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n-1-3-012.43a
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N-1-3-012.43, "Spain: a RedIRIS Update", by Jose Barbera*,
<jose.barbera@rediris.es>
Currently, the number of RedIRIS user organizations has grown up to
108, with most of them belonging to the Higher Education and Public
Research sector from various sizes and scope (see ISOC News, Vol. 1,
No. 1, Winter 1992, p.p. 12-13).
Infrastructure
--------------
Private X.25 backbone ARTIX has expanded along the first half of 1992
up to 9 regional nodes interconnected by 64 Kbps digital links.
Presently, 50 RedIRIS member organizations (all main universities and
research institutes in Spain) hold at least one access link to ARTIX.
Others use PPSDN Iberpac connections to ARTIX, or simply the PSTN
(eventual low-traffic volume users). Traffic volume on ARTIX has
doubled from January to June, currently reaching 20 Gbytes/month.
International bandwidth is 2 x 64 Kbps. A new 64 Kbps digital link
Madrid-Amsterdam was added in May as part of the Ebone 92
infrastructure to supplement the former IXI (X.25) access point, which
was used for some time to carry all traffic types. Now the IXI line
is used for X.25-based traffic (X.400, XXX, DECNET), whereas the Ebone
tail link is kept for IP and CLNS traffic.
For transatlantic IP traffic, EASIgate (T1 CERN-Cornell) is currently
used as the first option. Other links from Stockholm and London are
used as back-up.
Part of the RedIRIS infrastructure is also used by other networking
organizations in Spain such as, UUES (Spanish branch of EUnet) and ESA
Villafranca Station, which have subscribed proper agreements.
Services
--------
The RedIRIS environment offers a mixture of OSI and TCP/IP based
services, as well as DECNET (High-Energy Physics Community). NJE
(over different network architectures: IP, DECNET, SNA,...) is also
supported, but the actual management remains under the responsibility
of the EARN users group.
* OSI
---
- RedIRIS mail is the most widely extended OSI service. It is mainly
based on an X.400 global backbone system with local gateways with
other mail systems at each user center. There is a central X.400/SMTP
gateway as well as a format converter between domain-defined and
standard-attribute type of addresses. UUCP, BITNET and DECNET mail is
converted to SMTP and X.400 at specific sites.
There are presently about 100 RedIRIS organizations using the X.400
mail, 66 out of them keep their own MTA(s). The average number of
messages/month is now about 9,000, amounting approximately to 45
Mbytes.
- X.500 Directory Service. Run as an experimental pilot in
coordination with PARADISE Project (COSINE). There are presently 5
DSA based on QUIPU-ISODE. The number of registered organizations is
now 99 with more than 5,000 entries. A standard procedure to dump
existing information at each organization has been set up to
facilitate the inclusion of new entry data.
Public software for popular X.500 user interfaces has been announced
to RedIRIS organizations to prompt directory use by end users.
* TCP/IP
------
TCP/IP based services are mainly used to interconnect the growing
number of LANs. RedIRIS global internet network runs over the same
ARTIX backbone by means of tunneling over X.25.
In June 1992, 40 RedIRIS member organizations reached full IP
connectivity. Within the RedIRIS Autonomous System there are now 57
IP connected networks (18 class B, 39 class C). More networks are in
the process of getting IP connectivity.
The last RIPE DNS Hostcount showed 148 authorized domains under ".es"
(many of them are Spanish EUnet customers with only mail and Usenet
News) and about 3,800 registered hosts. In practice, only 40 such
organizations have properly set up their own DNS server.
* New services
------------
Several information services are now being implemented. File servers
containing information about network-related features are under
deployment. The aim is to help local managers at RedIRIS
organizations run their own network services at each specific site.
Anonymous FTP and an X.500 Directory are ready available for that
purpose. Other user-friendly interfaces such as WAIS and Gopher are
under consideration.
As to information of a broader scope, RedIRIS has recently started the
USENET News Service in cooperation with other national network
organizations (SWITCH, DFN, ACOnet), which established early this year
a partnership cooperation. At this stage, the RedIRIS News Service is
operated as an initial pilot. It is expected to turn it into a stable
service at the end of this year.
*RedIRIS Director, RedIRIS/Fundesco, Madrid, Spain