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                  * *      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.9, May 1995             Editor: Josefien Bersee
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BT AWARDED EMPB REPLACEMENT CONTRACT

Following completion of a public invitation to tender British Telecom 
has been awarded a contract to provide the continuation of the 
current EuropaNET service. Under the contract the pan-European 
backbone will be outsourced to BT, which includes backbone planning 
(in cooperation with DANTE) and implementation, the provision of 
switching equipment, circuits, and help desk facilities. The new 
contract provides for an IP (Internet Protocol) service at access 
speeds up to 8 Mbps in 15 European countries. Although there was 
actually a requirement for a network based on 34 Mbps lines, these 
are not available yet and as there was no guarantee they would be by 
the time the current EMPB contract expires (October 1995) an 
arrangement for a continuation of EuropaNET was mandatory. 

Dai Davies, general manager of DANTE said:"The new contract gives us 
the space we need to prepare for the implementation of the first 34 
Mbps connections. The choice of BT is based on solid technical and 
commercial grounds. It was a close finish but we are convinced this 
outcome is in the best interest of our customers. Strong points in 
the BT offer were their advanced plans for a Europe-wide IP service 
as well as their global reach via their link up with MCI." DANTE has 
already started the process of preparing for a smooth transition to 
ensure that EuropaNET customers will enjoy an uninterrupted high 
quality service.

So far DANTE's customers have made the following commitments to the 
'new' network: three networks have subscribed to a 4 Mbps connection 
and nine more to 2 Mbps; one network committed to 1 Mbps and one to 
512 kbps while eleven others committed to 128 kbps or 64 kbps (in 
most cases a 64 kbps X.25 access in addition to IP).

EUROPANET UPGRADES

The DANTE gateway in Amsterdam, which provides customers with US 
access and connectivity to Ebone, was upgraded from 2 to 4 Mbps at 
the end of April. In addition further T1 circuit between Amsterdam 
and the US came into operation in mid-March, bringing the total 
capacity of EuropaNET transatlantic connectivity to 6.5 Mbps. 

EUROCAIRN REPORT AVAILABLE

The EuroCAIRN Committee has issued a two volume publication which 
presents both the conclusions of the Committee itself and the study 
as submitted by DANTE to EuroCAIRN. The EuroCAIRN Project was 
established in 1993 to enhance trans-European computer communications 
for European researchers. DANTE was contracted in May 1994 to carry 
out a study addressing the requirements and options for setting up a 
pan-European high speed networking infrastructure. The results 
represent a blueprint for the development of research networking in 
Europe. To receive a copy of the publication from the EuroCAIRN 
Project Office please send a message to dante@dante.org.uk with 'send 
EuroCAIRN publication' in the body.

TEN-34 CONSORTIUM 

As mentioned in the previous 'Works' DANTE has been appointed as the 
coordinating body within the so-called 'ten-34 consortium' formed by 
18 European research networks to establish a high speed network 
between them. In this role, DANTE took responsibility for the 
preparation and submission of proposals for the interconnection at 34 
(and, later, 155) Mbps of national networks and of 'national hosts' 
under the European Commission's Telematics and ACTS Programmes 
respectively. The proposal to Telematics has received a favourable 
Evaluation Report in the meantime. Six European PNOs declared their 
intention of supporting the proposal before the submission deadline 
and are already formal partners in the project consortium. 
Commitments from other operators will be needed to provide full 
European coverage. DANTE is now working with the consortium partners 
to refine the project proposal, taking account of the specific offers 
of services that are now being made by the PNOs.

NAMEFLOW-PARADISE LAUNCHES X.500(93) PILOT

In March 1995 participants in the NameFLOW-Paradise international 
X.500 directory service decided to launch a pilot to test the 1993 
edition of the X.500 standard. The short term goal of the pilot is to 
gain experience with 1993 compliant implementations to pave the way 
for a full scale X.500(93) service next year, allowing more software 
vendors to participate. The transition is a necessary step towards 
the creation of a more universal directory. 

The pilot will comprise two phases. The first phase will be a 
small pilot covering three European countries, where 93 conformant 
services will be run in parallel with the current Quipu based 
service. This phase is planned to start in May 1995 and will continue 
until the end of August 1995. The initial organisations involved are 
DANTE, UKERNA (United Kingdom Education and Research Network 
Association) who will test the software in their organisation, 
SURFnet (Dutch national research network) and SWITCH (Swiss national 
research network) who will be performing tests nationally, while ULCC 
(University of London Computing Centre, currently operating the 
NameFLOW-Paradise service) will test a top level (international) 
service. The ISODE Consortium and NEXOR are the first two vendors to 
make their X.500(93) products available to the pilot participants.

NEW STAFF

On 24 April 1995 Nick Stevenson (UK) joined DANTE as Systems 
Administrator. Nick has ten years experience as service and support 
engineer. Among others he worked for a small international company 
producing systems for the management of PABX networks for the 
telecomms market, based on UNIX platforms. In his last project he 
worked for BT, to provide a national call management system reporting 
on the performance of BT's internal PABX network. 

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