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From comp.vuw.ac.nz!hine Tue Jun 23 16:25:29 1992
Subject: Review of R&E Networking Activity in SE Asia and the Pacific
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1992 16:25:29 +1200
From: John Hine <[e-mail]>
Status: OR

       A Review of Educational and Research Networking Activity
                  in
            Southeast Asia and the Pacific
                 John H. Hine
          Victoria University of Wellington
                  PO Box 600
               Wellington, New Zealand
               [e-mail]

Abstract

The author hasbeen working with UNESCO in the Southeast Asia and
Pacific Region to recommend ways in which the developing countries in
the region can be interconnected and connected to international
academic and research networks. As part of our investigations we have
discovered that a variety of mission oriented projects are already in
existence. At least two projects, Pactok and PEACESAT, have targeted
international connectivity and provide gateway services to other
networks. In addition the expansion of the Internet into the region is
being actively studied. This paper attempts to present an overview of
the various individual projects to provide a basis on which greater
interconnectivity can be established.

Introduction

The benefits of rapid communication and remote access to information
provided by modern research and educational networks are well known,
especially to participants in INET `92. As a resident scientist of a
relatively isolated country I can testify to the benefits that we have
derived from eight years of international connectivity.

Attention is now turning to those countries that have not achieved a
high degree of connectivity. Indeed they may have no connectivity.
Most of these countries are classified as developing or underdeveloped
countries. In many cases, they stand to gain considerably more from
access to networks such as the Internet than do the developed
countries. For many years organisations such as UNESCO and VITA have
been involved in transfering technology from the developed countries
to the developing countries. Similarly, efforts such as PEACESAT have
attempted to bring improved education to isolated countries.

This paper attempts to summarise the current state of educational,
research and associated networking in southeast asia and the southwest
pacific rim. The information was gathered as part of a project
sponsored by Unesco's International Informatics Programme. The paper
does not claim to be complete, partly because of the diversity of
activities that are present and partly because of the difficulty in
obtaining accurate information from some areas.

The RINSEAP Project

UNESCO's IIP Programme is administered through UNESCO's regional
offices. Thus the programme tends to have a regional focus including
the countries in each UNESCO defined region. The southeast asia and
pacific region covers an area bounded by DPR Korea to the north,
Malaysia to the west, New Zealand to the south and Tonga to the east.

The goals of the current project are to examine activities in the
region and produce a proposal to provide member countries with
improved access to exisiting international services. The current scope
is limited to the design of an international backbone providing a
gateway in each member country. Of course, it is still necessary to
look at the communication services and skills available within the
countries to determine the types of gateways that will be feasible.
The project is based at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand
with cooperation and support from Victoria University in Melbourne,
Australia and AARNet.

Practical Scope

In theory, the project covers the entire RINSEAP region. In practice,
we have had different levels of cooperation from different countries.
DPR Korea, the Republic of Korea, Japan and several smaller Pacific
island nations have not participated. Other countries have been eager
participants recognising that, if nothing else, they stand to learn a
great deal about the posssibilities that are available within the
region.

This paper covers activities in the following:
    Australia    New Zealand
    China        Papua New Guinea
    Fiji        Phillipines
    Indonesia    Thailand
    PDR Lao        Tonga
    Malaysia    Western Samoa

These twelve countries are distributed across a third of the world's
circumference. They range from Tonga with an area of 700 sq. km. and
population of108,00 to China, the most populous country on earth and
covering 10 million sq.km. Australia and New Zealand are members of
the OECD and both have nearly a decade of experience with education
and research networks. At the other extreme PDR Lao still relies
heavily on its telegraph service and a number of countries have
problems providing an adquate number of telephones.

Regional Survey

The diverse geography of the region means that one solution may not be
best for all concerned. The pacific islands are widespread and thinly
populated. Southeast asia is densely populated. Some southeast asian
countries have quite a bit of high technology industry giving them a
greater degree of expertise and experience. They are at least
"technology aware".

The following sections present an overview of the region including
current networks, the state of computer and communications technology
in the education and research sectors of the countries. Following that
we turn our attention to four regional initiatives that are already in
place.

The Pacific Islands

The island nations of the Pacific Ocean have a history of satelite
communication for education. The Peacesat project, based at the
University of Hawaii, was started in 1971 and reached fourteen pacific
countries. The author first participated in 1978 in Wellington, NZ.

One university, the University of the South Pacific, serves the entire
region. With headquarters in Fiji, USP has campuses in a number of the
island nations.. The university has considerable experience in
distance education as a result of meeting the requirements of campuses
on distant islands. It is likely that any connection to international
research and education networks would be through the University of the
South Pacific, using its facilities to reach other countries. USP is
currently connected to NZ by dial-up uucp and is incorrectly included
in the NZ domain.

A significant problem in the region is politics. Each state guards its
independence, including its telecommunications, jealously. Even USP
has problems gaining cooperation in areas such as distance education.

Extending more sophisticated networking into the reigion will require
substantial training. The retention of expertise in the region is
difficult because of the minimal opportunities available in each
country. Many skilled residents of the island nations emmigrate to New
Zealand where there are greater opportunities. (A work permit is not
required.)

Tonga

Tonga is generally representative of the pacific island states.
Telecommunication services are provided by the government owned Tonga
Telecom and the British Cable and Wireless. Dial-up and leased
analogue circuits are available. Use at speeds above 2400 bps is rare.
There are plans to introduce X.25 in the near future. Access to new
telecommunication services is fairly difficult to obtain.

Computing equipment is pretty much limited to personal computers. Only
a few institutions have any data communications whatsoever.

Australia and New Zealand

Both Australia and New Zealand have a number of years experience with
education and research networks. Since the intent of the paper is to
deal primarily with developing countries only a brief summary of the
Australian and New Zealand situations is presented.

Australia

The Australian Academic Research Network, AARNet, connects over 200
organsiation throughout Austrlia. Internet connectivity is provided by
a 256 kbps link to Fix-West in the United States. Both the internal
and international use of AARNet has grown substantially. In fact,
Australia ranks behind only Canada in the amount of
internationaltraffice to and from NSFnet.

Users of the Australian network benefit (in the authors opinion) from
the fact that AARNet was established by a major initiative rather than
simply growing to its current state. As a result AARNet provides a
number of services including documentation that encourage use.

New Zealand

New Zealand has an internetwork rather than a single research network.
The universities' network, Kawaihiko and the Department of Scientific
and Industrial Research's network are interconnected at a number of
locations. Other smaller research institutes are also connected. All
share a 64 kbps link to Fix-West.

New Zealand is currently reorganising its government funded research
through the dissolution of DSIR and the creation of a number of
research institutes. It was originally envisioned that this change
would see the introduction of a national research network along the
lines of AARNet. Unfortunately, the politics of this change have
resulted in a degree of confusion and what will emerge later this year
is not yet clear.

Southeast Asia

A typical situation in the countries of this region is to have a
single site that has established an international link to support
electronic mail. These links are commonly X.25 to UUNET in the United
States or dial-up to the University of Melbourne in Australia. The
latter are generously supported by AARNet.

Connectivity within each country is often ad hoc, depending on a
variety of dial-up technologies to access the gateway machine.
Internal networking is generally characterised by UUCP over either an
X.25 or a direct dial-up connection. Thus most countries are at the
stage where "some services are present and available to some
organisations in some cities some of the time."

China

China has a fledgling national network, the China Research Network. It
is principally operated by the North China Institute of Computing
Technology with help from seven other educational and research
institutes. As of early 1992 there were ten institutions connected and
several others with plans to make a connection. Landweber's report [1]
also indicates that China has a small number of UUCP sites with
international connectivity.

The China Research Network has its international connection through
Karlsruhe, Germany, using an X.25 link. There is no TCP/IP
connectivity. X.25 is used to establish a link to the Karlsruhe
gateway providing Internet, BITNET and UUCP connections.

All telecommunication services in China are provided by a government
owned monopoly. Both analog and digital leased circuits are available
in addition to the X.25 service. Speeds up to 64kbps are available
both within China and internationally. The X.25 service is currently
not available throughout China, there are still provinces awaiting
this service.

While the quality of transmission appears to be good establishing a
connection can be difficult with greater than 50% of incoming calls
failing because of the lack of lines[2].

A wide variety of hardware and software has found it's way into China.
There are also some locally manufactured systems and, of course,
locally developed software. There are some DECNET networks within
China but the extent is not known, nor is the experience of the
Chinese with networking technology.

Indonesia

Indonesia has an educational network, UNInet, serving six of its
universities. There are plans in place to include all 45 state
universities by the year 2000. UNInet uses UUCP over both X.25 and
dial-up links. There is also a network, IPTEKnet, operated by the
Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPTeknologi)
and Indonesia's National Science Foundation (LIPI).

UNInet has a UUCP over X.25 link to UUNET in the United States. UUNET
provides gateways to both the Internet and BITNET. Usage in the latter
part of 1991 was about 2 MB per month, mostly electronic mail. Over
the past six months the connection to Indonesia has not been
available.  Telecommunication services in Indonesia are provided by
state owned enterprises. Services include analog leased links and X.25
circuits. DIALCOM's electronic mail service is also available. Many of
Indonesia's circuits use an extensive satelite system. International
X.25 is limited to 2400 bps. UNInet achieves an effective data rate of
only 800 bps on its X.25 links.  It is extremely difficult to get a
new connection or a service upgrade for an exisiting connection. The
quality of service is reported as not really adequate, but improving
slowly.

In the educational and research environment PC compatibles with DOS
dominate. Some PCs running Unix are available. The use of networks is
minimal because of the lack of phone lines. Computer and
communications equipment is expensive in relation to university
resources.

Malaysia

Malaysia has a development project to construct a research and
education network named JARING[3]. The project is coordinated and
managed by MIMOS -- a government research and development institute.
JARING follows on from an earlier experimental effort, RangKoM.

The planned network will link hubs in eleven centres using dedicated
leased lines of up to 64kbps. All the hubs will support X.25. Both
UUCP and TCP/IP will be offered over the X.25 connections.

The current international connection is an X.25 link to UUNET in the
United States. JARING finds this expensive. Individual sites must
currently pay the use charges for traffic they generate and this is
inhibiting use. There is also a 4.8kpbs BITNET connection to
Singapore.

Papua New Guinea

Unitech, in Lae, operates a small number of Unix systems on PC AT
hardware and maintains a 1200 bps UUCP link to Melbourne supported by
AARNet. This is the only system used for mail, and receives all mail
for the PG domain. Other MS-DOS systems use uupc to send and retrive
mail through the gateway.

It is planned to extend this service to the University of Papua New
Guinea and Goroka Teachers College in the near future. They will also
use uupc to connect.

Telecommunication services are provided by a government owned
monopoly. Services offered include analogue leased lines, a public
X.25 service, PANGPAC and IDD. Digital leased circuits should be
available this year. Line speeds are restricted to 9600 bps.

The quality of service is low with connections frequently broken. It
is unusual to sustain a data connection for more than ten minutes,
either within Papua New Guinea or internationally. There does not
appear to be any problem obtaining new services or upgrading existing
services.

Although computing seems to be reasonably widespread within PNG it is
pretty much limited to experience with DOS and the basic PC
applications. Networking within Papua New Guinea is limited to a few,
very small Novell local area networks.

There are also a number of "environmental" problems in PNG including
the heat, humidity, poorly regulated power supplies, etc.

PDR Lao

Lao PDR currently has no national or metropolitan networks. There are
only a handful of local area networks in Vientiane.

All telecommunication services are provided by a state owned
enterprise. Telephone and telegraph services are available nationally.
There are no domestic leased circuits.

International connections are provided by a microwave link to Thailand
and via satelite to and through Australia to the rest of the world.
International leased circuits are available, with priority going to
diplomatic and government services. Private switching over a leased
circuit is forbidden.

The internal telephone system is saturated and no significant
improvement is expected until the end of 1993. Internationally there
is congestion at peak times. This will be alleviated when the link to
Australia (and the rest of the world) is upgraded to a digital circuit
in August of this year. At that time an international direct dialling
service will be available to those lucky enough to have a phone.

Phillipines

Educational and research networks in the Phillipines appear to be
limited to local area networks on two campuses and a network of
bulletin board systems using FIDONET technology. In [1] Landweber also
reports a small degree of uucp connectivity.

Telecommunication services have traditionally been provided by a
government owned monopoly. Recently, long distance services have been
deregulated and at least two private companies have entered the
market. Dialup access to X.25 is very limited. It is largely
restricted to private networks run over leased circuits. Four
companies provide international X.25 services. Links up to 64 kbps are
available.

Service is of medium quality. Connections can be immediately
established 90% of the time, however,local calls are frequently
broken. International connections are much more reliable[4].

New services can take up to six months to be installed. Upgrades to
existing services are also difficult to obtain. Direct dialing
(nationally and internationally) is only available in part of the
country.

A wide range of computers appear to be in use in educational and
research institutions. The purchase of new computing equipment suffers
from high import duties.

Thailand

Thailand has a national research network named after and run by
NECTEC. As well as NECTEC, Chulalongkorn University, Mahidol
University, AIT and KMIT are connected. There are plans to expand
NECTEC to the remaining Thai universities.

NECTEC is an X.25 network, with an international gateway is at AIT.
This is a dial up UUCP connection to Melbourne, again supported by
AARNet. Only electronic mail is provided. There are plans to connect
to the Internet and to BITNET by the end of 1992.

Telecommunications services are provided by government owned
monopolies (TOT and CAT) and private companies regulated by the
government. Services include both analog and digital leased circuits,
public X.25, and ISDN. Not all services are available throughout the
country. Similar services are available for international connections.

The availability of leased circuits on certain popular routes is low
and circuits are difficult to obtain.

Regional Initiatives

There are a number of existing initiatives in various states of
development within the region. Most of the initiatives are targeted at
a specific service, e.g. distance education, or a specific client,
e.g. environmental issues. The technologies chosen for these
initiatives is universily different making it difficult for a
developing country to make use of the full range of services
available.

In this section we summarize the initiatives that we know about. There
may well be others that have avoided our search over the past nine
months.

Peacesat

The Pan-Pacific Education and Communications Experiments by Satellite,
better known as Peacesat, is most likely the oldest effort at network
communications in the Pacific region, having been initiated in 1971.
The project is funded by NASA and run from the Social Science Research
Institute of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

There are currently about 30 Pacific sites in at least 20 countries
(including PNG, Australia, New Zealand and the United States) either
connected or about to connect.

Contained within the Peacesat network are also:

o Micronet, a network linking the educational institutions in
  Micronesia, and
o FFAnet, a network linking the Forum Fisheries Agency sites.

The services provided by Peacesat include library access through the
University of Hawaii library, a bulletin board, electronic mail and
file transfer. It is not clear whether or not gateways are provided to
networks such as the Internet.

Peacesat presently uses the GOES-3 satellite. The receiving stations
provide a range of channels for each site.

o voice:
  9 half duplex, and
  3 full duplex channels.
o data:
  9 half duplex at least 2400 bps, and
  3 full duplex, supporting 9600 bps.

These channels facilitate the use of voice, data, slow scan and
facsimile transmissions. The present access to the GOES-3 satellite
runs out at the end of 1994. A possible future route may be the ETS-V
satellite, currently part of a research project underway at Japan
Communications Research Laboartoy.

Pactok

Pactok is a networking project now in its first stage of
implementation. "It is designed to bring low-cost, reliable and
user-friendly computer-based communications services to the countries
of the South Pacific region."[5] It is principally targeted at
community organisations.

Pactok provides three main kinds of services:

o Electronic mail
o Computer conferencing
o File and document transfer

Pactok is a joint project of the Australian Foundation for Peoples of
South Pacific, Ideas Centre Sydney, Centre for South Pacific Studies,
University of NSW and Pegasus Networks. Pegasus itself is part of the
worldwide network of the Association for Progressive Communications
(APC) which has interconnections with all major electronic mail
networks in academia, science and commerce.

The approach employed has been to implement a private Fido Technology
Network (FTN) as an adjunct to the Pegasus node. Pactok subscribers at
present are in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia,
New Zealand and Australia. This is expected to expand quite
significantly over the next two to three years.

APCCIRN

Followers of the development of research networks will be aware that a
common scenario is for a country to establish a connection to the
United States to gain international connectivity. From the countries
point of view this is a logical move. The country has a reliable and
knowledgeable partner to work with and pays nothing extra in
international traffic costs.

This is typical of the Pacific region. Most nations on the western rim
of the Pacific communicate with each other through NSFNET connections
in the United States. In August, 1991 the Asia Pacific Coordinating
Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking was formed. At the
same time an Asia Pacific Engineering and Planning Group was also
established. One of the goals of this group is to rationalise the
cross Pacific connections. This can be expected to lead to some form
of backbone along the western Pacific rim. However, at the time of
writing the APEPG had not made any plans public.

RINSCA PROPOSAL

Adjacent to the southeast asia and pacific region UNESCO has another
region covering south central asia. This region has already adopted a
proposal for a network to support its activities. A joint meeting of
the two regions was held in November, 1991. The meeting received a
proposal for a Regional Informatics Network for Asia and the Pacific
(RINAP). The proposal was based on the design previously accepted by
the south central region.

The principal goal of the project is to provide access to information
held in the many databases built up by UNESCO. It is proposed that
this access be by both network and the distribution of CDROMs. The
design appears to be targeted at groups that require interactive
access to databases rather than the exchange of messages or transfer
of files.

The network envisioned consists of one X.25 gateway in each country.
Each gateway provides international X.25 connections to networks such
as Tymnet or BITNET, both X.25 and X.28 dialup connections within the
country and a connection to any national X.25 networks. The proposal
to distribute databases on CDROMs through UNESCO is apparently
independent of the proposal for the RINAP network.

Distance Education

The author knows of several new initiatives in the distance education
arena. In general, these involve application level protocols rather
than the establishment of networks per se. However, it is important
not to lose site of these developments. The designers expect to be
able to present information to learners in many locations
simultaneously. In many instances this information will be held in
local storage, however there will be times when access to the
resources available on, for instance, the Internet will be needed. We
should not lose sight of the need to integrate these new applications
with existing services.

Conclusion

We have reviewed the state of development of education and research
networks in the southeast asia and pacific region. While many
countries are currently lacking any widespread access to such services
there are a number of initiatives underway. These current initiatives
should be seen as complementary rather than competitive. Pactok is
focused on the exchange of information among community groups,
Peacesat on support for education, and the Internet on communication
and access to remote resources.

The next stage of development within the region should take a true
internetworking approach and look at how to provide as many people as
possible effective access to the full range of services. This is
important not just because the services are complementary, but the
technologies used by the different initiatives are appropriate to
different situations and should continue to be supported. Combining
these services while tackling the problems of networking in developing
countries will be a substantial challange.

References

1 Landweber, L.H., INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIVITY, Version 4, The Internet
  Society, Feb. 1992, electronic communication.
2 Gou, Zhensheng, Jan. 1992, personal communication.
3 Awang-Lah, Mohamed B., JARING Project: An Introduction, APCCIRN
  Meeting, Aug. 1991, Honolulu.
4 Disini, Joel, March 1992, personal communication.
5 --, Pactok Computer Networking for Community Organisations in the
  Pacific Region, The Centre for South Pacific Studies Newsletter,
  University of New South Wales.