Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/isoc/pub/isoc_news/1-1/n-1-1.txt.Z/n-1-1.txt

Text File | 1994-03-26 | 256KB | 5,386 lines

Internet Society Newsletter
Volume 1, Number 1
1 January 1992

Copyright (c) Internet Society.  All Rights Reserved.

*********************************************************
Editorial notes to ASCII version
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Editorial Outline not included
Graphs are generally depicted as numeric tables
Tables are generally reduced to lists
Ticklers are offset by long single dashed lines
Articles are offset by long double dashed lines
Paragraphs are separated by double carriage returns
Section captions have not been depicted
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================================================================
1992 Seems to have arrived early this year by Vinton G. Cerf      2
Publisher's Note by Anthony-Michael Rutkowski      2

Connectivity and Scaling
International Connectivity by Larry Landweber      3
Big markets in LANS->big Internet->Internet Society :
Preliminary LAN and Workstation/PC Market Data
    by Bob Hinden    5

North America
USA NSF Backbone by Eric M. Aupperlee      6
USA Regional Nets by Richard Mandelbaum      6
Canada-CDNnet by Dave Brent        7
Canada-CA*Net by Peter Jones      7

Latin America
Latin American and Caribbean by Daniel Pimienta      8
Chile by Florencio I. Utreras      8
Brazil by Eduardo Tadao Takahashi      9
Mexico by Joseph Choy    10
Argentina by John S. Quarterman    10

Europe & the CIS
Nordic National and International Networks by Bernhard Stockman    11
Finland by Petri Ojala and Harri Salminen    11
Ireland by Mike Norris    11
Germany by Klaus Ullmann    11
Germany-Users by Ruediger Volk    12
Italy by Stefano Trumpy    12
Spain by Jose Barbera    12
Greece by Kostas Karanassios    13
Central & Eastern Europe, Generally by Milan Sterba    13
Yugoslavia by Borka Jerman-Blazic    14
Hungary by Laszlo Csaba    14
Lithuania by Jonas Mockus    14
CIS GLASNET by Anatoly Voronov    15

North Africa & the Middle East
Tunesia by Nejib Abida    16
Israel by Hank Nussbacher    16

Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Sahara, generally by Bob Barad    17
South Africa by F. Jacot Guillarmod    17
South Africa by Mike Lawrie    17

Asia, Pacific Rim, & Antartica
Japan-WIDE by  Jun Murai    19
Japan - InetClub by Kazunori Konishi    19
Australia by Geoff Huston    19
Australia by Bob Kummerfeld    19
Antartica by Andy Linton    20
China by Tian Bai Quin    20
Malaysia by Mohamed Awang Lah    20

International Initiatives
Low cost global electronic communications networks
    for Africa by Mike Jensen & Geoff Sears    21
United Nations Development Programme by Lawrence
    Yeung    22

Application and User Groups
Education by Steve Ruth    24
Biomedicine by Ted Shortliffe    24
Internet Online Public Access Catalogs by Billy Barron    24
Library Science by Michael Break    25
Mathematics by Flemming Topsoe    25
Disaster Assistance by Marie-Jo Floret    25

Technologies
Gigabit Networks by Robert E. Kahn    28
Gigabit Networks by Craig Partridge    28
The View from the Gigabit Networking World
    by David J. Farber    29
Multimedia by Larry Masinter    29
Directories by Erik Huizer    29

Internet Administration and Operations
Internet Activities Board (IAB) by Vint Cerf    31
Internet Engineering Task Force Report
    by Phillip Gross    31
The IANA Story by Jon Postel    32
Resource Discovery Beyond X.500
    by Michael F. Schwartz    33
Discovery Research by Alan Emtage    33
Security Initiatives In the Internet by Dr. Stephen Kent    34
Passwords: Our Keys to the Network by Jeffrey I. Schiller    34
Cooperation Among Network Operation Centers -
    A Beginning by Elise Gerich    35
User Services by Joyce K. Reynolds and
    Gary Scott Malkin    35
What's Important in Coordinating Internet Activities Internationally by Steven N. Goldstein
    36
Europe Commercial Nets by Juha Heinanen    36
USENET by Rick Adams    37
RARE (Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche
    Europeenne) by Josefien Bersee    37
RIPE: A Short Status Report by Joy Marino    38
EARN by Frode Greisen    38

Public Policy
National Network Legislation Enacted in U.S.
    by Mike Roberts    40
U.S. NRC CSTB Policy Research by Monica Krueger    40

Law
Rules of the road: network law by Patrice Lyons, Esq    41
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
    by Gerard Van der Leun    41

Other Media - What's Happening
Internet in the News by Vint Cerf    42
Internet Digest by Philip H. Enslow Jr    42
Internet Digest by John S. Quarterman    42

Conferences
INET-92 by Larry Landweber    43
Interop by Dan Lynch    43
Inter-American NET - Background Information
    by Tadao Takahasi    43
IFIP by Jack Rosenfeld    44
Canadian Networking by Dave Brent    44

================================================================
1992 SEEMS TO HAVE ARRIVED EARLY THIS YEAR by Vinton G. Cerf
<[e-mail]>

1992 has been a major focus of attention in the European context for
several years. Enormous effort has gone into crafting a new framework
for cooperation among the Common Market countries. Significant changes
must be made to achieve the objectives. In the East, comparably massive
restructuring is underway as the old Soviet Union gives way to its
still-fluid successor. In the Internet community, similarly powerful
forces are at work, demanding radical re-thinking of some of the
fundamentals of the Internet Architecture.

The system is growing exponentially by all reasonable metrics (traffic,
number of networks, number of users, etc). Commercial services are
springing up on a global basis, together with rapid adoption of the
technology in the business sector. Penetration in the third-world is
palpable and growing. How can we collectively come to appreciate and
understand these global phenomena? Where can we find useful
international perspectives from which to evaluate different
architectural and design choices? How can we find out about available
products and services through which the Internet system can be made
accessible?
----------------------------------------------------------------
If you wonder what the 21st Century may be like, ask a member of the
Internet community who already lives there!
----------------------------------------------------------------
At least one objective of this newsletter is to probe these questions
and to provide, in one place, a diverse menu of views, opinions and
facts from which to synthesize insight and understanding.

The formation of the Internet Society is, in some sense, simply a formal
recognition that an Internet community already exists. The users of the
Internet and its technology share a common experience on an
international scale. This common thread transcends national boundaries
and, perhaps, presages a time when common interests bind groups of
people as strongly as geo-political commonality does today. If you
wonder what the 21st Century may be like, ask a member of the Internet
community who already lives there!

- Vint Cerf

================================================================
Publisher's Note by Anthony-Michael Rutkowski <[e-mail]>

This first issue of the Internet Society Newsletter marks the beginning
of a remarkable new era as the Internet scales-up exponentially around
the globe - providing the fabric, the new architecture for management,
collaboration and knowledge development.  Truly exciting times!

What is this newsletter?  How was it done?  Why was it done this way?
The answers to these questions are themselves fascinating.  At
negligible cost, in the span of a few weeks, an entirely virtual global
publishing network involving nearly 150 corespondents has been
assembled.  Coordination, concept development, information transfer,
editing were all accomplished through the Internet itself.  Such a
network in many respects equals the complexity of those of Reuters or
Time magazine.  The ability to do this with relative ease across the
entire globe is itself a profound statement.

The newsletter was conceived as a means of exploring and reporting - on
a very timely basis - what the Internet is and what the Internet
Community is doing with it.  A kind of "snapshot" of the Internet at
regular short intervals.

Toward this end, after a few iterations of expanding discovery, a number
of major sectors - facets of the Internet - were articulated and fleshed
out with subjects and potential regular contributors.  This was also a
way to assure that the perspective of the newsletter would be genuinely
global in scope - both geographically and professionally.  The entire
outline is found on the last page of the newsletter.

The ISOC Journal will emerge this year as the second major service for
Internet Society members.  Its focus will be more analytical and
thorough - serving as an archival-quality means of describing,
exploring, and evolving the Internet and its use.

Like the Internet and its applications, what you see will be constantly
evolving - improving in content, organization and format.  What you see
is just the start.  Ideas and contributions are appreciated.  For an
initial period, the newsletter will be issued quarterly.  As the
Internet Society continues to grow and flourish, the publishing
frequency will no doubt increase.

I convey my sincere appreciation to the many people who helped make this
endeavour possible - the individual contributing editors in more than 25
different countries, the other Newsletter Editorial Board Members, Vint
Cerf, and especially the intrepid Joyce K. Reynolds.  Between Reston,
the Marina and Geneva this virtual partnership has made the newsletter a
reality.

- amr

================================================================
005.01 INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIVITY by Larry Landweber <[e-mail]>
Version 3 - 3 December 1991

INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIVITY
Version 3 - December 2, 1991

 ----  AF  Afghanistan (Republic of Afghanistan)
 ----  AL  Albania (Republic of Albania)
 ----  DZ  Algeria (People's Democratic Republic of Algeria)
 ----  AS  American Samoa
 ----  AD  Andorra (Principality of Andorra)
 ----  AO  Angola (People's Republic of Angola)
 ----  AI  Anguilla
 ----* AQ  Antarctica
 ----  AG  Antigua and Barbuda
 BIUF  AR  Argentina (Argentine Republic)
 ----  AW  Aruba
 -IUF  AU  Australia
 BIUF  AT  Austria (Republic of Austria)
 ----  BS  Bahamas (Commonwealth of the Bahamas)
 ----  BH  Bahrain (State of Bahrain)
 ----  BD  Bangladesh (People's Republic of Bangladesh)
 ----  BB  Barbados
 BIUF  BE  Belgium (Kingdom of Belgium)
 ----  BZ  Belize
 ----  BJ  Benin (Republic of Benin)
 ----  BM  Bermuda
 ----  BT  Bhutan (Kingdom of Bhutan)
 --u-  BO  Bolivia (Republic of Bolivia)
 ---f  BW  Botswana (Republic of Botswana)
 ----  BV  Bouvet Island
 BIUF  BR  Brazil (Federative Republic of Brazil)
 ----  BN  Brunei Darussalam
 --UF  BG  Bulgaria (Republic of Bulgaria)
 --u-  BF  Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta)
 ----  BI  Burundi (Republic of Burundi)
 --uf  BY  Byelorussian SSR (Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic)
 ----* CM  Cameroon (Republic of Cameroon)
 BIUF  CA  Canada
 ----  CV  Cape Verde (Republic of Cape Verde)
 ----  KY  Cayman Islands
 ----  CF  Central African Republic
 ----  TD  Chad (Republic of Chad)
 ----  IO  Chagos Islands (Indian Ocean)
 BIUf  CL  Chile (Republic of Chile)
 --u-  CN  China (People's Republic of China)
 ----  CX  Christmas Island (Indian Ocean)
 ----  CI  Cote d'Ivoire (Republic of Cote d'Ivoire)
 ----  CC  Cocos Keeling Islands)
 b-u-  CO  Colombia (Republic of Colombia)
 ----  KM  Comoros (Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros)
 ----* CG  Congo (People's Republic of the Congo)
 ----  CK  Cook Islands
 b-u-  CR  Costa Rica (Republic of Costa Rica)
 --u-  CU  Cuba (Republic of Cuba)
 b-U-  CY  Cyprus (Republic of Cyprus)
 BiUF  CS  Czechoslovakia (Czech and Slovak Federal Republic)
 BIUF  DK  Denmark (Kingdom of Denmark)
 ----  DJ  Djibouti (Republic of Djibouti)
 ----  DM  Dominica (Commonwealth of Dominica)
 --u-  DO  Dominican Republic
 ----  TP  East Timor
 b-u-  EC  Ecuador (Republic of Ecuador)
 b-u-  EG  Egypt (Arab Republic of Egypt)
 ----  SV  El Salvador (Republic of El Salvador)
 ----  GQ  Equatorial Guinea (Republic of Equatorial Guinea)
 --UF  EW  Estonia
 ---f  ET  Ethiopia
 ----  FK  Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
 ----  FO  Faroe Islands
 --u-  FJ  Fiji (Republic of Fiji)
 BIUF  FI  Finland (Republic of Finland)
 BIUF  FR  France (French Republic)
 --u-  GF  French Guiana (Department of Guiana)
 ----* PF  French Polynesia
 ----  TF  French Southern Territories
 ----  GA  Gabon (Gabonese Republic)
 ----  GM  Gambia (Republic of the Gambia)
 BIUF  DE  Germany (Federal Republic of Germany)
 ----  GH  Ghana (Republic of Ghana)
 ----  GI  Gibraltar
 BIUF  GR  Greece (Hellenic Republic)
 ---f  GL  Greenland
 ----  GD  Grenada
 --u-  GP  Guadeloupe (French Department of Guadeloupe)
 ----  GU  Guam
 --u-  GT  Guatemala (Republic of Guatemala)
 ----  GN  Guinea (Republic of Guinea)
 ----  GW  Guinea-Bissau (Republic of Guinea-Bissau)
 ----  GY  Guyana (Republic of Guyana)
 ----  HT  Haiti (Republic of Haiti)
 ----  HM  Heard and McDonald Islands
 ----  HN  Honduras (Republic of Honduras)
 B--F  HK  Hong Kong (Hisiangkang, Xianggang)
 biUF  HU  Hungary (Republic of Hungary)
 -IUf  IS  Iceland (Republic of Iceland)
 bIU-  IN  India (Republic of India)
 --u-  ID  Indonesia (Republic of Indonesia)
 ----  IR  Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran)
 ----  IQ  Iraq (Republic of Iraq)
 BIUF  IE  Ireland
 BIuF  IL  Israel (State of Israel)
 BIUF  IT  Italy (Italian Republic)
 ----  JM  Jamaica
 BIUF  JP  Japan
 ----  JO  Jordan (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)
 ----  KH  Kampuchea, Democratic (formerly Cambodia)
 ----* KE  Kenya (Republic of Kenya)
 ----  KI  Kiribati (Republic of Kiribati)
 ----  KP  Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
 BIUf  KR  Korea, Republic of Korea
 b---  KW  Kuwait (State of Kuwait)
 ----  LA  Lao People's Democratic Republic
 --UF  LV  Latvia
 ----  LB  Lebanon (Lebanese Republic)
 ----* LS  Lesotho (Kingdom of Lesotho)
 ----  LR  Liberia (Republic of Liberia)
 ----  LY  Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Socialist Peoples's
           Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)
 ----  LI  Liechtenstein (Principality of Liechtenstein)
 --uF  LT  Lithuania
 b-uF  LU  Luxembourg (Grand Duchy of Luxembourg)
 ---F  MO  Macau (Ao-me'n)
 ----  MG  Madagascar (Democratic Republic of Madagascar)
 ----  MW  Malawi (Republic of Malawi)
 b-uF  MY  Malaysia
 ----  MV  Maldives (Republic of Maldives)
 --u-  ML  Mali (Republic of Mali)
 ----  MT  Malta (Republic of Malta)
 ----  MH  Marshall Islands (Republic of the Marshall Islands)
 --u-  MQ  Martinique (French Department of Martinique)
 ----  MR  Mauritania (Islamic Republic of Mauritania)
 ----  MU  Mauritius
 BIuf  MX  Mexico (United Mexican States)
 ----  FM  Micronesia (Federated States of Micronesia)
 ----  MC  Monaco (Principality of Monaco)
 ----  MN  Mongolia (Mongolian People's Republic)
 ----  MS  Montserrat
 ----  MA  Morocco (Kingdom of Morocco)
 ----* MZ  Mozambique (Republic of Mozambique)
 ----  MM  Myanmar (Union of Myanmar)
 --u-  NA  Namibia (Republic of Namibia)
 ----  NR  Nauru (Republic of Nauru)
 ----  NP  Nepal (Kingdom of Nepal)
 BIUF  NL  Netherlands (Kingdom of the Netherlands)
 ----  AN  Netherlands Antilles
 ----  NT  Neutral Zone (between Saudi Arabia and Iraq)
 --u-  NC  New Caledonia
 -IuF  NZ  New Zealand
 --u-  NI  Nicaragua (Republic of Nicaragua)
 --u-  NE  Niger (Republic of the Niger)
 ----  NG  Nigeria (Federal Republic of Nigeria)
 ----  NU  Niue
 ----  NF  Norfolk Island
 ----  MP  Northern Mariana Islands (Commonwealth of the Northern
           Mariana Islands)
 BIUF  NO  Norway (Kingdom of Norway)
 ----  OM  Oman (Sultanate of Oman)
 ----  PK  Pakistan (Islamic Republic of Pakistan)
 ----  PW  Palau (Republic of Palau)
 ----  PA  Panama (Republic of Panama)
 --u-  PG  Papua New Guinea
 --u-  PY  Paraguay (Republic of Paraguay)
 x-u-  PE  Peru (Republic of Peru)
 --uF  PH  Philippines (Republic of the Philippines)
 ----  PN  Pitcairn Island
 biUF  PL  Poland (Republic of Poland)
 bIUF  PT  Portugal (Portuguese Republic)
 BIUF  PR  Puerto Rico
 ----  QA  Qatar (State of Qatar)
 ----* RE  Re'union (French Department of Re'union)
 ----* RO  Romania
 ----  RW  Rwanda (Rwandese Republic)
 ----  SH  Saint Helena
 ----  KN  Saint Kitts and Nevis
 ----  LC  Saint Lucia
 ----  PM  Saint Pierre and Miquelon (French Department of Saint
           Pierre and Miquelon)
 ----  VC  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
 ----  SM  San Marino (Republic of San Marino)
 ----  ST  Sao Tome and Principe (Democratic Republic of Sao Tome
           and Principe)
 B---  SA  Saudi Arabia (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)
 --u-  SN  Senegal (Republic of Senegal)
 --u-  SC  Seychelles (Republic of Seychelles)
 -- -  SL  Sierra Leone (Republic of Sierra Leone)
 bIuF  SG  Singapore (Republic of Singapore)
 ----  SB  Solomon Islands
 ----  SO  Somalia (Somali Democratic Republic)
 -IUF  ZA  South Africa (Republic of South Africa)
 BIUF  ES  Spain (Kingdom of Spain)
 --u-  LK  Sri Lanka (Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka)
 ----  SD  Sudan (Republic of the Sudan)
 ----  SR  Suriname (Republic of Suriname)
 ----  SJ  Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
 ----  SZ  Swaziland (Kingdom of Swaziland)
 BIUF  SE  Sweden (Kingdom of Sweden)
 BIUF  CH  Switzerland (Swiss Confederation)
 ----  SY  Syria (Syrian Arab Republic)
 B-uF  TW  Taiwan
 ----  TZ  Tanzania (United Republic of Tanzania)
 --uF  TH  Thailand (Kingdom of Thailand)
 --u-  TG  Togo (Togolese Republic)
 ----  TK  Tokelau
 ----  TO  Tonga (Kingdom of Tonga)
 ----  TT  Trinidad and Tobago (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago)
 bI--  TN  Tunisia
 B---  TR  Turkey (Republic of Turkey)
 ----  TC  Turks and Caicos Islands
 ----  TV  Tuvalu
 b-UF  SU  USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
 ----  UG  Uganda (Republic of Uganda)
 --UF  UA  Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic)
 ----  AE  United Arab Emirates
 bIUF  GB  United Kingdom (United Kingdom of Great Britain and
           Northern Ireland)
 BIUF  US  United States (United States of America)
 ----  UM  United States Minor Outlying Islands
 x-uf  UY  Uruguay (Eastern Repuplic of Uruguay)
 ----* VU  Vanuatu (Republic of Vanuatu, formerly New Hebrides)
 ----  VA  Vatican City State
 --u-  VE  Venezuela (Republic of Venezuala)
 ----  VN  Vietnam (Socialist Republic of Vietnam)
 ----  VG  Virgin Islands, British
 ----  VI  Virgin Islands, U.S. (Virgin Islands of the United States)
 ----  WF  Wallis and Futuna Islands
 ----  EH  Western Sahara
 ----  WS  Western Samoa (Independent State of Western Samoa)
 ----  YE  Yemen (Republic of Yemen)
 ----  YD  Yemen, Democratic (People's Democratic Republic of Yemen)
 B-U-  YU  Yugoslavia (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)
 ----  ZR  Zaire (Republic of Zaire)
 ----* ZM  Zambia (Republic of Zambia)
 ---f  ZW  Zimbabwe (Republic of Zimbabwe)
-----------------------------------
In the following, BITNET is used generically to refer to BITNET plus
similar networks around the world (e.g., EARN, NETNORTH, GULFNET, etc.).
---------------------------------

NUMBER OF ENTITIES WITH INTERNATIONAL NETWORK CONNECTIVITY = 89

BITNET Col. 2  (Entities with international BITNET links.)
  b = minimal    < 5 domestic sites = 18
  B = widespread = 5 domestic sites = 28
  x = uncertain                     = 2
INTERNET Col. 3  (Entities with international IP links.)
  I = operational    = 33
  i = soon available = 3
UUCP Col. 4  (Entities with international UUCP links.)
  u = minimal    < 5 domestic sites = 40
  U = widespread = 5 domestic sites = 38
FIDONET Col. 5  (Entities with international FIDONET links.)
  f = minimal    < 5 domestic sites =  10
  F = widespread = 5 domestic sites =  43
Col 6 = * = New connections expected in near future.

Please send corrections, information and/or comments to:

Larry Landweber
Computer Sciences Dept.
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1210 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53706
[e-mail]
FAX [phone]

Include details, e.g., on connections, sites, contacts, protocols, etc.

Thanks to the many people from around the world who have provided information.

Copyright (c) 1991 Lawrence H. Landweber and the Internet Society. Unlimited
permission to copy or reproduce is hereby granted subject to the requirement
that this copyright notice be included.

==================================================================
Big markets in LANS->big Internet->Internet Society : Preliminary LAN
and Workstation/PC Market Data by Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>

The following statistics were recently assembled to analyze the growth
potential of the Internet.

FORECAST MARKET FOR MICRO/PC LAN, U.S.
Source:  Computer Industry Forcasts 10/91

    1991    $6 billion
    1992    $6.8 billion
    1993    $7.7 billion
    1994    $8.3 billion
    Average Growth Rate = 11.4%

FORECAST US SHIPMENTS OF LAN-BASED INTEGRATED OFFICE SYSTEMS
Source: IDC (in Computerworld) 3/90

    1990    13,000 units
    1991    21,000 units
    1992    33,000 units

FORECAST US HIGH-SPEED LAN MARKET IN NUMBER OF CONNECTIONS AND VALUE
Source: Info Gatekeepers (in MIS Week) 1/90

Mainframes
    1991    4100 units    $78 mil.
    1994    14500 units    $143 mil.
    1999    120800 units    $389 mil.

Workstations/PCs
    1991    162,700 units    $833 mil.
    1994    445,000 units    $1.2 bil.
    1999    2,137,000 units    $1.8 bil.

FORECAST SHIPMENT REVENUE OF US LAN SERVERS
Source: Forrester (in Computerworld) 1/90

    1990    $4.1 billion
    1991    $5.5 billion
    1992    $7.7 billion
    1993    $10.2 billion
    1994    $11.7 billion

MARKET FOR LAN NETWORKS
Source: Cowen & Co.  11/90

            1991        Future

Departmental Nets    67%        73%
Sitewide Nets        46%            59%
Organization Wide Nets  38%        60%

FORECAST NUMBER OF WORKSTATIONS RUNNING ON FDDI
Source: Computer Reseller News, 15 Jan 90

1989    5,000
1990    25,000
1991    98,000
1992    210,000
1993    532,000
1994    950,000
-------------------------------------------------------------
Most analysts predict that in the U.S. in 1995, between 29 and 45
million computers will be on LANs.  Many, if not most, can be expected
to be attached to the Internet.
-------------------------------------------------------------
According to Forrester Research's Network Strategy Reports, The Network
Strategy Report: LANs for Free?, November 1991, by the end of 1995, 56%
of all PCs installed in the U.S. will be LAN-attached.  This is 28
million PCs.  Workstations and mini's will add another 1.5 million,
providing 29.5 million LAN-attached computers in the U.S. in 1995.

According to Dataquest's North American Market Research Service, Market
Statistics: Local Area Networks, May 1991, the U.S. installed base of
PCs in business, government and education (not homes) is expected to
grow from 40 million in 1991 to 80 million in 1995.  Of these, they
believe 15 million will be attached to LANs by the end of 1991, rising
to 45 million by the end of 1995.

Both Dataquest and Forrester are beginning to allude to the potential
effect of laptops and other portable devices on overall market dynamics
and volumes, but there haven't been any forecasts done on what this
activity means in terms of wiaccommodate them.

================================================================
010.10 USA NSF Backbone by Eric M. Aupperlee <[e-mail].
umich.edu>

The National Science Foundation's mid 1980's commitment to expanding the
evolving Internet proved a crucial step in it's growth and success.
Their vision of simultaneously broadening access to NSF's sponsored
supercomputer centers and using this same infrastructure for pervasive
education and research institutional networking, and backing their
vision with leveraged funding, represented an extraordinarily important
seized opportunity.

A second key element of NSF's mid 1980's action process was their
insistence on building NSFNET using TCP/IP.  Their 1987 solicitation for
the Management and Operation of the NSFNET Backbone Network spelled out
this TCP/IP requirement along with the need for to developing a
migration path to OSI based data transport protocols.

But certainly their firm TCP/IP commitment significantly contributed to
the acceptance of this protocol family by many networking product and
service focused organizations both within the US, and perhaps even more
importantly internationally.  One result of this is the quickening
growth of  TCP/IP router and related networking products as is, for
example, evidenced by the rapidly rising attendance and equipment
introductions at the annual INTEROP conference.

More directly NSF's funding actions created much of the USA's regional
networking infrastructure, the evolving backbone, and even portions of
the Internet's international data circuits.  One measure of the
demonstrated benefit of this interconnectivity among many networking
organizations is the phenomenal backbone traffic growth reported by
Merit.

Over the past four year period the number of packets transported per
month increased a hundredfold from 100 million packets per month to 10
billion.  There is no apparent reason to expect that if adequate
transport capacity is available in the future for this growth rate to be
any less.  Indeed arguments can be made for why the rate may even be
greater.

A second measure of note is the number of backbone announced networks.
This measure grew from the order of 100 to over 3000 during the same
four year period, a factor of 30.  Over 1000 of these networks are
outside of the USA.  This increase reflects the expanding penetration of
the Internet on a worldwide basis. As with the packet rate, this measure
exhibits continued growth.  The greater than unity ratio of transported
packets to announced networks leads to the further conclusion that as
the Internet expands individual networks served by it are increasingly
generating more traffic.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Over the past four year period...packets transported per month increased
a hundredfold from 100 million...to 10 billion.  There is no apparent
reason to expect...in the future for this growth rate to be any less.
Indeed arguments can be made for why the rate may even be greater.
------------------------------------------------------------
Other information known about the backbone's traffic adds insight to how
its used.  On a volume basis (measured in bytes) approximately half of
the traffic serves to exchange files.  Second at about 20 percent is the
exchange of e-mail followed by remote logon access to servers at less
than 10 percent.  The remaining 20 percent is split among a variety of
other uses. These percentages are remarkably stable from month to month,
but indeed are slowing changing.  Most notable is the relative decrease
in remote logon and e-mail usage and the increase of newer services such
as X-Windows.

These usage patterns help support the conclusion that the backbone
serves to aggregate traffic of a very large user population rather than
serving the specialized needs of a few.  Further its users primarily
continue to rely on the more traditional services.  The likely pattern
is for the transition of traditional to newer services to slowly evolve.

As observed above NSF's involvement and support of NSFNET's regional and
backbone development during the last six years have been pivotal
elements in the Internet's history.  Their stewardship will continue as
was recently announced.

================================================================
010.20 USA Regional Nets by Richard Mandelbaum <[e-mail].
rochester.edu>

In early 1988 the National Science Foundation signed a cooperative
agreement with a consortium consisting of IBM, MCI and Merit, Inc,. to
upgrade and operate the NSFNET national backbone.  That agreement is due
to expire in October of 1992.  This past summer, under the auspices of
FARNET, the Federation of American Research Networks, a workshop was
held in Big Sky, Montana to formulate recommendations to the NSF about
what to do as a follow up to that agreement.  The primary scenarios
discussed at that meeting were:

(1)     Recompete the backbone agreement;

(2)     Fund regional networks directly and have them make appropriate
arrangements for backbone services; and

(3)     Fund end-user organizations directly in order to enable them
to buy network services.

After much discussion, FARNET recommended  that the NSF must both
continue its support for top-level backbone services and ensure that
mid-level networks have some degree of choice in picking a backbone
provider.  In November, the National Science Board accepted NSFUs
recommendation that the backbone contract be recompeted with AT LEAST 2
AWARDEES.

This coming winter, FARNET will convene a Task Force to recommend to NSF
how best to implement a multi-provider backbone.

At the same time, as the NSF pondered how to provide backbone services
for the IINREN (Interim Interagency National Research and Education
Network as the US Internet is now called), other Federal Agencies such
as NASA and DOE raised the cry of "the regional networks must be
hardened." FARNETUs November meeting, held in conjunction with the IETF,
in Santa Fe on November 18 and 19, was devoted to that topic.

The hardest problem seems to be in deciding what "hardening the
regionals" means.  A major part of such a concept seems to be the
insuring of end-to-end reliability of services.  In addition the
importance of NIC services and even User services was stressed. The
problem of how to achieve such hardening was not  solved. The February
meeting of FARNET in Orlando will be devoted to discussing how
coordination between the regionals and new NOC tools can be used to at
least partially "harden" the regionals.

The past decade saw exponential growth in institutional connectivity to
the Internet and in traffic carried by the Internet and the North
American mid-level networks concentrated primarily on furthering such
quantitative growth.  The coming decade will see increased emphasis on
"qualitative growth" and in 1992 we will see a tremendous amount of mid-
level effort devoted to understanding how to achieve this new goal.

================================================================
010.50 Canada-CDNnet by Dave Brent <[e-mail]>

Overview.  CDNnet is a national application-level network linking
Canadian researchers, developers and educators.  Where possible, CDNnet
offers services based on the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model.
CDNnet Headquarters is located in the Department of Computer Science at
the University of British Columbia.

CDNnet operates as a "modified star" network, using a combination of
public X.25 networks, TCP/IP networks and dialup lines.  Members are
encouraged to form direct connections when traffic warrants it.

Services.  CDNnet offers its members a reliable electronic mail and file
transfer service to other CDNnet organizations, as well as to other OSI
networks around the world.  In addition, it provides gateways to other
international networks including the Internet, BITNET and UUCP.

CDNnet operates the primary nameserver for the CA section of the global
DNS tree. In addition, CDNnet Headquarters coordinates development and
maintenance of the Ean X.400 software, which was originally developed at
UBC.

Status.  CDNnet currently has 29 member institutions.  Of these, 16 are
educational members, 11 are government/non-profit and 2 are commercial.
One of the educational members is a consortium of 12 B.C. colleges.
Membership has  decreased slightly over the last two years.

An increasing number of our members are joining the regional TCP/IP
networks, which have been deployed over the last few years.  When
possible we have been moving CDNnet traffic from public X.25 networks to
these networks.

We are in the progress of replacing our central hub with a newer machine
with more capacity.  Once this is done, we can embark on some new
initiatives, which include an X.500 directory pilot.

Contact Information.

CDNnet Headquarters
University of British Columbia
#333 - 6356 Agricultural Road
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada  V6T 1Z2
Internet: [e-mail]
X.400: C=ca/ADMD=telecom.canada/ PRMD=cdn/O=CDNnet/S=HQ
Phone:  [phone]
Fax:    [phone]

================================================================
010.55 Canada-CA*Net by Peter Jones <[e-mail]>

CA*net, pronounced "C-A-net", and normally written with the Canadian
maple leaf replacing the asterisk, is a national Canadian backbone
network linking regional networks in all provinces of Canada.  CA*net
exists to provide data communications in support of the research,
education and technology transfer missions of its member networks and
their member institutions and corporations.

Research networking in Canada began in the early 1980s.  The creation in
1984 of NetNorth, the Canadian equivalent of the American BITNET
organization, was a pivotal event and many of the foundational
principles that now underlie CA*net were established during the early
years of NetNorth.  By 1988, regional networks using the TCP/IP protocol
suite had been created in several provinces and bilateral links between
some of these were in place in 1989.

In parallel with these developments, the National Research Council of
Canada (NRC) was promoting the establishment of a higher speed national
research network.  This lead to the creation of CA*net which received a
$2M (Canadian) grant from NRC towards its first three years' development
and operating costs.  The University of Toronto Computing Services
department, in collaboration with IBM and Insinc, won the contract to
run the network operations centre and the installation of CA*net data
links began in May 1990.  The network was brought fully into service in
time for its official inauguration in October 1990.

CA*net is a backbone network which interconnects ten provincial regional
networks and has three links to NSFnet in the USA.  The topology of the
network ensures that each regional network has two paths to the rest of
Canada.  Currently, the internal links all operate at 56 kbps.  There
are three connections to NSFnet: the ones from Montreal and Vancouver
currently operate at 112 kbps and the one from Toronto at 224 kbps.  The
bandwidth of all these US connections and several of the internal links
will be increased in the near future.

CA*net is owned and managed by CA*net Networking Incorporated, a non-
profit, non-share corporation.  The members of CA*net Inc. are the
regional networks and each member nominates a representative to vote at
CA*net general meetings which are held at least once a year.  The
affairs of the corporation are managed by a board of directors
consisting of 10 voting directors, one from each Canadian province.  The
voting board member for a particular province is selected by the member
regional network(s) whose geographical area(s) consist of, or include,
all or part of the province.  At the moment there is a one-one
correspondence between provinces and regional networks but this
situation could change.

In addition to the voting directors, there are four non-voting directors
representing the National Research Council, the CA*net network operator,
NetNorth and CdnNet.

CA*net is a great success due to the excellent collaborative efforts of
all concerned with its formation and operation.  Its major shortcoming
is its low bandwidth, caused by the high cost of data lines and the
large distances between centres of population in Canada. However, the
board is actively seeking ways of enhancing the network and is currently
working on a new three year strategic plan.  More on this next time.

*Peter Jones, Chair, CA*net Board of Directors

================================================================
011.10 Latin American and Caribbean by Daniel Pimienta* <ulat-
dp%frmop11. [e-mail]>

For the first edition, we offer a brief perspective of the region
network developments since the origins, and some forecasted trends.

First Stage Development: before 1988

There are three distinct directions:

Bottom-up: some BITNET nodes based on mainframes or minis in Mexico,
Chile and Brazil.

Bottom-up: some USENET distributed nodes based on PCs, principally in
Argentina.

Top-down: a project in Venezuela, under the National Science and
Technology Research Council leadership, targeting a global national
solution.

Second Stage Development: 1988-1991

consolidation of existing networks in the first countries.

significant relative growth of USENET solutions, both in terms of user's
figures, and of start-up solution for new countries.

introduction of International Organizations in the playground as
contributors to the current or projected developments: (UNDP, BID, EEC,
UNESCO, OAS, PAHO, UNION LATINA,...).

Situation at the end of 1991

Users using the network

Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico  >40%
Argentina, Chile                 >25%
Brasil, Venezuela                >10%
Remaining                        <10%

Most countries will have at least a few network users.

It is estimated that there are  20,000 network users for the whole
region, which represents some 10% coverage of the total estimated
potential user population.

More than 80% of the international outgoing links of the Region goes to
the USA.  USENET user's figure growths faster than BITNET's. INTERNET
nodes are beginning to appear.

Some regional or sub regional projects are in the planning or
implementation stage (REDALC, HURACAN, CUNET, SCARNET).

Near-term trends

Growing consciousness of the need for integration between the countries:
the First Interamerican Networking Workshop held in Rio de Janeiro in
October 1991 allowed a high percentage of the region network
representatives (more than 100 people from national, regional or
international initiatives) to meet and start the first exchanges toward
regional integration. A Regional Committee was elected.

Creation of national associations involving all the players
(universities, NGO's linked to research, Science and Technology
Councils, States Departments linked to research). REDMEX of Mexico is
the first "success story" and Red Cientifica Peruana is the first
attempt to start from scratch with that model.

Start of the integration of industrial research domains within the
networks.

Negotiation with Telecommunication Authorities as a way to get tariff
advantages and participate to the development of national X.25 networks
(Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Peru, Venezuela).

Regionalization of the international link topology as a step toward a
regional backbone.

The Next Stage: a 1992-1995 forecast

A connected user level of the order of magnitude of 100,000 is expected.
The following developments will mature:

Generalization of the associative model for user administration.

Rationalization of the international links and the gateway accesses.

Generalization of the special tariff pattern for national X25 usage.

Emergence of new original tariffs schemes were billing additional
services allow some level of autofinancing.

Consolidation of the organizational entity representing the networkers
of the Region (something "a la RARE" especially adapted to the Regional
particularities).

Generalization of the TCP-IP protocol, at least for the international
links.

More involvement of Science and Technology Councils and, as a
consequence, a more controlled/planned network growth at national and
regional levels.

Emergence of a regional backbone, probably based on satellite
technology, with substantial international funding.

Emerging Long-Term Trends

Important shift toward the end-user (workstations, interfaces,
applications and support).

Integration of the transport network with information networks and
scientific data bases (the Region have already good provision of them,
as a result of national and international politics).

Skill merging between the "telematics" and the "documentalists", as a
result of market need and specific education plans.

First large-scale implementation based on the OSI model application
layers (X.400, X.500, FTAM...).

* Science Advisor, REDALC Project Director, Union Latina, Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic

================================================================
011.20 Chile by Florencio I. Utreras <futreras%uchdci01.bitnet@vtvm2.
cc.vt.edu>

REUNA: The Chilean Academic and Research Network

REUNA: Red Universitaria Nacional Chilena is a computer network
developed by the Chilean universities, headed by the University of
Chile. Its main goal is to promote the development of cooperation among
the different universities through the exchange of non-commercial
information between their researchers, students and teachers. Another
important goal of the network is to facilitate the interaction between
Chilean researchers and their colleagues in Europe, the US and other
countries, specially other Latin American countries.

The network has been built using existing research computing equipment
and vendor networking software: SNA, DECNET, UUCP; and recently: TCP/IP.
Additionally, in order to ensure connectivity among different pieces of
the network, some software has been developed at the Computer Center
(CEC) of the University of Chile which acts as center of the network.

REUNA is composed of three pieces. One connecting IBM mainframes is
using SNA software and uses leased phone lines to ensure a 24 hour
service. Its services include mail, file transfer, on-line messages and
remote login. The second piece connects Digital equipment using DECNET
software over leased lines and virtual X.25 links. Its services are the
same as those of the SNA portion of the network. Finally the third piece
connects minis and micros using UUCP software over dial-up connections.
This part of the network supports only mail and file transfer services
(using encoding and packaging).

The three pieces are joined together at the Computer Center of the
University of Chile where two gateways using TCP/IP software are
supported. The gateway machines are an IBM mainframe and two Digital
minis running simultaneously their native vendor communications software
and TCP/IP. Finally, a dedicated satellite link to Maryland (USA)
connects REUNA to BITNET where it has been accepted as a cooperative
network.

The full list of universities affiliated with REUNA is the following:

Universidad de Chile
Universidad Catlica de Chile
Universidad de Concepcin
Universidad de Santiago
Universidad Catlica de Valparaso
Universidad Federico Santa Mara
Universidad de Tarapac
Universidad de Antofagasta
Universidad de La Serena
Universidad Austral de Chile
Universidad de Talca

The number of nodes at each university is variable running from 20 at
the U. of Chile to 1 at Tarapac or Antofagasta. Not all the universities
have an internal network so that several of them use the gateways of
REUNA to interconnect their machines of different type.

The network has agreed to evolve to TCP/IP protocols. In particular
thanks to the support of the National Commission for Science and
Technology (CONICYT), the network is now connected to the Internet
through SURANET in Maryland. A new administration scheme is being
developed so that CONICYT will take the lead in the administrative part
and other Operation Centers will join the University of Chile to improve
the operational sites of the network.

Other interesting features of the Chilean Network is that the National
Bibliographic Service (RENIB) is connected to the network giving
Bibliographic research services through the network. Of special interest
is also BITNIS a project funded by the PAHO (Pan American Health
Organization) allowing to selected users of the network to use the
National Library of Medicine (US). This use is done through a gateway
designed and installed by the University of Chile in the NIH (US) seat
of NLM.

For information on REUNA contact: CONICYT, Santiago, Chile

================================================================
011.30 Brazil by Eduardo Tadao Takahashi <tadao%ethos1.ansp.br@
uicvm.uic.edu>

Brazil was incredibly late to get plugged into the academic networking
world. The first networking efforts in the country started in the early
80's, led by LARC, a consortium formed by major universities and
research centers for the exclusive purpose of advancing such activities.

However, these efforts were severely undermined by many problems, not
the least of which was the restriction that the telecommunications law
in Brazil imposed until recently upon data communication services: in a
strict interpretation, they were a monopoly of the union.

It was only in 1988 that two BITNET connections to the US were
established from Brazil, one by FAPESP (Sao Paulo State Research Funding
Agency) and another by LNCC (National Laboratory for Scientific
Computation), while a favorable interpretation of the law allowed
interested academic institutions to get connected to either of the two
pioneering gateways. Within two years, most universities and research
institutions managed to get connected to what became a national network.
A third connection to the US was set up at about the same time by UFRJ
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), but it would be used mostly for
UFRJ alone, offering BITNET and HEPNET services to Brazilian researchers
at negligible cost to end user institutions.

While the academic community gathered around FAPESP and LNCC, a non-
governmental organization in Rio, IBASE, obtained support from UNDP to
set up a node of services at its site and through an UUCP connection to
IGC in San Francisco.

In 1989, the Brazilian Research Network (RNP) was formally launched by
the Ministry of Science and Technology, having as its main purpose:

in the short-term, to integrate the then scattered networking efforts of
the academic community in Brazil;

in the medium-term, to plan and direct the consolidation of an academic
network in the country, interconnecting regional networks and individual
institutions, and providing direct connections to major networks in the
US, Europe, and neighboring countries in Latin America.

in the long-term, to help devise and implement a national strategy for
the deployment of informatics resources in education and research,
ranging from high-performance computing to K-12 education.

The RNP initiative was organized as a project under the direct
coordination of the National Research Council (CNPq), which has financed
most activities since its inception.

As of 1991, RNP approaches the conclusion of its first main objective,
that is, the installation of a nationwide 9.6 - 64 Kbps backbone with
points-of-presence in twelve major cities in the country, supporting
multiple protocols and running TCP/IP as its lingua franca.

As the backbone starts to operate, most institutions are expected to
deactivate their current connections (which are too low speed and badly
engineered as a rule) and seek a link to the nearest point-of-presence.

In February, a National Operations Center (NOC) will start working at
FAPESP, taking responsibility for the management of the national
backbone and its connection to other networks abroad. At the same time,
a National Informations Center (NIC) will start to operate at LNCC,
dedicated in the beginning to the preparation and dissemination of
training materials.

The NIC and the NOC are being organized with the partial support of IBM,
ORACLE and INTERLEAF, which are donating hardware, software, and
services.

Complementing the efforts of RNP at the national level, several states
in the country (most notably Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, and Sao
Paulo) have been pursuing their statewide networks, which are integrated
through the national backbone. Thus, by the end of 1992, one expects to
have in Brazil a two-level network composed by some 100 nodes, mostly
supporting INTERNET services, while some remaining as BITNET/BITNET-II
installations.

In 1992, RNP will start to deal with a number of issues, including:

faster connections, as the local public infrastructure gets improved;

integration with existing commercial services (e.g., X.400 messaging)
and with other national projects (e.g., library access; copying service;
automation of the federal administration along GOSIP lines, etc.) ;

experimentation with low-cost technologies such as packet satellite
communications;

systematic experimentation with packages such as ISODE, PP, QUIPU, etc.,
as a preliminary step to the launching of a concerted effort in topics
such as experimental X.500 services.

In future notes, we shall discuss these issues as seen from the
Brazilian perspective, which in a way is unique: not many national
networking initiatives have to simultaneously cope with first world
requirements and wishes and "fourth world" needs and priorities.

* Rede Nacional de Pesquisa - CNPq, Cidade Universitaria, Campinas,
Brazil

================================================================
011.80 - Mexico by Joseph Choy <[e-mail]>

TCP/IP networks with national and international access are now
coordinated through the RedMex which is the networking infrastructure
group for the country of Mexico.  The organization supports the
formation and development of the network for the participating public
and private institutions of investigation, development and education in
Mexico.  RedMex coordinates its TCP/IP links to the United States with
their network infrastructure.

At present, the following institutions participate in the committees:

Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada
Centro de Investigacion en Quimica Aplicada
Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia
El Colegio de Mexico
Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica
Instituto Politicnico Nacional
Instituto Tecnologico Autinomo de Mexico
Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente
SCT Instituto Mexicano de las Cominicaciones
SECOFI
SEP Consejo del Sistema Nacional de Educacion Techologica
Telefonos de Mexico
UNAM Direccion General de Servicios de Computo Acadomico
UNAM Instituto de Astronmia
Universidad Anahuac
Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana
Universidad de las Americas Pueblas
Universidad Iberoamericana

There are currently three active TCP/IP links between Mexico and the
United States.  Two are satellite links from the NSFNET backbone node at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado
to the UNAM network at Mexico City and the ITESM network at the Estado
de Mexico campus.  The UNAM and ITESM networks connect a number of their
campuses.  The third TCP/IP link is between the University of Texas in
San Antonio, Texas to the Monterrey Campus of ITESM at 9600 bps. This
third link will be replaced with a 56 Kbps link between the Monterrey
campus of ITESM and the NSFNET backbone node at Rice University in
Houston, Texas.  They are also planning for a link between the CICESE in
Ensenada and the NSFNET backbone node at the San Diego Supercomputer
Center.  The Technical Committee of the RedMex is working on
coordinating their national network routing and links to the NSFNET to
provide reliable links with automatic backup routing.

================================================================
011.60 Argentina by John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]>

Synopsis of Networks in Argentina

Argentina has connections to all the usual worldwide networks, including
the Internet, BITNET, UUCP, and USENET. In addition, there is much use
of Delphi and CompuServe. The main language used on all the Argentine
networks is Spanish, which may explain the apparent lack of traffic from
Argentina on the worldwide networks.

Several names are used for networks within Argentina: RAN (Red Academica
Nacional, or National Academic Network), RECYT (Red de Ciencia y
Tecnologi'a or Science and Technology Network), Red Argentina de Salud,
and ARNET (Argentine Science Network). These are all intertwined, and
there appears to be no consensus on the exact distinctions among them.

ARNET, the Argentine Science Network, is a national science and research
network connected to the Internet as class B network 140.191. The link
is by satellite from the machine <atina.ar> in Buenos Aires through New
York City to the University of Maryland, connecting to SURANET, an
NSFNET regional. The effective bandwidth is 9600 bps. This link is
funded under United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Project ARG-
86-026. Part of the costs are apparently also supported by the U.S.
National Science Foundation (NSF). The link is managed by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (MREC) and the Secretariat of Science and Technology
(SECYT).

Most of the internal links for the other networks named above are by
UUCP, either over dialups or over the national X.25 network, ARPAC.
There are several BITNET nodes, accessible through a dialup RSCS
connection to Chile.

RAN (Red Academica Nacional, or National Academic Network) for the early
UUCP star network centered around host <dcfcen> at the Departamento de
Computacion de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales.

RECYT is a name used by SECYT, the Secretariat of Science and
Technology, or Secretari'a de Ciencia y Tecnologi'a, for the current
UUCP network. For economic reasons, 60% of the machines on the network
are MS-DOS machines. Most connections are carried by UUCP over X.25 over
ARPAC. UUCP is used for all of UNIX, MS-DOS, and VMS. Effective link
speeds vary from 300 bps to 9600 bps.

Red Argentina de Salud is the Argentine Health Net, a UUCP network
managed by several organizations, particularly the Children's Hospital
of Buenos Aires, Hospital de Ninos ``Dr. Ricardo Gutierrez.'' There are
about 160 connected institutions, including hospitals and health
centers, faculties of medicine, and government offices. The traffic is
about 10 Megabytes per day. All the connections are by dialup telephone,
or ARPAC.

There has been some confusion within the country about these different
networks. This is changing, as the various historical Argentine
networking projects coordinate more closely as they grow. Each has its
own goals and political issues, but all are finding ways to cooperate.

*This is a synopsis of an article that  appeared in the November 1991
issue of Matrix  News, the monthly paper newsletter of Matrix
Information and Directory Services, Inc.  Copyright ⌐ 1991 Matrix, Inc.

================================================================
012.10 Nordic National and International Networks by Bernhard Stockman
<[e-mail]>

NORDUnet was created during 1988 to interconnect the national  academic
networks of the five Nordic countries. The network is star-shaped and
centered around Stockholm, Sweden, based on bridging technology with
dedicated routers for the supported layer three services (TCP/IP,
DECNET, NJE and X.25).  For connectivity outside the Nordic area there
is connections to Amsterdam and to the Cornell University in the USA.
The bandwidth was initially 64 Kbps one most of the NORDUnet lines.

The topology has been kept since then but the bandwidth has been
upgraded to between 128 and 256 Kbps on the NORDUnet internal and
external lines.

Today we see a changes on both technical and organizational  levels.
National Nordic academic networks and the NORDUnet are changing towards
different technologies and higher bandwidths. The reason is that today
layer 3 routing technology is capable of providing most of the offered
services which was not the case when these networks were originally
designed.

The commercialization of IP services has been very significant in  the
Scandinavian countries. During the recent two years three commercial
companies have been formed. The Finnish Datanet together with the two
Swedish SWIPnet and TIPnet, has started to provide IP service on the
Nordic market. These efforts have been possible due to close
collaboration with Nordic carriers.

One consequence of this commercialization for the academic networks is
an increased interest in the networking experience and know-how within
the academic community. What we now see in the Nordic area is the
formations of collaborative agreements between the academic and the
commercial networks. Telecom companies provide bandwidth and technology,
the academic networks provide competence in running the networks.

This is a rather new situation, there are no well established practices
around formation of such agreements and much time is accordingly spent
on finding ways and methods for such collaborations.

From the academic networking point of view such collaboration  could be
very beneficial. Telecommunication tariffs in the Nordic countries, as
within most of Europe, are a significant part of the networking budget.
A collaboration with the carriers will give possibilities for higher
line capacities then else would have been possible.

This does not just concern the NORDUnet but is a very visible  trend
within the Nordic national networks. For example, the Swedish University
Network (SUNET) is now installing an upgrade from 64 Kbps to 1 Mbps on
main connections as a consequence of collaboration with one of the
Swedish telcos. Another initiative is the planning of a 34 Mbps network
interconnecting Swedish super-computer centers.  In Norway a 34 Mbps
network is being installed as a joint effort between the Norwegian
academic network and the telecom company.

This Nordic trend of commercialization has similarities with the
situation in the USA and we will probably experience similar problems
within the Nordic area. A promising Nordic initiative is the discussions
around the creation of a "neutral traffic exchange point". The intention
is to provide one single exchange point where commercial and academic
networks may interconnect. Interest for similar solutions has been
expressed from US and Pacific network representatives. Seen on a broader
perspective, the formation of such interconnections at well chosen
points in the world could be the cornerstones in a general purpose
robust Internet core.

================================================================
012.15 Finland by Petri Ojala <[e-mail]> and Harri Salminen
<[e-mail]>

FUNET, the Finnish University and Research Network, is a project
established in 1984 by the Ministry of Education.  FUNET provides
Internet-connectivity to the academic and research community.

The network is based on cisco multiprotocol routers with redundant
leased line topology from 64 kbit/s to 2 Mbit/s which will be replaced
by public Frame Relay service during the spring 1992.  The supported
protocols are TCP/IP, NJE, DECNET and OSI CLNS.  In co-operation with
Telecom Finland three single mode fiber FDDI rings interconnecting FUNET
sites have been installed. FUNET operates various application level
gateways and services including the largest public archive server
nic.funet.fi in the Internet.

The Finnish Unix Users' Group, FUUG, provides EUnet mail and news access
to commercial companies and colleges.  The connections are mostly UUCP
connections using high-speed dial-up modems and ISDN.  InterEUnet TCP/IP
services will be available using leased lines and dial-up connections in
January 1992.  FUUG has an agreement with FUNET to utilize the FUNET IP
backbone for national connectivity.

Both FUNET and FUUG use the Nordic University and Research Network,
NORDUnet, for their main international connectivity.

================================================================
012.25 Ireland by Mike Norris* <[e-mail]>

The year 1991 saw a major advance for academic and research computing in
Ireland, in the form of the HEAnet-2 project. The seven member
universities of the Higher Education Authority are now interconnected by
a new 64 Kbps multiprotocol switched data network. The major protocols
in use are TCP/IP, DECnet, and the U.K. Coloured Book protocols, and
these are running successfully between the campus LANs.

HEAnet is connected to the European IP network by means of an IXI link
between University College, Dublin, and the NIKHEF router in Amsterdam.
NSFnet access is via EASInet and their EASIgate at CERN. The primary
domain name server for IE has now been located in Ireland, and name
servers for domains in each of the seven universities are now running.
Interior and exterior gateway protocols are running on routers at each
of the sites. Thus, the Irish universities, and their teaching and
research communities, are well placed when it comes to Internet
connectivity.

In inter-connecting the campus networks, and in providing access between
HEAnet and the wider Internet, we are grateful for the co-operation and
guidance of many people, particularly the help of colleagues in RIPE,
NSF, EASInet and other bodies. Without their help the HEAnet-2 project
could not have been completed on time.

*Computing Services University College Dublin

================================================================
012.30 Germany by Klaus Ullmann <[e-mail]>

Service Provision for the Research Community in Germany

In Germany the research community is organized on a federal basis, which
means that no central funding body for networking exists. As there are
no longer any regulatory barriers for service provision from the
national PTT, there is more than one organisation in the research
network field.

The biggest one is the DFN-Verein, an association of 250 institutional
members(all German universities as well as research labs and various
industries).  Through this organisation the federal ministry for
research and technology has funded (amongst other projects) the
installation of a national connectivity network with 9.6 kbps, 64 kbps
and 2 Mbps access points.

A data volume of about 120 Gbyte per month is being transferred; charges
for the access points are based on the capacities used and on a fixed
price per access point. On the basis of this connectivity network and to
a lesser degree through other means (i.e., leased lines, public X.25
network and ISDN service) the DFN-association,  the German branch of
EUNET and the Karlsruhe-based XLINK group provide a couple of services,
namely OSI-, EARN- and IP-services (DFN) and IP service (EUNET, XLINK).
All these services provide (through different means) international
connectivity as well.

In future editions of the ISOC newsletter these services will be
described in more detail.

================================================================
012.30.2 Germany-Users by Ruediger Volk <[e-mail]-
dortmund.de>

The German User Community

Efforts are underway to keep Internet services up and under control of
the best representation of the German Internet user community we can
identify.  This is driving an effort to create some formal
representation of the community at the national level.  On 6 December
Friday, a meeting will be held in Munich to establish a German Internet
users' group, which will be called "Deutsche Interessengemeinschaft
Internet" or for short "DIGI".

The invitation to this meeting so far resulted in a quite overwhelming
response:  more than 100 participants from academia, large and small
companies, and even several large and important public sector
organizations (several branches of the PTT and the mail service,
chambers of commerce, etc - all expecting to become large scale IP
users!) signed up for the meeting.

There are three areas of possible activities of DIGI:

helping users (i.e. the administrators of networks connected to the
Internet or just using Internet technology) get information; help
exchange of experience etc.

funding and caring for a German NIC, housing administration of domain
DE, running a delegated registry in close cooperation with RIPE NCC

help to create and maintain a competitive and fair market of IP services
with proper interconnectivity for all parties.

Due to the international scope of Internet Society and IETF DIGI will
not need to care much for the "developers".  Nevertheless DIGI is
intended and needs to keep all sectors of the Internet community
involved; particular emphasis will be on the users (i.e. network
administrators).

DIGI related information is available by anon. ftp on host
deins.Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE (192.35.64.34) under Directory /DIGI.
Of course you will see a lot of German text there; documents of possible
interest are: /DIGI/meetings/ziele. ascii and (less interesting)
/DIGI/meetings/ einladung-911206.ascii .

The general DIGI mailing list is [e-mail]
(with digi-request for the list maintainer); most messages will be in
German - but you can assume readers to understand English. To get in
touch with DIGI please address [e-mail]-Dortmund.
DE .

Parties involved with planning DIGI certainly are used to act
cooperatively and have been involved in the global networking community
for a considerable time.  We hope to spread and extend the spirit of
cooperation we enjoy at the global level within our country. Of course
we also will care for cooperation with related activities in other
countries or on international levels.

*Universitaet Dortmund, Informatik IRB (DE NIC) in Dortmund, Germany.

================================================================
012.42 Italy by Stefano Trumpy*
<[e-mail]>

Organization.  GARR is the Harmonization Group for Research Networks
operating under the Ministry of the University, Scientific and
Technological Research (MURST). GARR is also the name of the Italian
Research Network which is currently conducted by the founder
organizations: three public research nationwide Institutions i.e. CNR
(National Council for Research), ENEA (National Energy Institute), INFN
(High Energy Physics Institute) and by four consortia offering computing
resources to Italian universities, i.e, CINECA, CILEA, CSATA and NIC.
The aim of GARR is to interconnect the Italian research and academic
networks and to coordinate inter country connections.

Architecture.  The backbone of the network provides four TDM channels
over 2 Mbps lines, carrying IP, DECnet, SNA and X.25 traffic; the latter
protocol is carrying the traffic destined to the European backbone IXI
activated by the EUREKA-COSINE project.

Addressing.  All computers on GARR makes use of the Internet - style
domain addresses. The top-level domain is IT for Italy. Information on
Italian domains is available on-line at the RIPE NIC; use the command:
whois -h nic.eu.net 'domain name'. Queries about mailing to people in
Italy could be sent to [e-mail].

Future plans.  The backbone is built up by the original seven primary
sites located in Milano (CILEA), Bologna (CINECA and CNAF-INFN), Pisa
(CNUCE-CNR), Roma (ENEA and NIC-INFN) and Bari (CSATA). Recently
University of Napoli joined the backbone.

The MURST also funded a project to connect all the universities in
Italy; the major ones will be extensions of the backbone, while the
others will be attached with 64 kbps lines to the primary sites. GARR
will continue to maintain connections to the major research networks,
including RIPE/EASInet/ Internet, BITNET/EARN, EUnet, HEPnet and other
networks.

*CNUCE - Istituto del CNR in Pisa - Italy

================================================================
012.43 Spain by Jose Barbera <[e-mail]>

Organization.  Established in 1991, *RedIRIS* is the National Research
and Academic Network organization sponsored by the Higher Education and
Research funding bodies to provide services for universities and
research centers in Spain.  The network is managed by Fundesco, a non-
profit organization dealing with Information Technology and
Telecommunication activities.  Fundesco has been involved in the
definition and implementation of the initial networking program along
the preceding years.  Operation of various services is done either by
Fundesco's Technical Team or else by subcontracting them to a suitable
organization.

Policy.  In order to create a nation-wide homogeneous networking
environment, RedIRIS fosters the use of open communication protocols.
OSI standards are preferred when reliable products to implement RedIRIS
application services exist.  Otherwise, the equivalent TCP/IP services
are used.  Some OSI services are being introduced by an experimental
pilot phase before full-extension is reached.  In addition, RedIRIS also
takes into account specific needs from user groups for proprietary
protocols, provided they are cost-effective and technically feasible.

Services.  All application services are supported on a 64 Kbps. X.25
backbone linking the main R&D sites; connection to the PPSDN is also
provided. Over the common backbone infrastructure an IP network service
is "tunneled"; thus LAN interconnection is possible on WAN facilities.
In a similar way a CLNS (ISO IP) service is provided for experimental
purposes at this stage.

Remote terminal service is accomplished by XXX and TELNET; there is also
a central XXX/TELNET gateway.  MHS X.400 is widely used for electronic
mail; RFC 987 conversion and application level mail gateways are
provided as well to communicate with non-OSI networks. For file
transfer, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is extensively used.  There
is a central FTAM/FTP gateway as part of an FTAM pilot service.  The
X.500 Directory service is being implemented on an experimental basis.
Over the common X.25 backbone, DECNET services (required by the HEP
community) as well as NJE/IP services (typical of EARN) are also
supported.

All OSI services are managed in coordination with the COSINE Project.

International cooperation.  International communications are established
through the COSINE IXI network and recently through EASInet.  RedIRIS
has joined the Ebone 92 initiative for international IP and CLNS
services.

RedIRIS (IRIS-Net) has been part of the Internet since 1990.  Access to
the North-American Internet is done via the UK-US intercontinental fat-
pipe.  For Internet services in Europe, RedIRIS cooperates with RIPE.

RedIRIS is the National Member representing Spain in the RARE
Association and participates in the COSINE Project.

RedIRIS collaborates with other international networks such as EUnet and
SPAN through the corresponding national branches.  Agreements to share
common transport infrastructure have been reached with them.

================================================================
012.44 Greece by Kostas Karanassios* <[e-mail]>

PATRASnet: An Academic & Research Internetwork in the region of Patras

PATRASnet became operational in early November'91 and it is administered
by the Network Support Team of the Computer Technology Institute (CTI).
The core of PATRASnet is CTInet, the Local Area Network of CTI, which
provides connectivity to national and international Academic and
Research Networks for about 20 LANs (almost 1000 nodes spread around the
Campus of the University of Patras as well as in the region of Patras).

Computer Technology Institute (CTI), is a non-profit academic and
research organization which is devoted to research and development (R&D)
in the field of Computer Science and Technology. CTI operates in close
association with the University of Patras and in particular with the
Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics. It also participates
in joint projects with many other academic and research institutions
around the world. CTI is supervised by the Ministry of National
Education and Cults.

During the last 6 years, CTI has played a key role in the Academic and
Research Networking in the region of Patras. In order to fulfill the
high demands of users for networking facilities, it has established a
highly heterogeneous (Ethernet based) Local Area Network (CTInet) which
- for the time being - consists of about 200 nodes, using the TCP/IP
protocol suite as the main internetworking solution.

Other protocol families i.e. DECnet, AppleTalk, Novell SPX/IPX are also
used to fulfill application and project oriented needs. CTInet is also
connected to international academic and research networks such as
EARN/BITNET and EUnet (UUCP) as well as to X.25 networks (the national
Hellaspac and ARIADNEt/IXI which is the Greek Part of the COSINE
project). That is why it stands for the communications service center of
PATRASnet.

For the time being the regional LANs of PATRASnet are connected to
CTInet via 9.6 Kbps point-to-point serial links (either TCP/IP/SLIP or
DECnet/DDCMP). Where possible (mainly due to performance limitations)
TCP/IP is tunneled into the DECnet links. The main network services that
PATRASnet currently provides are: remote login, file transfer, remote
printing, electronic mail and news.

Needless to say that a great effort has been devoted to:

the integration of these services as well as to the modification (where
possible) of some services in order for local needs to be satisfied
(mainly problems in communication that arise from the different Greek
character sets).

the training of users in order to use efficiently any service provided.

From the CTI's point of view, the main goal of the above activities is
to make the academic and research community of Patras able to share
valuable information and data worldwide and at the same time acquire:

Very good technical know-how in network building, integration of
services in a highly heterogeneous environment, development of
distributed applications where services cannot be provided adequately
using commercial products.

Very good experience as a network service provider as well as
disseminating any technical know-how acquired.

Future plans.

By the end of January 1992, two recently purchased Cisco multiprotocol
routers (one AGS+ with 4 serial and 12 Ethernet ports and one IGS/R) and
one Cabletron IRBM/MAAC, 12-port multimedia bridge, are going to support
both the internal and external communications of CTInet and PATRASnet.

Having acquired official Class B Internet addresses (150.140.0.0) we
expect connection to the Internet in early 1992 in order to provide
official Internet services to our users. Our connection will be
established through the ARIADNEt (X.25) network and then through the
network of the FORTH Institute in Heraklio, Crete.

We aim to provide network services of high quality, following recent
trends and advances in computer communications services/technology while
adhering to related de-facto and international standards.

*Network Manager, Computer Technology Institute (CTI), Patras, Greece

================================================================
012.50 Central & Eastern Europe, Generally by Milan Sterba
<[e-mail]>

Internet networking in Central and Eastern Europe; and is most advanced
in  Poland where a primary name server and more than 20 machines are
actually connected to Internet. Czechoslovakia and Hungary are now
running only experimental connections and a plan currently exists to
connect Baltic republics to Internet over Nordunet. A report can be
found on anonymous ftp on <mcsun.eu.net>.

A significant expansion of IP facilities in ECE countries is expected
during 1992. Academic IP backbone projects are now becoming a reality in
Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.

Unfortunately, the process is slowed down by bad and expensive
telecommunication infrastructure, and lack of finances. The COCOM
restriction rules do not seem to be a problem for these countries, but
the administrative procedures to obtain export licenses are still very
slow for certain types of equipment (e.g., IP routers, RISC machines,
NetBlazers).

Coordination in network strategies and common approach to the above
mentioned problems is a necessity. The general mailing list for ECE
countries international networking is [e-mail].

ECE countries urgently need information and contacts to be able to
quickly expand Internet services. Money for network workshops,
conferences and coordination and task forces meetings is still a
problem. Several responsive initiatives are attempting to deal with the
problems, such as NetSchool in Trieste, RIPE, EUnet and EARN support.
National initiatives by DFN-WIN, INRIA France, ACONET Austria etc. tend
to help in solving national and international infrastructure.

================================================================
012.54 Yugoslavia by Borka Jerman-Blazic <[e-mail]>

Yugoslav Network for the Academic Community (YUNAC)

Facilities:
Directory services
Electronic mail
File transfer
Electronic Conferencing

Organization and management.  YUNAC is the major networking organization
in Yugoslavia.  It was set up in 1990 after two years of networking
activities.  Its aim is to care for the services provided to end users.
Members of YUNAC include Universities and Research Institutes from the
Academic and Commercial world.  The network is managed by a management
committee elected by the members of YUNAC Assembly.  YUNAC is organized
as limited company. YUNAC is a national member of RARE (the European
Association of Research Networks) and representative of Yugoslavia in
COSINE and RIPE - The European Internet Network.  YUNAC is naming
authority for TLD.YU.

Infrastructure.  YUNAC uses as a communication infrastructure leased
lines (mainly 9.6 Kbits and some 48 Kbps) and the Public Packet Switched
Data Network (PPSDN).  This infrastructure is used for multiprotocol
services: DECnet (Phase IV), X.400, and NJE.  All YUNAC nodes with X.400
services provide gateway services for electronic mail to the DECNET
nodes.  The number of connected hosts is cca 300.

YUNAC is connected via a leased 64 Kbps line to the International X.25
Infrastructure (IXI), run by RARE and COSINE.  The connection is
implemented on a leased line between Wien and Ljubljana, Slovenia. The
switch and WEP are connected to the PPSDN of Yugoslavia - JUPAK. The
switch and WEP (Well Known Entry Point) are located in the YUNAC
headquarters at the Jozef Stefan Institut in Ljubljana.  The connection
to Internet is currently available via lines and gateway services
offered by DFN.  The YUNAC switch provides a TCP/IP over X.25 connection
to the European Internet Network (RIPE).

Services.  The services offered to the end users include: electronic
mail, computer conferencing, transfer of data, directory services,
remote login, and connection to the international networks EARN/BITNET,
EUNET/USENET, and the Internet (US) via gateways.  A regular information
service connecting Yugoslav users abroad to the domestic source of
information via electronic mail and distribution lists is also working
well (Rok Press, BEST, etc.).

Other internationally connected networks in Yugoslavia.  In Yugoslavia,
there are two additional networking activities which are part of
international networks (i.e., EARN and EUNET).  The entry point to
EARN/BITNET network is located in Beograd.  This entry point (an IBM
machine located at the Statistical Office of Serbia) is connected with a
leased 9.6 Kbps line to Linz, Austria.  The EARN entry point in Beograd
provides gateway services for electronic mail to DECNET nodes through a
leased line to a mvax machine (with PMDF and JNET sw) located on the
premises of the Electrotechnical Faculty of Beograd.

The EUNET backbone for Yugoslavia is located in Ljubljana at
Electrotechnical faculty of Ljubljana University.  The backbone host
uses PPSDN and dial facilities for connecting the EUNET backbone in
Europe (Amsterdam).  Gateway services are not provided.  Other EUNET
hosts in the country use mainly UUCP and dial up facilities.

The Slovenian PTT is also offering mail box services to commercial users
on their host with X.400 facilities.  This site is connected to the
YUNAC WEP.

Addressing.  All computers on YUNAC with X.400 facilities use a X.400
address with an appropriate Internet-style domain addresses mapping.
That is:

X.400:  s=user/o=institution/p=ac/a=mail/c=yu
Internet: [e-mail]
Decnet: user@host
EARN:   user@host

Warning!!  Recently YUNAC had adopted a new addressing scheme.  It will
be announced in the near future (implementation to start starting
December 1.)  In RFC 822, the form will disappear "ac.mail" !!

Future plans.  The Domain Name System (DNS) for .YU was set up recently
(Internet address 153.5.1.1).  The current DNS for .YU from the US will
be moved in Europe.  Currently, an X.500 project is going on in
cooperation with the Slovenian PTT.  Implementation to be offered to the
users next year.

================================================================
012.55 Hungary by Laszlo Csaba <[e-mail]>

Since 1988 the Information Infrastructure System (IIF) has been
providing national and international network services for the Hungarian
R&D community.  The "Academic" segment of the system is the HUNGARNET
(Hungarian Academic Research Network ).

At present the system is based on a X.25 data network. The higher level
services like e-mail, bulletin board, terminal access to databases are
provided for several thousand users of 200 institutions.  The Hungarian
segments of the EUnet and the EARN networks are providing e-mail access
through a gateway of the national mail system.

In October 1991, an IBM 3090 mainframe was installed in the framework of
IBM's Academic Initiative. The computer will be an EARN node . The
community of high energy physicists is connected to HEPnet via CERN.

In October by sharing the EARN line the first TCP/IP connection was
established. The COCOM limitations for Eastern Europe are gradually
disappearing. As a result of this in the near future we are going to
install a national pilot IP network. A 64 kbps international digital
leased line has already been ordered and the CISCO routers, UNIX servers
and workstations are being delivered or are waiting for delivery.

================================================================
012.58 Lithuania by Jonas Mockus  <[e-mail]> [in the
near future <[e-mail]>]

Lithuania is experimenting using several e-mail systems.  You can
presently get assistance in using the network at the following
addresses.

X.400
S=postmaster/OU=skailab/O=mii/PRMD=litnetADMD=litpakC=lt/@gateway.uninet
t.no

Internet
[e-mail]

RELCOM
[e-mail]

Later, Lithuania will get its own code "LT".  Then you will get help at
the following addresses.

X.400
C=lt;ADMD=litpak;PRMD=litnet;O=mii;OU=skailab;S=postmaster

Internet
[e-mail]

Lithuania is a full country member of EARN, with SUEARN Moscow node as
the nearest connection.  Lithuania also takes part in NORDUNET Baltics
program.

Main Lithuanian EARN nodes are:

Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4, Vilnius, 232600.
Contact: Mr.  Petras Sulcas

Kaunas Technological University, Computing Center, V.Juro 50, Kaunas
233028.  Contact: Dr.  Aleksandras Targamadze

*Prof at the Institute of Math. & Informatics in Vilnius Lithuania and
representative for the Lithuanian EARN.

================================================================
012.70.3 USS GLASNET by Anatoly Voronov <[e-mail]>

GlasNet is a non-profit, non-governmental telecommunications network
established in Moscow and made fully operational in June, 1991 by the
Institute for Global Communications (IGC), which operates PeaceNet,
EcoNet and ConflictNet in the U.S., and the International Foundation
based in Washington, DC. GlasNet is run by an entirely Soviet staff,
with the support of American technicians at IGC in San Francisco.

Through a host computer in Moscow running Interactive UNIX system V/386
r. 3.2, GlasNet offers inexpensive electronic mail and conferencing
capabilities to individuals and organizations in what is called now USS
(Union of Sovereign States).

Its primary objective is to provide communications services to new,
citizens-based groups including human rights activists, educators,
journalists, computer enthusiasts, environmentalists, and entrepreneurs
that have emerged in the former USSR to challenge the monopoly of state-
sponsored organizations. GlasNet meets this need for easy and
inexpensive information exchange among groups and citizens within the
USSR by offering electronic mail (e-mail) and conferencing services,
with user fees charged exclusively in rubles.

Glasnet has gateways to more than 70 networks worldwide.

Glasnet proved its usefulness during the coup of August 19- 21, staying
on-line all the time and helping the Russian and foreign users to
exchange relevant information about the events in Moscow (see Tales of
the Electronic Resistance by  John C.Ausland, International Herald
Tribune, 25 Sep 1991).

In order to strengthen its financial self-sufficiency and at the same
time keep the rates for the pro bono users as low as possible, Glasnet
plans to implement new facilities, such as:

GlasMail (messages sent by email are posted, or faxed, or even sent by
telegraph to the addressee in the USS, an acknowledgment can be
delivered to the sender)

GlasNet Liaison (on user's request person or organization in Russia is
notified that somebody wants to establish communications with them),
GlasNet Money Transfer (delivery of small sums of hard currency to USS
residents indicated by the user)

Glasnet Remote Secretary (may be interesting for those who can't afford
an office in Moscow, but need to resolve their problems with USS
counterparts)

GlasNet Escort (the user emails to the Glasnet office the information
about his arrival in Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, and is escorted in
a taxi from the airport).

Glasnet has 170 users as on 1 November 1991. 20-30 new users are
registered monthly.

A partial list of organizations using GlasNet.

Democratic Information Exchange, Tallinn, Estonia
Catholic Information Center, Moscow
Interlegal Research Center , Moscow
Physics Society, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine
Transnational Radical Party, Moscow
Ecological Research Center, Obninsk (Moscow region)
Soviet-American Humanitarian Initiative, Moscow
The Lake Baikal Institute, Ulan Ude
Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, Alma-Ata - Moscow
Human Rights Project Group, Moscow
Leningrad Academy of Sciences Ecology Group
Moscow News Weekly
Georgia Greens Movement
Protein Research Center (Puschino, Moscow region)
Ecology Association (Kamchatka)

The Glasnet address is: Yaroslavskaya ulitsa 8, korpus 3, suite 111;
129164 Moscow Russia

*Glasnet Executive Director is Anatoly Voronov.  The Glasnet USA
Director is David Caulkins <[e-mail]>

================================================================
013.10 Tunesia by Nejib Abida <[e-mail]>

Tunisian Academic and research network.  Network facilities provide
electronic mail, file transfer, and remote interactive access.  Bitnet,
X.400, and Internet addresses are supported.

Tunisia, through the research center called IRSIT, is making effort to
connect universities and number of research organisations. Today, there
is three international node at IRSIT (Institut Regional des Sciences
Informatiques et des Telecommunications) Tunis, Tunesia which are a
EARN/BITNET node, X.400 mail facilities and Internet node. Users outside
IRSIT are connected to IRSIT via X.25 and dial-up modem.

IRSIT uses a x.25 public network to support NJE for EARN/BITNET, TCP/IP
for Internet and X.400 for X.400 mail facilities.

Future plans include connecting universities and research centers as
nodes, using a leased line and multiprotocol routers to share BITNET and
INTERNET traffic.

IRSIT is making an effort to establish international nodes in other
North African countries.  Algeria and Morocco as members of EARN, will
be connected to this network, and contacts with EMI, in Morocco, and
CERIST in Algeria have been made in order to undertake the first steps
toward the establishment of a research Network for the Maghreb
(Maghrebnet).

*IRSIT (Institut Regional des Sciences Informatiques et des
Telecommunications) network manager and responsible for developing the
research and academic network in Tunisia.

================================================================
013.30 Israel by Hank Nussbacher <[e-mail]. il>

Israel currently allows only academic institutions and R&D not-for-
profit organizations to connect to the Israeli portion of the Internet
called ILAN. This is a government limitation that we are attempting to
change over the next few months.

In October 1991 our second 64 kbs IP circuit became operational to CERN
in Switzerland. This link is via a new undersea fiberoptic cable called
EMOS which only became operational in March 1991. Our first 64 kbs link
is via a satellite circuit to PSI in the USA. The two IP links are
terminated at different sites in Israel so as to provide maximum
"disaster recovery" planning.
--------------------------------------------------------
Between the two international circuits, we move between 10-15 Gb/s of
data per month.
--------------------------------------------------------
On a national level, we use 64 kb/s leased line circuits routing IP,
DECNET and Appletalk using Cisco routers.

We have placed a request to upgrade all our national links to 128 kb/s
but due to PTT infrastructure problems, this won't be accomplished until
the second quarter of 1992. We use IGRP on a national level for optimal
routing between our seven Cisco backbone. On a national level, we move
approximately 40 Gbit per month.

================================================================
014.10.2 Sub-Sahara, generally by Bob Barad <bob.barad@f151.n109.z1.
fidonet.org>

In this, my first contribution to Internet News, I can only attempt a
broad overview. More detailed reports will follow. Mike Lawrie
<[e-mail]> just completed a tour of the USA during which he
spread the news that email is flowing in Africa. A dedicated 9600 baud
line is now operating between the ac.ZA domain host at Rhodes University
in Grahamstown, South Africa and Portland, Oregon, USA.

Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe are connected to Rhodes by
dial-up uucp and/or z5.fidonet.ORG. Zimbabwe has requested registration
of the ZW domain.

Pascal Renaud <[e-mail]> reports uucp links from orstom.FR
domain to Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Togo, and
Cameroon.

The NGONET and ESANET projects are providing access for African NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) and universities using fidonet software
connecting with gateways to apc.ORG domain. Current sites include Kenya,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Please send questions or news for future articles to me at Baobab
Communications or to the "The Baobab" BBS, reachable via modem at +1 202
296 9790 in Washington, DC, USA

================================================================
014.90.1 South Africa by F. Jacot Guillarmod <[e-mail]>

There are several networks in South Africa.  The most visible is Uninet-
ZA, a research and academic network that links participating
Universities and research organisations via low speed TCP/IP trunks.
There is also a loose confederation of dialup uucp sites, known
collectively as Sanet, which links together private individuals and
commercial undertakings in order to exchange Usenet news and electronic
mail.  Gateways between Uninet-ZA and Sanet exist, but are unofficial
and experimental at this time..

Other networks include Fidonet, which has a substantial presence (and to
which Uninet-ZA owes a considerable debt of gratitude for services
rendered); there is WorkNet, which links up non-Governmental
Organisations (NGO's) in South and Southern Africa; and finally, several
of the larger commercial organisations (such as the SA Wool Board) have
extensive but isolated TCP/IP based WAN's.

Recently, Uninet-ZA established a dialup uucp connection to provide
email to the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, and is in the process of
setting up a similar link to the University of Namibia in Windhoek.
There is potential for converting these rather unsatisfying low tech
solutions into dedicated TCP/IP links in the future.

Networking in South Africa took a giant leap forward in late November,
when a dedicated TCP/IP link to the United States was commissioned at
Rhodes University in Grahamstown.  This link connects Uninet-ZA to
RainNet in Portland, Oregon, and from there into Alternet, and finally
into the NSFNET.

Before this dedicated link was installed, connection to the Internet was
indirect, via UUCP dialup between two UNIX systems acting as gateways
between Uninet-Za and the Internet.  Traffic volumes on this link had
been showing continuous growth, and the cutover point, where it became
cheaper to rent a dedicated circuit than to continue with dialup, were
reached many months ago.

The process of cutting over from dialup UUCP to a dedicated TCP/IP link
has not been trouble free.  The link itself is a 9600 baud analogue
circuit, but use of V32.bis modems increases throughput to an effective
14.4 kb/s.  The routers on either end are normal PC XT's, running the
public domain ka9q package.  On a physical level, the link is remarkably
stable.  The cutover was planned in several stages so as to integrate
the Domain Name universes as painlessly as possible.  The first phase
was to change the transport from UUCP to SMTP between the original
gateway machines, while leaving Uninet-ZA and it's dummy root domain
isolated.  The switch over went smoothly.

What was totally unexpected was the traffic volume.  Within six hours of
the link being in place, there was a mail storm, consisting of replies
from mail based archive servers.  The feeding frenzy had begun.  Within
the blink of an eye, there were tens of megabytes of electronic mail
queued up, and more pouring in while users all over South Africa
determinedly tried to import the entire Simtel-20 archives as soon as
possible.  The fix was to increase the number of machines acting as
gateways on either side of the link, and to artificially filter the
'worst' of the traffic until the situation stabilized.  In all of this,
surprisingly, the bottleneck was on the gateway machines themselves, and
not on the bandwidth of the link.

The next phase of the integration was to ensure that RIP was propagating
effectively between Uninet-ZA and RainNet - a painless process.
Slightly more painful, in terms of paperwork, was providing detailed
lists of IP network numbers so that the router blocks into Alternet and
NSFNET could be lifted.

The final phase of this exercise, which is in progress, is to merge the
Domain Name universes without committing the unpardonable sin of
propagating bogons.  While intricate, this is proceeding smoothly, and
by the time you read this, there will be complete TCP/IP connectivity.

Of course, this won't be the end of the story.  There never is with
networking.

*Computing Centre - Rhodes University - Grahamstown

================================================================
014.90.2 South Africa by Mike Lawrie <[e-mail]>

A dedicated line has at last been installed between Rhodes University in
Grahamstown, and RAINet at Randy Bush in Portland OR. This line runs
TCP/IP protocols, and it is now possible to access computers on the
Uninet-za research network. Similarly, access to the Internet is at long
last possible. Activities at present are concentrating on the final
phase of cutting over the local Domain Name Service in order to
integrate into the Internet's root servers. This network is a project of
the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) in South Africa.

The line operates at 9600 baud, and uses KA9Q on PCs at each end. Modems
are Penrils, running at 14.4 kb/s. RAINet links via Alternet to the
Internet. It was clear from before the line was ordered that it would
overload, and plans were laid to replace it with a 56 Kb/s link, in all
likelihood in March 92. Currently Uninet-za enjoys some generous
temporary concessions from Alternet and NSFNet.

Plans are in hand to upgrade the internal Uninet-za trunks to operate at
64 Kb/s on digital circuits. Choice of routers is being debated - there
are serious financial problems regarding the prices of routers if bought
from the South African agents, and this is now the stumbling block. With
high-speed routers, the existing 7500 kilometers of Uninet-za trunks can
be reduced to about 4500 kilometers, with resultant savings and a
greatly improved resilience.

There are currently 12-odd University and research sites connected via
TCP/IP, with a further three with immediate plans to connect.
Internetting is done using multiplexers on the digital links to give
virtual circuits of 9600 or 19200 bit/s between sites, and PC Route for
routers.

Apart from the tcp/ip sites, there are several mail-only sites, within
South Africa and in the region. Namibia has found a second uucp user, a
link to three uucp systems has been installed to the University of
Zimbabwe in Harare, and a Fidonet channel to the University of Zambia is
undergoing tests. The ZImbabwean Mango Fidonet site has established
reliable email links to the Uninet-za network as well, and uses the
Uninet-za gateway to the USA.

There is every likelihood of links being established in the near future
to Lesotho and to Mozambique. Due to the costs of dedicated circuits, IP
connectivity will not be available initially.

Several South African commercial sites are interested in connectivity to
the Internet.  Current Telkom regulations make this very difficult. The
SANET UUCP network continues to be very active - this is the home of
some highly competent commercially-based netters.

* Director Computing Services, Rhodes University, South Africa (Rhodes
University condemns racism and racial segregation  and strives to
maintain a strong tradition of non-discrimination with regard to race
and gender in the constitution of its student body, in the selection and
promotion of its staff and in its administration.)

================================================================
015.10.1 Japan-WIDE by  Jun Murai <[e-mail]>

Japan(WIDE).  The Widely Integrated Distributed Environment (WIDE)
project was initiated in July 1987 by a group of researchers led by
Professor Jun Murai. The project was designed to provide a testbed for
the development of large-scale distributed systems technologies, and was
initially constructed by interconnecting several campus networks. The
WIDE Internet has since provided a basis for Japanese computer science
researchers to gain practical experience in advanced networking. The
WIDE project operates as a non-government network with funding support
from about 25 private companies.

The WIDE project sponsors a consortium to study various computer issues
including protocols, operating systems, computer security, ISDN
technologies, home computing, mobile computing, satellite data
communications, distributed applications and internationalization of
computer software.  Their research results are annually published by the
project and the resulted software are also distributed.

The WIDE Internet is composed of a variety of links, including voice
grade leased lines, 64 Kbps and 192 Kbps digital leased lines, and ISDN.
Currently, 52 user organizations, including universities and private
companies are connected to six operation centers through 64  Kbps to 192
Kbps leased lines. The backbone also passing a traffic of other research
networks such as JUNET (Japan University Network) or JAIN (Japan
Academic Inter-university Network) which does not have a long haul
nation-wide connectivity. The WIDE project has been providing
connectivity to other networks, such as the University of Tokyo
International Science Network(TISN), NACSIS Science Information
Network(SINET), and BITNET-JAPAN. The WIDE Internet supports TCP/IP as
the basic protocol.

WIDE operates in conjunction with the Pacific Area Computer
Communication (PACCOM) project to provide international inks for
Japanese researchers using 192 Kbps under-sea cable via University of
Hawaii to NASA Ames, FIX-WEST.

The actual location of WIDE Internet backbone nodes (WNOCs) are Sendai,
Fujisawa, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Fukuoka, and the backbone is formed by
connecting these WNOCs via 64  Kbps lines (192 Kbps between Tokyo  and
Fujisawa), which is backuped by the ISDN technology developed by WIDE
project itself.

*WIDE Project contact and Professor, KEIO University, Fujisawa, Japan.

================================================================
015.10.2 Japan - InetClub by Kazunori Konishi
<[e-mail]>

InetClub is a group of users who belong to a volunteer-based network
JUNET (top level domain is ".jp"), and pay their own international
electronic mails. After the domain registration has been completed in
the NIC of Japan, the user can join the club as one of the three member
classes: domain member, plural accounts member and a single account
member. The former pays more for the annual fee, but the usage fee is
just for the international transmission cost.

The gateway of InetClub is kddlab.kddlabs.co.jp located in the R & D
Laboratories of a communication carrier, KDD. The domestic links are
made up of a 64 kbps leased circuit connected to WIDE Internet with a
Cisco router, and telephone circuits with fast modems employing UUCP
protocol or Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).

KDDlab polls uunet.uu.net, mcsun.eu.net and uknet.ac.uk with fast modems
using UUCP protocol. Although the voluminous overseas messages (300 MB
emails and 80 MB USENET news) are relayed in a month for about 190
domestic organizations, it is not be able to use the leased circuits to
observe the regulation in Japan. Efforts are being made to solve this
problem.

================================================================
015.20.1 Australia by Geoff Huston* Australia by Geoff
Huston<[e-mail]>

Within Australia the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet)
provides infrastructural internetworking services to the broad national
academic and research community.

The network interconnects all 38 higher education institutions, the
divisions of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation and also provides connection services to sectors of the
national and state governments and various governmental and commercial
organisations. AARNet currently supports some 22,000 connected end user
host systems and supports a user population of in excess of 100,000
people, drawn predominately from the academic and research domain. The
network was established in May 1990.

The internal structure of AARNet is based on the deployment of
multiprotocol routers and point to point leased serial lines. Internal
capacity of the links ranges from 2 Mbps on the major internal trunk
routes to 48 Kbps for tail loops and a number of low speed 9.6 kbps
tails. The major networking protocol in use across AARnet is the TCP/IP
protocol suite. A national Phase IV DECnet is also supported (this
network does not use addressing modes which allow direct DECnet
connectivity to the HEP/SPAN DECnet) and regional X.25 switching
facilities are also supported within the transport infrastructure. The
namespace of Australian nodes is within the national top level domain
".au".

The major international facility is a satellite link to the US Federal
exchange point on the West Coast, Fix-West. From this point direct
connectivity is established to a number of other Asia/Pacific national
networks, and through connections within the national US infrastructure
connections to the remainder of the global Internet are established.
Additionally AARnet supports international mail connections to Papua New
Guinea and Thailand.

AARNet is operated by the peak national university body within
Australia, the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee. The facility is
funded directly by the user community through institutional
participation in the program.

More information on services and facilities available within AARNet can
be retrieved via the anonymous ftp facility from the host aarnet.edu.au.
Documents held there include a resource guide of Australian resources
and copies of periodic newsletters and  informational publications from
AARNet.

*Network Manager, Australian Academic and Research Network.

================================================================
015.20.2 Australia by Bob Kummerfeld Australia <[e-mail]>

The annual Australian Networkshop was held in Hobart, Tasmania from
Monday 2nd to Wednesday 4th of December. These workshops began in the
early 1980's when a small group met at the University of Sydney to
discuss the state of academic and research networking in Australia.

This was followed by meetings in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide
and Canberra in 1990.  This series of workshops has been used to develop
the technical design, organisational structure and funding method for
the Australian Academic and Research Network, AARNet. The workshop
continues to provide a forum for the development of the network.

The 1991 meeting was attended by more than 200 people from all parts of
Australia representing a wide range of interests in network research,
development and application. Sessions included status reports on AARnet
in general, regional hubs and international connectivity, a technical
stream concentrating on the X500 directory pilot, a stream discussing
library applications and sessions on security, management issues and
high speed networking.

Invited guest speaker for the meeting was Peter Deutsch from McGill
University who described the Archie Project. As well as the history and
current status of the project, Peter gave an overview of work on network
wide information systems and resource discovery systems.  Peter's talk
was inspirational and provided a glimpse of the future of network
services.

A session was devoted to reports for AARNet development projects.  These
projects are funded by AARNet to carry out work of benefit to the whole
AARNet community.  The projects described were: a survey of email to fax
gateway systems for AARNet, an AARNet resource guide, the feasibility of
AARNet wide access to the Australian Associated Press wire service, a
message based file transfer system, a link to the Australian Antarctic
base and a project to establish an AARNet archive service.

The AARNet project to establish an Australian X.500 directory service
pilot is larger scale and was discussed in a separate session.

This group invited Paul Barker from University College London to speak
on the Paradise directory project in Europe.

Many of the speakers for the meeting submitted full papers and these
will be available from an archive at the University of Tasmania. For
details send a request to [e-mail].

* University of Sydney, Australia

================================================================
015.28 Antartica by Andy Linton* <[e-mail]>

In February 92, NZ Telecom will have a satellite connection available to
Scott Base in the Ross Dependency offering data circuits of up to 64
Kbits/sec in the first year of operation and 2 Mbits/sec thereafter.

Preliminary enquiries in New Zealand show that an Internet link to Scott
Base would be useful to researchers and that there are no technical
reasons why the link could not be operational in February before the end
of the summer season. This link could be made available to researchers
at the American and Italian bases in the area relatively easily.

Work on funding the link will continue and we hope to report positive
progress soon.

*Dept of Comp Science, Victoria Uni, Wellington, New Zealand

================================================================
015.35 China by Tian Bai Quin* <[e-mail]>

The Chinese Academic Network (CANET)

Background and history. CANET was co-initiated by ICA (Beijing Institute
for Computer Application) and University of Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1985.

The first link to CSNET was set up in 1986. A pmdf/bs2000 was installed
on a Siemens 7760 in 1987.  The "cn" top level domain was registered
with ddn src-nic by ICA in 1990.

Techniques.  Internet DNS naming and addressing has been implemented
using pmdf 3.1 on a vax/vms or siemens/bs2000.  RFC822 format has been
adopted.  For communication links, both the public telephone network, as
well as the packet switching data network - CHINAPAC is used.
Transmission speeds of 1200/2400/ 4800 bps are supported and worldwide
e-mail service is supported.

Current status.  The top level domain "cn" has been operational since
Jan.1991.  Currently, international mail delivery takes half a day.  At
present, 16 sites have been connected.

Administrative and technical contacts.

Administrative contact : Tian Bai Qian; p.o.box 2418; Beijing Institute
for Computer Application; 10 che dao gou; Beijing 100081; China

Technical contact: Michael Rotert; University of Karlsruhe; Computer
Science Department; D-7500 Karlsruhe; Germany; E-mail [e-mail]

*Director of CANET

================================================================
015.50 Malaysia by Mohamed Awang Lah <[e-mail]>

JARING (Joint Advanced Research Integrated NetworkinG) Project is a
development project coordinated and managed by MIMOS - a government
research and development (R&D) institute for microelectronics and
information technology. The institute is responsible to the Ministry of
Science, Technology and Environment, Malaysia.

JARING has evolved from RangKoM, a pilot project initiated in 1987 which
has established links amongst local universities. Electronic mail
service is available for local researchers to communicate with their
counterparts in other countries having similar networks.

Objectives. The project has the following objectives:

to establish an integrated data communication network (known as JARING -
literally NET);

to enhance multidisciplinary R&D activities; and

to study and evaluate the use of data communication technology and its
impact on socio-economic activities.

Activities. One of the major activities being undertaken in the project
is the coordination of database development in various fields related to
science and technology as well as education. Most users will be using
terminals to access remote databases through JARING. The development of
JARING has in fact been integrated with other development programs
including Computer-In-Education and the Government Open Systems Program
for Public Sector. Many multidisciplinary research activities will be
conducted using JARING as the means for data communication.

Topology. Nodes will be set up in various parts of the country according
to the distribution of users. Dedicated leased-lines at speeds of 9600
bps to 64 Kbps will be installed to link the nodes. Dial-up lines at
speeds of 1200 bps to 9600 bps will be made available at certain nodes.
JARING is linked through the public X.25 network (MAYPAC). Its major
link is to other countries is through "uunet" in USA.

Protocol. All nodes support X.25 protocols. Some nodes will also support
TCP/IP.

Cost. Local users have to pay the cost of connection to the nearest
JARING node. Infrastructure and communication cost within the country is
paid by the government through the Project allocation.

*Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems (MIMOS) 7th Floor,
Exchange Square Jalan Semantan, Damansara Heights 50490 Kuala Lumpur
MALAYSIA

================================================================
016.10.1 Low cost global electronic communications networks for Africa
by Mike Jensen & Geoff Sears <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>

Introduction

Electronic mailbox and messaging services offer an ideal tool for
enhancing communications in Africa.  Electronic mail can be less
expensive and more convenient than facsimile or telex wherever a
computer and phone line are available. However, the communications
infrastructure in the African countries varies from very good to very
marginal. As a result, the appropriate communications solution may vary
from one location to the next. This paper outlines the two basic means
of connecting mailboxes to the global network and discusses which method
may be the most appropriate under various circumstances.

Local Network Applications in Africa

Bulletin Board systems, both those packages designed for single users as
described above, and full-scale systems supporting several users (not
simultaneously, though), are already being used by a number of
organizations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and
South Africa. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in
Ottawa, Canada has been responsible for helping to establish many of
these networks by funding the ESANET, PADIS, WEDNET and NGONET projects
described below.

NGONET.  The NGONET Africa project is based out of the Environment
Liaison Centre International (ELCI) in Nairobi, where a Fido bulletin
board system has been set up to provide a conduit for electronic mail
traffic in the region and to NGOs worldwide. This is done using a high-
speed modem to make daily calls to the GreenNet Fido gateway in London.
The project is also supporting the MANGO (Micro-computer Assistance for
NGO's) Fido bulletin board project in Zimbabwe (see below) and plans to
assist in the establishment of a third bulletin board system in Dakar
and another possibly in Ghana.

In particular, support is being given to improving the flow of
electronic information around the preparations for the UNCED conference
in Rio, Brazil in 1992. An earlier survey found there were significant
numbers of NGOs which had computers but were not using electronic mail
yet. A total of 48 NGOs are being identified to receive modems,
training, documentation and support.
--------------------------------------------------------
Electronic mailbox and messaging services offer an ideal tool for
enhancing communications in Africa.
--------------------------------------------------------
ESANET.  ESANET (Eastern and Southern African Network) is a pilot
project to link researchers at universities in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia,
Zimbabwe and Kenya with each other and with researchers worldwide by
installing electronic mail facilities at the computer centres of
universities in these countries.  ESANET is based at the University of
Nairobi Institute of Computer Science. To maximise scarce resources,
coordination and technical support is being shared with the NGONET
project.  Where there is no local NGO host system it has been agreed
that NGOs will be able to use the resources of the campus based nodes.

Nodes are currently being installed in Kampala - Makarere University -
nodename MUKLA, Nairobi - nodename UNICS, Dar es Salaam - University of
Dar es Salaam/Eastern and Southern African Universities Research Project
- nodename ESAURP, Lusaka - University of Zambia Computer Center -
nodename UZCC, and Harare - University of Harare Computer Centre -
nodename UHCC.

Each node runs a suite of Fido software on an IBM compatible AT with 40
MB hard drive, high speed modem (PEP) and dedicated phone line. Zambia,
Kenya and Harare can connect directly to the GreenNet Fido gateway
(GNFido), while Uganda and Tanzania can only connect via Nairobi because
direct dialling facilities outside the PTA (Preferential Trade
Agreement) area are not available. Zambia has begun to experiment with
direct dialling to London and the other nodes are expected to begin
testing connectivity later next month.  They are still awaiting arrival
of hardware shipped from Nirv Centre (Web) in Toronto, Canada.

HealthNet.  HealthNet is operated by a Boston based NGO called Satellife
which was initiated as a project of the International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Satellife have purchased 60% of the
capacity on the University of Surrey (UK) built Uosat-F satellite. This
will initially be used to exchange health and medical information within
the same Universities (coincidentally) participating in the ESANET
project and via Memorial University in Newfoundland Canada. Memorial is
an appropriate site because of Dr Maxwell House' work with telemedicine
and because it is so far north the satellite passes overhead 10 times a
day on its polar orbit.

Because of the total overlap in institutions in Africa, the HealthNet
project is being administered by the African participants as part of the
ESANET project to evaluate alternative data transport methods.  Although
the current traffic is limited to health related issues, it will be up
to the individual participating institutions in Africa to obtain
clearance from the authorities for a wider interpretation of the health
mandate. As far as the funders of the HealthNet project are concerned,
this could encompass a much broader range of environmental and social
issues.  Currently however, only Zambia has been successful in obtaining
approval for the installation of the ground station and this was with a
specific medically oriented application.

The Zambian approval nevertheless sets a precedent for the authorities
in the other countries. Also Zambia will now be able to host satellite
traffic from the other participating countries via direct dial telephone
lines with the ESANET Fido network until other ground stations have been
approved.

PADISNET.  The Pan African Documentation Centre Network - PADISNET is a
project to link 34 countries into a network of participating development
planning centres which exchange databases and information. PADIS is
based at the United Nations Economic Council on Africa (UNECA) in Addis
Ababa which also operates a Fido node connecting on demand to London,
South Africa and the US. NGONET and PADISNET project workers have held
joint workshops it is likely that the two projects will be able to share
resources in the support of other nodes in Dakar-Senegal (CRAT), Accra-
Ghana (AAU), Dar es Salaam- Tanzania (ESAURP).

WEDNET.  WEDNET supports research on women and natural resource
management. The aim is to link researchers in Senegal, Ghana, Burkino
Faso, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Canada via electronic
communications and conventional networking.  WEDNET is also based at
ELCI in Nairobi.

WorkNet.  WorkNet operates as the national electronic network host for
NGOs in South Africa. The network has been established for about three
years and now has about 150 users on a multi-user BBS programme called
MajorBBS.  Users include the labour movement, human rights groups, the
alternate press, documentation centres, service organisations and church
groups. The ICTFU has funded the development of gateway software which
will allow MajorBBS users to send messages to other systems and obtain
conference postings. The MajorBBS format is converted to the Fido
standard and a separate machine operates as a Fido bbs to transmit and
receive the messages. The Fido machine is now officially registered on
the Internet (worknet.alt.za) and is in daily contact with MANGO in
Harare and the GreenNet Fido gateway in London via high speed (PEP)
modem.  An X.25 leased line is already on premises awaiting the
installation of X.25 software and PAD in September/October.

MANGO.  MANGO is a bulletin board service in Harare, Zimbabwe, operated
by a collective of NGOs:; Africa Information Afrique (a regional news
agency), EMBISA (religious development group), SARDC (Southern African
Research and Documentation Centre), EDICESA (Ecumenical Documentation
and Information Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa), and SAPES
(Southern Africa Press Service). It was recently agreed that the system
be made available to the NGO community as a whole and a fee structure
has been developed. MANGO now connects three times daily with the Web
Fido gateway in Toronto. In addition it connects three times a day to
WorkNet in Johannesburg.
--------------------------------------------------------
Through this system users in Africa can gain access to the community of
10,000 NGOs and individuals
--------------------------------------------------------
ARSONET.  ARSONET is a CIDA professional development project to link the
Africa Regional Standards Authorities in Addis Abbaba-Ethiopia, Nairobi-
Kenya and Cairo-Egypt with Fido networking technology.  In all these
networking initiatives users are connecting to their nearest host node.
This provides them with a link to the global network for receiving or
sending private messages and public bulletins via a gateway operating at
the Association for Progressive Communication's London host - GreenNet.
Through this system users in Africa can gain access to the community of
10,000 NGOs and individuals working in peace, social development and
environmental issues who use the APC network.

With a 2400 baud modem, users are reliably achieving transmission speeds
of 220 characters per second (cps), even on relatively poor phone lines.
Because the messages and files are automatically compressed before
transmission to as little as one third of their original size (and even
more for fixed length record databases - up to 10 times) it is possible
to send or receive about 40,000 characters (about 6,500 words) during a
one minute call. Because the connection between the computers is all
under control of the machine at each end, the only time when the full
220 cps transmission speed is not being achieved is during the first 10-
15 seconds while handshaking between the two computers takes place.

Creating African Electronic Mail Host Systems

The methods and systems described above are the early stages of
establishing full electronic mail hosts systems in Africa, owned and
operated by Africans.

Complete electronic mail, computer conferencing and database systems are
now being run on small and relatively inexpensive microcomputers ('286,
'386, SPARC based hardware platforms can all be set up for between
$5,000 and $15,000).  Locally-based systems such as these can greatly
reduce the costs to the individual user of computer-based
telecommunications.  In this case users can make a local phone call and
share the cost of the international connection, rather than all
individuals competing for scarce and expensive international lines.

The benefits of such local operations has been proved by small UNIX
systems installed by the Association for Progressive Communications, the
RIO project in French-speaking countries of Africa and the Caribbean,
and by the Bureau for Latin America of the United Nations Development
Programme in Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Costa Rica, and by BBS systems
operating in several Eastern European and African countries.  These
benefits include service at a far lower cost than presently available.

There is now a variety of software and hardware available for this
purpose. Selection is not easy; some factors to consider include not
just the cost of the original equipment, but the availability of skilled
technical people to maintain the system, the availability of spare
parts, and the cost and availability of technical support from vendors.
The significant barriers to rapid implementation are the need to train
system operators and the high state tariffs on computer and
communications equipment.

The challenges of making this technology work in Africa are balanced by
significant rewards.  African countries are in a position to leap-frog
technologies and install relatively sophisticated information technology
now, skipping older, less effective techniques and methods.  With this
kind of information system in place, dialogue and information exchange
regionally and internationally can greatly expand, with benefits to
every sector of African development.

*A computer engineer based out of London.  He was a founder of Web, a
non-profit computer network in Canada, and, while working at GreenNet in
London, developed software to gateway the UNIX systems of the
Association for Progressive Communications with the FIDO world.  Most
recently he has been traveling extensively in Africa setting up small
BBS systems and training non-governmental organizations to use them.

GreenNet 23 Bevenden Street London, N1 6BH, ENGLAND tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

** Director of the Institute for Global Communications in San Francisco,
California.  IGC operates the non-profit PeaceNet and EcoNet
international computer networks.  IGC is a founding member of the
Association for Progressive Communications, and is currently involved in
the establishment of computer networks in the USSR, Eastern Europe and
Latin America.

Institute for Global Communications 18 de Boom Street, 1st Floor San
Francisco, CA 94107 tel: [phone] fax: [phone]

================================================================
016.30 United Nations Development Programme by Lawrence Yeung
<[e-mail]>

UNDP is one of many agencies within the United Nations system, with its
own Governing Body and an  Administrator, Mr William H. Draper III.

Why is UNDP interested in Internet? Well, our Statement of Purpose will
underline the work we set out to do in networking offices in developing
countries.

UNDP promotes human development; we seek to create opportunities through
which people's abilities, talents and creativity can find full
expression. We help countries to develop the capacity to manage their
economies, fight poverty, ignorance and disease, conserve the
environment, and stimulate technological innovation.

UNDP builds partnerships to foster human development (and
telecommunications is a major component of this development). We forge
alliances with the people and governments of developing countries, with
the donor community, with the specialized agencies of the  United
Nations, and with private institutions and non-governmental
organizations.

UNDP works in more than 150 developing countries and territories.
Through our worldwide network of offices - and in dialogue with
governments and other development partners - UNDP supports programmes
for human development. These spring from national priorities and are
shaped by local culture. Beyond this, UNDP manages an increasingly
diverse range of development services through its country  offices.

UNDP plays a leading role in coordinating the development efforts of the
United Nations system. In times of disaster - natural or human - UNDP
helps orchestrate the United Nations' response in the field.

UNDP operates across national boundaries. We sponsor programmes that are
regional, interregional and global in scope. We promote  the sharing of
experience among developing countries and draw international  attention
to issues of global concern. Communications with institutions,
universities, academic and research personnel are an integral part of
our activities.

The structure in UNDP can be logically divided into programme and core
(corporate), although these activities are interlinked. Programme work
in the  field is managed by four Regional Bureaux in conjunction with
the field  offices and project staff. The Bureaux are Asia and Pacific,
Africa, Arab  States and Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
--------------------------------------------------------
The connection of UNDP headquarters to Internet ...via a  dedicated 56
Kbps line...opens up a new chapter for information access...
--------------------------------------------------------
Telecommunications are major elements in UNDP's global development. A
number of Governments have asked UNDP to improve their ability to
coordinate and access information using electronic means. For its
corporate work, use of telephone service is dominant, not just for
voice, but for facsimile and electronic mail. Telex has been the
traditional means of communications between headquarters in New York and
the field offices. Moving  away from this outdated mode of
communications has been slow.

More than 50  field offices are presently using email through TCN
(Telecommunications  Co-operative Network) using BT/Tymnet services.  To
cater for emergencies and  to alleviate the difficulties of the local
loop in some countries, portable  INMARSAT (International Maritime
Satellite) terminals are located in nearly 40 countries.  High
Frequency, Very High Frequency and Ultra High Frequency radio networks
for communications between field offices and in-country locations  have
also been established. Lastly, mail, pouch (diplomatic), and courier
services complement the rest of UNDP's communications means.

The connection of UNDP headquarters to Internet via Princeton University
in New Jersey, USA was made in November 1991. This interconnection, via
a dedicated 56 Kbps line between a Novell LAN (local area network) of
1,500  workstations and Internet, opens up a new chapter for information
access, not just for UNDP personnel but for some authorized Government
missions and agencies. We will explore some of our objectives on this
connection in the  next issue.

* Telecommunications Coordinator, UNDP, New York.

================================================================
020.06  Education by Steve Ruth <[e-mail]>

An evolving project in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) has
made a contribution to improving the ability of universities,
laboratories, and other complex and expensive improvements in data
communications infrastructure.  Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the
project has had a role in making CSFR's first year as a full-fledged
user of international networks successful.

Since last November when the first node was established in Prague, over
two thousand new network users have been registered and monthly message
volume has steadily risen to over a billion characters per month.
CSFR's monthly EARN volumes are consistently higher than those of other
Eastern European users like Poland and Hungary.

The Mellon grant offers "Value Added Services" that are aimed at
bringing the low unit costs of academic networks to many more users than
would normally be possible.  Also, these users become much more
sophisticated in network capabilities and are better prepared to take
advantages of better hardware and software as they become available.

Many smaller institutions are particularly helped by this process. For
example, the Palecky University in Olomouts in central CSFR probably
would have had to wait for a year or more--until mid or late 1992--to be
able to connect to the networks under normal circumstances, but through
special training and network services they were connected in January of
1991.

This enabled the rector, Dr. Josef Jarob, and his faculty to have the
ability to be in direct contact with hundreds of thousands of
researchers in nearly sixty countries at a cost of a few cents (five
CSFR crowns) or less per message.  Jarob immediately took advantage of
this opportunity, using the network to contact various institutions to
establish fellowships, scholarships and major grant arrangements around
the world.

The faculty of Palacky University routinely exchange manuscripts,
research findings and other data with an expanding group of colleagues
around the world.  In addition, one of their major grant proposals, to
establish a university wide local area network, has already been funded
and the equipment and training provided.  Using the network greatly
facilitated the preparation and approval of the grant.

A similar case is that of the Czech Academy of Physics which received
help to revise existing network software to accommodate several hundred
researchers who would normally have had to wait for a year or more to be
connected to the international networks.  They were connected in the
spring of 1991.  About a dozen other diverse value added projects are
already completed or under way.

The administrator of the Mellon grant, Dr. Stephen Ruth, director of the
International Center of Applied Studies in MIS at George Mason
University <[e-mail]> or <intmis@ gmuvax.bitnet>, sees the
value added services approach as appropriate for all of Eastern Europe
as well as the former Soviet republics.  "It makes sense to take full
advantage of the networks that already exist by giving every professor
and student in the world a chance to be in contact with others.
Eventually the telecommunications infrastructure will improve, but these
opportunities exist now and we don't have to wait."
--------------------------------------------------------
It makes sense to take full advantage of the networks that already exist
by giving every professor and student in the world a chance to be in
contact with others.
--------------------------------------------------------
Ruth is particularly impressed with the results in CSFR where the first
year's outcomes have been three times the estimates made before the
project began.  He is now working with organizations in Moravia and
Slovakia to assist in increasing their network use and expects nearly a
thousand new users from that region in the coming year.

The project also aims to involve the faculties and students in liberal
arts and the humanities, medicine, law and other disciplines that
frequently are among the last to become proficient in informatics
technologies.

Ruth and Harry Barnes, former U.S. ambassador to Romania, have recently
received approval and funding to begin a similar project in Romania
where they begin with three major nodes in Bucharest sometime later this
year.  Says Professor Ruth, "We would like to do this in all the
countries of Eastern Europe, the Baltics and of course the former
Russian republics.  By concentrating on the user and not so much on the
hardware, our approach is very low in unit cost and the results in CSFR
speak volumes about who is benefiting."

================================================================
020.15  Biomedicine, by Ted Shortliffe <[e-mail]>

Although late to join the Internet community, biomedical researchers and
educators have been increasingly aggressive in their efforts to connect
to the network and to articulate a vision of what national electronic
connectivity and information access can mean to both the medical
practitioner and the biomedical researcher.

A recent report from the Institute of Medicine (Computer-Based Patient
Records: An Essential Technology for Health Care, National Academy
Press, November 1991) has been particularly explicit about the need for
an enhanced role of the biomedical community in national network
planning.

Most academic health science institutions are joined to the Internet via
their main campus computing and communications facilities.  This has
left community hospitals and other non academic healthcare institutions
with a limited understanding of the Internet and a simultaneous lack of
models for how they might best get connected to their regional networks.
The National Library of Medicine is hoping to address this problem as
one aspect of its role in the national High Performance Computing
initiative.

To help address both the clinical and research uses of networking in
biomedicine, the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has
identified Broadband Networks, High Speed LANs and Multimedia as one of
the two tracks in its annual Spring Congress to be held at the downtown
Marriott Hotel in Portland, Oregon from 7-9 May 1992 (the second track
deals with Decision Support Systems in biomedicine).

The program chairman for the networking track is Dr. Jerome Cox from
Washington University <[e-mail]> and more information about
the meeting may be obtained from the AMIA Offices, 4915 St. Elmo Ave,
Suite 302, Bethesda, MD 20814 Tel: [phone] or email to
<[e-mail]>.  Abstracts are due 10 January 1992 and the
preliminary program will be available by 1 March.

================================================================
020.20.1  Internet Online Public Access Catalogs by Billy Barron*
<[e-mail]>

For the first issue of the Internet Society newsletter, I thought would
start with the Internet Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs), the most
well known Library Science application of the Internet. OPACs primarily
offer access to bibliographic information.  Uses of this information
range from InterLibrary Loan to Research to collection development.

Currently, the bulk of the OPACs on the Internet are in the English
speaking countries.  Hopefully, this will change in the near future.
According to my sources, we should see a good number of libraries in
Finland soon on the network.

The primary mailing list on OPACS is called PACS-L. It is housed on
ukupvm1.uh.edu or uhupvm1.bitnet.  Subscriptions may be obtained by
sending mail to LISTSERV on that node with "SUBSCRIBE PACS-L firstname
lastname" as the body of the letter.

Many sources of information on accessing Internet OPACs are available
via anonymous FTP.  I try to maintain a fairly complete collection on
ftp.unt.edu in the library directory.  The guide of the most general use
is my own which is in the filenames starting with LIBRARIES.

*VAX/Unix Systems Manager, University of North Texas.

================================================================
020.20.3 Library Science, by Michael Break* <[e-mail].
uk>

Libraries are becoming heavy users of the network both for their
operations and to provide information services for their users. There
are a range of applications already in use, including:

(i) electronic mail for individual communication and for the provision
of specialist discussion lists, exchange of information;

(ii) access to OPAC's (Online Public Access Catalogues) connected to
campus networks;

(iii) exchange of bibliographic records, which are more cost-effectively
produced on a shared basis;

(iv) transmission of inter-lending requests and experiments with
transmission of full text documents for direct supply to end-users;

(v) access to remote databases, such as the UNCOVER journal article
database or to the three ISI Citation Indexes available over the JANET
network to staff and students in UK universities.

However, as the number of resources available on the network increases,
there are several major problems emerging:

* it is increasingly difficult for a user to identify and locate
potential relevant resources to satisfy a need for information in a
specific area, particularly if the user is not a specialist in that
area.

* each resource is mounted as part of its own independent information
retrieval system and there is a need to learn a new, unique user
interface for each resource.

* there is no simple way to move results from one system to another for
consolidation, analysis, and storage since access to each system is
through remote login.

These problems are is being addressed in a number of ways:

(i) through the development of Internet resource directories, but they
will need to provide the facilities of deep indexing and convenient
searching.

(ii) front-end based systems that provide the user with a common
interface to a range of disparate systems, but this is currently only in
the form of menu gateways which provide login facilities to remote
services.

(iii) the development of applications-layer protocols, such as Z39.50 or
Search and Retrieve, which allow a client machine to submit a search to
a server, manage the search process and learn the outcome.

The establishment of the NREN (National Research and Education Network)
in the USA has been strongly supported by the library community and the
Association for Research Libraries (ARL), EDUCOM, and CAUSE have
recently formed the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) to promote
and address issues related to the availability and role of networked
information resources. CNI's agenda is "to develop a set of initiatives
to address the public policy issues and to identify and assign
priorities for the provision of information resources on the NREN."
Issues will include:

intellectual property rights
standards
licensing
service arrangements
charging algorithms and cost-recovery fees
economic models
identifying information resources for NREN.
--------------------------------------------------------
Access to networked information resources will soon be one of the major
issues in the development of national computer networks.
--------------------------------------------------------
The recent approval for funding for the SuperJANET network in the UK,
will be encouraging similar organisational initiatives there building on
the already close relations between libraries and computing centres.
Access to networked information resources will soon be one of the major
issues in the development of national computer networks.

================================================================
020.23 Mathematics by Flemming Topsoe* <[e-mail]>

An issue of central importance for efficient electronic interchange and
processing of mathematical documents is that of standard representation.
In order not to limit future possibilities, the representation should
reflect structure, i.e., mathematical semantic content (rather than
layout). A completely faithful representation is neither feasible nor
desirable.

The best chance to achieve a result within a short time horizon seems to
be to agree on a selection of DTD's (Document Type Definitions) in the
sense of SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) in order to define
types of Mathematical Documents (Articles, Expressions, etc.).

A committee with an aim as indicated above has just been formed as a
sub-committee of a committee sponsored by AAP (American Association of
Publishers). The committee is chaired by William B. Woolf of the AMS
(American Mathematical Society) and will base its work on suggestions
and results already obtained by the following organizations or projects:

AAP
AMS
Arbortext
Euromath Project,
ISO (TR 9573)
TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)

It is an absolute necessity that professional mathematicians take an
active part in this work.

Interested persons should contact the chairman, W.B.Woolf <[e-mail].
com>.

*professor, University of Copenhagen, Mathematical Institute, Denmark.

================================================================
020.45 Disaster Assistance by Marie-Jo Floret* <[e-mail]>

The Office of the Disaster Relief Co-ordinator, UNDRO was created in
December 1971 as a focal point within the United Nations System to
mobilize and co-ordinate international relief assistance in case of a
disaster, as well as to promote preparedness and prevention of natural
disasters. UNDRO is headed by the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-
ordinator who reports directly to the Secretary-General. The Co-
ordinator's responsibilities include:

(a) Mobilizing, directing, and co-ordinating the relief activities of
the various organizations of the UN system in response to a request for
disaster assistance from a stricken state;

(b) Co-ordinating UN assistance with assistance given by inter-
governmental and non-governmental organizations, in particular by the
International Red Cross;

(c) Promoting the study, prevention, control and prediction of natural
disasters;

(d) Assisting in providing advice to governments on pre-disaster
planning in association with relevant voluntary organizations;

(e) Acquiring and disseminating information relevant to disaster relief;

UNIENET is an electronic network which places members of the world-wide
disaster management community in direct contact with each other, and
provides them instantaneously with both background and operational
disaster-related information

(f) Preparing a biennial report for the Secretary-General, to be
submitted to ECOSOC and to the Assembly.

In subsequent resolutions the UN General Assembly has further regulated
international action in emergency situations and has reaffirmed the
mandate and central position of UNDRO in the management of natural
disasters and other disaster situations.

UNDRO's Communications and Information Systems

UNDRO maintains a computerized directory of fax and telex numbers which
allows timely delivery of information to emergency contacts worldwide.

UNDRO also maintains several databases. Some are only available
internally such as the roster of experts in disaster management and the
disaster-prone country profiles. Others, although maintained internally,
are partly available through the United Nations International Emergency
Network (UNIENET).

In addition to the above, UNDRO makes use of databases produced with
assistance from UNDRO by external collaborative institutions. This
applies, in particular, to the disaster events and the emergency country
factsheet databases produced by The Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disaster (CRED), which is located in Brussels.

Established in 1987, UNIENET is an electronic network which places
members of the world-wide disaster management community in direct
contact with each other, and provides them instantaneously with both
background and operational disaster-related information. UNDRO is
responsible for the administration of the network. UNIENET operates as a
joint venture with other organizations active in disaster management.

The Bulletin Boards and Databases on the network cover a wide range of
topics such as:

UNDRO:
Disaster Situation Reports
Emergency Contacts
Disaster Relief Contributions
Disaster History
Disaster News in Brief
Disaster Related Terminology
Conferences and Meetings
Training Resources
Press Releases

IDNDR:
National Committees

FAO:
Special Alerts and Reports
Food Situation in Africa
Foodcrops and Shortages

WHO:
Current Disaster Situation

PAHO:
Latin America Conferences

ICVA:
NGO Database

*Disaster Assistance Coordinator, UNDEO, Geneva.

================================================================
020.55.1  Internet and Environmental Law, by John E. Bonine*
<[e-mail]>

John Muir, nineteenth century naturalist, once wrote that when you take
hold of anything in this world, you find that it is hitched to
everything else.

A growing number of young environmental lawyers and public interest
scientists around the world are putting this principle of ecology to use
in the Information Age.  They are using electronic mail and computer
conferencing to obtain information transnationally that before now has
been largely unobtainable in their own countries.

With this information and advice, they are rewriting the book on
environmental law in the developing world.   Environmental Law Alliance
Worldwide (E-LAW), formed by public interest lawyers from Peru, Ecuador,
Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the
U.S., recently began operation. Members of E-LAW are committed to
helping get good science and legal information into the hands of lawyers
(often volunteers) who are representing citizen groups at the grassroots
level.

Their goal is that government policies will be made with the full
participation of those affected by pollution and environmental harm, and
that environmental laws will be properly enforced.

After receiving a grant in late 1990 to get the Alliance off the ground,
the E-LAW members decided that rapid, cheap communications through e-
mail had to be at the heart of their work.

For their initial e-mail and conferencing host, they selected Pegasus in
Australia and Econet/Peacenet in the U.S. (a project of the nonprofit
Institute for Global Communications (IGC) and member of the Association
for Progressive Communications (APC)).

Within a few months they had E-LAW offices in Malaysia, the Philippines,
Australia, and the U.S. online through national packet-switching
networks.   Other countries have proved to be much more difficult.

The greatest quantitative difference in environmental protection through
information exchange can be obtained in those countries that have the
least access to computer networks.  When the barriers of cost and
technology are high, successfully leaping those barriers with
environmental law and science information can be like a drink of water
to a parched person.  Consequently, E-LAW participants found that to
link together they would have to use whatever computer links were
available, and ask for help where none exists.

In Ecuador E-LAW has been working to get connected through Ecuanex, an
academic and nonprofit uucp network partially funded by the United
Nations Development Programme.

In Peru the public interest lawyers are waiting for the final steps in
setting up PeruNet to be completed. E-LAW's public environmental law
discussion conference is now carried through Internet/Bitnet/Fido links
to three dozen bulletin boards in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on
ComLink, and is now being started on Worknet in South Africa and Mango
in Zimbabwe.

The conventional wisdom said that Sri Lanka is impossible.  But
monitoring of a mailing list devoted to technical discussions of low-
cost e-mail revealed that a new academic and research UUCP network is
being established in Sri Lanka (LankaNet).

E-LAW moved quickly to get hooked up and professors at the University of
Moratuwa cooperated. In the Philippines, the E-LAW offices has
experimented with FidoNet as a possibly cheaper alternative to direct
calls to Econet.

Meanwhile, international networking expert Randy Bush of Portland,
Oregon, has been advising the non-technical E-LAW users in Eugene about
adopting a more distributed approach through the Internet, Bitnet, and
UUCP, particularly where the APC systems do not reach. Working with
Econet, he has designed a linked mailing list that will allow E-LAW's
discussion conferences on Econet to be networked through the Internet to
quite remote sites, despite the e-mail-only connection.

Does all this make any difference?  Owls in Australia and Amazonian
Indians in Ecuador would be likely to say yes.

An urgent request was flashed to E-LAW U.S. in August for information
that would help an Australian barrister protect the Sooty Owl and 24
other sensitive species in a State Forest.  In response, a U.S.
scientist who had worked extensively on both the Northern Spotted Owl of
the Northwest U.S. and the Sooty Owl in Australia produced decisive
evidence.  A court granted an injunction against the logging in late
September. The court's ruling that the government was violating a
variety of environmental laws has been called one of the most
significant in Australian environmental history.

Ecuadorian public interest lawyers have been fighting to prevent oil
drilling in a National Park in the Amazon considered to be the most
biologically diverse on the planet.  They uncovered information on
improper interferences in the Ecuadorian judicial system by certain
foreign oil companies, drew up a complaint to the U.S. government, and
publicized the complaint worldwide on computer networks.

Combined with other activities by rainforest protection groups, it
appears that these efforts had something to do with the announcement in
October by the major North American oil company seeking drilling
permission that it would not pursue the project.

Other public interest lawyers are seeking information on the safety of
planned nuclear plants in Asia, on health effects of a plastics
production process in Sri Lanka, and on threats to still other National
Parks in South America and Central America.

The thirst will not soon be sated.  Once the information stream starts
trickling through the Internet, Bitnet, UUCP, FidoNet, and APC systems
into a region, numerous nonprofit groups and their public interest
attorneys quickly line up to drink from it.

In the end, environmental policy decisions will be made by the
governments, courts, and peoples of each country.  But until now there
has been an imbalance in information and persuasion.
--------------------------------------------------------
...those who question the safety or environmental impacts of unwise
projects are catching up, and the nonprofit computer networks like the
Internet are providing the essential basis for changing the balance.
--------------------------------------------------------
Those who build or operate industrial or development projects have had
worldwide resources to press their points of view.  They could even (as
in the case of toxic dumping in the Third World) roam the world
searching for countries where information about possible dangers is the
most absent. Now, those who question the safety or environmental impacts
of unwise projects are catching up, and the nonprofit computer networks
like the Internet are providing the essential basis for changing the
balance.

* Professor of Law, University of Oregon

================================================================
030.50.1 Gigabit Networks by Robert E. Kahn* <[e-mail]>

A small number of research sites will soon be gaining limited access to
experimental networks which support end-end user communication rates on
the order of a gigabit per second (i.e. a billion bits per second).
While many technical problems must be solved before wide-area common-
user networks are available with this capability, it cannot be assumed
that they will simply happen because all the technical problems are
solved.
--------------------------------------------------------
Backbone speeds on the order of Terabits per second and higher will be
necessary to support a large user community with gigabit access speed
requirements...
--------------------------------------------------------
High speed "network backbones" have been cost effective for multiplexing
large numbers of lower speed users. Backbone speeds on the order of
Terabits per second and higher will be necessary to support a large user
community with gigabit access speed requirements in a wide-area common
user network. Many factors, including sustained throughput requirements,
acceptable levels of delay, the need for real-time delivery guarantees
and overall size of the market will surely be taken into account in
determining the price of gigabit network services.

Quantitative changes often lead to qualitative changes when the
magnitude of change is sufficiently large. Substantial investment is
being made in the development of 1) gigabit technology for computing and
communications and 2) lightwave technology for all-optical networking at
much higher speeds.

However, a critical concern is identifying and developing applications
that require or can make effective use of such high data rates to the
end user. For over twenty years, network users have relied principally
on text-based forms of communication due to limitations in speed of
existing computer communication networks to the range of megabits per
second and less.

With the advent of common user networks operating at speeds on the order
of a gigabit per second or more, new visual forms of communication
becomes practical including the regular use of images, graphics and
real-time video. End-user data rate requirements can also approach
gigabit per second speeds with real-time high-resolution large screen
display systems. The impact on the user of such visual communication
systems may be hard to quantify, but the practical result will be a
radical alteration of the relationship between a user and data output
from a computer or network. Visualizing the pictorial output of a
simulation can take place in a fraction of a second, while scanning
reams of printed computer data may never afford a clear picture of the
results no matter how much time is taken to absorb it.

High Performance Computers may also need to interact with each other at
gigabit per second speeds. This is currently a subject of considerable
interest within the scientific community. The value of such high speed
computer interactions, once they have been demonstrated, may eventually
be of interest to many other sectors of society.

Other uses of gigabit networks may not lead to qualitative change
immediately. It is clear that higher speed networks will enable
computers to exchange files more quickly, but this may not necessarily
produce any real or perceived benefit to the end user.

In those cases where storage exists to hold extremely long files and
databases, one-time transfers of large data sets on demand or by pre-
arranged distributions of these data sets at selected user sites on a
network may be desirable. However, these transfers need not necessarily
occur at gigabit per second speeds and remote use of the files may even
be possible initially. The speed of such network transfers can be
technologically impressive and may not disadvantage the application, but
it may be unnecessary in many cases as well as unaffordable.

In weighing the value of gigabit networks to the end user, one must
include the basic economics, the competitive value, the qualitative
value and the changes (real and perceived) wrought by such new
technological capabilities. For many applications and users, lower speed
network alternatives may well suffice. However, as technology matures
and advances, the relative cost of gigabit technology and services can
be expected to decrease and we should ultimately see the widespread
deployment of the technology to all sectors of society.

Gigabit technology will be expensive to build and deploy for many more
years. When the technology is widely available and networks are deployed
with end-end gigabit speeds, users can begin to explore possible new
uses and applications that may create a significant marketplace for
gigabit services. But, without an existing or nascent market for gigabit
speeds to the end-user, industry will find it difficult to justify many
of the requisite initial investments. We plan to explore various aspects
of this "chicken-egg" problem along with other matters relating to
gigabit networks in future columns.

* President, Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Reston,
Virginia, USA.

================================================================
030.50.2 Gigabit Networks by Craig Partridge <[e-mail]>

There are now strong signs that research and development in gigabit
networking has begun to make that critical move from paper studies to
real systems of fiber, silicon and lasers.

First, we're beginning to see a flood of papers from researchers who
have built at least some hardware.  Two different papers on recently
constructed ATM (Asychronous Transfer Mode) interfaces were published at
SIGCOMM '91.  The folks at Cambridge University have been reporting
interesting work with their 600 Mbit/s prototype of the Cambridge
Backbone Ring.  And IBM-Zurich demonstrated its gigabit LAN at a
telephony conference this fall.  (Indeed, it is somewhat sobering truth
that we may be innundated with gigabit literature in 1992.)

A second, and possibly more important, development is that the computer
communications community has begun to get seriously involved in the
process of making standards for future gigabit networks.  In particular,
the computer communications community began to get involved in Broadband
ISDN (B-ISDN).
--------------------------------------------------------
the computer communications folk had taken a close look at B-ISDN and
concluded that it didn't adequately support the transmission of datagram
traffic
--------------------------------------------------------
The standards process for Broadband ISDN (which is built on ATM) has
been underway in CCITT for a few years now.  B-ISDN is the technology
that the telephony community plans to deploy in the coming decades to
serve a wide range of voice and data communications requirements.

Before late 1990, almost no one in the computer communications community
(people worried about making computers communicate) had looked very
closely at the B-ISDN standards.  By late 1991, the computer
communications folk had taken a close look at B-ISDN and concluded that
it didn't adequately support the transmission of datagram traffic (a big
concern for protocols like IP!).

So in late 1991 a consortium of computer companies (Apple, BBN, DEC, IBM
Motorola/Codex, Sun Microsystems and Xerox) brought their concerns
before the US ANSI T1S1.5 standards committee in the form of a proposal
called SEAL to augment the B-ISDN standards.

ANSI and CCITT are trying to wrap up the initial B-ISDN specifications
so this late appearance by the computer companies could have caused
problems.  But instead, in a pleasant case of the standards process
working as it should, the consortium's contributions were welcomed and
the committee agreed to ask for a change to the ATM header to support
the SEAL proposal. This change will make it possible to experiment with
implementing datagram protocols over B-ISDN.

Some of this implementation work will be done in conjunction with the
IETF.  Send mail to [e-mail] to join the IETF discussions).
The plan is to take the results of this experimentation and incorporate
it into the next standards release.

================================================================
030.50.3 The View from the  Gigabit Networking World by David J. Farber*
<[e-mail]>

In subsequent issues of the ISOC Newsletter, this column will cover
specific research issues and accomplishments of both the NSF/DARPA/CNRI
Gigabit Testbeds Initiatives and other gigabit network related research
activities. This first contribution is timely since it is concurrent
with the passage of the US HPCC bill.

The U.S. testbeds, Aurora, Blance, CASA, Nector,  and VISTANET are an
ongoing activity now in the second year of  a three year initial
program. It aims to provide a set of  experimental testbed of different
characteristics with the intent of allowing the research community to
have the opportunity create and explore working prototype networks.

This would in collaboration with other research activities provide
feedback to the hardware and software designers as to what the long term
technical requirements would be for a future gigabit NREN.

This will provide an insight into  the hardware/software alternatives
that must be faced in the creation of the Gigabit NREN as envisioned in
the HPCC bill. It is not the intention of the testbeds to have a bakeoff
of technology. . We will have a handful of major switch designs, some
ideas of what we have to do with protocols and operating systems -- for
example the National Backplane ideas, the application level protocols,
the speed up of TCP/IP, ATM, PTM  etc. These approaches will  not be
examined in order to "pick one" but rather to get a better handle on the
fundamental issues. At the end of the initiative we will be where the
Arpanet was back in the mid 70's -- a working set of demos, some
protocol ideas and lots of enthusiasm.
--------------------------------------------------------
These approaches will  not be examined in order to "pick one" but rather
to get a better handle on the fundamental issues.
--------------------------------------------------------
And finally and most importantly, I believe we will have a good enough
feel for the benefits of gigabit networks to the science community, that
we will be able to answer the question we should be asking -- is such a
network a reasonable use of limited science resources?

*Director, Distributed Systems Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, USA.

================================================================
030.60.2 Multimedia by Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>

What's multimedia? For me, "Multimedia" is an adjective; it implies only
that human-sensible information is being transmitted (the "media") via
the use of more than simple text (the "multi"). That it crosses
application areas engenders confusion among those who try to bound the
set of multimedia applications.

Much of the current growth of multimedia computing is a byproduct of
changes in consumer electronics.  The transition of ordinary consumer
and office information devices and services (telephones, copiers,
cameras, television) from analog to digital is happening because those
devices can be made with better quality, features, and lower cost. These
developments shaped the technologies available for multimedia computing
today, in support of audio, document imaging, color and video.

In particular, interest in multimedia computing is fueled by the
availability of low-cost hardware for aquisition, compression,
decompression and reproduction of page images (with scanners, binary
image compression using "Group 4" compression, and page-size displays or
image-capable printers), color (slide scanners, video frame grabbers,
and electronic cameras; JPEG compression, and color displays and
printers), sound (these days, most workstations and PCs either have
built-in sound capabilties or low-cost add-on boards are available), and
full-motion video.

The activities in networking and communication center in two areas:
real-time or interactive communication in multimedia applications, and
transmission, storage and retrieval of static multimedia documents; call
these "telnet" and "ftp".

For the "telnet" applications, the goal is to develop the underlying
infrastructure to support communication with real-time requirements.

At the transport layer, the conflicts between the telecommunications and
packet-network views of communications seem to be resolving in the ATM
standardization community. For more conventional internet activities,
we'll watch the development of extensions to X and other windowing
protocols for dealing with multimedia data, communication protocols for
not-quite-real-time network video and the like.

For "ftp" applications, the focus is on is standardizing the interchange
formats and transmission mechanisms for multimedia documents across the
network.

Thus, the IETF NetFax group is pushing ahead with a profile for TIFF
(Tagged Image File Format) format as the standard for page images (fax
or scanned), while the Internet Extensions Task Force has been laying
the groundwork for describing and encoding mail containing audio, image
or formatted text, possibly in multiple parts.

In other areas, we'll watch for development of interchange standards for
particular kinds of multimedia applications; for example, "MHEG" (the
Multimedia and Hypermedia Experts Group) is developing an interchange
standards for "synchronized multimedia and time dependent hypermedia
structures", scheduled to reach initial draft stage some time in 1993.
Another group is working on an international standard for AudioVisual
Interactive 'scriptware' (AVI).

*Xerox Palo Alto Research Facility

================================================================
030.70.2  Directories by Erik Huizer*  <[e-mail]>

The importance of a global directory service which holds (and provides)
information on persons, applications and services, is a necessity that
is clearly perceived in the Internet Society. This is true for those
aiming at OSI-services as well as for those who prefer IP-based
services.

In 1988 the first standard on directory services was published jointly
by ICO and CCITT and is commonly known as X.500. This standard has since
then been put into practical use in various (cooperating) Directory
Services pilots within the Internet Society. For example the
Nysernet/PSI White Pages Project, the FOX project and the European
Paradise project.

Many holes have been discovered in the not yet full-grown standard and
several working groups within the Internet Society are working on these
problems in a joined effort. Within the IETF there are the OSI-DS
working group and the DISI (Directory Information Services
Infrastructure) working group. In Europe there is the RARE WG3 on
Directory Services. The RARE WG3 and IETF-DS group share the same E-mail
distribution list for discussions, called: [e-mail] (if you
want to subscribe, send a mail to: [e-mail]).

The pilot projects mentioned above are all inteconnected, and all use
the same 'root' Directory Server for the world, which is based in London
(ULCC), and maintained by the Paradise project.

The currently registered amount of data in the pilot projects is not
large, but it is growing steadily. A recent survey ("Paradise
International Report, november 1991) shows the following figures:

Almost all of this data comes from organizations closely related to the
Internet Society. PTT involvement has so far been minimal, but it is
expected that this will change rapidly in the next couple of years.

For example, in the Paradise project PTT Telecom (The Netherlands) is a
participant, responsible for interwoking tests. Industry, in the form of
the major computer manufacturing companies, is showing more and more
interest, and is participating in a.o. the IETF-DS group.

Recently the DISI group has published an internet-draft available as
draft-ietf-disi-catalog-01.txt, which lists the currently available
X.500 products.

Recently the DISI group has published an internet-draft available as
draft-ietf-disi-catalog-01.txt, which lists the currently available
X.500 products. Within the pilot projects the ISODE/Quipu implementation
is the one that is mostly used.

Other products that are used are the Pizarro implementation (fr) and the
DirWiz implementation (it). It is expected that in 1992 commercial X.500
products and the e.g. the NIST (custos) product will be integrated into
the pilot projects.

*SURFnet BV, Netherlands

================================================================
040.10 Internet Activities Board (IAB) by Vint Cerf*
<[e-mail]>

Apart from its regular standards-review activities, the Internet
Activities Board has been paying increasing attention over the last year
to architectural imperatives brought on by the rapid expansion and
diversification of the Internet. During the summer of 1991, an
architectural retreat was convened by the IAB and hosted by the San
Diego Supercomputer Center, at which members of the IAB, the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and a few invitees debated and
explored the future needs of the Internet at all levels of the protocol
hierarchy.

Many important requirements were recognized, but among the most pressing
were: the need to scale to over one billion (109) networks; the need for
a high-quality security architecture; the need for a common, well-
maintained and populated "white pages" directory service. A second
retreat has been scheduled in early January in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Internet Activities Board announced in early December that Lyman
Chapin would assume the chairmanship of the IAB in January, 1992, when
the present chairman, Vint Cerf, steps down to devote his attention to
the needs of the Internet Society. The IAB also accepted, with regret
but with a great deal of appreciation for his service, the resignation
of Dr. David D. Clark. Dr. Clark served as chairman of the Internet
Activities Board from its inception until 1989, as chairman of the
Internet Research Task Force from July 1989 to January 1992, and has
been a productive contributor to the TCP/IP protocol suite development
for over a decade.

*Vice President, Corporation for National Research Initiatives

================================================================
040.20  Internet Engineering Task Force Report by Phillip Gross*
<pgross@ nri.reston.va.us>

This is the first report on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
in an Internet Society publication. Therefore, I'd like to start by
saying how exciting it is for the Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG) and IETF to be part of the formation of a new professional
society concerned with something very important to us all -- the global
communications network called the Internet. The IETF has played a key
role under the Internet Activities Board (IAB) in many important
Internet development activities. We all look forward to working within
the Internet Society in the future.

Since this is an initial report on the IETF, I feel it is important to
give an overview of the IETF, how it operates, and how to become more
involved in the open IETF activities. I will also give a brief report on
the most recent IETF meeting, which took place in November 1991 in Santa
Fe New Mexico, USA.

IETF Overview.  The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the
protocol engineering, development, and standardization arm of the
Internet Architecture Board (IAB). The IETF began in January 1986 as a
forum for technical coordination by contractors for the U.S. Defense
Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), working on the ARPANET, U.S. Defense
Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system. Since that
time, the IETF has grown into a large open international community of
network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with
the evolution of the Internet protocol architecture and the smooth
operation of the Internet.

The IETF mission includes:

Identifying and proposing solutions to pressing operational and
technical problems in the Internet,

Specifying the development (or usage) of protocols and the near-term
architecture to solve such technical problems for the Internet,

Making recommendations to the IAB regarding standardization of protocols
and protocol usage in the Internet,

Facilitating technology transfer from the Internet Research Task Force
to the wider Internet community, and

Providing a forum for the exchange of information within the Internet
community between vendors, users, researchers, agency contractors, and
network managers.

Technical activity on any specific topic in the IETF is addressed within
Working Groups (WG). All Working Groups are organized roughly by
function into nine technical areas. Each is led by an Area Director who
has primary responsibility for that one area of IETF activity. Together
with the Chair of the IETF, these nine technical Directors (plus, a
director for Standards Procedures) compose the IESG.

The current Areas and Directors, which compose the IESG, are:

IETF and IESG Chair
Phill Gross/ANS

Applications
Russ Hobby/UC-Davis

Internet
Noel Chiappa/ Consultant
Philip Almquist/ Consultant

Network Management
James Davin/ MIT

OSI Integration
David Piscitello/ Bellcore
Ross Callon/DEC (retiring)

Operational Requirements
Susan Estrada/ CERFnet
Phill Gross/ANS
Bernard Stockman/ Nordunet

Routing
Robert Hinden/BBN

Security
Steve Crocker/TIS

Transport and Services
Dave Borman/Cray Research

User Services
Joyce Reynolds/ISI

Standards Management

Dave Crocker/DEC

The IETF has a secretariat, headquartered at the Corporation for
National Research Initiatives in Reston Virginia, with the following
staff:

IETF Executive Director
Steve Coya

IESG Secretary
Greg Vaudreuil

IETF Coordination
Megan Davies

Administrative Support
Debra Legare
Cynthia Clark

The Working Groups conduct business during plenary meetings of the IETF,
during meetings outside of the IETF, and via electronic mail on mailing
lists established for each group.

The IETF holds 4.5 day plenary sessions three times a year. These
plenary meetings are composed of Working Group sessions, technical
presentations, network status briefings, WG reporting, and an open IESG
meeting. A Proceeding of each IETF plenary is published, which includes
reports from each area, each WG, and each technical presentation. The
Proceedings includes a summary of all current standardization
activities.

Mailing Lists.  Much of the daily work of the IETF is conducted on
electronic mailing lists. There are mailing lists for each of the
Working Groups, as well as a general IETF list. Mail on the Working
Group mailing lists is expected to be technically relevant to the
Working Groups supported by that list.

To join a mailing list, send a request to the associated request list.
All internet mailing lists have a companion "-request" list. Send
requests to join a list to <listname>-request@<listhost>.

Information and logistics about upcoming meetings of the IETF are
distributed on the general IETF mailing list. For general inquiries
about the IETF, send a request to [e-mail]. An archive of
mail sent to the IETF list is available for anonymous ftp from the
directory ftp/irg/ietf on venera.isi.edu.

On Line IETF Information.  The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains
up-to-date on-line information on all its activities. There is a
directory containing Internet-Draft documents and a directory containing
IETF working group information. All this information is available in
identical format for public access at several locations globally. (See
below for locations.)

The "IETF" directory contains a general description of the IETF,
summaries of ongoing working group activities and provides information
on past and upcoming meetings. The directory generally reflects
information contained in the most recent IETF Proceedings and Working
Group Reports.

The "Internet-Drafts" directory makes available for review and comment
draft documents that will be submitted ultimately to the IAB for
standardization and/or submitted to the RFC Editor to be considered for
publishing as an RFC. Comments on Internet-Drafts from the wider
Internet community (i.e., in addition to those attending the WG sessions
at the IETF plenaries) are strongly encouraged and should be addressed
to the responsible person whose name and electronic mail addresses are
listed on the first page of the respective draft.

The IETF Directory.  Below is a list of the files available in the IETF
directory and a short synopsis of what each file contains.

Files prefixed with a 0 contain information about upcoming meetings.
Files prefixed with a 1 contain general information about the IETF, the
working groups, and the internet-drafts.

FILE NAME

0mtg-agenda the current agenda for the upcoming quarterly IETF plenary,
which contains what Working Groups will be meeting and at what times,
and the technical presentations and network status reports to be given.

0mtg-logistics the announcement for the upcoming quarterly IETF plenary,
which contains specific information on the date/location of the meeting,
hotel/airline arrangements, meeting site accommodations and travel
directions.

0mtg-rsvp a standardized RSVP form to be used to notify the support
staff of your plans to attend the upcoming IETF meeting.

0mtg-schedule current and future meeting dates and sites for IETF
plenaries.

1id-abstracts the internet drafts current on-line in the internet-drafts
directory.

1id-guidelines instructions for authors of internet drafts.

1ietf-overview a short description of the IETF, the IESG and how to
participate.

1wg-summary a listing of all current Working Groups, the working group
chairmen and their email addresses, working group mailing list
addresses, and, where applicable, documentation produced. This file also
contains the standard acronym for the working groups by which the IETF
and Internet-Drafts directories are keyed.

Finally, Working Groups have individual files dedicated to their
particular activities which contain their respective Charters and
Meeting Reports. Each Working Group file is named in this fashion:

<standard wg abbreviation>-charter.txt

<standard wg abbreviation>-minutes-date.txt

Using FTP, the "dir" or "ls" command will permit you to review what
Working Group files are available.

The Internet-Drafts Directory.  The Internet-Drafts directory contains
the current working documents of the IETF. These documents are indexed
in the file 1id-abstracts.txt in the Internet-Drafts directory.

The documents are named according to the following conventions. If the
document was generated in an IETF working group, the filename is:

draft-ietf-<std wg abrev>-<docname>-<rev>.txt , or .ps

where <std wg abrev> is the working group acronym, <docname> is a very
short name, and <rev> is the revision number.

If the document was submitted for comment by a non-ietf group or author,
the filename is:

draft-<org>-<author>-<docname>-<rev>.txt, or .ps

where <org> is the organization sponsoring the work and <author> is the
author's name.

For more information on writing and installing an Internet-Draft, see
the file 1id-guidelines, "Guidelines to Authors of Internet-Drafts".

Directory Locations.  The directories are maintained primarily at the
NSFnet Service Center (NNSC). There are several official "shadow"
machines which contain the IETF and INTERNET-DRAFTS directories in
identical format. These machines may be more convenient than
nnsc.nsf.nsf. (Plus, there are numerous "unofficial" sites, that may
also be more convenient for specific users.)

To access these directories, use FTP. After establishing a connection,
Login with username ANONYMOUS and password GUEST. When logged in, change
to the directory of your choice with the following commands:

cd internet-drafts

cd ietf

Individual files can then be retrieved using the GET command:

get <remote filename> <local filename>

e.g., get 00README readme.my.copy

IETF Directory Locations.

NSF Network Service Center Address

nnsc.nsf.net

The Defense Data Network NIC Address

nic.ddn.mil

Internet-drafts are also available by mail server from this machine. For
more information mail a request:

To: [e-mail]

Subject: Help

NIC staff are happy to assist users with any problems that they may
encounter in the process of obtaining files by FTP or "SERVICE". For
assistance, phone the NIC hotline at 1-800-235-3155 between 6 am and 5
pm Pacific time.

Pacific Rim Address: munnari.oz.au

The Internet-drafts on this machine are stored in Unix compressed form
(.Z).

Europe Address: nic.nordu.net (192.36.148.17)

*Advanced Network and Services

================================================================
040.25 The IANA Story by Jon Postel* <[e-mail]>

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) provides for the
assignment of numbers, keywords, and other protocol parameters for the
Internet community. For example, the assignment of network numbers,
protocol numbers, port numbers, and MIB numbers are the responsibility
of the IANA.

The Internet Activities Board (IAB) has the responsibility for the
management of the Internet including its address spaces. The IAB has
delegated the management of the Internet address spaces to the IANA.

The IANA is located at USC's Information Sciences Institute in Marina
del Rey, California, and is staffed by Joyce K. Reynolds and Jon Postel.

The assignment and recording of network numbers is a substantial part of
the activity and this has been identified as the Internet Registry. The
support of the Internet Registry is currently delegated to the Network
Information Center. For the assignment of an Internet network number (an
IP address) please contact "[e-mail]".

The following is a list of the types of numbers, keywords and other
parameters currently registered or recorded directly by the IANA:

Version Numbers
Protocol Numbers
Port Numbers
Unix Ports
Internet Multicast Addresses
IANA Ethernet Address Block
IP Type of Service Parameters
IP Time to Live Parameter
Domain System Parameters
BOOTP Parameters
Network Management Parameters
ARPANET and MILNET Logical Addresses
ARPANET and MILNET Link Numbers
ARPANET and MILNET X.25 Address Mappings
IEEE 802 Numbers of Interest
ETHERNET Numbers of Interest
ETHERNET Vendor Address Components
ETHERNET Multicast Addresses
XNS Protocol Types
PRONET 80 Type Numbers
Address Resolution Protocol Parameters
Reverse Address Resolution Protocol Parameters
Dynamic Reverse Address Resolution Protocol Parameters
X.25 Type Numbers
Public Data Network Numbers
Telnet Options
Mail Encryption Types
Machine Names
System Names
Protocol and Service Names
Terminal Type Names

The IANA records the assignment of these and other numbers and
occasionally publishes lists of the currently assigned numbers and
parameters in an RFC titled "Assigned Numbers" (most recently as RFC-
1060).

A common request to the IANA is for the assignment of an enterprise or
"company private" management information base (mib) number. A more
interesting case is a request to assign a port number for a new
application or service based on UDP or TCP. In these cases, there is
often some discussion to understand the protocol aspects of the use of
the port. Normally, a two-page description of the application (focusing
on the protocol aspects) is required before a port number is assigned.

Other types of assignments are less frequent. It is always helpful when
a request is accompanied by a description of the proposed use of the
parameter to be assigned.

To contact the IANA for information or to request a number, keyword or
parameter assignment send an electronic mail message to [e-mail].

*Communications Division Director, Information Sciences Institute,
University of Southern California

================================================================
040.31.1 Resource Discovery Beyond X.500 by Michael F. Schwartz*
<[e-mail]>

The Internet connects thousands of sites and millions of users around
the world. As it continues to grow and offer new types of services,
being able to locate and make effective use of the available resources
becomes increasingly difficult. To address this issue, the CCITT has
developed a directory service specification called X.500, as an OSI
application layer standard.

X.500 describes a hierarchical collection of servers, with provisions
for caching and replication. Each participating site maintains directory
information about resources at that site, as well as administrative
information needed for traversing the tree and maintaining proper
distributed operation. Unlike the TCP/IP Domain Naming System, X.500
supports authenticated runtime updates, and stores typed data using a
structured schema. Field trials conducted by Performance Systems
International and the Field Operational X.500 Project demonstrate that
there is significant interest in deploying X.500 servers at institutions
around the world. Tools exist to ease the task of searching the tree,
and to make long-distance operations more efficient. Graphical client
interfaces exist for a number of platforms.

X.500 is an important standard with growing momentum, but it is not a
complete solution to the resource discovery problem. Its current use
focuses primarily on providing a "white pages" directory of Internet
users. However, over time X.500 will need to accommodate many other
types of resource discovery. Consider two realms very different than
user directories: commercial network services, and wide area distributed
file systems.

In a commercial network service environment (such as airline computer
reservation systems), the resource discovery mechanism should support
fair access among competing information providers. This issue will heat
up significantly in the next few years, as the U.S. Regional Bell
Operating Companies enter the information services market, and the
Internet begins explicitly allowing commercial traffic.

Supporting resource discovery in a distributed file system requires
support for two distinct problems. First, how does a user discover a
needed resource based on an attribute-based description, such as source
code for a particular X-window system application? Second, how does a
user locate an appropriate instance of this resource, from among the
many replicas available (e.g., by anonymous FTP)? This decision should
consider network bandwidth and version information about the file, and
eventually should also consider cost and policy routing considerations.
The popular Archie system developed at McGill University addresses the
first of these problems. The second problem is currently a topic of
research.

Beyond supporting different types of resource discovery, other problems
arise in trying to organize a widely shared, broad information space.
While the hierarchical organization used by X.500 supports scalable
decentralized administration, hierarchies become convoluted as an
increasingly wide variety of resources are registered. Moreover,
hierarchical information is only efficiently searched according to its
primary organizational attributes (country and organization in the case
of X.500). Searching for resources according to other criteria (such as
the functionality of a software package) is inefficient. Inserting cross
links between parts of the tree according to such criteria does not
adequately solve this problem, since the information is still physically
distributed in a fashion that does not permit efficient searching.

Moreover, creating such links requires a large amount of manual
administrative effort.

There are a number of research efforts under way to address the problems
discussed here. In time, the ideas introduced by these projects may find
their way into future versions of X.500.

*Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of
Colorado - Boulder

================================================================
040.31.2 Discovery Research by Alan Emtage* <[e-mail]>

Although it has been many years since the term "Information Age" entered
the vocabulary, we are only now beginning to realize what that it could
mean in the day to day lives of people on very large networks such as
the Internet. The archie system, developed at McGill University in
Montreal, is one of a number of ongoing projects, throughout the world,
trying to bring some order out of the current information chaos.

Simply stated, archie's purpose is to track any kind of information on
the Internet which is freely available and frequently updated. The
prototype system, now in operation in 8 countries on 4 continents,
monitors approximately 900 anonymous FTP UNIX sites on the Internet. It
is expected that in the coming months facilities for accessing anonymous
FTP sites running VMS and other operating systems will be added. Every
day archie retrieves the directory listings from a subset of these sites
and integrates this information into its own specialized database. All
sites are accessed in a monthly cycle.

At the time of writing, publicly available servers are running on
archie.mcgill.ca (Canada), archie.sura.net (USA), archie.fi (Finland),
archie.au (Australia), archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (UK) and cs.huji.ac.il
(Israel). Currently, three methods can be used to search for filenames
in the hundreds of anonymous FTP sites:

(a) When installed on your local system, archie clients allow the user
to remotely access the archie databases. These clients can be obtained
via anonymous FTP from any of the archie hosts. Command line based
clients written in Perl or C as well as an X11 client are available.

(b) telnet (or rlogin) connections. Connect to one of the archie hosts
and log in as "archie". No password is required. Full online help is
available by typing 'help'.

(c) Send electronic mail to 'archie' at one of the the archie hosts with
the word, 'help' as the subject or in the body of the message.

Archie also has a Package Description database which contains the names
and short descriptions of about 3,500 pieces of information (software
packages, documents, datasets) available on the Internet. Users can
search through this database to locate useful information by using the
'whatis' command on the telnet and email interfaces.

The implementors of archie can be reached by sending mail to archie-
[e-mail]

*Unix Consultant, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

================================================================
040.33.1 Security Initiatives In the Internet by Dr. Stephen Kent*
<kent@ bbn.com>

The Internet has grown to encompass over 5000 "connected" networks
spanning numerous countries. Internet technology is employed not only in
academic and research networks, but also in an increasing number of
commercial networks. Although this technology has brought many benefits
to its subscriber community, e.g., multi-vendor and multi-platform
interoperability, security and privacy concerns have never been at the
forefront of the technology. Several initiatives are underway to
incorporate security and privacy technology into Internet protocols,
including Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), SNMP security extensions, and
Common Authentication Technology (CAT). This article briefly explores
PEM.

Privacy Enhanced Mail is an extension to the familiar RFC 822/SMTP
electronic mail system which is used extensively throughout the Internet
and which has links to many other major electronic mail systems, e.g.,
BITNET, EARN, UUNET and many commercial electronic mail systems. PEM
allows a message originator to affix a digital signature to a message,
so that each message recipient can verify the identity of the sender and
the integrity of the message.

Signed messages may be forwarded to third parties who can, in turn,
verify the identity of the (original) sender and the integrity of the
original message. A message originator also may elect to encrypt the
message, protecting it against disclosure while the message is in
transit or residing in a mailbox.

As part of developing the PEM standards, an infrastructure is being
established which will include a facility for organizations and
individuals to be "certified", i.e., to bind a public key to the
individual's or organization's name. The resulting certification system
will be used not only with PEM, but also provides essential security
capabilities for use with a variety of applications, including X.500
directory authentication and the CAT system noted above. In recognition
of personal privacy concerns, provisions are being made to support PEM
users who do not wish to disclose their identity but do want to make use
of the security facilities in an "anonymous" fashion.

The availability PEM and its associated certification infrastructure may
expand the ways in which the Internet may be employed. For example,
applications requiring transmission of data that was deemed too
sensitive for unprotected messaging may now be able to make use of the
Internet. New applications may arise which make use of the PEM digital
signature facility to support billing for various services accessed via
the network.

The Internet Society is slated to play an important role in the
certification system alluded to above. Current plans call for the
Society to serve as the root of the certification hierarchy, and to
provide a clearinghouse database to help avoid name collisions in the
certification process. Members should be proud of the pioneering role
the Internet Society is playing.

*Chief Scientist, Communications Division, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.

================================================================
040.33 Passwords: Our Keys to the Network by Jeffrey I. Schiller*
<[e-mail]>

Perhaps one of the most useful doors that crackers are finding open on
the Internet today are the passwords of others.

For most users, passwords are the way that they prove their identity to
computers on the network, and the way that crackers forge their identity
in order to break in. The road to better security on the Internet starts
with good password choices.

By definition a good password is one that is easy for you to remember,
but difficult for anyone else to guess. You want it to be easy to
remember, so that you don't need to resort to writing it down. It should
be obvious why you don't want others to guess it!

Here are some guidelines to help you choose a good password (from the
Site Security Policy Handbook (FYI 8, RFC 1244):

DON'T use your login name in any form.

DON'T use your first, middle, or last name in any form.

DON'T use your spouse's or child's name.

DON'T use other information easily obtained about you (like license
plate numbers, telephone numbers etc.).

DON'T use a password which is all digits, or all the same letter.

DON'T use a word found in a dictionary (of any language!).

DO use a password with mixed-case alphabetics (if your system allows
it).

DO use a password with non-alphabetic characters (digits or
punctuation).

DO use a password that is easy to remember.

DO use a password that you can type quickly, without having to look at
the keyboard.

You should also change your password frequently. Just in case your
password has been compromised by an intruder, changing it will probably
lock them out. If your password grants access to sensitive information,
you also need to consider if crackers are attempting computational
attacks. These attacks, typically done offline using information already
obtained from your system, for example a password file, may take weeks
to succeed.

However if you change your password before the offline attack completes,
you have won! System Administrators may wish to check the quality of the
passwords that their user community are using. Several programs exist,
depending on the type of computer system you have, that allow you, the
System Administrator, to attempt to "crack" your users passwords. In
this fashion you can warn those who have poor passwords. Some programs
can even be put in place that disallow the selection of a password which
fails to meet some or all of the guidelines given above.

A good source of information on this and other security related topics
is FYI 8, RFC1244, The Site Security Policy Handbook. This document,
available free from distribution sites around the Internet, is a
valuable source of information and references to other security related
works.

In future issues we will discuss other Internet security issues, like
protecting passwords as the traverse the network.

*MIT Network Manager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

================================================================
040.50 Cooperation Among Network Operation Centers - A Beginning by
Elise Gerich* <[e-mail]>

In the summer of 1988, when the NSFNET T1 backbone became operational,
the NSF mid-level networks and the NSFNET management team discussed the
need for the distribution of real-time information about the status of
the NSFNET backbone. The mid-level networks provide direct support to
the network users within their region or organization. The users call
the mid-levels when they perceive a problem reaching someone or some
machine via the network. The network is and should be perceived as one
entity; the multiple component networks that provide the path from one
destination to another should be transparent to the user. Therefore, the
network operation centers which are responsible for various portions of
"the network" need a way to share information about the health of their
portion of the network.

The result of these discussions was the creation of a mailing list,
network-status-reports <[e-mail]>. For the last three years the
Merit Network Operation Center has posted notices of scheduled backbone
activity and disruption of service on the backbone to [e-mail].

The mid-level networks agreed to create distribution lists for the
network status announcements. The Merit Network Operation Center used
this mailing list to apprise the NSF regionals of the status of the
NSFNET backbone. Some of the mid-levels, notably JVNCnet, also started
to use nsr as a vehicle to notify other network operation centers of
activities within their regional network. However, the list has
primarily reported information about the NSFNET backbone.

As more and more networks accessed the NSFNET and the NSF regionals, the
original distribution list has expanded to include more network service
providers, for instance, CA*net, SWITCH, and EASInet.

At the Network Joint Management working group meeting at the last IETF
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the usefulness of sharing information
concerning the status of the Internet was discussed. From all reports,
the working group agreed that the network operation centers need to know
what is happening in remote parts of the Internet that may impact the
ability of their users to access some destinations. This sharing of
information permits the network operation centers to more efficiently
debug problems reported by their constituents.

The working group also agreed that while the nsr mailing list acts as a
good vehicle for dispersing operational information to other centers, it
is inappropriate to use that vehicle as a forum to discuss meta issues.
The integrity of the mailing list should be maintained so that network
operators can keep the real-time network messages separate from other
topics.

A second mailing list should be used for on-going discussions concerning
cooperation between network operation centers. The working group
proposed that the [e-mail] mailing list is the appropriate forum
for other topics concerning distributed management of the Internet.

Network Operation Centers are encouraged to use [e-mail] to notify
other NOCs of scheduled maintenance and other service activities for
which they are responsible. Accurate and timely postings by NOCs to nsr
will benefit all of us in serving our users.

*Merit/NSFNET

================================================================
040.51 User Services by Joyce K. Reynolds* <[e-mail]> and Gary
Scott Malkin* <[e-mail]>

As the Internet has rapidly developed to encompass a large number of
internationally dispersed networks in academic and research fields, many
new users of different backgrounds are added to the community. Buried
deep within the heart of the Internet are countless servers providing
information about everything from aerospace information to the weather.
However, few users on the Internet know where even a small fraction of
this information can be found. The reason is because it is globally
scattered throughout the thousands of host machines connected to the
network. This growth has placed the user services provider in the
difficult position of trying to provide much needed user support, while
at the same time restructuring the user services' system to accommodate
continued expansion.

Recent changes include the establishment of a User Services Area within
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This area provides an
international forum for people interested in all levels of user
services, to identify and initiate projects designed to improve the
quality of the information available to users of the Internet.
Interaction with other national and international user services entities
began in 1991 with the creation of the User Services Area Council
(USAC). Currently, USAC's membership includes representation by
Australia, Canada, Europe, Israel, Japan, and the United States. USAC's
goals will be ongoing as the Internet evolves globally.

One continuing goal of the User Services Area is to coordinate the
development of user information services by providing documentation
information and distribution for the Internet community. With the "For
Your Information" (FYI) series of "Request For Comments" (RFC), the User
Services Area provides introductory and overview documents for network
users.

Their purpose is to make available general information, rather than the
protocol specifications or standards that is typical of other RFCs. FYIs
are allied to the RFC series of notes, but provides information about
who does what on the Internet. The FYI RFC series has proved a success
since its initiation, and its goal is to continue to do so.

Current list of publications related to user services:

FYI9
Who's Who in the Internet: Biographies of IAB IESG and IRSG Members
(Also RFC 1251) August 1991.

FYI8
Site Security Handbook  (Also RFC 1244) July 1991.

FYI7
FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly Asked  Experienced
Internet User  Questions  (Also RFC 1207) February 1991.

FYI6
FYI on the X Window System  (Also RFC 1198) January 1991.

FYI5
Choosing a Name for Your Computer  (Also RFC 1178) August 1990.

FYI4
FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly asked  New Internet
User  Questions  (Also RFC 1206) February 1991.

FYI3
FYI on Where to Start: A Bibliography of Internetworking Information
(Also RFC 1175) August 1990.

FYI2
FYI on a Network Management Tool Catalog: Tools for Monitoring and
Debugging TCP/IP Internets and Interconnected Devices  (Also RFC 1147)
April 1990.

FYI1
F.Y.I. on F.Y.I.: Introduction to the F.Y.I. Notes  (Also RFC 1150)
March 1990.

Instructions for retrieving FYI RFCs may be found in the file: "in-
notes/rfc-retrieval.txt" on VENERA.ISI.EDU.

*Member of the Technical Staff, Information Sciences Institute,
University of Southern California

*Member of the Technical Staff, FTP Software, Inc.

================================================================
040.52 What's Important in Coordinating Internet Activities
Internationally by Steven N. Goldstein* <[e-mail]. nsf.gov>

The opportunity to write comes on the heels of the 13-15 November 1991
meetings of the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research
Networking (CCIRN), generally pronounced "kern", and its engineering
advisory body, the Intercontinental Engineering Planning Group (IEPG),
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. These were followed the next week by the
meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), including a
session of its Operational Requirements Area Directorate (ORAD), also in
Santa Fe.

In addition, the Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET) met
jointly with the ORAD. All of these groups are concerned with a central
issue: maintaining stability in the Internet and encouraging network
interconnection architectures and engineering practices which in one way
or another fit people's views of "optimality".

I was not able to attend the IETF/ORAD or FARNET meetings, and the
minutes and business of the CCIRN and IEPG meetings have not yet been
finalized. So, I will not attempt to report on those events per se, but
rather, I will present a general discussion of the ideas that face us
all in this arena.

I recently read an article about bulletin boards which referred to
Fidonet in terms like "chaotic, self-organizing beast", and, by
juxtaposing the Internet implied similar qualities for our collective
body. There may be a ring of truth to that, especially by limited
analogy with fractals in Chaos Theory: LANs connect to MANs and WANs,
and, now WANs are connecting into super-WANs, and the trend may take
even higher steps of organizing. Yet, this is being done without any
central authority. In the U.S., many campuses have several levels of
LANs which may ultimately connect to the regional WAN.

The regional WAN connects to the NSFNET WAN. Some regional WANs also
connect directly to other regional WANs. Also, portions of a campus may
connect to the ESnet or the NASA Science Internet WAN, or to the
Terrestrial Wideband Net. And, the NSFNET, ESnet, NSI and TWB WANs
connect to each other at two Federal Internet eXchanges, FIXs. But,
similar things are happening among commercial nets in the U.S., and the
CIX (for Commercial Internet eXchange) Association has formed CIXs.

There have been proposals to link FIXs and CIXs into National EXchanges
(NEXs). There is talk of one or more CIXs in Europe. Japanese research
and academic networks are talking of a JIX. A proposed European
Backbone, Ebone, would create a supra-national network infrastructure to
which national and [intracontinental] international European nets would
connect at main nodes, again WAN-to-super-WAN.

If one were to visualize each network as a chain link with shape somehow
indicative of topology and link thickness and size representing network
size (number of connections, traffic levels, capacities, etc.), the
result would be a three-dimensional mail (fabric). Some network
researchers, engineers and operators assert that the fluttering of the
wings of a butterfly in some distant link can cause huge storms
throughout the net. Less whimsically stated, some of my colleagues
maintain that the present state of Internet technology is not up to the
task of protecting the stability of their networks from poor engineering
choices in neighboring networks. And, as the technology catches on
throughout the world, new links continue to materialize, as do new
connections among them. New tools are being developed to try to cope
with this, especially hierarchical routing protocols (e.g., the Border
Gateway Protocol-BGP) and the ability to interject policy into routing
decisions (policy-based routing). So, it is a race of sorts between the
proliferation of scale and complexity and tools designed to cope with
them to preserve stability and performance.

This, then, is the context as I see it. And the question(s), as yet
unsolved: "Can we, collectively, create a forum for exchanging
information and evaluating proposed linkages before the fact in order to
preserve stability and performance in the Internet?" And, relatedly, "Is
it possible to have a shared sense of optimality against which
alternative solutions emanating in the forum can be evaluated?" Finally,
"Under what sets of circumstances might we expect individual network
administrations to behave according to the best judgments of other
network administrations represented in the forum?"

The CCIRN and the IEPG and the IETF/ORAD and FARNET did not achieve
closure on these issues this time around, and they may not do so in the
next few rounds. Yet other bodies may have to join the forum as the
Internet becomes increasingly populated with commercial interests. Yet,
the quest must not be given up, because we all live together in the same
flat address space, and in one way or another we will share similar
fates if instabilities occur.

*Program Director, Interagency & International Networking Coordination,
Division of Networking and Communications Research & Infrastructure,
National Science Foundation.

================================================================
040.62 Europe Commercial Nets by Juha Heinanen <[e-mail]>

In this first report, an overview is given on present European
commercial providers of Internet services.

Traditionally commercial customers needing Internet services in Europe
have turned to EUnet, which is a not-for-profit network related to
EurOpen association. The branch of EUNET offering IP level services is
called InterEUnet and currently it has points of presense in Austria,
Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, the Nordic Countries,
Switzerland, and United Kingdom. Connectivity to the U.S is via
Alternet.

Another network providing European wide Internet services is InfoLAN.
InfoLAN is owned by InfoNet which is a Los Angeles based international
network operator. InfoLAN has IP access nodes in Belgium, France,
Finland, Germany, Sweden, and United Kingdom and links from Europe to
the U.S. Customers subscribe to InfoLAN usually because of their
internal interconnection needs and Internet connectivity is offered as
an added value to qualified users.

Besides these international service provides, there exists national
commercial internet networks in Finland and Sweden, where open
competition has encouraged fulfilling of advanced user needs.

In Finland, DataNet, which is run by the state owned telecom company,
and LANLINK, which is managed by a consortium of local telecom
companies, offer LAN interconnectivity supporting (among others) the
TCP/IP protocol suite. Qualified DataNet customers can get Internet
Access either via NORDUnet or via DataNet's InfoLAN connection.

In Sweden, there exists similarly two competing IP providers: SWIPNET,
which is an IP service of a privately owned telecom operator Tele2, and
TIPNET, which is run by the state owned PTT. Both of these networks can
currently both closed and open IP connectivity and Internet access to
qualified customers via NORDUnet.

================================================================
040.70  USENET by Rick Adams* <[e-mail]>

USENET READERSHIP SUMMARY REPORT for Oct 91

This smple was estimated for the entire net

Sites

701

40,000

Fraction reporting

1.75%

100%

Users with accounts

159,480

9,100,000

Netreaders

33,345

1,902,000

Average readers per site

48

Percent of users who are netreaders

20.91%

Average traffic per day (megabytes)

27.301

Average traffic per day (messages)

11,318

Traffic measurement interval

last 28 days

Readership measurement interval

last 75 days

There were 154,597 articles, totaling 295 Mbytes (364 including headers)
submitted from 15,531 different Usenet sites by 41,378 different users
to 1,810 different newsgroups for an average of 21 Mbytes (26 including
headers) per day.

*UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA, USA, with assistance
from Brian Reid, DEC Western Research Lab, Palo Alto, CA,  USA

================================================================
040.90 RARE (Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche Europeenne) by Josefien
Bersee* <[e-mail]>

Networking for Researchers in Europe since 1986, RARE is the association
of European networking organizations and their users. RARE's aim is to
foster cooperation between both national and international networking
organizations to develop a harmonized data communications infrastructure
in Europe. RARE supports the principles of Open Systems and the
international standardization activities.

The Association has four types of members. The twenty European countries
listed in the statutes are eligible to be the National Members which, as
voting members, formally constitute the Association. Associate National
Members are national research networking organizations in other
countries which support the objectives of RARE. International Members
are international organizations within Europe which support the
objectives of RARE and are closely associated with the use, coordination
and provision of an infrastructure to the benefit of the research
community. Liaison Members are organizations which are involved in
networking and related matters with whom RARE considers it important to
have close and continuing contact. At this point in time, RARE has 26
National Members and 10 International and Liaison Members.

RARE Projects RARE is carrying out a number of projects. Its largest
project is the COSINE (Cooperation for Open Systems Interconnection
Networking in Europe) Implementation Phase, EUREKA Project No.8. This
project is carried out under contract with the CEC. Under the
Implementation Phase a number of Pilot Projects and User Services are
operated.

One of these User Services (S2.1) was created out of the RARE MHS Pilot
Project, which established a pilot infrastructure for electronic mail
based on the X.400 standard.

Another well-known project is the International X.25 Infrastructure
(IXI), COSINE Service S1. The IXI backbone was created to interconnect
the public packet switching networks and the private research networks
across Europe.

Other RARE projects concerned electronic mail reliability and a
connectionless network services pilot project - to gain experience with
the internetworking of products based on ISO-IP standards. Recently a
project has started on the international character set issue, which is
now being incorporated in the COSINE framework.

Another recent initiative has been the setting up of Ebone 92: an
interim backbone infrastructure providing value-added open networking
services for Internet IP and pilot ISO CLNS.

The Operational Unit.  To handle the operational management of existing
and future networking services for the European Research and Education
community, RARE is now preparing the establishment of an Operational
Unit. This Operational Unit will operate on a not-for-profit basis,
having Europe as a primary geographic scope, but if necessary also
including services to other countries.

Conferences Each year RARE organizes a Joint Networking Conference (JNC)
to provide the opportunity for a broad discussion on networking for the
European research community, to review progress in its area of
activities and to stimulate new work. In 1992, the JNC will take place
in Innsbruck, Austria.

Liaisons with other Organizations RARE provides a user's voice on a
number of European standardization and political bodies, such as EEMA,
EWOS, ECTUA, ECFRN and and ETSI. On a broader scale, RARE represents the
European participation on the Coordinating Committee for
Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN). Recently, RARE has agreed
in principle to become a charter member of the Internet Society.

*Publicity Officer, at the RARE Secretariat of the RARE Association

================================================================
040.91  RIPE: A Short Status Report by Joy Marino* <[e-mail].
net>

As probably many know, RIPE ("Reseaux IP Europeen": we have many
languages to play with) is the informal coordinating body for all
Internet-related activities in Europe.  It was established in 1989, and
up to now it coordinates the activities of about 40 organizations of 23
countries.  The long standing cooperation between EUnet and NORDUnet was
taken as an good example of cooperation at the technical level, but many
other partners have had a key role in RIPE; the initial list of
participating organizations being: BelWu, CERN, EASInet, EUnet, GARR,
HEPnet, NORDUnet, SURFnet, SWITCH, and XLINK.

The main scope of RIPE is the cooperation among the existing IP
networks, both on a intra-european basis, and from the point of view of
US-Europe connectivity.

So far, RIPE has set up a registry data base of all networks, domains,
leased-lines, and persons involved in IP networking, in Europe.  The
database, which can be downloaded via anonymous FTP on "nic.eu.net" or
queried via "whois" port on the same host, lists 2474 persons, 1622
networks and 1161 domain names, at the end of November.

It is interesting to look at DNS host counts, also: a monthly poll of IP
registered hosts lists 12965 in November 1991, which is about four times
the hostcount in November 1990, and the European IP community is still
exhibiting an exponential growth: someone has predicted one million
sites at the end of 1992!

The issue of routing is quite complicated: most of the European IP
networks have and need to have peculiar routing policies, and the
connectivity among different networks is primarily based on bilateral
agreements.  The scenario is even more complicated by the use of both
"interior" and "exterior routing" between international routers.
Although a solution based on a European-wide backbone, with interior
routing within the backbone is considered optimal, in the meantime a
workable solution is being carried out, based on the collection of all
the existing "policies", their uniform and univocal labelling into the
RIPE database, followed by the (automatic) generation of lists of which
networks each international router announces.  A similar scheme is
already in place, but the formal coordination is on going and the
coordinated routing policy will start on January 1st.

People in RIPE are aware that the level of informal coordination cannot
continue forever, and have recommended the creation of a formally
established Network Coordination Center.  A Request for Proposal for a
NCC and for a NCC manager were issued on October 21st, and a decision
will be taken in January.

The work of RIPE is also at the base of the EBONE initiative, whose goal
is to implement a true European Backbone, which will be based, on the
first year - 1992, on the resources made available by the contributing
partners, but later on it will have one common network infrastructure.

A bunch of documents about the activities of RIPE is maintained on- line
on "nic.eu.net" and is available via anonymous FTP in the directory "-
ftp/ripe/docs"; see the file "README" for more details.

*Treasurer, EUNET Executive Board

================================================================
040.92  EARN by Frode Greisen* <[e-mail]>

Established in 1985, EARN has become a stable provider of networking
services for research and academic users in Europe, the Middle East and
Africa.  EARN is an organization with country membership and
technically, the services are totally integrated with the CREN services.
EARN now comprises 950 host computers in 550 institutions in 27
countries and the traffic volume increased by 57% from 1989 to 1990 up
to a volume of 6 billion records.

Geographically, the main recent development was the connection of new
East European countries.  This happened quickly after a statement was
obtained from the US Department of Commerce that EARN could connect to
COCOM proscribed countries - with some restrictions on speed and
services and as long as appropriate safeguard procedures were
established at the supercomputer sites on the network.  Poland was first
to connect, soon followed by Hungary, CSFR and USSR. Furthermore,
Rumania, Bulgaria and Lithuania have advanced plans connect.

What EARN offers to the new countries is that by becoming a member of
just one organization, and by using well established and widely
accessible technology, they can exchange electronic mail and files with
45 other EARN/BITNET countries.  Furthermore, they can use the value
added services on the network and due to the gateways and bilateral
agreements of EARN and CREN with other networking organizations they can
communicate with colleagues in a total of 90 countries.

Networking is in rapid change so is EARN.  Basically, EARN is a store
and forward network using IBM's NJE protocol which is emulated most of
the major operating systems.  Some years ago an EARN OSI project was
established and this project has now been successfully concluded. With
generous support from DEC, IBM and Northern Telecom software stacks were
developed and systems installed enabling countries to run the NJE
protocol on top of the five lower OSI layers, including X.25. Several
countries now employ this system for their international EARN traffic
using the private European X.25 network IXI, which is temporarily
provided by the European COSINE project.

However, other countries chose to rely on the TCP/IP protocol suite
which to run NJE the same way CREN core sites ship traffic via NSFnet.
According to this move, in 1991 EARN has developed a regionalization
plan to group the EARN hosts around core sites which have multiple links
between them.  This means both increased bandwidth and alternative
routes in case of line failure so that users get improved performance
and reduced response times.

The regionalization has only been economically feasible by cooperation
and line sharing with other organizations.  In the mid-eighties, a 9,600
bps EARN line was often the only international connection for academic
networking in a country whereas the community is now slowly but steadily
taking advantage of economy of scale by sharing international lines
running from 64 kbps up to 2 Mbps.

In 1990, EARN adopted a strategic plan.  Working according to this EARN
has increased its geographic coverage and large portions of the network
has moved to higher speeds.  Focus has been put on tools and
documentation to make the use of the network easier for new and
occasional users.  Work is going on to improve application services such
as data base access.  The goal is to continually provide easy to use low
cost networking services to the community.

================================================================
050.01  National Network Legislation Enacted in U.S. by Mike Roberts
<[e-mail]>

President George Bush signed the High Performance Computing Act of 1991
into law on 9 December 1991.  The legislation contains omnibus
provisions covering computer hardware and software, science education,
and the National Research and Education Network (NREN).

The final bill closely parallels a federal program announced early in
1991 and brings Administration and Congressional proposals into
alignment.  It is anticipated that approximately U.S. $100 million will
be available in each of the next five years for federally sponsored NREN
development and deployment.  These funds are allocated among a number of
federal agencies whose programs include both research and production
network components.

A major goal of the NREN program is to demonstrate the feasibility of
gigabit computer networking by 1996, a twenty-fold speedup from the 45
megabit per second capacity of some backbone links currently operating
in the U.S., most notably on NSFNET, which currently serves as the means
for connectivity to the Internet for nearly all American colleges and
universities.  More than 500 of the approximately 1400 four year
institutions of higher education in the U.S., which includes well over
half of the total faculty and student population of 14 million, are now
connected to NSFNET and the Internet.

The legislation passed unanimously in both houses of Congress following
a three year effort by a partnership of American universities, research
laboratories and organizations, supercomputer centers, and private
sector computer and communications companies. The bill was delayed in
recent months by internal debate within the Congress and the
Administration over management roles for the NREN. In a last minute
compromise, the bill was amended to leave responsibility for designation
of network managers with the White House.

In related developments, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently
made two announcements of its networking plans.  In September, Steven
Wolff, Director of the Networking Division in NSF, formed a new program
office for the NREN and named Robert Aiken, formerly of the Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory, to be its head.  Aiken is preparing a development
plan for the next three years, during which time the network will be
called the Interim Interagency NREN to reflect its joint support by
several federal agencies, and its pre-gigabit deployment character.

On 26 November, Wolff announced that the National Science Board had
approved a proposal that the NSFNET backbone be continued for three
additional years, and that a new cooperative agreement for its operation
be solicited on a competitive basis in 1992.  As part of the new
solicitation, NSF intends to separate the responsibility for routing
from that of circuits and packet switches.  As a result, it is likely
that multiple awards will be made for the provision of backbone
connectivity in various parts of the U.S., while a single award is made
for a routing authority, whose responsibilities will be broadened beyond
NSFNET to include both national and international components of the
Internet, working cooperatively with national authorities in other
countries.

================================================================
050.10 U.S. NRC CSTB Policy Research by Monica Krueger <mkrueger@
nas.bitnet>

Since this is the first issue of the Internet News some introductions
seem in order.

The NRC is the National Research Council and the CSTB is the Computer
Science and Telecommunications Board.  The NRC was formed by the
National Academy of Sciences in 1916 "to associate the broad community
of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering
knowledge and advising the federal government."  The NRC is the
principal operating agency of the NAS in providing services to the
federal government, the public, and the scientific and engineering
communities.  The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board is a
group within the NRC which specializes in studies dealing with computer
science and telecommunications issues.

The CSTB is currently working on over a dozen projects, any of which
might prove interesting to a sub-set of the subscribers of the Internet
News.  However, one project, the "Strategic Forum on Rights and
Responsibilities for Participants in Public Data Networks and
Information Services" is a project which engenders interest from nearly
anyone using a pc.  The project is in the earliest stages of development
but, it is expected to provide a framework in which competing technical,
business, and legal/regulatory perspectives can be aired in the interest
of mutual exploration and understanding.

This forum should prove to be particularly timely as citizens, members
of the business community and members of the government begin to ask
questions about civil liberties, equitable access, privacy, security and
appropriate use of computer networks in the electronic age.  A date for
the forum has not yet been set.

A recently completed project of the CSTB, the Workshop on Computer
Simulation and Visualization will be reported on in the January issue of
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.  This workshop brought together
individuals from industry and academia to discuss the state of the art
and directions for computer simulation and visualization.  Participants
in the meeting highlighted the evolution of simulation and visualization
into a discipline in its own right and pointed to benefits which may be
realized as the discipline becomes more broadly recognized and utilized.

The two projects mentioned above demonstrate the breadth of subject
matter which the CSTB addresses as it strives to support the National
Academy of Sciences in its "dedication to the furtherance of science and
technology and to their use for the general welfare."

================================================================
060.01 Rules of the road: network law by Patrice Lyons, Esq* <3432266@
mcimail. com>

When I was out driving last weekend, I noticed a stop sign placed at a
dangerous intersection. Down the road a bit, there was another sign to
indicate a hidden driveway. We often take such indicators for granted.
Rules of the road have evolved over time in most parts of the world for
the protection of motorists and pedestrians alike. By facilitating the
flow of traffic, these rules contribute to the orderly conduct of
commerce.

In the case of the Internet, however, we are still in the early stages
of reaching a consensus on the digital equivalent of basic rules of
conduct to govern access to and the orderly dissemination of
information. This space in the Internet News will be used to focus
attention on specific legal issues arising in the context of the
Internet. In doing so, it may serve to advance the development of rules
of conduct for the Internet community, or, at least flag important
matters for more detailed consideration. Please let the editor know if
there are legal concerns about networking that you would like to see
discussed. We will attempt to cover them in up-coming issues.

To initiate this forum on network law, I have elected to focus attention
on what I consider to be the most basic of rules for the user of
networks, namely respect for the rights of individual authors. In
particular, I refer to the right to claim authorship as set forth in the
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Generally, by denying an author credit for a work, the public may be
misled into believing a third party was the actual creator.

There are at least three aspects of this right to consider: (1) the
right to be named as author; (2) the right to object to another person
being identified as the author of your work; and (3) the right not to be
identified as the author of a work created by another person. In
addition, an author may decide to remain anonymous or to adopt a
pseudonym.

In the context of the Internet, where portions of a work created by a
person may easily be taken out of context, it may be useful to consider
the development of standard electronic identifiers that would follow
works, or excerpts from works, as they migrate over the Internet. For
example, an electronic system of footnoting may point the reader back to
the Internet mailbox of the source, together with a mention of the
author's name and the time, date and place of origination. False
attribution of authorship and other violations of this "moral right" may
be avoidable. Such a system may provide for the electronic equivalent of
road signs to facilitate the flow of information over the Internet.

*Law Offices of Patrice Lyons, Chartered

================================================================
060.10 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by Gerard Van der Leun
<[e-mail]>

Since the inception of the EFF in April of 1990, we have become an
organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of the emerging
electronic environments of the information age.  We believe that
computer-based communications should be useful, affordable and
accessible to all citizens, and that all systems should be created and
managed in keeping with our societies highest traditions of the free and
open flow of information and communication.

To accomplish this, we have taken on the complimentary roles of watchdog
and advocate; the former to make sure that the constitutional rights and
privileges of other media are extended to this new realm, the latter to
ensure that this new realm is settled in a way that benefits as wide an
array of citizens as possible.

During the first phase of our existence, we were instrumental in
reducing, through numerous public appearances, press conferences, and
other means, the wave of "hacker hysteria" which was prevalent
throughout 1990 and much of 1991.  When warranted, we have defended
people unjustly accused of computer "crimes" and lobbied successfully
against faulty legislation on the federal and state level.  We believe
that much of the apprehension of the public and law enforcement about
computer networks stems not from ill-will, but from ignorance of the
technology and the networked culture that the technology creates.  We
are continuing in our efforts to inform and enlighten individuals and
groups throughout the country through a program of presentations,
speeches and symposiums.

At the same time, it is not enough to simply defend and explain.  To
create the kind of National Public Network that this nation needs
requires that we be pro-active in the political arena.  Political and
legislative decisions made now and in the next few years will shape the
electronic environments of this nation and the world well into the next
century.  The central position of the EFF is that any nationally
deployed telecommunications infrastructure should be, in all senses of
the term, an open platform.  Only a National *Public* Network open to
all information providers, large or small, and accessible to all
citizens in an affordable manner, can satisfy the needs of the nation.

Currently, we are developing a proposal for Congress calling for the
early deployment of such a system through the use of existing ISDN
technology.  We believe that the use of this technology will be a means
of jump-starting the National Public Network if it is guided by an
overarching vision of openness, competitiveness, and affordability.
While we agree that fiber-optic technology will ultimately be used, we
see no reason to lose a generation of experience and usefulness waiting
for the highly expensive and time-consuming re-wiring of America.

In concert with this, and because we believe that the current Internet
will become an important part of the National Public Network, we have
been working closely with the Commercial Internet Exchange and the ANS
to develop policies in line with the public interest.

In order to give citizens with networking experience a voice in the
ongoing national debate over telecommunications policy,  we have now
established a Washington office to compliment EFF headquarters in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The EFF is a non-profit, membership organization. You can find out more
about us by sending requests for information to [e-mail].  You can
retrieve information about the EFF and its projects via anonymous FTP
via ftp.eff.org.  Our mission statement and back issues of our online
newsletter, EFFector Online, are held in the EFF directory.

We maintain two Usenet groups on the Internet, comp.org.eff.talk and
comp.org.eff.news.

*Director of Communications at the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Cambridge, MA, USA.

================================================================
070.10 Internet in the News by Vint Cerf* <[e-mail]>

Any system with the size and geographic scope of the Internet is bound
to find itself at the core of newsworthy events. I suppose this is the
natural consequence of the evolution of all infrastructure. Most people
pay little attention to the power system or the road system until
something goes wrong. THEN these quietly-serving infrastructures
suddenly get a good deal of local, regional and, sometimes national or
even international attention. So it seems to be with the Internet and
the various activities surrounding it.

The Internet is frequently mentioned in the trade press as the largest
collaborative internetworking system ever built (and it is still
GROWING!). Its very scale almost guarantees that some things that happen
in the Internet environment earn international attention. For instance,
Cable News Network (CNN) ran stories recently about the use of the
Internet in Project Gutenberg (headquartered in the state of Illinois in
the U.S.) to disseminate public domain books and about Dutch hackers who
spend their time attempting to break into various hosts on the Internet,
especially those operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.

More often, it is the standards-making activity which attracts trade
press attention. Recent announcements of plans for support of Privacy-
Enhanced Mail and the adoption of Open Shortest Path First routing
garnered considerable attention.

The Internet Society, itself, has caused no little stir in many circles.
The Chronicle for Higher Education ran a recent story about the
formation of the Society and this led to a small storm of queries and
applications for membership which descended on the staff of the Internet
Society secretariat.

Not long ago, a special arm of the U.S. Agency for International
Development, Volunteers in Technical Assistance, announced their plans
to use the Internet to assist in disaster relief planning and
coordination. The Secretary-General of the International
Telecommunication Union announced plans to place on-line copies of all
CCITT standards document in archives accessible to Internet users.

Announcements of commercial Internet service offerings from Sweden,
Finland, the United Kingdom and the United States seem to pepper the
news with increasing regularity. Another sign that the Internet is
outgrowing its historical research focus. Similarly, strong interest in
the Internet in the Library community and among elementary and secondary
school educators reflects yet other facets of the increasingly diverse
communities relying upon and exploring new uses of this global system.

*Vice President, Corporation for National Research Initiatives

================================================================
075.05 Internet Digest by Philip H. Enslow Jr* <[e-mail]>

Computer Networks and ISDN Systems

Recent items of interest.  CN/ISDN is published by Elsevier Science
Publishers, Amsterdam.

Distributed Operation of the X.500 Directory, B. Smetaniuk, Vol. 21, No.
1.

An Approach to Indirect Protocol Conversion, J.C. Shu and M.T. Liu, Vol.
21, No. 2.

Special Issue on ODA-Open Document Architecture, Vol. 21, No. 3.

Special Issue on High Speed Networking for Research in Europe, RARE,
Vol. 21, No. 4.

Special Issue on Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification, Vol.
22, No. 1.

Special Issue on Driving Applications for Future Networks, Vol. 22, No.
2.

Policy Requirements for Inter-Administrative Domain Routing, D. Estrin,
Vol. 22, No. 3.

Special Issue on Computer-Network Security, Vol. 22, No. 5.

*Editor-in-Chief, "Computer Networks and ISDN Systems", Professor,
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

================================================================
075.06 Internet Digest, by John S. Quarterman* <[e-mail]>

Matrix News is a monthly paper newsletter about contextual issues
related to computer networks; preferably issues that cross network,
organizational, or political boundaries.

The first issue included an article on "National Network Policy", which
has been followed by articles such as, "Exactly What is the NREN?", by
Jay Habegger, and by the guest editorials (called Martian Packets),
"Encouraging Equitable Competition on the Internet", by Mitchell Kapor,
"Public Institutions in an Electronic Society", by Steve Cisler, and
"Walking the Beat in the Global Village", by Richard Civille. Steve
Jackson's "The Top Ten Media Errors About the SJ Games Raid", is also
relevant. The monthly Network Policy Updates have mentioned the first
EARN connection to Moscow and the passing of the NREN bill. Network
policy is not just national, as indicated in R.R. Ronkin's "Global
Cyberspace -- Who Needs It".

Every issue attempts to draw connections between technology, politics,
and community, ranging from Smoot Carl-Mitchell's "X.400 - Fact and
Fancy", to John S. Quarterman's "Networks from Technology to Community",
"Boundaries, Resources and the Law", "Which Network, and Why It
Matters", and "Analogy is Not Identity". We also print reports from
networked communities, such as artists in "Cyber Art: The Art of
Communication Systems", by Anna Couey or Billy Barron's "Libraries on
the Matrix" and "BBSing Around the OuterNet".

User and directory services are often covered, with the Martian Packet
"On the Need to Develop Internet User Services", by Peter Deutsch There
were MIDS reports on the CNI and NSF Directory Services workshops, and
the articles, "Strategies for Finding People on Networks" and "Networks
Are Volunteers".

Issue 5 (August) was a theme issue on K-12 (Kindergarten-12th Grade)
networking, with articles on KIDSNET, the electronic college classroom,
and specific K-12 networking projects.

Issue 8 (November) examines networks in Argentina in depth and reviews
the program netfind.

For further information, please contact: [e-mail].

*Editor, ix News, Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc. (MIDS)

================================================================
100.01 INET-92 by Larry Landweber* <[e-mail]>

INET 92, to be held in Kobe Japan on 15-18 June 1992 will be the first
annual meeting of the Internet Society. Its predecessor, INET 91, held
in Copenhagen last Summer attracted almost 500 network planners,
implementors, maintainers, managers, and funders from almost sixty
countries throughout the world. The Conference Chair is Professor Hideo
Aiso from Keio University; the Program Chair is Professor Haruhisa
Ishida from the University of Tokyo.

INET 92 will feature presentations in four tracks, technology and
services, policy, applications and regional reports. Tutorials on
networking technology, ranging from futuristic/state-of-the-art to "how
to get started" will be featured. In addition, a special workshop for
attendees from developing countries will precede the conference and it
is hoped that over 50 people from countries just now beginning to
develop networks will attend. At the end of the conference, special
regional planning meetings will be held.

The meeting will be held in a picturesque setting on an artificial
island outside of Kobe on the Inland Sea. Within an hour of Kobe are
Kyoto and Nara, both of which are must sees for the visitor to Japan.

INET 92 is a working conference which should be of interest to all who
are actively involved in helping to build the global internet.

*Chair, INET

================================================================
100.07  Interop by Dan Lynch <[e-mail]>

In 1992 there will be two INTEROP Conferences instead of one.  The first
of them will be held in Washington, DC from 18-22 May.  The second will
be held in San Francisco, CA from 26-30 October.

The focus for the Spring Conference in Washington is on the "Business of
Internetworking".  While the technology that enables internetworking is
certainly important and constantly evolving, the business opportunities
and challenges are critical to the successful deployment by all end
users.

Two major speakers address these business areas.  Mitch Kapor, as
President of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, will address the public
policy issues surrounding the establishment of commercial
internetworking.  Mitch is especially concerned that this new capability
be made accessible to as many persons as possible and that users of it
are protected by intelligent extensions of the US Constitution and Bill
of Rights.

Dixon Doll, General Partner of Accel Partners, a venture capital firm,
will describe the fears, hopes, dreams and schemes of those who step up
to the opportunity to provide products and services in this new
internetworking age.  While as users, we all want to have the cheapest,
fastest, most reliable stuff we can, it is also in our interest to have
suppliers who are competent, innovative, stable and responsive.  How is
that balance met?

The 45 Conference sessions will be broken into two main clusters:
Deployment (or Tools for Today) and Technology (or Ideas for Tomorrow).
34 Tutorials will be offered on Monday-Tuesday and 7 of them will also
be offered on Thursday-Friday due to strong expressions of demand for
this format from previous attendees.

The cooperative demonstrations of vendor offerings will center on SMDS,
Frame Relay, Network Management, FDDI, X.400 Messaging, Token Ring and
ONC/NFS.

For more information you may reach us in the following ways:
[e-mail], 1-800-INTEROP, 1-415-941-3399 or fax to 1-415-949-
1779.

================================================================
100.08 IFIP CONGRESS '92 by Jack L. Rosenfeld* <[e-mail]>

Final plans have been announced for IFIP Congress '92 -- the 12th World
Computer Congress of the International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP) -- which will be held in Madrid, 7-11 September 1992.

The Congress will comprise five streams, which will be presented during
all five days of the Congress, and two subconferences, which will run
for two and one half days each:

Streams.  From Architectures to Chips Informatics and Education The
Vulnerability of the Information

Society. Social, Legal, and Security Aspects Software Development and
Maintenance Algorithms and Efficient Computation

Subconferences.  Expanding the Power of the Personal Computer Enhancing
the Intelligence in Information Systems

For information about submitting papers and posters, please contact the
IFIP Congress '92 Committee at the address given at the end of this
article. The deadlines for receipt of papers and posters are 10 January
and 15 April 1992, respectively. Proceedings will be published by
Elsevier/North-Holland.

In addition to the streams, subconferences, and workshops, there will be
tutorials, an exhibition, technical visits, and a tourist program that
will coincide with the Spanish celebration of the 500th anniversary of
Columbus's discovery of America.

For further information, please contact: IFIP Congress 92 c/o Grupo
Geyesco Mauricio Legendre 4, 8G 28046 Madrid, Spain fax: 34

(1) 3234936 e-mail: [e-mail]

*Editor, IFIP Newsletter

================================================================
100.3 Inter-American NET - Background Information by Tadao Takahasi*
<[e-mail]. edu>

The so-called First Interamerican Networking Workshop which took place
in Rio de Janeiro from October 7th to 11th, 1991 began to be organized
as the third meeting of SIRIAC GROUP. An initiative which started in
Sevilha (Oct '90), promoted a second meeting in Santiago (March '91),
and in this process managed to attract representatives from major
relevant networking efforts in LA&C.

As one of the decisions of the Santiago Meeting, Brazil was entrusted
with the responsibility for the organization of the third meeting, which
would strive to ensure the participation of all major players in
networking in LA&C.

In the process of assembling a program for the meeting, it soon became
clear that it would not be a simple "extended SIRIAC meeting". The
number of participants and themes would be much higher than usual. After
a number of false starts, the event was finally organized into two
tracks, one to address organizational and political issues, and the
other to address technical aspects in networking.

The Workshop included presentations on the following topics:

Building a Research Network: An Advanced Tutorial (Daniel Karrenberg)

Organizational Aspects of INTERNET (Steve Goldstein)

Organizational Aspects of RARE (Jose' Barbera')

Trends in Academic Networking in the US (Glenn Ricart)

Trends in Academic Networking in Europe (Jose' Barbera')

An Appraisal of RIPE (Daniel Karrenberg)

Low Cost Communications (Randall Bush)

Packet Satellite Communications (Charles Clemments and Junior de Castro)

Trends in High-Speed Networking (Guy Almes)

A Satellite Backbone for LA&C : Issues (Joseph Choy)

VSAT Technology (Brien Morgan)

Long Distance Education (Armando Villarroel)

Health Applications (Carlos Gamboa and Pablo Liendo)

In addition, several panel and open sessions were organized, involving
the participants in lively discussions and exchanges. One of the most
informative panel sessions dealt with the current activities of
international agencies (OAS, UNPD, etc.) in the LA&C networking. The
agencies were represented by Saul Hahn (OAS), Enzo Puliatti (UNDP),
Daniel Prado/Daniel Pimienta (UNION LATINA), and Gian-Franco Romero
(UNESCO).

Finally, it is important to mention that the Workshop was preceded by a
Hands-on Training Seminar on Networking (a series of talks and
demonstrations on grass-roots approaches to Networking) and conjugated
with the CRESALC/REDALC Meeting on Science and Technologies Systems in
LA&C.

The Event and its Results.  Over 120 participants from countries in the
Americas attended the Workshop and associated events. All workshop
sessions allowed unrestricted access to any interested participant.

Given the current situation of most networking efforts in the region
(which are just getting organized), it was not surprising that the
political track attracted overwhelming attention.

After several rounds of open discussion in a very hectic atmosphere, 29
representatives from LA&C held a closed session, the outcome of which
was a proposal which was unanimously approved by a general assembly. The
workshop participants agreed to establish a "permanent forum for the
coordination of networking activities" in LA&C, having as its mission:

to establish the LA&C Academic, Scientific, and Research Network,

to promote the development of national networks in participating
countries, and

to foster cooperative integration between the LA&C network and
counterparts from regions all over the world.

The Forum was concretely established as a Working Group composed of five
elected members (Ida Holz, Julian Dunayevich, Roberto Loran, Sergio
Flores, and Tadao Takahashi) which will address the following short-term
tasks:

to identify joint projects currently in development which can help
establish a framework for regional networking activities.

to define a set of projects to develop within a 6-month time frame.

to develop a strategic plan for the LA&C initiative.

The proposal went on to enumerate six activities for the Working Group
to execute during 1992, ranging from general studies and assessments to
specific, local-impact activities.

Finally, a major commitment of the subscribers of the proposal was the
naming of a formal representative from each country no later than
November 10th, 1991.

Conclusions.  All in all, the final results of the Workshop were amazing
and incredibly matter-of-fact. The Working Group was stocked with
credibility that no previous or competing initiative can claim.

A concrete timetable of activities was proposed to the Working Group.
Finally, the commitment was made to univocally define one representative
per country to interact with the Working Group.

Not all problems are solved. In particular, the role of international
agencies such as OAS, UNDP, UNESCO, etc., with respect to the newly
formed Working Group is not all clear.

Notwithstanding, the progress made is remarkable, and the LA&C
networking community has many reasons to be proud of its impressive
growth in maturity in such a short time.

The next Inter-American NET. It is still too early to guess whether the
Second Interamerican Networkshop shall take place next year. The Working
Group is still trying to get fully organized. The on-going activities
will have a good checkpoint at INET'92 (Kobe, June 1992). Then, it will
be possible to decide when and how the next edition will happen. As a
preliminary guess, a smaller, more technically-oriented workshop in
October/November of 1992 is a good bet.

*Coordinator, Brazilian Research Network

================================================================
100.08  IFIP CONGRESS '92 by Jack L. Rosenfeld* <[e-mail]>

Final plans have been announced for IFIP Congress '92 -- the 12th World
Computer Congress of the International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP) -- which will be held in Madrid, 7-11 September 1992.

The Congress will comprise five streams, which will be presented during
all five days of the Congress, and two subconferences, which will run
for two and one half days each:

Streams:

From Architectures to Chips

Informatics and Education

The Vulnerability of the Information Society: Social, Legal, and
Security Aspects

Software Development and Maintenance

Algorithms and Efficient Computation

subconferences:

Expanding the Power of the Personal Computer

Enhancing the Intelligence in Information Systems

For information about submitting papers and posters, please contact the
IFIP Congress '92 Committee at the address given at the end of this
article.  The deadlines for receipt of papers and posters are 10 January
and 15 April 1992, respectively.  Proceedings will be published by
Elsevier/North-Holland.

In addition to the streams, subconferences, and workshops, there will be
tutorials, an exhibition, technical visits, and a tourist program that
will coincide with the Spanish celebration of the 500th anniversary of
Columbus's discovery of America.

For further information, please contact:

IFIP Congress 92    c/o Grupo Geyesco    Mauricio Legendre 4, 8G
28046 Madrid, Spain    fax: [phone]    e-mail: [e-mail]

*Editor, IFIP Newsletter

================================================================
100.10  Canadian Networking by Dave Brent <[e-mail]>

Networking '92: The 6th Annual Canadian Networking Conference

Memorial University of Newfoundland

St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

30 June - 3 July 1992

The 1992 Canadian networking conference objective is to provide
attendees with an update of emerging network developments and focus on
other technical networking topics of interest.

The evolution and issues regarding TCP/IP and OSI will be discussed at
management and technical sessions.

A number of Canadian computer networking organizations (CA*net,
NetNorth, CDNnet) will be holding their meetings in the days before and
after the conference.

Networking '92 is sponsored by the CA*net, NetNorth and CDNnet Executive
Committees and is hosted by Memorial University of Newfoundland.

For more information, send electronic mail to: [e-mail]
========================================================