point to multipoint facility, ATM resource reservation and other protocols and techniques. For more information, see http://www.dante.net/ten-34/tf-ten/ . US LINK OPERATIONAL After many trials and tribulations, the first portion of DANTE's US service became officially operational on 25th November. This consists of the transatlantic circuit between the TEN-34 PoP in Frankfurt and TeleGlobe's PoP in New York. It is now providing access to the US and the wider Internet for CESnet (Czech Republic), GARR (Italy), GRnet (Greece) and Hungarnet (Hungary). These NRNs are making good use of the new service, the line being loaded at 75% or more during working hours. So far, there has been one major outage of the service, traced to equipment at TeleGlobe's PoP in Frankfurt. A subsequent outage in the same equipment was fixed rapidly. The remaining part of DANTE's US service, a line from the New York PoP to MCI's Perriman facility, where peering with ESnet and NASA can be done, is expected to be completed shortly. DANTE AT BARCELONA TAP DANTE will be exhibiting at the Telematics Applications Programme Barcelona Conference from 5 to 7 February 1998. Similar to our stand at the recent EITC in Brussels, we will have an application showing how the network is laid out and how data travel over the network. Additionally, we will be showing a new visualisation tool for browsing a genome database remotely via TEN-34. This web-based "semantic lens" assists researchers to scan the database by presenting information in greatest detail at the point of search, and in decreasing detail further away from this point, thus keeping a good overview of the context of the search. This application is only now viable as a result of the increased bandwidth available in TEN-34. TF-TEN will be presenting the network management facility of the ATM overlay network over JAMES, as well as a videoconferencing tool that works directly over ATM in the framework of the Mesh project. WORKING FOR DANTE DANTE is offering challenging jobs in the areas of Applications and Network Engineers. For more information, please visit our jobs'page at http://www.dante.net/jobs.html . We wish you a Merry Christmas and a good start into 1998! _____________________________________________________________________ DANTE Tel +44 1223 302992 Francis House Fax +44 1223 303005 112 Hills Road E-mail dante@dante.org.uk Cambridge CB2 1PQ WWW http://www.dante.net _____________________________________________________________________