![[TEN-34 logo]](/ten-34/ten-34-small.GIF)
Editor: Cathrin.Stover@dante.org.uk
The last months were rather quiet months for TEN-34 in terms of new developments. The network has however continued to approach the service ideal of operating effectively but unobtrusively in transferring large quantities of data between the national networks. Availability of the network remains high, with an average access port availability of 99.94% in May. 10 out of the 15 participating national research networks enjoyed 100% access port availability. Utilisation of the network continues to increase. Between January and June 1998, traffic in the TEN-34 network increased by an average of 7.7% per month.
At the end of May, the QUANTUM Policy Committee decided on major issues concerning the QUANTUM network, the successor of the TEN-34 network. Next to a set pricing scheme, the committee members agreed on the principle that ATM will be used as a bandwidth management tool to optimise the use of the SDH circuits. The individual national research networks will have the choice between ATM or IP-over-SDH access to the network.
The QUANTUM network will receive co-funding from the EC ESPRIT and Telematics for Applications programmes. The QUANTUM Policy Committee has also mandated DANTE to negotiate detailed arrangements with the EC ACTS programme for the support of ACTS projects as well as with the Commission in general to prepare the final EC contract for QUANTUM.
Towards the end of 1997, the Israeli government signed a scientific cooperation agreement with the EC. One of the consequences is that Israeli organisations now qualify to participate in Fourth Framework projects and can receive funding support in the same way as EU organisations. A more specific consequence is that Israel, via its national network organisation MACHBA/ILAN, expressed a strong wish to join the TEN-34 and QUANTUM projects.
A parallel set of discussions has been proceeding for several months in the context of the EC's MEDA Programme which provides for promotion and support of Internet technology and applications in the Mediterranean region.
These two strands have now been brought together with the preparation and submission to the EC Telematics Programme for a new Q-MED project. Q-MED will be a complementary project to QUANTUM and will provide for the connection of MACHBA/ILAN to the TEN-34 successor (at a location which is yet to be determined and which will depend on the cost of international access circuits) and the connection of the University of Cyprus/CYNET to the Greek node in Athens. DANTE will act as the Coordinating Partner in this complementary project; other partners in addition to MACHBA/ILAN and the University of Cyprus/CYNET are GSRT (Greece), INFN/GARR (Italy) and NTUA (Greece).
The Q-MED proposal is currently being evaluated by the EC.
DANTE's intercontinental service to the US was successfully upgraded from 34 to 45 Mbps on 26 June. This upgrade followed the upgrade of the SWITCH-US connection from 8 to 12 Mbps which took place at the end of April. Both upgrades were urgently needed since packet loss in the direction towards Europe had exceeded 1000pps during the busiest parts of the day.
Concerning availability, the 34 Mbps link was quite reliable in May and June. The circuit experienced only three hours of outage during May. Peering with ESnet has been established, the peering agreement with the NASA is still pending.
On 12 June a new workstation was installed in the German PoP. This workstation is equipped with an Ethernet and an ATM interface allowing a finer refinement of the TEN-34 Mbone topology. For a more efficient use of the backbone RENATER and CESNET feeds were moved to this German workstation. Previously, these were configured on the Swiss PoP workstation as an interim solution to cover the lack of a well equipped workstation in Germany. The availability of the German PoP workstation also allows the set-up of backup tunnels for the national research networks directly from TEN-34. These were up to now not available or only available via mutual agreements between national research networks, costing them access capacity to TEN-34.
A set of monitoring tools is being developed based on a SNMP-capable mrouted, with a web interface similar to a Looking Glass. You can find more information here.
![[TF-TEN logo]](/ten-34/tf-ten/tf-ten.GIF)
D14.2 is available from the DANTE deliverables page.
The main aims of DANCERT are to provide DANTE customers with the coordination for the handling of network security incidents, the distribution of security information to help prevent security incidents and with a focal point for security related activities involving the DANTE services.
For more information on DANCERT, please click here.
Saverio Pangoli (IT) started at DANTE as Network Engineer on 1 June and will be working in the Operations Team on network measurements and statistics. In addition he will provide third line support for operational issues. Saverio has a background in managing network systems and services for Italian research organisations and has worked in several national and European projects.
After almost five years at DANTE, Michael Behringer (DE) will be leaving DANTE on 10 July 1998. Michael will be joining CISCO and will be moving to Spain in the near future.
DANTE is currently recruiting for the position of Senior Network Engineer. The successful candidate must be a proven expert in Internet and ATM technology and will have played a leading role in the design, installation and testing of Internet backbone networks in the past. The candidate has to be familiar with the latest Internet developments from the IETF and has to have the vision and personality to propose and introduce new technologies and services. The candidate must have team leadership skills and experience in project management. For more information, please visit our jobs page. Deadline for applications is 10 July 1998.