Editor: Josefien.Bersee@dante.org.uk
The establishment of a European Security Incident Response Coordination Service was discussed and requested by the European IRTs (Incident Response Teams) to solve a number of coordination problems. These include dependence of European IRTs on the US funded CERT/CC, as well as those arising from cultural, legal and language differences, and different time zones.
In consultation with its CERT Task Force, the TERENA Executive Committee set up a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to advise TERENA on a suitable organization to lead a two and a half year pilot service. At the beginning of October 1996, TERENA issued a call for proposals to a limited number of organisations for the operation of the SIRCE (Security Incident Response Coordination for Europe) pilot.
DANTE and UKERNA decided to respond to the call by establishing a partnership which brings together the complementary skills of the two organisations. UKERNA has the technical expertise of the well- established JANET-CERT, while DANTE has the commercial and administrative experience in the management of coordinated pan- European services.
The pilot service is planned to be launched in the first quarter of 1997. DANTE and UKERNA, in consultation with TERENA, will immediately start preparing the service implementation, one element of which is the drafting of a detailed service specification.
As required in the specification of the TERENA CERT Task Force the service will develop gradually. In the initial phase a coordination function will be offered, which includes organisation of meetings, help for the establishment of new IRTs, and the provision of information services. In the second phase of the pilot incident coordination will be included, and SIRCE will be involved in the process of responding to individual incidents. After the pilot phase it is intended that an operational service will provide full incident coordination, 24 hours/7 days a week.
The work concentrates mostly on the provision of IP services over ATM and the related problems. Major areas of experimentation cover performance issues over CBR and VBR services, SVCs and security implications of switching, network management of ATM networks, addressing issues and advanced IP technologies such as ATM-ARP, RSVP and NHRP.
The interim results of the experiments have shown that basic ATM services such as CBR are well understood and can be used internationally in a production environment. In the area of the more advanced ATM services the interim results demonstrate that the services vary from being usable only under very idealistic circumstances (e.g. in the case of switching), to potentially providing a stable infrastructure, pending further investigation (e.g., VBR).
The most important result of the experiments so far is that switching proves to be very difficult to use in the way it was created for, which is between end-user applications. There are no major problems with switching in a LAN environment, where bandwidth is close to unlimited. But over a public wide area network, with significant bottlenecks and policing, SVCs can only be used under severe limitations. Due to the number of diverse problems it is not expected to have SVCs available in a general production environment within the next two to three years.
The experiments are being carried out in two phases. The first phase, which covers the experiments described above, will be finished in April 1997. The second phase will cover more advanced services such as ABR, UBR and P-NNI, which are to a large extent not available yet.
For more information see http://www.dante.net/ten-34/tf-ten/ or contact Michael.Behringer@dante.org.uk.
The Network Operation service will encompass three main activities. Firstly a help desk: a manned help desk operating over the full range of normal European working hours providing a trouble ticket system and network database. Secondly network monitoring and configuration including pro-active monitoring of the main network elements and of instituting remedial action in the case of faults detected as a result of such monitoring. The third important activity is the collection of relevant data and the presentation of it in a monthly report. The precise content of the reports will be developed during the life of the project but will include current status of the network, network performance, and a summary of fault reports.
To achieve this objective, to provide a stable and flexible commercial framework for the management of the project, and to ensure that costs and benefits are fairly shared out by the participants, a consortium agreement has been negotiated among the participants. The agreement sets out the decision making process for the ongoing management of the project, provides the commercial rules by which it will operate and gives a mandate to DANTE as the project coordinator. Now that all participants have signed the agreement, it is in force and implementation of the network can begin in earnest.
For more information on TEN-34: see http://www.dante.net/ten-34
Network development efforts will be directed to enabling a new generation of applications that fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks, e.g. media integration, interactivity, real time collaboration. This work is seen to be essential to fulfil new priorities within higher education for support of national research objectives, distance education, lifelong learning, and related efforts.
The work of the Internet II project will also be integrated with ongoing efforts to improve production Internet services for all members of the academic community. A major goal of the project is to rapidly transfer new network services and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.
The Internet II project will cover a three to five year period and will have a major impact on European researchers as well. It could serve as an example for pan-European planning of research networking facilities which needs much longer term planning horizons and a more stable funding mechanism, still two major bottlenecks in Europe, despite the progress made by TEN-34.
For more information see: http://www.Internet2.edu/