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n-1-3-040.90a
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n-1-3-040.90 RARE
by Kees Neggers <neggers@surfnet.nl>
NEW TECHNICAL STRUCTURE OPERATIONAL
RARE's new structure for the execution of its technical activities has been
completed and is now operational. The RARE Technical Committee (RTC),
consisting of networking experts with a wide breadth of knowledge and
experience, will manage a technical work programme to further the
development and quality of international networking services within Europe.
The RTC is chaired by Tomaz Kalin, RARE Secretary-General; Tim Dixon, RARE
Project Development Officer act as Secretary. The other members are: Brian
Gilmore (Edinburgh University, United Kingdom), Erik Huizer (SURFnet,
Netherlands), Eicke Jessen (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany),
Jean-Paul Le Guigner (CICB, France), Bernhard Plattner (ETH Zuerich,
Switzerland), Sven Tafvelin (Chalmers Technical Institute, Sweden). Howard
Davies (RARE Vice-President, University of Exeter, UK) liaises between the
RTC and the RARE Executive Committee and Christian Huitema (INRIA, France)
is temporary adviser to the RTC.
The work programme is executed largely by Working Groups, consisting of
volunteers, who share an interest in a particular area of technology. The
RTC also funds a small number of Task Force activities which it believes
to be so important that volunteer effort should be supplemented to achieve
more expeditious results.
Recent meetings of the RTC have established Working Groups on the
following subjects:
- Character Sets (WG-CHAR), Convenor: Borka Jerman-Blazic, RARE
Issues related to the development of services supporting a variety of
character sets in an international environment.
- Multimedia (WG-IMM), Convenor: John Dyer, JNT
The promotion of new services and the enhancement of existing services to
make full use of emerging multimedia technologies.
- Information Services & User Support (WG-ISUS), Convenor: Jill Foster,
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
The development of networked information services and support for users
who are not computer specialists.
- Lower-Layer Technology (WG-LTT), Convenor: Piet Bovenga, University of
Nijmegen
Issues relating to the area of Lower-Layer Technology, i.e. layer 1 up to
and including layer 4 of the OSI-RM.
- Messaging Services (WG-MSG), Convenor: Harald Alvestrand, SINTEF
The promotion and development of mail and messaging services.
- Network Applications Support (WG-NAP), Convenor: Paul-Andre Pays, INRIA
The development of the infrastructural support needed by distributed
applications (e.g. directory and time services).
- Network Operations (WG-NOP), Convenor: Bernhard Stockman, NORDUnet
All issues relating to the problems of everyday network operations.
- Security Technology (WG-SEC), Convenor: Klaus Truoel, GMD
The development and promotion of basic technology and procedures needed
to enhance network security.
RARE welcomes anyone who wishes to join one of the above-mentioned working
groups. Joining is very simple: send electronic mail to mailserver@rare.nl
containing in the body of the message:
SUBSCRIBE wgname yourfirstname yourlastname
where wgname is the abbreviation for the name of the working group
shown in parentheses in the above list, for example:
SUBSCRIBE WG-ISUS Joe Public
CONFERENCE
>From May 11-14 RARE held its 3rd Joint European Networking Conference in
the Kongresshaus Innsbruck in Austria. The conference, attended by 375
networking specialists from 29 countries, was very successful. This success
was not only due to the more than 45 presentations on a variety of subjects
- ranging from user services to purely technical topics - but also to the
conference package as a whole. This included a demonstration evening, a
poster session, forums on Eastern Europe and on the Internet Society, a
large number of informal meetings and BoF's and of course social events
offering a good opportunity to meet the right people. The excellent way in
which the Kongresshaus Innsbruck and the city of Innsbruck hosted the
Conference added to its success.
In his keynote Klaus Ullmann - RARE President until May this year - analyzed
the status of current
European Research Networking. He concluded that a high-level European
organizational body as well as a stable long-term funding structure are
necessary to guarantee progress for European research networking. The new
RARE President, Kees Neggers, stressed the importance of moving forward in
European Research Networking in his closing address, moving forward in a
geographical as well as an organizational sense. Geographically speaking he
referred to the globalization of the Internet and provision of support to
countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Organizational steps in the short
term should be the setting up of the Operational Unit and the
rationalization of funding mechanisms for research networking.
Cooperation with the (new) countries in Central and Eastern Europe was
addressed not only in a forum but also during a BoF session. All parties
agreed that, in the short term, a lot of effort should be made to bring
research networking in these countries in line with the rest of Europe.
This was the first JENC to provide the opportunity of presenting
demonstrations in a specially designed demonstration area in the conference
hall. On Tuesday a demonstration evening was organized, where a selected
numbers of demo's were presented separately. Proceedings of the conference
will be published in the October issue of the Elsevier North Holland
Journal 'Computer Networks and ISDN Systems'.
Short news items:
New members
RARE has three new members: the national network of Slovenia (ARNES) was
accepted as a Full National Member; UNINET-ZA (South-Africa) was accepted
as new Associate National Member and EMBL (European Molecular Biology
Laboratory) became an International Member. Furthermore a letter of
application from CARNet - the academic network of Croatia - was welcomed
by the CoA (Council of Administration). YUNAC, the network of former
Yugoslavia changed its membership status from Full National Member to
International Member. A number of other countries have expressed their
interest in becoming a member of RARE.
Collaboration RARE and EARN
RARE and EARN (European Academic Research Network) are going to work more
closely together. President, Vice-President and Treasurer of both
organizations form a Task Force to review possible areas of cooperation;
they reported for the first time in May. The task force will continue its
study to develop complementary technical and educational programmes. It
was agreed that RARE's activities will lie mostly in the technical area
while EARN will concentrate more on educational activities. Amongst others,
cooperation in the publication area is planned.
RARE organizer IETF and INET meetings
The RARE CoA decided that RARE should take responsibility for organizing
IETF meetings that take place in Europe. Preparations are now starting to
organize the first one to be held in Amsterdam in July 1993. RARE is also
planning to organize the 1994 European INET Conference.
Document server
RARE now has a Document Server to make all documents of interest to the
RARE community available to a wider audience. Via anonymous FTP:
<raredoc.rare.nl>. Via e.mail: <mailserv@file.nic.surfnet.nl>, send <help>
in mail body to receive manual.
New publications
The first RARE Technical Report has been published. It presents an
overview of User Support facilities and Information Services in (most of)
RARE's member organizations. The report was produced by the USIS (User
Support and Information Services) group, a subgroup of the former RARE
Working Group 3 and now a separate working group in RARE's new technical
structure. Paper copies can be obtained from the RARE Secretariat; the
document can electronically be obtained from the RARE Document Server (by
anonymous FTP: <raredoc.rare.nl> under the directory: /rare/RTR). With the
publication of its RTRs RARE aims to make a wider audience aware of the
results of technical activities carried out by RARE task forces and working
groups. A number of RTR's are now being prepared for publication. Furthermore RA
RE's Annual Report on 1991 is available from the
Secretariat.