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                  * *      A bi-monthly electronic news bulletin
                 *   *     reporting on the activities of DANTE,
                *          the company that provides international
               *           network services for the European 
THE WORKS OF D A N T E     research community.

No.7, January 1995         Editor: Josefien Bersee
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EUROPANET GROWTH IN 1994

EuropaNET, DANTE's international network for the European research 
networks, grew fast in 1994. In total the traffic load on the network 
more than quadrupled. The total EuropaNET backbone access point 
capacity is currently 24 Mbps, with each access point connected to at 
least two trunk lines (the total trunk capacity of EuropaNET is 
30 Mbps). An overview of total traffic growth and traffic growth of 
the ten 'largest' access ports can be obtained from URLs: 
http://www.dante.net/traffic.GIF and http://www.dante.net/top-10.GIF.

EUROCAIRN STUDY SUBMITTED

In view of its current customer base and pan-European backbone 
management experience, DANTE is in an excellent position to be at 
the forefront of the development of the next generation research 
backbone in Europe. The Eureka EuroCAIRN project, set up to 
improve network facilities for European researchers, contracted 
DANTE in June 1994 to prepare a plan for the immediate procurement 
of a high speed network for research in Europe.

The draft Final Report of the EuroCAIRN study was submitted to the 
EuroCAIRN Committee on December 24th 1994 and they will consider it 
at their next meeting on 20 January 1995. The study details the high 
speed networking requirements of the European research network 
organisations, presents a technical and commercial options 
analysis as well as a detailed plan for the immediate deployment 
of a 34 Mbps pan-European network for research. 

Earlier, on 8 November 1994, DANTE had organised a meeting in 
Brussels with representatives of the national research networks to 
receive their feedback on the preliminary findings of the study. 
During the meeting several attendees stressed again the urgency of 
setting up the new high speed infrastructure as soon as possible.

TRANSATLANTIC CONNECTIVITY INCREASING

The first circuits as part of the plans to upgrade EuropaNET 
connectivity from Europe to the US have been acquired. A new T1 
(1.5 Mbps) line between Amsterdam and New York became operational 
in December 1994. This brings the total capacity of EuropaNET's US 
connectivity to 5 Mbps. The order for the second T1 link from 
Amsterdam has been placed and the link is expected to be in place 
by February.

At the request of SURFnet and DFN, DANTE will manage a direct link 
between Germany and the Netherlands. One use of this additional 
capacity will be for traffic between the Dutch and the German 
Aviation and Space Research institutes. For this purpose DANTE 
will set up a Point of Presence (PoP) in Aachen, Germany. In addition 
DFN has decided to obtain additional intercontinental connectivity 
from DANTE which can be delivered via Amsterdam and this new 
German-Dutch link. A further T1 circuit will be ordered to provide 
the extra capacity needed. To improve the US service for other 
EuropaNET subscribers ways of upgrading the capacity of the DANTE 
gateway in Amsterdam (which provides them with US access) are being 
discussed with Unisource.

DANTE has started work under a contract with the European 
Commission to set up a connection between EuropaNET and Canada. 
The first phase of the work will be to assess what sort of 
capacity is needed and how it can best be organised. A 
recommendation will follow on which the actual implementation plan 
will be based.

DANTE SECURITY SERVICE 

At the request of a number of national networks, DANTE will create a 
European level CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) service. DANTE 
is currently working on a detailed service specification which will 
be published shortly. The objectives of the CERT service will be: the 
coordination of incident handling between member CERTs and with other 
incident response teams worldwide; the coordination of technical 
assistance to member CERTs; the maintenance of an information server 
on operational aspects of computer security; assistance for the 
establishment of new CERTs and the provision of backup and support to 
resolve problems that cannot be handled by a member CERT.

The DANTE CERT service will build on the expertise and experience
of the national CERTs that are already in place. The DANTE CERT will 
participate fully in existing international bodies dealing with 
incident response and security. Full membership of FIRST (Forum on 
Incident Response and Security Teams) will be applied for. As is 
DANTE's normal practice, many of the operational components of the 
DANTE CERT activity will be sub-contracted; discussions on how best 
to do this are already taking place with organisations which are 
interested in carrying out this task.

CESSATION OF DISCUS 

DISCUS, the continuation of the CONCISE central European 
information service for the research community, was funded by the 
European Commission during 1994. In the knowledge that this 
funding would come to an end on 31 December 1994 DANTE and Level-7, 
the service operator, have looked into several options to continue 
the service on a self-sustaining basis. The concept of a locally 
maintained information service such as DISCUS has, to a great 
extent, been overtaken by distributed services such as the WWW and 
Gopher. It has not proved possible to find a sufficiently large 
customer base to continue the service on a commercial basis.

Therefore DISCUS will cease to exist in its current form by 31 
January 1995. By courtesy of FUNET (Finnish research network) the 
current information will remain accessible for at least six months at 
URL: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/index/DISCUS. DANTE is considering the 
possibility of continuing some elements of the service if required.

NEW EUROPANET POSTER AVAILABLE

An updated version of the EuropaNET topology poster is available 
on request. The new version gives a slightly more streamlined 
overview of the network topology. To receive a copy of the poster 
send  in a message to dante@dante.org.uk (please 
include your surface mail address). 
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