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. 31, February 1999
Editor: Cathrin.Stover@dante.org.uk
TEN-155 AT THE STARTCONFERENCE OF 5 FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
The European Commission launched its 5 Framework Programme at a two day event in Essen in February 1999. TEN-155 was officially demonstrated during the launch activities and attracted considerable interest and attention. The TEN-155 stand was visited by the German Federal for Research and Education Edelgard Bulmahn.
The German Minister was accompanied by Robert Verrue, Director General of DG XIII, when she visited the TEN-155 stand during the exhibition in Essen. Dai Davies and Cathrin Stover welcomed the Minister and the Director General to the stand and introduced the TEN-155 network. Mrs Bulmahn and Mr Verrue then participated in a live-video session between the partners of the MECCANO Project. The MECCANO Project is the first user of the TEN-155 Managed Bandwidth Service. For the first time a group of European researchers benefited from dedicated bandwidth made available in the TEN-155 network. Mrs Bulmahn said: "Offering guaranteed bandwidths, TEN-155 constitutes an example of an innovative step which prepares the ground for new applications, above all real-time applications." Mrs Bulmahn also followed a tele-teaching session, another MECCANO application supported by the TEN-155 network.
Impressions of the visit, as well as the speech of the German Minister can be found here.
TEN-155 MIGRATION CONTINUES
As expected, the migration of the national research networks from TEN-34 to TEN-155 continued in January and February. Altogether 14 of the 20 TEN-155 circuits are today carrying production traffic. The link between the German and Nordic research networks was brought into service on 6 January. The French research network, RENATER, was connected on 15 January, as was the Czech research network CESnet. Greece was linked to TEN-155 after the line between the Netherlands and Greece passed acceptance testing on 21 January.
On 3 February, the links between Austria and Germany, as well as between Italy and Germany came into service. The connection between Austria and Hungary became operational on 2 February. A link connecting the Polish research network POL-34 to the TEN-155 PoP in Frankfurt will become operational shortly.
In January access port availability for seven of the then ten to TEN-155 connected national research networks was 99.99% or higher. RedIRIS, the Spanish research network, suffered some unscheduled connectivity loss due to various problems, including power failure, line and configuration faults. The bad weather which affected the satellite connection was still the main cause of a few long-period intermittent losses of connectivity for the Portuguese research network, resulting in a 99.12% connectivity.
Immediately after TEN-155 succeeded TEN-34, DANTE's Network Planning and Engineering team carried out an analysis of the impact of providing more capacity to the European research community. The analysis compared inter-NRN traffic measurements on TEN-34 in November 1998 (the last month of full operation of TEN-34) and on TEN-155 in January 1999. The measurements (daytime averages expressed in Mbps) were derived from DANTE's inter-NRN statistics package, Purgatorio.
The analysis emphasises that inter-NRN traffic had increased by almost 50% which outlines both the benefits and need for more bandwidth to support the European research community. It is expected that once all national research networks have migrated to TEN-155, the increase of inter-NRN traffic will be even more significant.
MBS - ALPHA PHASE SUCCESSFUL
More and more co-operative development activities in Europe are based on the use of multi-media services, which are only effective if they can rely on high Quality of Service which cannot necessarily be provided in a "best effort" IP network. The TEN-155 Managed Bandwidth Service (MBS) addresses this issue by allowing the definition of Virtual Private Networks with committed bandwidth between national research networks. This service is offered to universities and research institutions connected to a participating national research network, as well as to organisations participating in EC supported research and development activities with sites in countries of a participating national research network. The MBS is being introduced in three successive phases.
The associated contractor ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) has chosen the MECCANO project to be alpha tester of the MBS. MECCANO and DANTE have successfully set-up the interconnection of three MECCANO sites across Europe. MECCANO is using 4 Mbps dedicated VCs between their sites for their interactive research cooperation.
The beta test phase of the Managed Bandwidth Service will commence by the end of March 1999. It is expected that the MBS will be fully operational by mid-1999.
Please turn to MBS, if you would like more information on the MBS or if you would like to join related mailing lists. Potential users of the MBS are invited to complete a web-based questionnaire.
QUANTUM TEST PROGRAMME
In addition to the operational TEN-155 network, the Quantum project includes a testing programme (QTP) which has the objective of testing and validating new technologies, products and services with a view to introducing them into the operational TEN-155 service at some future date. The QTP is managed by DANTE and carried out in a joint Task Force (TF-TANT) together with TERENA.
The TF-TANT testing plan has now been finalised and work especially in the area of IP Quality of Service and MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) is progressing. For more information on the QTP and TF-TANT, please visit the TF-TANT pages.
Q-MED UPDATE
The Q-MED project is a complementary project to QUANTUM and will provide for the connection of the
Israeli research network MACHBA/ILAN and the University of Cyprus/CYNET to TEN-155. Israel has
recently signed a contract with the Israelian operator Golden Lines for the delivery of a 34 Mbps
access at the TEN-155 PoP in London. This connection is expected to become operational by the end of
May 1999.
PGP DIRECTORY INITIATIVE
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is developing into one of the main public key infrastructures in the Internet. Its success in terms of number of users makes the non-distributed key server technology currently used obsolete because of its lack of scalability. Directories could be an ideal technology for publishing public keys, provided there is a standardised storage model for public key information. For this objective an initiative was started and a mailing list set up at DANTE, with participants from Directory, as well as PGP people. More information can be found here.
NameFLOW MEETING
On January 18 DANTE organised a NameFLOW meeting at the SURFnet Office in Utrecht. After reports on statistics and the transfer of the NameFLOW services to DANTE, the PGP-Directory Initiative and the DESIRE II LDAP indexing work, a proposal for the Hybrid X.500(93)-LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) infrastructure was discussed, and a group for testing such an infrastructure formed. Other parts of the agenda were reports by the national research networks of Belgium, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) work for the 2000 version of the X.500 standard and the LDAP to Web gateway implementation TWEB (Tuebinger Webgateway). More information can be found here.
DANTE at CEBIT
The German research network, DFN, has invited DANTE to join their exhibition stand at this year's CeBIT in Hannover from 18 to 24 March 1999. The DFN stand is located in Hall 16. Come along, visit and pick-up the newest edition of the TEN-155 mousepads!
DANTE NOW TRADE MARK
On 29 December 1998 we received the Registration Certificate which announced that DANTE and our logo have been registered as Trade Mark in Great Britain and Northern Ireland as of 18 April 1998.
STAFF AT DANTE
Mandy Kiwerska (GB) joined DANTE as Secretary/Administrator on 1 February 1999. Mandy used to work for Lloyds TSB in their Property Management office, where she was in charge of co-ordinating security installations and problems, i.e. alarms. safes etc. She was also responsible for providing a "helpline" service for all Lloyds and TSB branches in the eastern region.
On 1 March Louise Croote (GB) started at DANTE in the position of Secretary/Administrator. Louise was formerly employed in the Army Air Corps at Wattisham Air Field.
For personal reasons Xenia Lecha Mora (ES) had to leave DANTE and return to Spain in the end of February 1999. Xenia had worked in the Network Engineering and Planning team since August 1998. We wish her all the best.
WORKING AT DANTE
We are currently recruiting for the position of Applications Engineer. Please note that the deadline for applications is 17 March 1999. You can find more information about this opportunity on our jobs' page.
