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

No. 43, March-April 2001

Editor: Marine Chartois

NEW LOOK FOR THE DANTE WEB SITE!

The new DANTE web site went live on May 4. We hope you find it easy to navigate. We have done our best to ensure the migration would cause a minimal level of disruption, but please do not hesitate to let us know at webmaster@dante.org.uk if you come accross any problem!

TEN-155 UPGRADES

The backbone link of the TEN-155 network was upgraded between Austria and Slovenia on March 15. This in turn allowed our Slovenian partner ARNES to upgrade its access capacity to 90 Mbps on the same day. On March 15 still, DFN upgraded its access to TEN-155 from a 310 to a 622 Mbps POS link.

The ongoing upgrade of the Infonet interconnection continued, with the new 80 Mbps capacity to Geneva giving TEN-155 a total interconnect of 445 Mbps with the commercial Internet in Europe.

DANTE WORLD SERVICE

In addition to the existing 622 Mbps POS line to Abilene from the DANTE New York PoP, an independent OC-3 has been delivered on April 10 for back-up and ATM-based projects. This in turn frees capacity on the OC-3 formerly shared between Abilene and ESnet transit, allowing the line to be dedicated to ESnet, the US Energy Sciences network. The ESnet upgrade to 155 Mbps should become effective in the weeks to come.

ARNES upgraded its transatlantic capacity to 45 Mbps on March 15. GRNET's plans of an upgrade to 155 Mbps, initially scheduled for March 19, are unfortunately still being delayed, due to the failure of the supplier to deliver.

GÉANT

We are now in the final stages of tender evaluation and contract negotiation with shortlisted tenderers. We expect to be able to announce the name of the suppliers for the various components of the GÉANT network by the end of June 2001.

SEQUIN UPDATE The SEQUIN team used a technological approach to develop a parameterised definition of QoS, based on four criteria (delay, IPDV, capacity and packet loss) and carried out equipment tests. Combined with the results of the interviews carried out at the beginning of the year, this allowed them to achieve a useful QoS definition, the results of which were presented in a report to the European Commission in April 2001.

You can find this report, as well as more detailed information on the work achieved by the SEQUIN group on the DANTE website at http://www.dante.net/sequin. A free brochure is also available upon request at the same URL.

PUBLICATIONS

The DANTE Annual Report 2000 is hot off the press! Its 52 pages will tell you in five languages about the services and projects DANTE was involved in over the course of the year 2000 and will also give you the basic financial information relating to these activities.
You can order your free copy online, or come to the DANTE booth at the TERENA Networking Conference 2001.

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS

Dai Davies gave two presentations during the EGM on the Trans-Eurasia Information Network which took place in Seoul, Korea, from March 26 to 28. The first one presented "GÉANT: the European backbone for Research Networks", while the second focused on the "Intercontinental Connectivity of GÉANT".

Agnès Pouélé has given a presentation on the work carried out in the field of MPLS by the TF-NGN task-force during the Eurescom Conference, which took place in Budapest from May 2 to 4.

Two presentations will be given by DANTE staff members next week in Antalya (Turkey) during the TERENA Networking Conference 2001. Vincent Berkhout will be presenting GÉANT while David Harmelin will be discussing detection of Denial of Service attacks. We hope to see many of you there!

David will be giving another presentation on a related topic during the FIRST conference, which is to take place in Toulouse (France) from June 17 to 22.

STAFF AT DANTE

After almost three years as a network engineer in the company, Saverio Pangoli (IT) has left DANTE on April 6 and has taken a few weeks off before joining the Juniper TAC team in Amsterdam, where he started work at the beginning of May. We wish him all the best in his new position!

David West (GB) joined the Finance team at DANTE on 17 April as Project Manager. Previously David spent 15 years on the international side of British Telecom in a number of managerial positions, principally leading product marketing and new service development activities for the company.

We are very happy to announce the recent wedding of Roberto Sabatino, Head of DANTE's Network Engineering and Planning team, to Zita Ginney. Congratulations and best wishes to the happy couple!