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- N-1-3.012.10, "Status of the European IP Backbone, EBONE", by Bernhard
- Stockman, <boss@sunet.se>
-
-
- EBONE was established as a European Backbone in Spring 1992, providing
- IP and CLNP services. This was possible due to generous contributions
- from many national and international networking organizations from the
- R&D and commercial sectors. A core backbone consisting of five
- interconnected EBONE core nodes, and the EBONE Border Systems (or
- EBS's) were defined and implemented. The EBS's are located in
- Amsterdam, London, Geneva, Montpellier, and Stockholm. EBONE is
- connected to the US networks via lines from Stockholm (768 Kbps),
- London (512 Kbps), and Geneva (1544 Kbps).
-
- The EBONE Action Team (EAT), consisting of technical representatives
- from the EBONE member organizations, has the engineering
- responsibility of the EBONE. So far, EAT has specified an EBONE
- Implementation Plan, an EBONE Routing Plan, and an EBONE Operations
- Plan which together gives the framework for the implementation and
- provision of the EBONE services.
-
- An EBONE Operations Team (EOT) was defined and nominated to provide
- the day to day operations of the backbone according to the EBONE
- Operations Plan. The EOT consists of representatives from the EBONE
- Border System sites and the EBONE Network Operation Center staff. The
- EBONE NOC was nominated to be KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, which also
- provides NOC services for the NORDUnet and SUNET networks.
-
- Today's current situation
-
- EBONE has developed very rapidly during this spring and summer.
- Requirements for information and connectivity have been received from
- many new organizations which now are under implementation. Central
- and East European countries have shown serious intentions to connect
- to the EBONE. For this reason, a possible extension with a new EBONE
- Border System in Austria is now under evaluation.
-
- One major change in the EBONE core layout will occur when the EBONE
- Border System in France is moved from Montpellier to Paris as a
- consequence of the establishment of the French national academic
- network, RENATER. To the French EBS in Paris, a 512 Kbps line to the
- US will be connected this coming October.
-
- The EBONE routing implementation has been an ongoing challenge. To be
- able to provide redundant US backup where all the EBONE to US lines
- are utilized, advanced policy based routing has to be implemented.
- This has been achieved using BGP-III both as the external gateway
- protocol and as internal routing protocol (iBGP). For many reasons,
- it will not be possible to use default routing within the EBONE and
- full routing has to be implemented. This requires support today for
- over 7,000 networks. To implement this, a major upgrade of all EBONE
- Border System routers will be necessary and is foreseen to happen in
- the beginning of autumn this year.
-
- A joint effort for inclusion of EBONE routing information in the RIPE
- NCC database is ongoing. The goal is to be able to generate loadable
- EBS configurations directly from the RIPE NCC database.
-
- A integration of ISO CLNS as a full EBONE service is planned for
- autumn. An implementation plan is under way and being worked on by
- the European CLNS project group. Results will be presented at the
- EBONE Action Team meeting in Stockholm, September 3.
-
- A major EBONE member meeting will be arranged in Vienna, September 23,
- where the continuation of the EBONE is to be discussed. This shall be
- seen in the light of recent activities in European academic
- networking.
-
- EBONE and Europe
-
- A call for tender for a follow-up of the CEC funded COSINE IXI pilot
- X.25 network was issued some time ago. Recently one of the bidders,
- Netherlands PTT Telecom, the current provider of the IXI pilot
- service, was nominated to provide the follow-up named, IXI Production
- Service (IXI-PS). The IXI-PS will deliver an IP service. An IP
- router will be developed and integrated with the X.25 switches by the
- vendor of these switches. These switches were used in the IXI pilot
- and will initially also be used for the IXI-PS. The performance of
- the IXI-PS IP service is limited by the general performance of the
- X.25 technology to provide a guaranteed packet forwarding rate of 300
- packets per second initially, and around 400 packets per second in
- 1993 at access points. With an average packet size of 128 bytes, this
- gives a maximum throughput of 307 Kbps and 410 Kbps.
-
- So far, the technology chosen to implement the IXI-PS IP service is
- unknown and no interoperability guarantees with other Internet
- networks exist. Accordingly, many concerns have been raised with both
- the performance and the interoperability of this service.
- Independently performed interoperability tests of the IXI-PS IP
- service have been requested by RIPE and EBONE representatives.
-
- To be able to have a coordinated provision of networking services for
- the European R&D sector, there are now ongoing efforts to establish a
- limited company (currently named the Operational Unit (OU)). Possible
- shareholders (and by the influence of the OU) is limited to European
- national R&D networks. The role of the OU, once established, is not
- yet clear. There are at least two possible scenarios. The OU may act
- as a clearing house, buying network services from possible providers
- and resell this to the European R&D sector. By acting on behalf of
- the national R&D networks, it is assumed that favorable prices may be
- negotiated with network service providers. The OU may, on the other
- hand, provide networking services within itself and by that be in
- competition with other possible providers.
-
- One assumption made is that the OU initially shall resell the IXI-PS
- X.25 service, the IXI-PS IP service and the EBONE IP service. As a
- consequence, the IXI-PS and the EBONE could be regarded as being in
- competition with each other. If the OU can be neutral and provide the
- IXI-PS and EBONE IP services on equal terms, is dependent to a large
- extent how the OU will be implemented and managed, which is currently
- unknown.
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