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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.16, August 1996 Editor: Josefien Bersee
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EUROPANET AND INCS
As part of the establishment of their new global transit network
announced in collaboration with MCI, BT has initially set up a
European network called INCS. INCS effectively supersedes IBDNS (the
network service which BT built in order to supply the pan-European
component of EuropaNET). BT has taken the IBDNS infrastructure as a
starting point and has made major extensions in order to be able to
offer a backbone service to commercial customers. DANTE and
commercial traffic share the same physical network and DANTE is able
to take advantage of BT's new extensions, including high speed
connectivity to the US. INCS will eventually be integrated into the
planned BT/MCI global network.
There are several advantages for DANTE's EuropaNET customers. One is
that they can benefit from the substantial additional capacity
installed by BT. Another benefit is that next year, when most of the
the National Research Networks (NRNs) plan to migrate to TEN-34, a
stable pan-European network will remain in place for other customers
until they are ready to do so.
The INCS transition is a very good example of the rationale behind
setting up DANTE in 1993. By combining the buying power of the
National Research Networks DANTE represents a very powerful customer
group capable of getting a network like IBDNS (and before that
Unisource's EMPB) in place (from scratch). For BT it was viable to
set up IBDNS on the basis of DANTE's (the NRNs') custom. Now the NRNs
plan to move on to a 34 Mbps infrastructure, and the BT network has
become available on the market. We expect TEN-34 to have the same
positive spin-off when the NRNs want to move up to 155 Mbps...
US CONNECTIVITY
The changes as a result of INCS mean a substantial increase in the US
connectivity DANTE can offer to its customers. INCS has a 45 Mbps
connection to the US to be supplemented with a second US connection
at 34 Mbps capacity later this year. 6 Mbps of the 45 Mbps BT/MCI
link is now available (shared with other BT customers) to EuropaNET
customers. This brings the current total to 26 Mbps. In 1993 DANTE
started out with a capacity of 3.5 Mbps. In three year's time nearly
an eight-fold increase has been achieved, at an increasing rate of
growth (see table below).
December 1993 3.5 Mbps
December 1994 5 Mbps
December 1995 12 Mbps
August 1996 26 Mbps
The requirements of TEN-34, and the growing number of emerging
national high capacity research networks will make further
substantial increases in US connectivity in the short term necessary.
JAPAN LINK
A new 2 Mbps connection with Japan is established in Amsterdam.
NACSIS, the Japanese research network organisation involved, arranges
for the connections across the Pacific to the US and from there to
Amsterdam. It is the first direct connection between the Japanese
research network NACSIS and the European research networks connected
to EuropaNET and it will facilitate co-operation between researchers
in Europe and Japan. It is a 2 mbps terrestrial connection which is
routed via the USA but ensures dedicated bandwidth.
TEN-34: HEADING FOR THE FIRST MILESTONE
TEN-34, the new high speed pan-European interconnect facility for the
research community is taking shape. The first project 'Deliverables'
have been prepared which describe the commercial model under which
the network will be supplied and managed while others define the
topology of the two subnetworks and their interconnection at three
locations in Europe (Geneva, Frankfurt and London).
TEN-34 will be constructed as follows: Unisource will offer a managed
IP service between the Unisource home countries (Sweden, Netherlands,
Switzerland, Spain) and also connecting Belgium. Data-transmission
services based on ATM will interconnect France, Germany, Italy, the UK,
Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Greece.
There is also a document describing acceptance test criteria for
the new network to guarantee good value for money on the service. In
addition experiments to be performed on the JAMES experimental ATM
backbone have been defined. They form the second part of the TEN-34
project.
A picture of the topology of TEN-34 as agreed by the partners in the
Consortium is now available at: http://www.dante.net/ten-
34/ten34net.gif. After submission to the EC all public documents will
be made available on DANTE's WWW server.
PHARE IS GETTING THERE
In recent months substantial progress has been made with new
connections and upgrades for research networks in the Phare
countries. The EC Phare 1994 R&D Networking Programme, which funds
network connections and computer hardware in eleven central and
eastern European countries, started in October 1994. The following
countries are partners in Phare 1994: Albania, Bulgaria, The Czech
Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia. A brief overview of the results so far:-
Connections to the Baltic States were realised; support was provided
for connections which the Polish university network established on
its own initiative and for upgrading the links between Slovakia and
the Czech Republic. Contracts have been awarded for new connections
to Albania and Bulgaria, which are currently in an advanced stage of
preparation. In addition, the connections that were established under
Phare 1991 for Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia were
substantially upgraded.
The fact that Hungary and (in the next phase) the Czech Republic will
join in TEN-34 is a very positive development, which, to a large
extent, can be ascribed to the Phare programme. For a picture of the
current (planned) connections see: http://www.dante.net/phare/phare-
top.gif.
MORE NEW STAFF
Christoph Graf, formerly SWITCH (CH), joined DANTE on 1 August 1996.
Together with Michael Behringer and Steven Bakker he will work on
Network planning and management, in particular the implementation of
TEN-34. At SWITCH he worked for two years in the 'upper layer'
management (mainly mail gateway operation, helpdesk and system
administration) and subsequently for two years in the 'lower
layers'(network management) focusing on ATM.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: FORUM OF INCIDENT RESPONSE SECURITY TEAMS
From 29 July to 2 August Eduardo Garcia, who started work for DANTE
recently in the security area, attended the 8th FIRST Conference and
Workshop in Santa Clara, US.
by Eduardo Garcia
As the organizers intended, the event turned out to be a unique
conference providing valuable information to assist Incident Response
Teams (IRT) that cannot be found anywhere else. The excellent Forum
brought together different members of the Security Incident
community. Among the attendees were IRT (Incident Response Team)
members, representatives of law enforcement agencies and computer
vendors.
The Conference began on Sunday 28th with half a day of tutorials. In
the morning I attended the "Incident Handling - Experience through
Role Playing" tutorial organised by CERT/CC and the Australian CERT
(AUSCERT) where they illustrated different aspects of day to
dayoperation of an IRT such as incident resolution, prioratisation of
tasks, and information disclosure.
Role playing continued in the afternoon, but I switched to
another tutorial: "Building and Incident Response Team", because of
the close relationship that might have with DANTE's planned
activities. Representatives of CERT/CC, CIAC and NIST provided basic
information on how to establish an IRT such as recruiting personnel
and the definition of operational procedures.
On Monday 29th the annual Team updates session was of special
interest. Well-established and newer teams reported on their
activities during last year, providing incident statistics, and
problems they encountered in establishing their IRTs. All of them
registered an increasing number of incidents, a trend confirmed also
by the statistical reports of CERT/CC on Wednesday. A problem
for many IRTs is obtaining funding for their activities, in
spite of the fact that their constituencies find their services
essential.
Among the presentations and sessions that took place in the following
days, the update on Regional Coordination provided by SURFnet and DFN
representatives is worth mentioning. They reported on the current
situation in Europe, including previous attempts to establish a
European CERT Coordination Service and current work in TERENA towards
this goal.
The law enforcement and vendor panels were also particularly
interesting. All parties (law enforcement, vendors and IRTs) reported
on their current activities and tried to analyse how to increase
cooperation and better understand each other's requirements.
The conference was closed on Wednesday afternoon, just after a
session where FIRST members exchanged PGP public keys and checked
identities vs. PGP fingerprints.
Currently DANTE is working on setting up the infrastructure and
procedures to offer a European CERT Coordination Service. DANTE has
applied for Liaison membership to FIRST in June this year. The service
would be offered as specified by the TERENA task force in its final
report (ftp://ftp.terena.nl/terena/working-groups/wg-sec/
task-forces/CERT_TF_Final_Report.ps). A CERT Co-ordination Technical
Advisory Group has been started recently by TERENA to advise TERENA
on the details of the setting up of the pilot phase of the CERT
Coordination and their report is expected before the next TERENA
General Assembly in October.
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PLEASE NOTE DANTE'S NEW ADDRESS - FROM 30 SEPTEMBER 1996
Francis House
112 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 1PH
Telephone/fax/e-mail as before. The new offices are just around the
corner from our present office, opposite the Centennial Hotel, close
to the railway station.
Telephone +44 1223 302992
Fax +44 1223 303005
E-mail dante@dante.org.uk
WWW http://www.dante.net
DANTE - Lockton House - Clarendon Road - Cambridge - CB2 2BH - UK
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