012.42 Italy by Stefano Trumpy <trumpy%icnucevm.cnuce.cnr.it@uicvm.uic.edu>
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 intercountry connections.
Architecture. The backbone of the network provides four TDM channels over 2 Mbps lines, carrying IP, DECnet, SNA and X.25 trafic; the latter protocol is carrying the trafic destinated to the European backbone IXI activated by the EUREKA-COSINE project.
Addressing. All computers on GARR makes use of the Internet - style domain addresses. 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 mail-ita@info.garr.it.
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 64kbps 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
