terena annual report 2003 · [terena / annual report 2003 ] / policy and outlook def def terena -...

>// TERENAANNUAL REPORT 2003

def def Terena - 2003 28-02-2006 11:00 Pagina 1

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[TERENA / annual report 2003] /


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Contents

4 FOREWORD7 POLICY AND OUTLOOK7 TERENA Policy

13 SERENATE19 INFORMATION SHARING19 TERENA Compendium20 Information Dissemination and Member Development Programme21 TF-PR23 CONFERENCES23 TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 200325 Workshop on Policy Issues for NRENs in Southeast Europe27 TECHNICAL PROGRAMME27 Introduction to the Technical Programme28 The Technical Programme in 200330 Task Forces30 TF-AACE32 TF-CSIRT34 TF-Mobility35 TF-Netcast36 TF-NGN38 TERENA Projects38 Adding Certificate Retrieval to OpenLDAP38 Directory Schema Registry39 GNRT40 IP Telephony Cookbook41 External Projects41 6NET42 6LINK43 SCAMPI45 TRANSITS46 SEEREN47 SERVICES47 Trusted Introducer 49 MEMBERSHIPS AND LIAISONS49 ENPG and European Commission50 DANTE51 Internet252 CCIRN52 Internet Society

APPENDICES54 A. TERENA Membership in 200356 B. Financial Report 200359 C. TERENA Staff in 200360 D. List of Acronyms

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / CONTENTS


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>// Foreword

Dear Reader,This is the first time that I have the privilege and pleasure to write the foreword to a TERENAAnnual Report. I took over the presidency of TERENA in May 2003, and I must say that it hasbeen an exciting and eventful experience to be in the midst of all the activities now going onin European research and education networking. I have been delighted to see how successfulTERENA has been during the past year in promoting the interests of its members - the first andforemost task for an association.

On the technical side, we have seen a growing use of the high-speed backbone provided by oursister organisation DANTE, and many fruitful collaborative activities between the nationalresearch and education networking organisations - the NRENs. It is encouraging to note that thecollaboration between all partners on the European networking scene has now reached a veryhigh level, so that there is really a joint effort that puts Europe on the global map in a new way.

The TERENA task forces have been very active and I think that I may say: very successful.Theyhave been exploring how to implement the many new developments into everyday services,exchanging experiences across borders and thus avoiding the pitfall that every country wouldhave to learn everything in the hardest way possible. I believe that this intensive Europeancollaboration is an achievement to be proud of.As many of you will know, it has brought Europeonce more to the frontier of research and education networking, whereas not so long ago wewere looking to other continents for leadership in this area.

Looking further ahead,TERENA has now definitely entered the arena for Grid computing - aterm that some may still consider to be more a vision on the future and a buzzword than a reality.But at this point, I think that we can say that Grids are already here, although we are still in thevery early days.

By now, we have become used in Europe to have a GÉANT backbone with a core at 10 Gb/s andmore than 30 countries connected to it. Most of those countries are also taking up the challengesof security that the NRENs are now facing.The success of TERENA's task force TF-CSIRTshould be mentioned here, as well as the courses provided by the TRANSITS project to peoplearound Europe who are trying to protect the network and the end-users from the securityincidents that can easily happen in the open communication structure.

During the summer,TERENA became a partner in the project proposal to the EuropeanCommission for the next generation of the European research-networking infrastructure, theGN2 proposal.This has led to a much closer collaboration with DANTE, and I believe that this isthe road to be followed so that the two organisations will be able to jointly serve the communityand thereby help Europe to stay ahead in worldwide developments.

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / FOREWORD

> Dorte Olesen


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In TERENA, we have the privilege that many talented people from NRENs and researchinstitutions devote time and effort to joint European activities - mostly funded by thoseorganisations themselves. I believe that it is important that people join these activities if onlybecause it is beneficial to their own national research and education network, especially whenthings develop quickly and there is no time to wait for the next round of co-financing by theEuropean Union.We are certainly appreciative of the opportunities offered by the EU; on theother hand, some developments come so quickly that no new programme can be put in place andone just has to act anyway. In such circumstances,TERENA can move in quickly and providetechnical and organisational assistance without delay, drawing on the strengths of the nationalresearch networking organisations themselves.

In this connection, it is a pleasure to thank the leaders of the TERENA member organisations andthe members of the TERENA Executive Committee for their personal efforts in bringing aboutthe necessary collaborations.That would not have been possible without the foresight to establishtask forces in a timely fashion and to bring the expertise of many countries together in those taskforces.

The TERENA Networking Conference 2003 was held in Zagreb, Croatia in May.Theconference was organised in conjunction with the CARNet Users Conference 2003, and thejoint event was extraordinarily well attended. Participants enjoyed the Zagreb experience,including, for example, the excellent facilities for wireless connections provided by the hostingorganisation CARNet.The conference was rated by participants as an all-time high, the best for asmany years as we have records.This holds for the content of the programme as well as for thetechnical facilities.

It has been a challenge for me to take over the presidency of TERENA from my very successfulpredecessor David Williams. I think that David did a marvellous job and initiated some reallygroundbreaking projects - like the forward-looking SERENATE studies, which finished only justbefore the end of the year 2003.A number of initiatives came to blossom under his leadership, andI feel very much obliged to him for taking TERENA into the new millennium in thisconstructive and future-oriented fashion.

The SERENATE report also made the point quite explicitly that we have to take into accountthe threat of a European ‘Digital Divide’ and jointly address the challenges that face us, withsome countries being very advanced in every respect and others not so. In view of the progressmade already, I am confident that we can also face this challenge and overcome it, with the muchappreciated and qualified assistance of the European Commission.



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In 2003,TERENA established its first non-technical task force:TF-PR, the task force on publicrelations and information dissemination.TF-PR has already been very useful to many of thecountries represented in TERENA through the exchange of experiences in the public relationsarea.With so much political attention, it is now time to think of public relations in new ways. Inmany countries, academic and research activities have not been very visible in more generalcontexts, and a broader success of the work of our community is intimately related to bringingthe benefits of European networking to the attention of a more general public.

It is my hope that the TERENA members shall be able to take TERENA and Europeannetworking further in the years to come - with the continued help and support from theexcellent Executive Committee and the dedicated TERENA Secretariat staff.

> Dorte Olesen,President



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-|TERENA Policy

The European research and education networking community is facing important changes.The combination of new user requirements, technological developments, changes in the regulatoryenvironment and the telecommunications and equipment markets as well as new fundingopportunities make it both possible and necessary to develop and deploy a new generation ofnetwork infrastructures and services. Because Europe is at the forefront of developments worldwidein a number of aspects of technology and service provision, the European research networkingcommunity faces the challenge to take initiatives that very few organisations have taken before.Theyear 2003 has been a period in which much attention has been given to studying developments,investigating possibilities and designing plans for the future.

The SERENATE project has offered one of the environments to collect, analyse and disseminateinformation about the technological, economic and regulatory developments and the evolution ofuser requirements.The SERENATE findings make essential contributions to the development ofthe policies of TERENA and its member organisations. Some of the main issues are the following:

> Users of research networks feel that impressive achievements have been made in researchnetworking in Europe over the past five years. Currently, the networking requirements ofresearchers and students are rapidly increasing, in all countries in Europe and in all fields ofresearch.At the same time, we see the emergence of different classes of users with widely varyingneeds.The most demanding users require networks with very high capacities and high reliability,in combination with end-to-end services. It is essential that the existing research networkingorganisations cater for the needs of these most demanding user groups.This will require theintroduction of new technologies and new organisational and funding models.

> There is a substantial digital divide in research networking in Europe, which turns the EuropeanUnion’s political objective of equal opportunities for researchers throughout the EuropeanResearch Area into an elusive goal. Research networking organisations in Europe should assisteach other in various ways to bridge this gap as much as possible. However, only radical actionsby national governments and the European Commission can really offer a prospect ofsubstantially narrowing the digital divide in the foreseeable future.

> The digital divide issue is in many countries related to insufficient investment intelecommunications infrastructure and a less than competitive telecommunications market.TheEU regulations should result in real competition in the telecommunications markets and alsoprovide opportunities for research and education networking organisations to obtain access toinfrastructure by forms of acquisition that offer alternatives to the traditional leasing of lines. Intheory, regulations in all member states and accession states of the European Union are suchthat markets are liberalised. However, in practice the situation leaves much to be desired in anumber of countries, where there is no real competition and there are hindrances for alternative

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / POLICY AND OUTLOOK


methods of infrastructure acquisition.This results in significant obstacles for thedevelopment of research and education networks.

> In the past two years, there have been sudden developments in the internationaltelecommunications market that have had a high impact.A number of carriers haveunexpectedly left the marketplace, either temporarily or permanently.The period ofrevolutionary price decreases for international and national links has come to an end, andis not expected to return.

> The overall technological development over the next years will be that research networks willbecome more and more ‘optical networks’, albeit by using different technical solutions indifferent parts of the networks and introduced at different paces.The SERENATE work hascontributed to a better understanding of which technologies can and which cannot beexpected to become available over the next years, as well as some feeling for the costs involved.

> As a result of the developments mentioned above, it will be possible, cost effective or even neces-sary for research networks to get access to fibre, although probably not for all geographic locationsand for all distances.There are various operational, managerial and financial forms of obtainingthat access.The European research networking infrastructure of the near future will consist of amix of different components with varying technology and management characteristics.

It follows from the above that there is much work to be done by the research and educationnetworking organisations and the wider European research networking community indeveloping, testing and evaluating new technologies and in designing new services.Astechnical experts and financial means are scarce resources for all of the organisationsconcerned, there is much to be gained by close collaboration in this work at a Europeanscale. It is one of the main functions of TERENA to contribute to the organisation andsupport of such joint activities.

In June 2002, the TERENA membership adopted a new Mission and ObjectivesStatement for the association.This mission statement expresses very well the role thatTERENA is expected to play in addressing the current challenges to research andeducation networking in Europe.

The Statutes of the TERENA association state:“The objectives of TERENA are topromote and participate in the development of a high-quality international informationand telecommunications infrastructure for the benefit of research and education. It willtake whatever steps are required to accomplish that this infrastructure is based on openstandards and uses the most advanced technology available.”

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//Claudio AllocchioVice President TechnicalProgramme

//Dorte Olesen,President


These objectives translate into four categories of activities, which are the pillars of the organisation:

> Fostering new initiativesTERENA provides an environment for fostering new initiatives of the European researchnetworking community. In this context TERENA can provide a neutral basis for investigatingthe feasibility of ideas and developing and piloting new services for the TERENA communityand possibly the Internet community at large.

> Technical ProgrammeTERENA supports joint European work in developing, evaluating, testing, integra-ting and promoting new networking, middleware and application technologies.TERENA brings together technical specialists from TERENA member organi-sations and the wider European research networking community in task forces andinnovative collaborative projects.TERENA organises topical workshops and ad-hocmeetings to exchange experiences and to plan for joint activities.The TERENATechnical Programme liaises with similar activities in other continents.

> Knowledge transferTERENA organises conferences, workshops and seminars for the exchange ofinformation between TERENA member organisations and in the wider researchnetworking community, and to make them and the Internet community at largeaware of relevant developments.TERENA also pursues the transfer of technicaland managerial knowledge to less advanced networking organisations in thecountries represented by the TERENA membership, both on a bilateral and on amultilateral basis.

> Promoting members’ interestsTERENA represents the common interests and opinions of its member organisations incontacts with governments, funding bodies, industry and other organisations. In this contextTERENA advises the European Commission, national governments and other authorities onpolicy and technical matters related to support for the development of research and educationnetworking infrastructures, services and applications.TERENA also liaises with similarorganisations from other continents, promoting the European views and expertise.

All activities are undertaken under the guidance and responsibility of the TERENA ExecutiveCommittee and under the ultimate authority of the TERENA membership, as represented by theTERENA General Assembly.The Technical Programme is guided by the TERENA TechnicalCommittee and reviewed annually by the Technical Advisory Council.

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//Marko Bonac


The General Assembly met twice in 2003.The first meeting took place in Zagreb on 22-23 May,following the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003.Themeeting was hosted by CARNet, the Croatian national member of TERENA.The meetingdecided to terminate the TERENA membership of the incumbent national member fromIceland, because of the accumulated outstanding membership fees.The Assembly welcomedRHnet as the new national member for Iceland.The General Assembly received the AnnualReport of the TERENA Executive Committee on the year 2002 and adopted the financialaccounts for that year.

The Icelandic University Network (RHnet) was officially established on 24 January 2001.Its participants are nine universities and eight research institutions. RHnet is a limited company,founded to enhance the quality of networking within the Icelandic academic and research community, and to serve as its gateway to international networks.The RHnet Board and staff feel that it is important for the future of RHnet to be a part of a wider networking group like TERENA.These relations help to keep the flame alive on the island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Dorte Olesen (UNI•C, Denmark) was appointed TERENA President for a two-year term ofoffice. She succeeded David Williams, who had served as TERENA’s President for the maximumperiod of four years. Shirley Wood, Claudio Allocchio and Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia were re-appointed for a second two-year term of office as Vice President for Conferences,Vice PresidentTechnical Programme and member at large of the TERENA Executive Committee, respectively.Marko Bonac (ARNES, Slovenia) was also appointed member of the Executive Committee for atwo-year term; he succeeded Stanislaw Starzak of Poland.

The General Assembly heard updates on the SERENATE project and on the TERENATechnical Programme. It took note of the initiatives of the TERENA ExecutiveCommittee and the DANTE Board of Directors to study forms of collaboration betweenthe two organisations.The Assembly gave a mandate to the Executive Committee toapply for TERENA to become a member of the NREN Consortium.The meeting alsodiscussed TERENA’s three-year strategy, following a presentation by Claudio Allocchioon various plans for new technical projects.

Claudio Allocchio presented the recently printed brochure on the relations betweennational research and education networks and industry. He and Sabine Jaume-Rajaoniagave an update on the two root server initiatives.TERENA Treasurer Agathoclis Stylianoupresented the Executive Committee’s thoughts on the Member DevelopmentProgramme, and Shirley Wood reported on the past TERENA Networking Conferenceand the plans for 2004.TERENA’s Chief Administrative Officer Bert van Pinxteren gavea short presentation about current work on the TERENA Compendium.

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//Shirley Wood, VicePresident Conferences


Finally, the General Assembly discussed TERENA’s membership of the InternetSociety. It decided to continue the membership but to convey to the Internet Societythat in TERENA’s opinion the Society should concentrate its activities on thesupport that it provides to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the IAB(Internet Architecture Board).

The autumn meeting of the General Assembly was held in Copenhagen on 23-24October and was hosted by UNI•C, the Danish national member of TERENA.TheAssembly welcomed the University of Malta as a new national member of TERENA.It also admitted Consortium GARR as the new national member for Italy, replacingINFN.

The Computing Services Centre (CSC) of the University of Malta is responsible for theIT infrastructure of the university. Most of the research institutes currently being served are located oncampus or have a close relationship with the university.The university is developing the local researchinfrastructure further and is inviting other research and education entities to participate. RobertSultana, Executive Director of CSC, believes that the experience of TERENA and its members willhelp CSC to achieve these aims over the coming years.

The meeting heard progress reports about the TERENA Technical Programme and about theMember Development Programme. Dorte Olesen presented the TERENA Executive Committee’sActivity Plan for the year 2004. Claudio Allocchio presented the Executive Committee’s views onthe experiences in the past year with the three-year rolling planning cycle.The meeting agreedwith him that a more flexible approach would be a good way forward.

The General Assembly devoted much time to a discussion of next year’s budget and thefinancial status of TERENA in general.The organisation’s substantially increasinginvolvement in projects of the European Union’s Framework Programmes leads to asignificantly changed portfolio of work for the TERENA Secretariat, and has also largefinancial consequences. Both the long-term continuity of the organisation and short-term issues such as cash-flow management need to receive careful attention.TERENATreasurer Agathoclis Stylianou gave as his view that it would not be possible topostpone an increase of the membership fees much longer.Taking note of thesewarnings, the General Assembly adopted TERENA’s budget for the year 2004 asproposed by the Executive Committee and decided to maintain the membership feesat the same level as in 2003.

According to the Activity Plan for 2004,TERENA will aim to achieve a number ofmajor results:

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////Agathoclis Stylianou,Treasurer

//SabineJaume-Rajaonia


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> TERENA will promote the development of European research and education networking at allgeographical levels by disseminating the results of the SERENATE studies and offering theEuropean Commission, national governments and funding bodies, research networkingorganisations and the management of research and education institutions, support and advice forplans that build on those studies.

> TERENA will become a partner in the Integrated Infrastructure Initiative project that willprovide the next phase of GÉANT.This will simplify the information exchange betweenTERENA, DANTE and the national research and education network organisations, and therebypromote further collaboration.The project will provide financial support to the production ofthe annual editions of the TERENA Compendium of National Research and EducationNetworks, the co-ordination and pooling of resources through TERENA task forces, theorganisation of workshops at the TERENA Networking Conferences, and the provision ofassistance to the development of research networks in less advanced regions in Europe. In lateryears, the project will also enable a large-scale foresight study, similar to the SERENATE studies.

> TERENA will be a partner in a small number of 6th Framework Programme projects in theareas of Grids and test beds, where the TERENA Secretariat will take care of informationdissemination and the organisation of workshops and conferences.

> The TERENA Secretariat will continue to provide organisational and secretariat support to thesuccessful task forces and projects.TERENA will develop plans for new activities in theTERENA Technical Programme, focusing on the Special Interest Areas and the important issues(Grids, campus co-ordination) that need to be addressed across all Special Interest Areas.

The Copenhagen meeting of the General Assembly was preceded by presentations on the activitiesof TERENA’s five current technical task forces. It was followed by a workshop on NREN-controlled fibres, in which Erik-Jan Bos (SURFnet), Jan Gruntorád (CESNET), Urs Eppenberger(SWITCH) and Michal Przybylski (Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre) presentedthe impressive progress that their national research networks had made recently in the implemen-tation of dark-fibre-based and NREN-controlled national infrastructures. Per Thorbøll of UNI•Cgave a presentation on Sektornet, the Danish school network. Both the workshop presentationsand the presentation on the Danish school network led to lively discussions with the audience.

www.terena.nl

TERENA Executive Committee in 2003:

President David Williams (until 23 May)Dorte Olesen (from 23 May)

Vice President Conferences Shirley WoodVice President Technical Programme Claudio AllocchioTreasurer Agathoclis StylianouMembers Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia

Stanislaw Starzak (until 23 May)Marko Bonac (from 23 May)


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•)SERENATE

SERENATE (Study into European Research and Education Networking As Targeted by eEurope)was a series of strategic studies into the future of research and education networking in Europe.The SERENATE project had the aim to contribute to the development of policies by theEuropean Commission, national governments and funding bodies, the management ofuniversities, and national research and education networking organisations, by looking into thetechnical, organisational and financial aspects of the development of research networking in thenext 5-10 years, as well as the regulatory environment and the market conditions.As a result, bythe end of the project, relevant policy makers, funders and managers of research networks inEurope received a set of recommendations and background materials that will enable them to settheir policies for the further development of European research networking.

The European Commission funded the SERENATE project with an amount of nearly 960,000euro as an accompanying measure in the 5th Framework Programme for Research andTechnological Development.TERENA was the co-ordinating partner in the project consortium,which also included the Academia Europaea, CTI (the Center for Tele-Information of theTechnical University of Denmark), DANTE and the European Science Foundation.The workbenefited greatly from the active participation by all stakeholders - research and educationnetworking organisations, governments and funding bodies, network operators and equipmentvendors, and of course the users of research and education networks.

The SERENATE project started in May 2002 and was completed at the end of December 2003.It consisted of fourteen interrelated studies and other work items. Significant milestones were theSERENATE workshops.After an initial workshop in September 2002 and a workshop for tele-communications operators in November 2002, three more workshops were organised in 2003:

> A small-scale workshop for network users in the European research community took place inMontpellier, France on 17-19 January.This event was organised by the Academia Europaea andthe European Science Foundation to discuss current and future networking requirements of theEuropean research and higher-education community, based on the results of a widely distri-buted SERENATE questionnaire and the experiences and views of the workshop participants.Prominent researchers presented their views on the development of networking needs in manydifferent disciplines, including particle physics, social sciences, the humanities, media researchand bio-informatics.A large part of the workshop programme was devoted to intensiveroundtable discussions.

> On 4-5 February,TERENA organised a workshop of the SERENATE project that was aimedspecifically at managers of national research and education networks in Europe.The workshop,which was held in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands was attended by 57 participants, includingrepresentatives from 27 national research and education networking organisations. In a separate



session for representatives of research networks in countries aspiring for membership of theEuropean Union, Marko Bonac led a discussion about various geographic issues.The workshopprogramme included reports on a number of SERENATE results by Dai Davies (DANTE),Claire Milne (Antelope Consulting), Knud Erik Skouby (CTI), Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia(Renater), and Karel Vietsch and Valentino Cavalli (TERENA).The SERENATE findings asregards alternative forms of infrastructure acquisition were illustrated by presentations by JanGruntorád and Marko Bonac on the developments in the Czech Republic and Slovenia, and byHans Carlsson (Stokab) on the model for infrastructure provision in the Stockholm region.Atthe end of the workshop, a short presentation by Dai Davies on the new complexities ofnetworking was followed by a general discussion involving all workshop participants and led byTERENA President David Williams.

> TERENA was also the organiser of the final SERENATE workshop,which took place in Bad Nauheim, Germany on 16-17 June. More than90 representatives of research and education networks, nationalgovernments and funding bodies, network operators, equipmentmanufacturers and the scientific and education community participatedin the event.The main objective of the workshop was to discuss theprovisional conclusions reached in the SERENATE studies, producefeedback and develop a consensus in order to prepare for the summaryreport on the SERENATE studies that would be published at the end ofthe year.After a summary by David Williams of the SERENATE findingsand the resulting proposed recommendations, Dai Davies sketched thepresent context in terms of available telecommunications infrastructures

and their pricing. Ian Butterworth (Academia Europaea) presented an overview of therequirements of network users in the European research community.The SERENATE findingsin this area were illustrated by four short presentations by prominent European researchers.Marko Bonac discussed the digital divide in research and education networking betweenvarious regions in Europe. In two parallel groups,Valentino Cavalli and Knud Erik Skoubydiscussed the technical opportunities and difficulties of optical networking, and the evolution ofthe infrastructure market, respectively. Several case studies were presented concerning theintroduction to research and education networks of new user groups from communities outsideresearch and higher education. Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia presented the conclusions from the casestudies.A subsequent session addressed the issues of costs and investments and included apresentation by Jean-Paul le Guigner (CRU, France) about investments in campus networks.Workshop participants then divided into four groups that provided an opportunity fordiscussions and comments on any and all of the topics of the workshop. Finally, participantsheard reports on the results of the breakout sessions in the closing plenary session, which alsoincluded a general discussion led by DANTE’s Tomaz Kalin.

In total, the SERENATE project has produced fifteen public reports, which are all available onthe SERENATE website. Besides the SERENATE Summary Report, five reports were thoughtto be of sufficient general interest to make them available in book form:

> Report on the expected development of the regulatory situation by Dan Saugstrup, Claire Milne,Anders Henten and Knud Erik Skouby.The report presents the results of the SERENATE

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> SERENATE FinalWorkshop

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fact-finding study on the current regulatory environment in the relevant countries and theexpected evolution, especially in relation to alternative models of infrastructure acquisition.

> Report on the availability and characteristics of equipment for next-generation networks by ValentinoCavalli (editor), John Dyer, Michael Enrico, Eoin Kenny, Michal Przybylski, Roberto Sabatinoand Stanislav Sima.The report discusses the availability and characteristics of equipment fornext-generation networks, dealing with current and potential suppliers, technology in terms ofswitching and routing elements as well as the emergence of management techniques.

> Report on the networking needs of users in the European research community by Ian Butterworth.Thereport describes the networking requirements of users in the European research community anddiscusses priorities in introducing novel networking facilities and services.

> Report on examples of extension of research networks to education and other user communities by SabineJaume-Rajaonia, Pedro Veiga, Lino Santos, Kurt Bøge, Stephen Percival, Sandra Passchier,Georges-Albert Kisfaludi,Artur Binczewski, Bernard Gondran, Claes-Göran Hanberg, LennartForsberg and Michel Devester.This report describes a number of initiatives in differentcountries to extend the user community of research and education networks to primary andsecondary education, students at home, libraries, museums and government institutions.

> Report identifying issues related to the geographic coverage of European research and education networkingby Marko Bonac and John Martin.The report provides a review of the present status of net-working opportunities for researchers in various parts of Europe, including the availability andcost of services and infrastructures, and presents possible actions for improving the situation.

The SERENATE studies have produced a wealth of material, and it was a major taskfor the SERENATE Steering Committee to structure and summarise the findings,highlight the most important developments and present the recommendations in anaccessible and attractive form.The summary report of the SERENATE studies, titledNetworks for Knowledge and Innovation - A strategic study of European research andeducation networking and authored by David Williams (editor), Marko Bonac,Ian Butterworth, Dai Davies, Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia,Tony Mayer, Knud ErikSkouby and Karel Vietsch, was published on 31 December 2003, the final day of the SERENATE project. Its main conclusions can be summarised as follows:

> European research networkingEuropean universities and research institutions were early adopters of data net-working. In most countries in Europe, national networks interconnecting theuniversities in the country were established in the 1980s.These national networks,which are in turn interconnected at the European level, provide operational servicesto research and higher education. Many technologies and services that are developed and testedin the research network environment, later find their way to the commercial Internet. Moregenerally, research networks are an excellent source of technical innovation.The liberalisation ofthe telecommunications markets in Europe has had a major impact on the environment inwhich National Research and Education Network organisations (NRENs) operate. In manyparts of Europe, the prices to be paid for the components of networks have been reduced


> SERENATE SummaryReport

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enormously. Europe is now a world leader in several aspects of research networking. However,progress has not been uniform.

> The organisational modelIn Europe, the provision of network services to research and education is organised at threelevels: the Local Area Network to which the end-user is connected, the national infrastructureprovided by the NREN, and the pan-European level provided by GÉANT.This organisationalmodel, with one NREN per country and close collaboration at the European level, has been asuccess factor for the development of research and education networking in Europe.This modelcan be expected to remain in place and to continue to be a key to success for at least the next5-10 years.

> Optical networking is coming and everyone can and should participateThe move towards the use of optical techniques in data transmission is a fundamental changethat will not be reversed. It offers enormous opportunities for research and education networks,regarding cost and management and in relation to the network capacities and services that canbe provided.As a consequence, optical-fibre infrastructure becomes an asset of crucial

importance, not only for research and education, but also for the economyand society in general.A competitive market for fibre infrastructure shouldtherefore be promoted, and access to fibre at reasonable prices should beensured.

> Very demanding applications are coming and need carefulattentionThere is a growing diversification of the network requirements ofresearchers.The most demanding scientific applications now require veryhigh network capacities and put heavy demands on network availabilityand end-to-end performance. Recent technical and market developmentswill enable the existing research network organisations to serve the needsof these most demanding users.This will maintain the coherence in

European research and education networking, which is in the interest of all stakeholders and ofgreat importance for continued innovation. However, in order to achieve this goal, researchnetwork organisations will need to introduce new infrastructures, technologies and networkarchitectures. Moreover, funding and cost-sharing models for research network facilities willneed to be adjusted to accommodate the increasing diversity in network use.

> There is a digital divide inside the European research and education communityOne of the main objectives of the European Research Area and of the eEurope Action Plans isto provide equal opportunities to researchers, teachers and students, independent of location.Widespread and cost-effective access to research and education networks is therefore of crucialimportance to the success of these two policy initiatives. Unfortunately, there is a significantdivide between countries in Europe with respect to the network infrastructure and services thatare available to the national research and education communities.The institutions of theEuropean Union and national authorities should recognise the existence of this digital divideand take energetic measures to reduce, and preferably eliminate, the divide. Creating a trulycompetitive telecommunications market and ensuring access to fibre infrastructures atreasonable prices are important in this context. In addition, investments in research and

> Workshop inBad Nauheim


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education networking will be needed, including investments incommunications infrastructure such as optical fibre.The use of the European Union’s Structural Funds for this purpose should beencouraged. In order to measure the effect of the actions, it will be important to monitor regularly the state of the digital divide in research and education.

> The campus is often the weakest link in the network chainBecause, in recent years, research and education networks at thenational and international levels have achieved substantial improve-ments in network capacity and service quality, it is perhaps notsurprising that the local level of network facilities is now seen toproduce the most significant bottlenecks. Investments need to be made, and universities andresearch institutes need to ensure that adequate annual budgets are available for their campusnetworks.

> Users need end-to-end quality, a compatible European Authentication andAuthorisation Infrastructure, and value-added servicesThe expectations of network users have evolved beyond the provision of pure bandwidthtowards the supply of more complex services.There are concerns about security, privacy andconfidentiality.There will be a strong demand for authentication and authorisation services.Increasingly, researchers and teachers want to be able to access networks and their own usual setof network and information services wherever they happen to be.The establishment of a pan-European Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure will be an important contribution tomeeting these requirements.

> Inclusiveness of the user community of an NREN can only be determinednationally, but obvious economies of scale exist in smaller countriesSeveral national governments in Europe have initiated projects to provide network connectionsand services to schools, libraries, museums and other public institutions. Some of theseinitiatives involve the NREN, but others do not. Such initiatives, and the way there areimplemented, have to be decided at the national level. It should be mentioned that greater‘inclusiveness’ is particularly important for small countries. By extending their user communitybeyond researchers, teachers and students in higher education, NRENs in such countries canachieve a critical mass and economies of scale that are obtained naturally by NRENs in largecountries.

> There is a crucial role for the European UnionThe NRENs and their pan-European organisations DANTE and TERENA need to intensifytheir collaboration in order to meet the new challenges to research and education networking.In recent years, the European Commission has acted as a uniting force.The European Counciland the European Parliament should ensure that the European Commission continues to play asignificant role in enabling Europe’s research and education network facilities to remaincompetitive at a global level.

The SERENATE reports, and in particular the Summary Report, have been distributed in largenumbers. In many countries they are used in discussions about the future of research and

Marco Bonaccontemlating theuse of EUstructural funds

˘


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education networking at the national and local levels.TERENA officials and other persons whohave been involved in the SERENATE studies are frequently invited to present the SERENATEfindings and recommendations at various events.

www.serenate.org



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[TERENA / annual report 2003] / INFORMATION SHARING

// Information Sharing

// TERENA Compendium

In its current form, the TERENA Compendium of National Researchand Education Networks in Europe consists of two parts. One partcontains basic information on national research and education networksin Europe and surrounding regions.This part is available on the Web only.For each networking organisation, the webpages offer information aboutorganisation, staffing, finances, user base, network capacity and plans as well as services and developments.The second part consists of acompilation and analysis, which gives information on various dimensionsof a large number of networks.This second part is available both on the Web and in printed form. It consists of chapters that cover basicinformation, users and clients, network dimensions, traffic figures, andservices, staffing and funding.

The publication of the final version of the 2002 edition of the Compendium and the fullproduction of the 2003 edition were financially supported by the European Union through theCOM-REN project, an accompanying measure in the 5th Framework Programme.

The questionnaire for the 2003 edition of the Compendium was developed with the assistanceof a review panel, which consisted of Lajos Bálint (HUNGARNET), Marko Bonac (ARNES),Urs Eppenberger (SWITCH), Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia (Renater) and Mike Norris (HEAnet).The panel met once in this composition and conducted most of its work through frequent emailexchanges during the preparation of the 2003 edition and the elaboration of the results. In theautumn, Peter Kaufmann (DFN) also joined the panel.

The responses to the questionnaire were first published on the Web. On the basis of thoseresponses, a first, limited edition of the analytical part was published in April and was shared onlywith the TERENA member organisations.The limited edition contained 27 graphs, maps andtables.All respondents were asked to correct their entries if needed, and a number of memberorganisations made suggestions for changes and additions to the analytical part.

In July, the European Commission organised a review of the COM-REN project.A number ofsuggestions for improvements to the Compendium were made, and could be taken into accountwhen preparing the final version of the 2003 edition.

The final version of the analytical part of the Compendium 2003 was published in September.Based on the suggestions received, it contains 59 graphs and tables, presented on 60 pages.Thegeographical coverage of the 2003 edition was wider than ever before: the publication containsdata from 51 countries in and around Europe.

> The TERENACompendium 2003

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The Compendium was again used as a valuable source of information by researchers and policymakers from a number of countries. Several TERENA member organisations distributed copies ofthe Compendium nationally; many of them used data from the Compendium in their dialogueswith policy makers at the national level.TERENA’s Bert van Pinxteren gave a presentation on theCompendium at the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003 inZagreb in May.The fruitful dialogue with the SIBIS project, one of the users of the Compendiumdata, was continued.

In October, the review panel met to discuss the topic for the focus study that is to be undertaken aspart of the COM-REN project. Because this focus study could not be completed before the end of2003, the planned end date of the project, a request was submitted to the European Commission toextend the project duration with a number of months.

www.terena.nl/compendium/

// Information Dissemination and Member Development Programme

TERENA provides information and technical and managerial advice to its member organisations,not only on a multilateral but also on a bilateral basis. More generally, the TERENA Secretariataims to intensify the bilateral contacts with the staff of the member organisations.

Participation by TERENA staff members in national and regional research networking conferencesis another way to disseminate information about TERENA’s activities and to make more contactsin the wider European research networking community.As an example,TERENA’s SecretaryGeneral, Karel Vietsch, presented TERENA’s activities at the French national research networkingconference in Lille in November.TERENA’s Valentino Cavalli gave similar presentations at aNetworkshop organised by UKERNA in York in April, at the RedIRIS Technical Days in Palma deMallorca in November, and at a GARR Workshop in Rome later that same month.The Romaniannational research networking conference in Iasi in June heard presentations by TERENA’s KevinMeynell. John Dyer,TERENA’s Chief Technical Officer, presented TERENA’s activities torepresentatives of research networks in the Mediterranean region at a EUMEDCONNECTmeeting in Paris in July. It should also be mentioned that TERENA’s Vice President TechnicalProgramme, Claudio Allocchio, was an invited speaker at a conference on the occasion of the 10thanniversary of the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre in October.

The TERENA Secretariat publishes announcements on developments in TERENA activities onthe TERENA website.The announcements are also distributed by electronic mail to therepresentatives of the member organisations and other persons who have subscribed to thedistribution list.The Secretariat maintains on the website a calendar of events that are of interest tothe research and education networking community.

In recent years, it has been one of the explicit objectives of TERENA to provide support toresearch and education networks in the less favoured regions of the geographical area covered bythe TERENA membership. In the General Assembly meeting in Zagreb in May, the TERENA

,


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Executive Committee presented a revised plan for this Member Development Programme.Theplan identifies measures to improve communication between TERENA member organisations, tostimulate and facilitate participation of networking experts from less favoured regions ininternational activities, and to help networking organisations to develop appropriate policies forimproving research networking facilities and services in their countries.

Working visits of TERENA staff members to the research networking organisations in specificcountries are expected to be the most suitable instrument to make progress in the MemberDevelopment Programme.These visits will be the best, and in some cases the only, manner toestablish a common understanding of the problems and issues in the country concerned, and ofthe ways in which TERENA could collaborate to address the problems.

Two such visits were organised in 2003. In July,Valentino Cavalli and Kevin Meynell were theguests of LITNET, the national research and education network in Lithuania. During this two-dayvisit they discussed LITNET’s activities with the LITNET staff; they had also several meetingswith representatives of the Lithuanian government and parliament, and rectors and researchersfrom various universities in Vilnius and Kaunas. In October, John Dyer and Valentino Cavalli madea two-day visit to Latvia.There they met with staff members of LATNET, the research networkorganisation that is a national member of TERENA and a participant in the project that providesthe GÉANT interconnect network, and staff members of LANET, the network organisation thatprovides network services to the University of Latvia.They also had discussions with networkusers and government representatives.

During both visits, the TERENA representatives presented the association and its technicalactivities to network engineers and users.The meetings with government officials focused onrelevant findings from the SERENATE studies and the TERENA Compendium about issues likethe digital divide, funding models, access to fibre infrastructure and telecommunicationsregulations. For TERENA, the visits have resulted in more knowledge about the networks, theservices and the technologies in use in the respective countries, as well as a better understandingof organisational, funding and management issues.A number of problems and inhibitors wereidentified and highlighted after the meetings in reports containing recommendations to thenational TERENA member organisations and the relevant decision-making bodies in therespective countries.

www.terena.nl/news/

// TF-PR (Public Relations and Information Dissemination)

In its meeting of 18 September, the TERENA Executive Committee established TF-PR,TERENA’s first non-technical task force.The aim of the task force is to promote collaborationbetween research and education networking organisations in Europe in the areas of publicrelations and information dissemination, through activities at the level of PR Manager /Information Officer.TF-PR will promote the quality and quantity of public relations andinformation dissemination about research and education networking in Europe.The task force hasan initial mandate of two years, ending on 30 September 2005. It is chaired by Sandra Passchier of


p.22


SURFnet, the Netherlands and its secretariat is provided by TERENA’s PR & ConferenceOfficer, Carol de Groot.

After an initial, informal meeting of information officers at the TERENA NetworkingConference 2002, a number of action items and deliverables were formulated in electronicdiscussions.These draft Terms of Reference were discussed further in a birds-of-a-feather sessionat the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003 in Zagreb inMay.That meeting was attended by 22 representatives from fifteen national and internationalresearch networking organisations.

The Terms of Reference of the new task force were finalised in TF-PR’s kick-off meeting inAmsterdam on 5 September.The meeting decided to divide the proposed deliverables into twogroups: those that would show visible and usable results in a short time, and those that requiredmore long-term planning.The meeting, which was attended by representatives of seventeenresearch and education networking organisations, was preceded by a seminar session on theprevious day in which the results of the recent GÉANT user survey were presented and discussed.In other seminar sessions, Greg Wood of Internet2 outlined his organisation’s strategies andactivities to accomplish similar objectives in the United States as those of TF-PR in Europe, andJacko van Dijk and Paul Erkens of Drempels Weg gave an impressive and thought-provokingpresentation on their work in the Netherlands to make websites more accessible to all sectors ofthe community, especially the handicapped.

After the official start of the task force, significant progress has been made on the priority workitems. PeaR, the online news agency for TF-PR members, was launched ahead of schedule on 20November.The work on this deliverable is led by Patricia Soria De Miguel (HEAnet) and RussellNelson (UKERNA), with support from TERENA’s Jeroen Houben for the creation of thetechnical Web features.Anamarija Soric and Zoran Birimisa (CARNet) and Mariska Herweijer(SURFnet), leaders of the work item on best practice in user surveys, published before the end ofthe year on the TF-PR website five examples of user surveys that had been developed in researchnetworking organisations in Europe. Good progress was also made in the work item on bestpractice in NREN websites.

www.terena.nl/news/pr/> PeaR News Agency

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[TERENA / annual report 2003] / CONFERENCES

->Conferences

The TERENA Networking Conference 2003 and the CARNet UsersConference 2003 were organised as a joint event in Zagreb, Croatia on 19-22 May. Participants rated the event to be highly successful, thanks to thequality and scope of the conference programme, the variety of other eventssurrounding the conference and the excellent facilities provided byCARNet’s technical staff. More than 460 participants from 34 countries in Europe and worldwide attended the event; the host country Croatia waswell represented with more than 130 participants.The conference theme‘User Opportunities - Network Challenges’ reflected the dual view on theconference topics and the current phase in the history of research and edu-cation networking: presently technical developments offer great opportunitiesfor new network applications while at the same time the need to interactwith the end-users is a greater challenge to network service providers thanever before.

During a press conference in the CARNet office a few days before the conference, journalistswere addressed by videoconference from Amsterdam by TERENA’s Secretary General, KarelVietsch, who outlined the history, structure and objectives of TERENA and previewed the topicsto be presented at the joint conference.The video link was an opportunity to demonstrate thecapabilities of advanced, high-speed networks. John Dyer,TERENA’s Chief Technical Officer,sketched the TERENA Technical Programme and highlighted some of the ongoing work and thechallenges ahead. CARNet’s Miroslav Milinovi´c explained the importance of the conference inproviding an opportunity for developers of network technologies to meet with the users ofresearch and education networks to exchange ideas and present their current research anddevelopment projects.

The conference programme was organised in four parallel tracks over four days, with a plenarysession to open each of the first three days and a closing plenary on the final day.

After introductions by the co-chairs of the Programme Committee, Shirley Wood and MiroslavMilinovi´c , and a welcome by Prof. Ignac Lovrek, President of the Managing Council ofCARNet, the conference was officially opened by Prof. Gvozden Flego, the Croatian Minister ofScience and Technology.As the keynote speaker in the opening session, Kim Veltman of theMaastricht McLuhan Institute presented some fascinating projects and ideas to use Gridtechnologies to make works of literature and art accessible, to re-create ancient buildings andother works of art, and to create virtual galleries to display old and new masterpieces.

> TERENA talking tothe press

->TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003


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The plenary session on Network Challenges heard presentations on two of thetimeliest subjects for research and education networking: Grid technologies andmiddleware. Ian Foster of Argonne National Laboratories explained about Gridsas tools for resource sharing and co-ordinated problem solving in dynamic,multi-institutional virtual organisations. He presented the Open Grid ServicesArchitecture, middleware for establishing, managing and evolving multi-organisational federations and mechanisms for creating and managing workflowwithin such organisations. Ken Klingenstein of Internet2 presented new trendsin collaborative technologies and enterprise middleware that will manage all ofour information and accessibility in the electronic world of the near future.

The plenary session on the third day focused in particular on UserOpportunities. Stephen Heppell of ULTRALAB, the learning technologyresearch centre of Anglia Polytechnic University, presented a creative andinnovative, while at the same time realistic vision on new opportunities foreffective online learning. Derek Law of the University of Strathclyde explainedhis ideas about the role of libraries and librarians as agents in building andsupporting user communities with common interests and practices.

In the closing plenary session,Tony Bates of the University of British Columbiadescribed an ongoing project to develop a totally integrated Internetcommunications system that uses state-of-the-art technology to provide newand innovative services for university campuses.

The parallel sessions offered a wide range of presentations. Speakers on user issues presentedpractical organisational tools and methods, user services and unique applications in fields likedistance education, the organisation of national research and education networks, bridging thegap between networks and users, virtual worlds, videoconferencing, multimedia services,mobility and information exchange.The more technical sessions included presentations on

advances in network technologies, Quality of Service, security, optical networks, peer-to-peer technologies and applications, and Grid technologies.There were two sessionsof short presentations on recent results, and two sessions devoted to current and futureTERENA activities.

Several meetings of TERENA task forces and projects and a large number of specialmeetings were organised before, during and after the conference. Egon Verharen ofSURFnet and Ted Hanss of Internet2 led a full-day hands-on training workshop on theprovision of H.323 videoconferencing services. In parallel to the conference,TERENAorganised on one day a 6NET workshop and a SCAMPI birds-of-a-feather session.Several equipment vendors organised open meetings back to back to the conference: aResearch and Education Summit by Juniper Networks, birds-of-a-feather sessions byTellium, CIENA and Extreme Networks, and a Next-Generation Internet Symposiumby Cisco Systems. Other birds-of-a-feather sessions were organised by the TERENAPR initiative and by the Croatian CRO GRID project.

The conference was jointly organised by TERENA and CARNet, the Croatian Academic andResearch Network, with local support from Generalturist.The CARNet team of 24 techniciansmade unparalleled achievements, enabling the high-quality streaming of four parallel sessions

> David Williamsopens the Hi-TechGala Event

> Ian Foster on Grids


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throughout the conference as well as interactive videoconference presentations from as far a fieldas Wales, England, the United States and Brazil.They also provided extensive wireless Internetconnections throughout the conference venue to a record number of users. Individualvideoconferencing booths allowed participants to keep in close contact with their offices, usingequipment provided by Radvision and Tanberg.

The conference was made possible by the sponsorship of CIENA, HT (Croatian Telecom), CiscoSystems, IBM, Juniper Networks, COLT, Extreme Networks, Logical,T-Systems, COMPUTECH,Tellium, perpetuum mobile and ECS.

www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2003/

->Workshop on Policy Issues for NRENs in Southeast Europe

With support from the NATO Science Programme,TERENA,CEENet and the SEEREN project organised a workshop on‘Policy Issues for NRENs in South East Europe’, which tookplace on 7-9 September in Varna, Bulgaria and was hosted by theICT Development Agency of the Republic of Bulgaria.TheNATO Advanced Networking Workshop was co-ordinated byValentino Cavalli (TERENA) and Orlin Kouzov (ICTDevelopment Agency). It was attended by more than fifty keyrepresentatives of research and education institutions,governments and telecommunications operators in southeastEurope, as well as by representatives of the EuropeanCommission and the NATO Advisory Panel on ComputerNetworking.

Most of the countries in the region have established national research and education networkingorganisations in some form, in order to provide researchers with network connectivity and basicservices. However, in many cases their continued existence is not secured and their technologicalstatus and development are not very advanced.There is a general digital divide in Europe and adivide in research networking in particular, and most research networks in southeast Europe findthemselves on the wrong side of that gap.The SEEREN project represents a major step towardsbridging the gap by providing connectivity between the national research networks in the regionand GÉANT.The workshop in Varna complemented the SEEREN activity by disseminatinginformation on the project’s achievements and by establishing a dialogue at the policy levelabout the development of research and education networking in the region.

The workshop provided an opportunity for interaction at high level between governmentofficials and representatives of funding organisations, telecommunications carriers, NRENs andthe research and education communities about issues like the role and importance of nationalresearch and education network organisations, international co-operation, sustainability, issuesrelated to the digital divide, and government support.

> Participants atthe Varna Workshop


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The first day of the workshop was devoted to explanations anddiscussions about the nature of NRENs, their role in supportingresearch and education in a knowledge society, their organisation andmanagement, their funding, and their interaction with politicalinstitutions. One session focused in particular on the issues of regionaland international collaboration.

The second day was mostly devoted to discussions about thetelecommunications sector and the issues of prices and access toinfrastructure. Matters related to regulation of the telecommunicationsmarkets and funding were also addressed. In the afternoon there was aclosed meeting for participants in the SEEREN project, while other

workshop participants attended a special open meeting of the Ideal-IST project on opportunitiesfor research collaboration in the European Union’s 6th Framework Programme.

The final day of the workshop started with a session highlighting the digital and economic dividein southeast Europe, followed by three summaries of the main points arising from the discussionsheld during the previous days, which focused on the need for national research and educationnetwork organisations, the relationship with telecommunications operators, and the sustainabilityof infrastructure and services for the research and education community.The major part of theday was devoted to presentations and in-depth discussions about the ways governments supportNRENs in southeast Europe and the question how this support could be improved.The final partof the programme was a brainstorm session about the conclusions from the workshop andpossible follow-up actions.

It clearly emerged that integration in the European Union and participation in EU initiatives andprogrammes are among the highest priorities on the political agenda of most governments in theregion, and that a set of recommendations to governments and policy makers as a result of theVarna workshop would be extremely useful to support the development of better facilities forresearch and education networking. In the months after the workshop, a document that summarisesthe conclusions from the event was elaborated; it will be published in the spring of 2004.

www.terena.nl/conferences/nato-anw2003/

> Discussions atthe workshop inVarna


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(( Technical Programme

(( Introduction to the Technical Programme

The TERENA Technical Programme supports joint European work inthe development and testing of new networking, middleware andapplication technologies. It brings together technical specialists andengineers from TERENA member organisations and the widerEuropean research networking community.The focus of the TechnicalProgramme is determined by a number of Special Interest Areas,networking technology areas that are of particular interest to the use ofnetworks by researchers, teachers and students. Every two years, theSpecial Interest Areas are reviewed by the Technical Advisory Council,a body composed of the senior technical managers of the TERENAmember organisations.The Technical Programme is co-ordinated andsupervised by the TERENA Technical Committee, a small group ofexperienced and respected networking professionals.

Activities in the Technical Programme are organised in task forces and projects.TERENA taskforces are open groups where specialists undertake joint focused work under specific terms ofreference in new areas of technology.As a rule, a task force has a limited lifetime that is linked tothe completion of a defined set of deliverables.Task forces also play an important role in theexchange of information about other activities in their field and the development of plans fornew initiatives.Task force activities are carried out on a voluntary basis by experts and engineersfrom research networking organisations, universities and laboratories in Europe and are supportedby TERENA staff through the provision of mailing lists, webpages, meeting arrangements andother secretariat functions.

TERENA projects are carried out by network specialists and engineers from the Europeanresearch networking community on the basis of a contract with TERENA. Sources of fundingmay vary depending on the size and scope of the project. Except for very small projects, fundingrequires a combination of contributions from TERENA’s own resources and from TERENAmembers and other interested organisations.

In recent years,TERENA Secretariat staff members themselves have been participatingincreasingly in the work of larger projects that are co-funded from external sources, in particularprojects in the Framework Programmes of the European Union.

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / TECHNICAL PROGRAMME

> The TERENATechnical Comiteeat work


p.28


(( The Technical Programme in 2003

The TERENA Technical Committee met three times in 2003 to discuss the progress of thevarious activities in the Technical Programme and to decide on proposals for new TERENAprojects and the creation of task forces.These meetings took place in the TERENA office inAmsterdam on 14 March, 23 June and 23 September. On 24 June, the Technical Committee had ajoint meeting with the TERENA Executive Committee.

The Technical Advisory Council had its annual meeting on 19 May in Zagreb, immediately beforethe TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003.The meetingdiscussed the impact of Grid technologies, as well as lower-layer technologies, mobility, contentdelivery and the initiative to host root certificates.The 46 participants were told about the high

bandwidth requirements of the emerging Grid applications, which candemand network speeds up to Gigabits per second in some instances.Thiswill have a significant impact on all levels of networking to ensure thatend-to-end performance can be delivered.The work of the proposedPerformance Enhancement Response Team (PERT) should have someeffects in this area.The question how to provide a coherent and effectiveauthentication and authorisation system was also discussed. Currentlythere are many parallel approaches in use and to enable those to worktogether, integration will be needed. It was suggested that this will requirea very large European project, if possible funded by the EuropeanCommission.The meeting heard about the approaches that TF-Mobilitywas considering for a pan-European roaming authentication pilot.At thesuggestion of TF-AACE,TERENA had agreed to create a pilot repository

of NREN root certificates. In summary, it is clear that authentication and authorisation will forma strong focus for the TERENA Technical Programme in the coming years.

On the basis of the recommendations made by the Technical Advisory Council in 2002, theTERENA Executive Committee had defined the following Special Interest Areas:> Lower Layers (IPv6, MPLS,VPNs etc.)> Quality of Service (including DiffServ)> Videoconferencing and Streaming> Content Delivery, Indexing and Searching> Middleware (security,AAA)> Mobility.In addition, the issues of campus co-ordination and Grids should receive special attention and canbe addressed across the Special Interest Areas.

The Zagreb meeting of the Technical Advisory Council concluded that these Special InterestAreas were still in line with the needs of the research and education community that TERENAneeds to address.

The interest of TERENA’s constituency in Grid technology and services has continued to growduring 2003, with the expectation that production services will be established to serve a widerange of research disciplines.TERENA Secretariat staff has been closely following the

Technical AdvisoryCouncil meeting inZagreb


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developments in the Grids community throughout the year, among others by actively partici-pating in the Global Grid Forum meetings in Tokyo in March, in Seattle in June and in Chicagoin October. In the second half of the year, large investments of time and effort have been made inthe preparations of the EGEE project (Enabling Grids for E-science in Europe), which aims tointegrate current national, regional and thematic Grid efforts to create a seamless European Gridinfrastructure for research. EGEE will be a very large project in the European Union’s 6thFramework Programme and is planned to start officially in April 2004.

The TERENA Secretariat staff has also devoted considerable amounts of time to other proposalsfor 6th Framework Programme projects. One of these proposals concerned the MOME clusterproject in the field of monitoring and measurement, starting on 1 January 2004.

During the year,TERENA identified and supported two initiatives concerning Root NameServers, i.e. those Domain Name System (DNS) servers where the start point of the wholestructure of Internet domain names is known:> the K-Root Server Anycast initiative proposed by the RIPE NCC, installing some anycast

replicas of the Root Server in some of the Internet Exchange Points which are very well linkedor directly connected to the GÉANT network

> the initiative to install inside the native IPv6 network service of the 6NET project a RootServer replica running native IPv6 and native IPv4 stacks.

Both initiatives also proposed to experiment with and deploy DNSSEC, the secure DNS dataexchange between servers, serving as a test bed for the final deployment of this feature.

www.terena.nl/tech/

TERENA Technical Committee in 2003:

Claudio Allocchio (chairman) Vice President Technical ProgrammeRoberto BarberaDavid Chadwick until 23 AprilChristoph GrafDimitrios Kalogeras until 14 DecemberOlav Kvittem until 23 AprilVictor Reijs from 24 JuneMartin Sutter from 18 DecemberTon VerschurenSteve Williams from 23 OctoberKarel Vietsch Secretary GeneralJohn Dyer Chief Technical OfficerBrian Gilmore MACE liaison


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(( Task Forces

(( TF-AACE (Authentication and Authorisation Co-ordination for Europe)

TF-AACE was established in 2002 with a two-year mandate, which will end on 30 April 2004.The task force, which is chaired by Diego López (RedIRIS, Spain), aims to co-ordinate thecontribution of the European research and education networking community to thestandardisation process, through liaison with the IETF, ETSI, the Global Grid Forum, Internet2 andother appropriate groups.

TF-AACE organised three meetings in 2003.The first of these, which took place in the TERENAoffice in Amsterdam on 15 April, was a special technical meeting for developers of authenticationand authorisation software.The objective of the meeting was to identify the characteristics of thevarious authentication and authorisation systems that are in use in the academic community inEurope and in Internet2, and to determine the capabilities of the different systems, in order toestablish their mutual interoperability and in some cases complementarity.The meeting wasconsidered to be very fruitful. It was decided to prepare an interoperability document based onSAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), an XML-based framework for exchangingauthentication and authorisation information between different applications.

The other two meetings took place in Zagreb on 18 May, before the TERENA NetworkingConference and CARNet Users Conference 2003, and in Málaga on 21 November, immediatelyafter an Authentication and Authorisation workshop organised by TF-AACE.A main item ofdiscussion in the last meeting was the initiative to set up a repository of root certificates,TACAR.

TACAR (TERENA Academic CA Repository) addresses one of the key problems linked to thecross-domain use of Public Key Infrastructures, namely: how to get all the different root CAcertificates as trust anchors in users’ browsers and other applications in a practical and cost-effectivemanner.The idea to set up an online repository to host the trust anchors of national research andeducation networks was discussed during the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNetUsers Conference 2003, and immediately obtained a wide support.TF-AACE decided to formalisethe procedure for gathering and verifying academic root-CA certificates, and a policy documentwas prepared and discussed on the TF-AACE mailing list during the final months of the year.Thedocument, which is available from the TF-AACE webpages, defines the certificates that arecollected, how one can get involved in the process, and how certificates are collected and madeavailable online.

Initially, the repository was supposed to be used only by national research and education networks.However, due to the large interest expressed by the Grids community, which makes a heavy use ofcertificates, it was decided to extent the range of applicants to include national academic PublicKey Infrastructures in the countries covered by the TERENA membership as well as non-profitresearch projects that directly involve the academic community.

The collection of root-CA certificates for TACAR started at the TF-AACE meeting in Málaga.The proposal for building a system for assessing the interoperability of Authentication andAuthorisation Infrastructure components was also discussed at this meeting.The system will be


p.31


presented at the final TF-AACE meeting, and it is foreseen that it will be used for the proposedGN2 project.The task force meeting in Málaga also discussed possible ways to organise and co-ordinate European authentication and authorisation activities after the current lifetime of TF-AACE.

According to the Terms of Reference of TF-AACE, it was one of its deliverables to organise twoworkshops on inter-institutional authentication and authorisation.The first of these had takenplace in Stockholm in November 2002.The second workshop was held on 20-21 November 2003at the University of Málaga. It was attended by almost 40 people from across Europe as well as fromthe United States.

The programme of the first day of the workshop focused on requirements from different usercommunities: content providers (represented by Niels Weertman of Elsevier), librarians (SallyChambers, University of London), Grid users (Tony Genovese of ESnet and Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory) and videoconference users (Dimitris Daskopoulos of GRNET and DavidCollados of the California Institute of Technology). New proposals on access control andcryptographic protocols were presented by Mariemma Yagüe (University of Málaga) and MarcoCasssassa Mont (Hewlett-Packard), respectively. One of the most interesting conclusions from thisset of presentations was that in many cases the real requirements of students and campuses are notwell represented in the TF-AACE community. National research and education networkingorganisations, and especially the largest ones, are sometimes not aware of what their connecteduniversities are implementing, and in many cases universities are not aware of the activities of thenational research and education networks in this field.There is therefore a need to organise localmeetings in the various countries to help research networks to get in touch with users ofauthentication and authorisation systems.

The role of federations was discussed during the workshop. Ingrid Melve (UNINETT) presentedthe Norwegian FEIDE system. Ueli Kienholz (SWITCH) spoke about the federation being builtby the universities in Switzerland, with an authentication and authorisation infrastructure basedon Shibboleth. Diego López spoke about PAPI and Alan Robiette (JISC) mentioned in hispresentation the Athens system in the United Kingdom.The PAPI development team was aboutto release the PAPI Adaptor to Athens, so that PAPI origins and Athens targets can interoperate.

Finally, the workshop discussed the use of Public Key Infrastructures. Many national research andeducation networking organisations have set up a PKI, but the use of certificates is not widelydeployed. One of the topics for discussion was whether Grids or the increasing use of 802.1Xwould reinforce the introduction of PKI.The common feeling was that, because PKI is hard tomaintain for system administrators and difficult to use for end-users, while it is expensive as well,it will be used up to a certain level but will not reach end-users such as, for example, students.TheGrid community uses PKI widely, but this has its historic reasons, related to the need to useGlobus.When Grids started, national research and education network organisations were not ableto provide certificates, and therefore the Grid community had to set up ad-hoc certificationauthorities.The Grid scenario was explained by Tony Genovese, who gave a presentation aboutthe authentication and authorisation approach in the Grids community and in particular aboutthe CA of the US Department of Energy, and Leon Gommans (University of Amsterdam), whodescribed the authentication and authorisation infrastructure in the DataGrid project.

www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-aace/


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(( TF-CSIRT (Collaboration of Incident Response Teams)

TF-CSIRT is a forum where members of Computer Security IncidentResponse Teams (CSIRTs) meet to exchange information and experiencesand to set up collaborative activities.The participants in the task forcecome from different communities, including TERENA memberorganisations, universities, government institutions and the commercialsector.The task force is chaired by Gorazd Bozic of ARNES, Slovenia.

The meetings of TF-CSIRT always offer a two-day programme.The firstday consists of seminar sessions in which various computer and networksecurity issues are presented and discussed.The second day is a task forcebusiness meeting, which reviews the work of TF-CSIRT’s subgroups anddiscusses other activities related to the mission of the task force.

TF-CSIRT met three times in 2003: on 23-24 January in Zagreb, on 29-30 May in Warsaw andon 25-26 September in Amsterdam. Participation in the task force meetings is growingcontinuously; the meeting in Amsterdam attracted more than 60 attendees.

There are a number of recurrent items in the programmes of the seminar sessions. One of these ispresentations by participating CSIRTs about their own current practice.This year, the task forceheard such presentations from CARNet CERT (Croatia), mtCERT (Malta), LITNET CERT(Lithuania), CERT-FI (Finland), KCSIRT (the Netherlands),ACOnet CERT (Austria), SWITCHCERT (Switzerland), GOVCERT.NL (the Netherlands),TeliaCERT CC and TelekomunikaciaPolska.There were also presentations from law enforcement agencies in Croatia and theNetherlands. Gilles André (CERTA, France) discussed a possible emergency backup infrastructurefor CSIRTs, and Andy Bone (JANET-CERT, United Kingdom) presented updates on theRequest Tracker Incident Response (RTIR) system. Other presentations in the seminar sessionscovered technical topics, including techniques and tools developed by universities, researchinstitutes and industry.

During the year, a slide show about TF-CSIRT’s activities was created through a joint effort oftask force participants.The presentation slides are maintained by TERENA’s Baiba Kaskina, thesecretary of the task force, and are made available to TF-CSIRT participants for presentations atvarious events.They were used, for example, to present the task force to the Asian-Pacificsecurity community and at a conference on regional cyber-security collaboration in southeastEurope.

A number of projects in the European Union’s 5th Framework Programme had their origins inTF-CSIRT.A first example was the eCSIRT.net project, which aimed to establish a standardisedexchange of incident-related data and collect incident statistics, followed by intelligent generationof warnings and emergency alerts based on this collected integrated data set.The project wassuccessfully completed on 31 December 2003, and follow-up activities will be undertaken bysubgroups of TF-CSIRT.Another example is the project EISPP (European Information SecurityPromotion Programme).This project developed a European framework to share securityknowledge and to define the content and ways of disseminating security information to small andmedium-size enterprises.The common advisory format that has been developed in the EISPP

> The TF-CSIRTmeeting in Warsaw

˘ ˘


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project is used by teams in different countries to exchange advisory-related information.The enddate of the project is January 2004.A third example is the TRANSITS project for training CSIRTstaff.Another spin-off of the TF-CSIRT activities, not financially supported by the EuropeanCommission, is the Trusted Introducer service. Both the TRANSITS project and the TrustedIntroducer service are reported on elsewhere in this Annual Report.

TF-CSIRT developed the plan to add an Incident Response Team object to the RIPE database, inorder to help CSIRTs or system administrators to discover who is responsible for the securityaspects of a host or a group of hosts.The object was implemented and operational before the startof 2003, but it has turned out to be a major effort to populate this part of the database by taggingthe address objects of the constituencies of CSIRTs. During the year, documentation has beenproduced on the use of the IRT object.

One of TF-CSIRT’s activities is to maintain a Web-based clearinghouse of incident handlingtools.This service is hosted by DFN-CERT in Germany. During the year,TF-CSIRT participantshave started to explore possible ways to improve the clearinghouse service and to add more valueto it. One of the possible improvements would be a categorisation of tools and the creation ofbasic workflows for cases of incident response.

A new initiative in TF-CSIRT was the plan to create a subgroup to consider a possible unifiedVulnerability and Exploit Description and Exchange Format.The intention is that the group willproduce a series of documents establishing consolidated best-practice for the description ofvulnerabilities and/or exploits, taking into account the needs of vendors, CSIRTs and end-users.

TF-CSIRT participants have undertaken various activities related to the Incident ObjectDescription and Exchange Format (IODEF).These included building an authoritative source foreCSIRT.net’s IODEF profile and common language, implementing an IODEF exchangeprotocol, providing support to the current IODEF exchange network, and promoting theimplementation of IODEF in contacts with other forums.

During the year, the initiative has been taken to establish a forum to promote collaborationbetween Abuse teams.This is an activity adjacent to TF-CSIRT, which involves a partly differentcommunity. Nevertheless it is important to maintain good contacts between the two Europeanforums.

Because TF-CSIRT brings together a large number of active CSIRTs from all across Europe, it isseen as a focal and contact point for activities in this area. Representatives of TF-CSIRT havepresented the European activities and views in various meetings and discussion groups organisedby FIRST, the worldwide association of incident response teams.Also the European Commissionsees TF-CSIRT as an important discussion partner. Regular meetings are organised betweendeputations from TF-CSIRT and Commission officials.The EU has funded the production of aLegal Handbook for CSIRTs, thereby implementing one of the earliest ideas of TF-CSIRT. Othertopics of discussion have been the creation of a European Network and Information SecurityAgency (ENISA), and opportunities for new CSIRT-related projects in the 6th FrameworkProgramme.

www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-csirt/


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(( TF-Mobility (Roaming for Mobile Devices)

TF-Mobility investigates roaming for mobile devices using access technologies that are alreadydeployed (or planned) in the research and education networks that contribute to the task force. Italso defines and tests an inter-NREN roaming architecture by evaluating possible authenticationand authorisation techniques in fixed and mobile networking environments (for example,Web-based, RADIUS + 802.1X, VPN).The task force activities started officially on 1 January 2003and the group is expected to complete its work by the end of June 2004. It is chaired jointly byCarsten Bormann (University of Bremen) and James Sankar (UKERNA).

The first TF-Mobility meeting took place in the TERENA office in Amsterdam on 10 February.This meeting had a last review of the list of planned deliverables and discussed the planning fortheir production. From the very beginning, the task force has been very active, and by the time ofthe next meeting, which took place in Zagreb on 18 May, before the TERENA NetworkingConference and CARNet Users Conference 2003, five deliverables had already been produced.These reports describe how VPN, 802.1X and Web-based authentication work, they highlightinteroperability problems as well as scalability, and they provide a picture of which protocolsnational research and education networks are currently using.

It was obvious that it would not be possible to select one dominant solution from the threealternatives that had been investigated. It was therefore decided to choose an approach whichoverlays and supports multiple solutions, with the longer-term objective to move to a singlesolution.The most promising overlay solution, which offers a good balance between security andscalability, appears to be RADIUS Proxy Hierarchy, because its supports Web-basedauthentication, 802.1X and some VPN solutions.The fact that more and more NRENs are usingthis overlay seems to support the choice.

At the moment,VPN is used only in the Swiss national research network and at the University ofBremen. In order to cope with the scalability problems that arise when VPN is used on a largescale, the task force proposed two approaches: the use of VPN with client certificates, and CASG(Controlled Address Space for Gateways), also known as ‘relay networks’.The CASG approachforesees that each NREN assigns a network range out of its global address space to the CASG.

The third TF-Mobility meeting was held in Berlin on 22 September. Here it was decided topursue only the CASG approach.Although VPN working with client certificates looks quiteattractive because it uses temporary certificates, it still remains a solution that would be difficult toimplement at the European level.

TF-Mobility has also set up a top-level RADIUS server to allow European roaming.TheNetherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Finland, Portugal and Croatia have joined thisinitiative.

www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-mobility/


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(( TF-Netcast (Academic Netcasting)

The objective of TF-Netcast is to create a portal for live-streamingannouncements and to investigate the possible extension of the portalto an academic channel for live streams and video-on-demand.Theofficial start date of the task force activities was 1 March 2003, and TF-Netcast has a one-year mandate.The task force is chaired by DanMønster of UNI•C, Denmark.

TF-Netcast had its kick-off meeting in the TERENA office inAmsterdam on 11 February.The five subsequent meetings that tookplace during the year were all held via H.323 videoconferencing.Thevideoconference MCU was hosted by SWITCH.The experiencegained from hosting these meetings has resulted in a service of veryhigh quality.

Task force participants met informally during the TERENA Networking Conference andCARNet Users Conference 2003 in Zagreb.This additional, unofficial face-to-face meetingproved to be very fruitful and helped to define the best solution for the implementation of thecontent delivery network.

TF-Netcast has produced several deliverables during the year.The first deliverable was theextended TF-Netcast schedule, which is intended to be the main reference for the work in thetask force.

During April and May,TF-Netcast conducted a survey within the organisations represented in thetask force and their user communities, to get a better understanding of the way streaming video isused in the community and the directions in which this technology is developing.The reportsummarising the results of the survey was the next deliverable of the task force.

The task force has collected information about resources for content production and has madethese data available online.The collection of resources includes information about mediaarchitectures, systems and formats, software and hardware solutions, best practices, tutorials,glossaries, and other material.

The TF-Netcast announcement portal was designed and established, based on the announcementsportal created by CESNET.The features of the portal give the possibility to provide informationabout live-streaming events all over the world. It is also possible to submit and maintaininformation about new events.The portal has been translated into nine languages.

Another deliverable is a report on video-on-demand metadata and portals.This document reviewsseveral metadata models that are currently used for describing video-on-demand assets in theacademic community and explores how these metadata could be exchanged for use in a portal.

The last deliverable that was completed before the end of 2003 was a report on live-streaminginfrastructure, complemented by the OpenCDN software.This software enables the installation ofnodes and servers suitable for replication and splitting of live and recorded multimedia content on

> TF-Netcast meets byvideoconference


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the Internet.The report presents the results of an investigation of viable solutions for large-scaleprovision and delivery of live content. It focuses on concept and design architecture, usage ofmultiple servers, stream splitters, unicast-to-multicast gateways and other transport mechanisms,along with a system for using one or more of the analysed solutions for efficient delivery of livecontent to a broad international audience.

www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-netcast/

(( TF-NGN (Next-Generation Networking)

TF-NGN investigates the suitability of advanced network technologies for future implementationin research and education networks in Europe. Since the start of the task force in November2000,TF-NGN work has been carried out in collaboration with the technical activities related toGÉANT and with other European projects like 6NET, without being restricted to them. In itsmeeting of 14 March, the TERENA Technical Committee has extended the mandate of TF-NGN until 1 November 2004, and has approved a revision of its Terms of Reference.Thisrevision encompasses an update of the list of work items of TF-NGN, with a new emphasis onoptical networking and other activities like an intra/inter-domain network monitoringinfrastructure, an experimental implementation of a Performance Enhancement Response Team(PERT) and support for layer-2 VPNs. During the year, Roberto Sabatino of DANTE wassucceeded as chairman of TF-NGN by his colleague Michael Enrico.

TF-NGN had three meetings in 2003, in Rome on 6-7 February, in Poznan on 8-9 May, and inCambridge on 15-16 September.

Members of TF-NGN’s subgroup on optical networking have been testing the functionality ofDWDM transmission equipment and optical switches on existing national test beds. During theyear they have reported about the progress and achievements in this work to the TF-NGNparticipants.The group shared information about experiences with Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet over long distance. Plans for experiments with networks at 40 Gb/s andbeyond as well as bandwidth-on-demand were also discussed during the year.The limitedavailability of a pan-European test bed has hindered the group in gaining hands-on experience.Several NRENs whose specialists participate in TF-NGN have been involved in the preparationof project proposals in response to a call for proposals for research networking test beds as part ofthe 6th Framework Programme.

TF-NGN has promoted a number of activities aimed at enhancing the monitoring of networkperformance.These include a pilot implementation of a PERT, a body set up to address end-to-end performance problems, as well as the development of performance measurement tools for thePERT, and the provision of relevant statistics.A monitoring infrastructure is being developed thatwill exchange performance data between domains to help troubleshooting, provide network userswith views of edge-to-edge performance, and verify Service Level Agreements.

TF-NGN serves as a forum for reporting and discussing progress in the deployment of IPv6 anddevelopments related to IPv6 in other environments, like the 6NET project or the IETF. 6NET


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has deployed a native IPv6-only network and GÉANT has successfully moved to dual-stackoperation.The task force has been looking actively into developments in IPv6 multicast; it hasheard updates on M6Bone, the first IPv6 multicast initiative, which currently counts 30connections in a number of countries, and the plans for introducing IPv6 multicasting onGÉANT.

The task force has also discussed the plans for the joint research activities that are envisaged to bepart of the proposed GN2 project, and has provided feedback on them.

www.terena.nl/tech/task-forces/tf-ngn/


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(( TERENA Projects

(( Adding Certificate Retrieval to OpenLDAP

The project ‘Adding Certificate Retrieval to OpenLDAP’ is carried out at the University ofSalford under the supervision of David Chadwick.The project started in September 2001. It isfunded from TERENA’s own resources with an amount of 26,300 euro, and by five TERENAmember organisations, CESNET, RedIRIS, SURFnet, SWITCH and UNINETT, which eachcontribute 10,000 euro.The total project costs are estimated at 129,700 euro.A project reviewcommittee, appointed by TERENA, reviews the project results and deliverables. Members of thecommittee are Thomas Lenggenhager (SWITCH), Diego López (RedIRIS), Milan Sova(CESNET), Stig Venås (UNINETT),Ton Verschuren (SURFnet) and Kurt Zeilenga, ChiefArchitect of OpenLDAP.The committee is supported by one of TERENA’s Project DevelopmentOfficers, Licia Florio.

OpenLDAP is an open software suite of application and development tools of the LDAP protocol.The project aims to implement two of the Internet Drafts that proposed solutions to thedeficiencies that become apparent when LDAP is used in combination with Public KeyInfrastructures, namely matched values and certificate matching rules, and to build them into theOpenLDAP source code.This will allow searching for certificates containing specific fields, suchas key usage or Subject Alt Names containing an email address.

Although the project made good progress during 2002, it was not completed by April 2003, ashad been originally planned, because of certain complexities and due to some bugs that werefound in the design when testing had started. By the end of 2003, these bugs had been fixed andthe migration of the code into the latest release of OpenLDAP was ongoing.

www.terena.nl/tech/projects/AddingCertificateToOpenLDAP/

(( Directory Schema Registry

The ‘Directory Schema Registry’ project was carried out by DAASI International.The projectwas supported from TERENA’s own resources with an amount of 16,100 euro, while four otherorganisations, the JISC in the United Kingdom and the national research and educationnetworking organisations of Spain, the Czech Republic and Poland, together contributed another16,000 euro to the project.A project review committee reviewed the project results anddeliverables. Members of the committee were Maja Gorecka-Wolniewicz (PCSS), Diego López(RedIRIS),Alan Robiette (JISC) and Milan Sova (CESNET), and the committee was supportedby TERENA’s Licia Florio.

The project started in August 2002, and the final report and other results of the project werepublished on the TERENA website in November 2003. Before this project, there was no reliable,up-to-date registry of LDAP schema elements that also contained metadata about the definedschema. Because there was no reliable and easily searchable registry, there was also considerableduplication of effort in the academic community.The project was undertaken to fill this gap.


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The objectives of the project can be summarised as follows:> to set up an LDAP schema registry, with an easily browsable and searchable Web interface as

well as an interface based on MIME types defined in RFC 2927 for submission of new schema> to search for all schema definitions made in standardisation bodies like the IETF and to include

a first set of these in the registry> to develop a business model to keep the registry alive after the end of the project.

These objectives were achieved through the completion of the eleven project deliverables.Thefinal report includes extensive documentation on the deliverables and links to the projectdocumentation.The report gives a comprehensive introduction to the problem space as well asspecifications of the registry’s policy, schema and software design.

www.terena.nl/tech/projects/SchemaRegistry/

(( Guide to Network Resource Tools

The ‘Guide to Network Resource Tools’ (GNRT) is a popular publication,whose origins go back to 1993. It was originally produced by the EARNAssociation as a small printed booklet. In 1997, 1999 and 2001, revisededitions were published on the TERENA website.These editions were alsopublished in book form by Addison-Wesley.The GNRT is a user-friendly,well-organised guide, designed to provide a basic introduction to theInternet with sections on using basic tools and services available on thenetwork.

The work on the next version of the GNRT was completed towards the end of 2003, and the newpublication became available from the TERENA website soon afterwards.The new edition is acomprehensive guide on a whole spectrum of Internet services: from basic network tools andsimple email and Web tools to multimedia collaboration tools.The GNRT also covers topics likesearching for information,Web publishing and security. Compared to previous editions, thesections on streaming, videoconferencing and network tools have been improved and expanded.

An important innovation is that the new edition has a completely modular structure and ispublished using novel Web technology.This will allow for easier online management; parts of thepublication can be easily updated when they are in danger of becoming obsolete because of newtechnical developments.

The chief-editor of the new edition of the GNRT was Miroslav Milinovic (University ofZagreb); authors were Dan Mønster (UNI•C), Dave Hartland (Newcastle University), DebraHiom (University of Bristol), Corrado Derenale (Politecnico di Torino), Saverio Niccolini(University of Pisa) and Maria Verina.A number of experts, including Egon Verharen (SURFnet)and Pål Axelsson (Uppsala University), reviewed the contents.Ann Pocklington (UKERNA)assembled all contributions and TERENA’s Chief Technical Officer, John Dyer, edited the finalversion.The new Web-based structure was created by TERENA’s Jeroen Houben.

www.terena.nl/gnrt/

> The new GNRT


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(( IP Telephony Cookbook

The project to create an ‘IP Telephony Cookbook’ was started on 1 April 2003 and is planned torun for eleven months.The work is carried out by technical experts from the University of Pisa,the University of Bremen and FOKUS (the Institute for Open Communication Systems of theFraunhofer Gesellschaft), with contributions from CESNET, GRNET, the Karl FranzensUniversity in Graz and SURFnet.The project is supported by TERENA with a sum of 10,000euro. Five TERENA member organisations, UKERNA, SUNET, CYNET,ARNES andCARNet, will together contribute another 41,000 euro to the project.The total project costs areestimated at 64,800 euro.

A poll in the second half of 2001 revealed that there was substantial interest with the TERENAmember organisations to exchange experiences and possibly work together in the field of IPtelephony. In a meeting at the TERENA Networking Conference in June 2002, a detailed planwas discussed for the creation of an IP Telephony Cookbook for network engineers and systemadministrators at universities and national research and education network organisations.Theproposal was further developed in the subsequent months and it was approved by the TERENATechnical Committee in September 2002. Despite the substantial interest in the researchnetworking community it then still took considerable time to collect the necessary funding.

The IP Telephony Cookbook will provide an overview of available and future IP telephonytechnologies, through an explanation of the background and a description of the components andprotocols: H.323, SIP and Media Gateway Protocol.This will be followed by overviews ofscenarios for IP telephony deployment: which needs are addressed by IP telephony services andhow should an IP telephony environment be built? The Cookbook will describe in great detailhow to set up basic and advanced IP telephony services, and how to connect an IP telephonysystem to a global ‘dialling plan’ for H.323. Furthermore, the Cookbook will provide an overviewof regulatory and legal aspects in the European Union and the United States.Two appendices willreport on existing IP telephony projects and on the interoperability of equipment.

Work on the Cookbook has been progressing well during the year. By December 2003, six out ofthe eight chapters had been delivered and reviewed by the project review panel, which iscomposed of representatives of the organisations that fund the project.

www.terena.nl/tech/IPtel/


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(( External Projects

(( 6NET

6NET is a three-year project, which started in January 2002.The project aims to encourage theadoption of IPv6 technology by demonstrating that it is fully functional and stable, and that itoffers distinct advantages over IPv4.Thirty-six partners, including national research and educationnetworking organisations, universities, research institutes and commercial companies are involvedin the project.The total budget is 18 million euro, of which more than half will be funded by theEuropean Commission as part of the IST Programme in the 5th Framework Programme.

The project has seven work packages, which focus on building and operating a native IPv6backbone, interworking and migration from IPv4 networks, establishment of basic IPv6 networkservices, application and service support, middleware and user application trials, trials of networkmanagement tools, and dissemination and exploitation of results.TERENA is leading the workpackage on dissemination and exploitation.

The 6NET project has produced a pan-European backbone network that connects fifteencountries and runs native IPv6 over dedicated links at 155 Mb/s, with the exception of two linksthat are tunnelled over existing IPv4 connections for cost reasons. Local access is providedthrough national IPv6 test beds operated by NRENs that are partners in the 6NET project, suchas UKERNA, Renater and SWITCH. Connectivity to the 6NET partners in Japan and SouthKorea is provided via the UK6X Internet Exchange and Renater, respectively.The backbone alsohas connections to the Abilene network in the United States (via SURFnet), Euro6IX (via theUK6X) and the 6Bone (an experimental virtual network).

Collectively, the 6NET backbone and the interconnected national test beds form the largestnative IPv6 network in the world.This provides plenty of scope for trialling the new technology,testing interoperability with existing networks, and demonstrating services and applications. Inaddition, IPv6 trials are being run over wireless networks (both WLAN and 3G) in Lancaster,Southampton and Tromsø.

Basic routing (using IS-IS and BGP4+), tunnelling (IPv6 over IPv4) and DNS support have beensuccessfully tested, and a multicast overlay network (the M6Bone) is being used for conferencingand radio broadcasting. IPv6 has also been successfully tested over MPLS,ATM and WLAN basednetworks, while IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack operation has already been implemented by a number ofnational research networks.

A great deal of experience has been gained with transitional issues, and a number of missingelements have been identified. Other components that are important to widespread IPv6deployment, such as DHCPv6, autoconfiguration, multihoming, renumbering and mobile IPv6,have been evaluated, and feedback has been provided to the developers.

A core set of applications to be developed or ported to IPv6 were identified in the areas ofvideoconferencing and streaming, online gaming, e-business solutions and edge services. Some ofthese are already available, while others will be released in 2004. In addition, several IPv6 trafficmeasurement and visualisation tools have been released.


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6NET participants contribute actively to the IETF, particularly to the ipv6, v6ops (formerly:ngtrans) and multi6 working groups.A number of Internet Drafts have been submitted in theareas of site-local addressing, multicasting, 6to4 security, SNMP over IPv6, application porting,3GPP and DNSSEC.These are areas that were previously poorly defined, and 6NET has beenable to provide input based on its operational experiences. 6NET has also contributed to theIEEE in the areas of IPv6 transition and mobile source-specific multicasting, and provides regularupdates to RIPE.

TERENA is responsible for operating and maintaining the 6NET Web server, including theprovision of content.TERENA has also developed the Web-based project management system,which integrates document storage and retrieval, mailing list archives, a contacts database and ascheduling system.All these facilities are available via IPv6 as well as via the regular Internet.

TERENA organised a 6NET workshop in Zagreb on 21 May, inconjunction with the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNetUsers Conference 2003.The event followed on from the successful joint6NET-Euro6IX workshop held the previous year, and attracted a total of84 participants.The programme included discussions on various aspects ofIPv6 deployment and on the question of how to make the transition fromlegacy networks. It focused on the state of the technology, with particularreference to multicasting, security and mobility, and considered the leadingrole that projects like 6NET and Euro6IX can play in the development ofnext-generation networks.

Other dissemination tasks in the 6NET project include the organisation oftraining events, and the publication of quarterly newsletters with updates on the project.Therehave also been joint activities of 6NET and Euro6IX in the areas of connectivity, multicasting andsecurity.

6NET has demonstrated that IPv6 can be deployed in a production environment with the samefunctionality as IPv4. Not only does it solve the problem of shortage of IP addresses, but it alsopromises a number of enhanced features that are not an integral part of IPv4.The 6NET networkitself has been used to provide IPv6 connectivity to a number of prominent global events.

The experience gained in the project is being used to produce informational ‘cookbooks’ aimedat network administrators.The cookbooks on routing, migrating backbone and campus networksfrom IPv4 to IPv6, and network management are already available on the 6NET website.

www.6net.org

*\ 6LINK

TERENA is one of the partners in the 6LINK project, which provides support to the IPv6Cluster in the IST Programme of the European Union’s 5th Framework Programme.The project

The 6NET Workshop inZagreb


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started in March 2002 and is planned to run for three years. BT Exact is the coordinator of the6LINK project, and all project partners are organisations that play key roles in a variety of IPv6activities.

One of the objectives of the 6LINK project is to identify IST projects that have an interest inIPv6.These do not have to be specifically focused on IPv6, since the main aim is to bringtogether different activities in order to share experiences and knowledge.This is mainly donethrough public workshops, which during 2003 were held in Brussels adjacent to the 6thFramework Programme Information Day, in Madrid at the Global IPv6 Summit and in Milan atthe IST 2003 conference, and through liaison with other IPv6 bodies such as the IPv6 Forum, theEuropean IPv6 Task Force and Eurescom.These activities make it possible to build up a picture ofthe state of IPv6 development and deployment in Europe.

The second project goal is to disseminate and promote the IPv6 work that is being undertaken bythe various IST projects.This is pursued through the publication of informational booklets suchas Moving to IPv6 in Europe and IPv6 Research and Development in Europe, and a Web portal thatprovides up-to-date news about IPv6, as well as by maintaining a database of IPv6-enabledapplications.

The third goal is to exploit the IPv6 work being undertaken, by promoting the work of relatedprojects and providing inputs to standardisation bodies like the IETF, and through the exchange ofinformation.The aim is to accelerate the adoption of IPv6 and thereby provide European industrywith a competitive advantage in the global Information Society.

www.6link.org

*\ SCAMPI

TERENA is the co-ordinating partner in the SCAMPI project, which is part of the ISTProgramme of the European Union’s 5th Framework Programme. SCAMPI (A ScaleableMonitoring Platform for the Internet) started in April 2002 and is planned to run for 30 months.The total project budget is 5.5 million euro, of which about half will be contributed by theEuropean Commission. Besides TERENA, the current members of the SCAMPI consortium areCESNET and Masaryk University Brno (Czech Republic), FORTH and FORTHnet (Greece),IMEC (Belgium), Leiden University (the Netherlands), NETikos (Italy), Siemens (Germany) andUNINETT (Norway). Masaryk University joined the project during 2003, replacing 4PlusTechnologies (Greece) as the main hardware provider in the project following that company’swithdrawal because of internal restructuring.The consortium features a good combination ofhardware and software specialists, researchers and service providers to help solve the difficultproblem of establishing low-cost, high-speed traffic monitoring.

The objective of SCAMPI is to develop an intelligent monitoring adapter with an open andextensible architecture that is capable of operating at speeds up to 10 Gb/s.The design brief is toproduce a PCI-based adapter that can be installed in a standard PC and that is supported bycommon operating systems such as Linux and BSD. However, the middleware needs to be able to


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support alternative hardware, whilst presenting a common interface toapplications.

The COMBO6 PCI-based card developed by Masaryk University waschosen as the primary hardware platform - to replace the 4Plus equipment- and prototypes running at 4 x 1 Gb/s have already been demonstrated.These mount the network interfaces on a daughter board, which allows avariety of transmission media to be supported.The next phase is to developthe COMBO6 further to run at 10 Gb/s speeds; prototypes will becomeavailable early in 2004. In addition, the SCAMPI system is being trialledwith Endace DAG adapters, Intel IXP network processors and Juniperswitches, as well as standard NICs.

At the heart of the SCAMPI system is the Measurement Application Programming Interface(MAPI).This presents a standardised API to applications that provides more functionality thanwhat is offered by existing solutions.While the MAPI is able to support most existing monitoringtools, it is expressive enough to allow applications to specify advanced queries on data streams(e.g., scan all packets in a flow for a signature).The MAPI can run co-located with themonitoring equipment or be accessed remotely.

A number of complementary applications are also being developed. In particular, much effort isdevoted to the detection of intrusions and denial-of-service attacks, since these are increasinglybecoming large problems in today’s Internet. Other tools are being developed for flow-basedreporting, QoS monitoring, traffic accounting and billing.

Besides being the coordinating partner in SCAMPI,TERENA is also responsible for the project’sdissemination activities.This includes providing and maintaining the project website, organisingopen workshops and birds-of-a-feather sessions, and developing a technology exploitation plan.

The first SCAMPI workshop was held on 27 January in Amsterdam. Because of logisticlimitations the number of participants was limited to 60, although more people had applied toattend.The participants heard presentations from Stephen Donnelly (Endace Technology), HenkUijterwaal (RIPE NCC), Les Cottrell (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center),Tanja Zseby(Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems) and several SCAMPI participants.Theworkshop provided a general introduction to high-speed traffic monitoring and its problems. Italso considered different monitoring methodologies, debated how to develop high-performancemonitoring hardware for current networks, discussed IETF standards and posed the question howthe technology may be extended to detection of cyber attacks.

TERENA organised a birds-of-a-feather session on measurements and monitoring in Zagreb on21 May, in conjunction with the TERENA Networking Conference and CARNet UsersConference 2003.The objective of this event, which attracted 36 participants, was to publicise theSCAMPI project and to discuss specific aspects of the work that are of wider interest to themonitoring community.

www.ist-scampi.org

> The Scampi Workshopin Amsterdam


p.45


*\ TRANSITS

TERENA and UKERNA are the partners in the TRANSITS project (Training of NetworkSecurity Incident Teams Staff), which provides training to staff members of new Computer SecurityIncident Response Teams and new staff members of existing CSIRTs.The project started in July2002 and the project duration is three years.TRANSITS is funded by the European Commissionwith an amount of 250,000 euro as an accompanying measure in the 5th Framework Programme.

The project is the result of one of the work items of TERENA’s task force TF-CSIRT. Before thestart of the project, volunteers from the TF-CSIRT community have developed the necessarycourse materials.These are maintained and frequently updated as part of the TRANSITS acti-vities.The course materials cover five modules: organisational issues, legal issues, vulnerabilitiesand advisories, operational issues, and technical issues.

During the lifetime of the TRANSITS project, the course materials will be presented at least sixtimes for a European audience.The locations of these six training workshops will be spread overvarious regions in Europe. Each training workshop provides an intensive programme of two fulldays, with trainees working in two parallel groups of about ten persons each.At every workshop,five very experienced members of prominent CSIRTs in Europe present the course materials;the high trainer/trainee ratio allows for intensive interactions.The TRANSITS budget includes a small fund to partly reimburse the cost of participation of trainees from economically less prosperous countries in Europe.

The first TRANSITS workshop was held in the autumn of 2002 in the Netherlands. During the year 2003, two more training courses were organised.The first ofthese took place in the office of the research and academic computer network organisationNASK in Warsaw on 27-28 May, immediately before a TF-CSIRT meeting in the same city.Twenty trainees from thirteen countries attended the workshop.The location had been chosenso as to encourage in particular participation from Central and Eastern Europe; this objective was definitely achieved, with trainees from seven EU accession states in CentralEurope participating in the course.Andrew Cormack (UKERNA), Klaus Möller (DFN-CERT), Gareth Price (BT Secure BusinessSystems), and Jan Meijer and Jacques Schuurman (SURFnet) presented the five modules.TERENA’s Raquel Corredoira and Karel Vietsch took care of logistic support, while NASK staffprovided excellent networking facilities.

The autumn workshop was held on 30-31 October at Castello di SanGaudenzio near Voghera, Italy.This conference centre provided an out-standing venue for the event in a relaxed and peaceful setting. On thisoccasion, the lecturers were Andrew Cormack, Klaus Möller, DavidParker (UNIRAS, the United Kingdom government CSIRT), JacquesSchuurman and Don Stikvoort (Stelvio, the Netherlands).Theworkshop was attended by 22 trainees from fourteen countries.TERENA’s Dick Visser took care of the networking facilities, whileother logistic support was provided by Karel Vietsch and Carol deGroot.

> trainees andlectures at thetraining course inWarsaw


p.46


Trainees as well as lecturers judged both workshops to be a great success,with everyone contributing to a very useful exchange of information.Thefeedback received from trainees via evaluation forms was very positive.

The TRANSITS training course materials are also used for workshops at a national level.Andrew Cormack presented the full course to eighteenstaff members of higher-education, further-education and research sitesconnected to the JANET network in a workshop in London on 15-16January.Twelve staff members from higher-education sites connected tothe SURFnet network participated in a training course presented byAndrew Cormack, Jan Meijer, Klaus Möller and Jacques Schuurman on 8-9 April at the Amsterdam Medical Centre. On 24 June,Andrew

Cormack presented the vulnerabilities module to 100 delegates at the FIRST Incident HandlingConference in Ottawa, Canada.

TERENA and UKERNA have also taken responsibility for creating a suitable permanentframework after the completion of the TRANSITS project for delivering further training coursesand regularly updating the materials.

www.ist-transits.org

*\ SEEREN

TERENA is a partner in the SEEREN project (South-Eastern European Research & EducationNetworking), which aims to connect the national research and education networks of Albania,Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia-Montenegro to GÉANT.The project is part of the European Union’s 5th Framework Programme,and its budget of almost 1.3 million euro will be fully funded by the European Commission.TheSEEREN project started in December 2002 and the project duration is planned to be eighteenmonths. GRNET (Greece) is the co-ordinating partner in the project; besides GRNET,TERENAand the national research networking organisations of the five beneficiary countries mentionedabove, the project consortium also includes DANTE, HUNGARNET (Hungary) and RoEduNet(Romania).The SEEREN network, which is based on links with capacities from 2 to 34 Mb/sconnecting the national research networks in beneficiary countries with GÉANT’s points ofpresence in Greece and Romania, is operational since the autumn of 2003.

Many of the countries in southeast Europe are lagging behind in terms of network infrastructureand services for research and education.The SEEREN project also aims to leverage additionalfunds from local, European and international sources and to co-ordinate those in order tomaximise the impact in the region.What is needed is obviously more than just a one-off impulseto the development of research and education networking in the countries concerned; thelonger-term sustainability of the infrastructure and services also needs urgent attention.Thesetopics were the focus of the workshop on ‘Policy Issues for NRENs in South East Europe’, whichwas organised by TERENA in September in the context of the SEEREN project.That workshopis reported on elsewhere in this Annual Report.

www.seeren.org

> Participants atworkshop in San Gaudenzio


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[TERENA / annual report 2003] / SERVICES

‘>Services

‘>Trusted Introducer

Many research and education networking organisations, universities, governments, commercialInternet service providers and telecommunications operators have created Computer SecurityIncident Response Teams to deal with security incidents. Collaboration between these CSIRTs isvery important because, in many cases, incidents originate from outside the network that isaffected. Such collaboration needs to be based on strong trust between the teams; trusted CSIRTsform a closely knit community, which is sometimes referred to as a ‘Web of Trust’.

The Trusted Introducer service has been set up to address the problem of admitting CSIRTs intothat ‘Web of Trust’.The Trusted Introducer collects detailed information about CSIRTs, and if ateam meets certain criteria it can be ‘accredited’ by the Trusted Introducer. Information aboutaccredited CSIRTs, as well as information about CSIRTs that have applied for accreditation andother known teams (‘listed’ CSIRTs) is published on the Trusted Introducer website.Theinformation is checked on a regular basis to ensure that it is still up-to-date and that accreditedCSIRTs still fulfil the criteria for accreditation.The service provides only accreditation and not aform of certification, but the scrutiny by the Trusted Introducer gives accredited CSIRTssufficient status for other CSIRTs to build their trust on.

The Trusted Introducer services are provided by a team led by Don Stikvoort of S-Cure, theNetherlands and Klaus-Peter Kossakowski of PRESECURE Consulting, Germany. In thesummer of 2002, following a two-year pilot phase,TERENA and S-Cure signed a contract forthe provision of the Trusted Introducer service. Under this contract,TERENA pays S-Cure aone-off amount of 900 euro for each CSIRT applying for accreditation and 60 euro per monthfor each accredited CSIRT.These amounts are then re-charged by TERENA to the CSIRTsconcerned, except that TERENA itself contributes 450 euro for every CSIRT of a TERENAmember organisation that applies for accreditation.

TERENA has established a TI Review Board to review the operations of the Trusted Introducerand to address all special issues that might result from its operation.The Board performs thefollowing tasks:> it receives the four-monthly progress reports from the Trusted Introducer> it reviews the overall performance of the Trusted Introducer and handles all complaints about its

functioning> it signs the PGP keys of the Trusted Introducer to foster the authenticity of these keys> it sets and changes the operational framework for the Trusted Introducer as necessary> it decides about special issues with regards to accredited CSIRTs and accreditation candidates,

like making exceptions to the established TI procedures for status change and maintenance,deciding on a site visit to clear issues not clearable otherwise, etc.


p.48

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / SERVICES

The TI Review Board consists of three persons elected by the accredited CSIRTs as theirrepresentatives, Gorazd Bozic (ex officio as chairman of TF-CSIRT) and Karel Vietsch (TERENArepresentative).The three elected members are appointed for three-year terms of office, in such away that every year the term of office of one member expires. During 2003, the elected memberswere Jimmy Arvidsson (Telia),Andrew Cormack (UKERNA, until 25 September), JacquesSchuurman (SURFnet) and Marco Thorbrügge (DFN-CERT, from 25 September).The ReviewBoard met three times during the year, in Zagreb on 23 January, in Warsaw on 29 May and inAmsterdam on 25 September. In order to save time and travel costs, each of the meetings wasorganised back-to-back with a meeting of TF-CSIRT. On 16 July, the Board published its annualreview report on the TI service. Despite a number of critical remarks, the Board recommendedthat the contract between TERENA and S-Cure be renewed for another year from September2003, under the same conditions as before.

In its report, the Board expressed the opinion that the Trusted Introducer is and remains verysignificant to the European CSIRT community. However, the Board also felt that the TrustedIntroducer will only remain relevant if more value is added to the current package of services.One way forward is to offer additional services that provide a firmer base for establishing trustbetween CSIRTs than the current check of formal data.Another way is to establish new servicesexclusively for the accredited CSIRTs, as well as forms of collaboration between them, buildingon the trust that the accreditation brings.

Regular meetings of representatives of the accredited CSIRTs can be instrumental to build outthe collaboration between them and to lay the foundations for additional TI services. It wastherefore decided that the Trusted Introducer would organise such meetings more frequently, andprepare ideas for new initiatives to be discussed in those meetings.The meeting of accreditedCSIRTs that took place in Amsterdam on 25 September was very successful.

By the end of October, the TI website contained data about 83 CSIRTs in Europe.At that timethere were 34 accredited CSIRTs: nineteen with a constituency in the research and/or educationcommunity, ten provided by commercial companies, four in the government sector and one witha mixed constituency.

www.ti.terena.nl

˘ ˘


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[TERENA / annual report 2003] / MEMBERSHIPS AND LIAISONS

*-Memberships and Liaisons

*-ENPG and European Commission

Civil servants from a number of European countries meet periodically in the EuropeanNetworking Policy Group (ENPG) to exchange information and co-ordinate their plans andpolicies with respect to the funding of research and education networking.TERENA has thestatus of permanent observer in the ENPG. On the basis of a contract with the JISC,TERENAalso hosts the ENPG website and mailing lists.

The ENPG is established on the basis of a Memorandum of Understanding between Ministersand other national authorities that have responsibility for policy and funding for research andeducation networking.The Memorandum was renewed in 2002. By the end of 2003, the newMemorandum had been signed by or on behalf of the governments of Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary,Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, whiletheir counterparts in Denmark, Greece, Slovakia and Spain had committed to sign the documentsoon. During the year, ENPG meetings were also attended by representatives of a number ofother national governments.

The ENPG had three meetings in 2003, in Dublin on 13-14 February, in Helsinki on 26-27 Juneand at CERN in Geneva on 27-28 November.As a guest speaker in the meeting in Dublin, JaneButler of Cisco Systems Europe presented Cisco’s view of technological developments in high-performance networking. John Hayden, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Authority, andJohn Boland of HEAnet gave a joint presentation about network services for research and highereducation in Ireland.The Helsinki meeting had a number of guests from Finland and the UnitedStates; Ulla Westermarck from the Finnish Population Register Centre gave a presentation aboutthe electronic identification certificate that has been introduced in Finland, and Doug VanHouweling of Internet2 spoke about recent developments in research networking in the UnitedStates. In the meeting in Geneva, Bob Jones presented current and future Grid work at CERN,and Claude Ribeyrol discussed the ICT policy and funding through the Ministry of Research andNew Technologies in France. Obviously, the development of policies for European researchnetworking and the actual rollout of the pan-European network infrastructure were recurrentthemes in the ENPG meetings. In every meeting, a representative of DANTE discussed recentdevelopments in GÉANT and Mario Campolargo gave an update on the latest developments atthe European Commission regarding policies and funding plans in the area of researchnetworking and Grids.

While in earlier meetings TERENA’s Karel Vietsch had kept ENPG members informed about theprogress in the SERENATE studies, in the meeting in November the chairman of theSERENATE Steering Committee, David Williams, was able to make a keynote presentation aboutthe final conclusions and recommendations resulting from that project.The SERENATE results


p.50


are of great importance to ENPG members for the further development of their own nationalpolicies.

Throughout the year, members of the TERENA Executive Committee and the TERENASecretariat staff had frequent contacts with several directorates of the European Commissionservices on a number of policy issues, in particular in relation to the 6th Framework Programme.

www.enpg.org

www.europa.eu.int/comm/

*-DANTE

DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe Ltd.) is a not-for-profitorganisation, established in Cambridge, England as a limited-liability company. Fifteen researchand education networking organisations in Europe are currently shareholders of DANTE.Themission of DANTE is to organise, manage and provide international advanced data networkingservices for the research community.

DANTE’s principal activity is to plan, build and operate pan-European backbone researchnetworks. Over the years, the organisation has played a pivotal role in consecutive generations ofthe pan-European research network infrastructure. GÉANT is the sixth generation of thatinfrastructure, and the first that can be considered to be the highest-capacity continental researchnetwork in the world. GÉANT was in full service before the start of 2002, and during the pasttwo years there have been many extensions and upgrades of the GÉANT infrastructure.

GÉANT is partially funded by the European Commission through a project in the 5thFramework Programme. In 2003, DANTE has devoted a large effort, in collaboration withnational research and education networking organisations and TERENA, to the preparations ofthe successor project in the 6th Framework Programme.This project, called GN2, will not justprovide the next generation of GÉANT, but it will be a so-called Integrated InfrastructureInitiative, encompassing joint research activities and supporting networking activities in additionto the service provision.The GN2 project proposal was submitted to the European Commissionat the end of September, and by the end of the year it became clear that it had been favourablyreceived by the evaluators.

DANTE is also a partner in the 6NET, 6LINK and SEEREN projects, which are reported onelsewhere in this Annual Report. In addition, DANTE is the co-ordinator of two importantprojects that aim to promote network connectivity for research in other world regions:ALICEand EUMEDCONNECT.

The ALICE project was set up in 2003 to develop a research network infrastructure within theLatin American region and towards Europe.ALICE implements the recommendations of theCAESAR study, which was carried out between March and October 2002.The study investigatedthe feasibility of connecting the Latin American national research and education networks toGÉANT via a Latin American regional research network. It was concluded that there was a real


p.51


demand for this, and that developing such a network is technically feasible.The EuropeanCommission co-funds the ALICE project with 10 million euro, which constitutes 80% of theproject budget.The project is managed by DANTE and has as its other partners four organisationsfrom Europe (FCCN, GARR, RedIRIS and Renater) as well as the NRENs of eighteen LatinAmerican countries.

The EUMEDCONNECT project is a pioneering initiative to establish a network that serves theresearch and education communities in the Mediterranean region and is linked to GÉANT.EUMEDCONNECT started in December 2001 and is proceeding in two phases.The current,second phase involves the actual development and operations of the network infrastructure.Detailed specifications were produced to define the initial shape and size of theEUMEDCONNECT network. Suppliers that expressed interest were invited to tender.Following extensive evaluation and negotiation, contracts were awarded and the first connectionsare due to come into service during the first half of 2004.

www.dante.net

*-Internet2

Internet2 is a consortium led by universities in the United States working in partnership withindustry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies.Internet2’s membership continued to grow during 2003, reaching at the close of the year a totalof 204 university members, 66 corporate members and 41 affiliate members.

Some of the highlights in the Internet2 activities during the year were:> the upgrade of the Abilene network, which along with new efforts such as FiberCo and

participation in National LambdaRail, ensures participating institutions in the United Statescontinued access to a leading-edge network infrastructure

> software developed under the auspices of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative that makes iteasier for organisations to deploy enterprise-wide authentication capabilities

> work within the Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative for helping engineers topinpoint and resolve network performance problems more quickly

> services available through the Internet2 Commons that provide improved access tocollaboration techniques.

There is close collaboration between TERENA and Internet2 in a number of fields, for example,measurements and middleware. Leaders of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative participate activelyin TERENA’s task force TF-AACE, and TERENA has appointed three persons as its liaisons withMACE (Middleware Architecture Committee for Education). Internet2 staff contributed to theTERENA Networking Conference and CARNet Users Conference 2003 and to a number oftechnical meetings organised by TERENA throughout the year. Conversely,TERENA Secretariatstaff members participated in the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting in Arlington,Virginia on9-11 April, and in the Fall Member Meeting in Indianapolis on 13-16 October.At bothconferences,TERENA’s Karel Vietsch presented updates on the work in the SERENATE project.

www.internet2.edu


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*-CCIRN

In addition to the intensive contacts with Internet2 in the United States,TERENA aims tomaintain good contacts with research networking organisations in other parts of the world, inparticular Canada, the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America.The single global forum whererepresentatives of research networking organisations worldwide meet on a multilateral basis is theCCIRN (Co-ordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking).The history ofthe CCIRN goes back to 1987.Although nowadays many specific initiatives for bilateral ormultilateral collaboration in research networking are discussed and managed in separate forums,the annual CCIRN meetings remain interesting events to exchange information and discusstechnical and organisational issues of common interest.The European delegation to CCIRNmeetings is designated by the TERENA Executive Committee.

This year’s CCIRN meeting took place in Indianapolis on 16-17 October, following theInternet2 Fall Member Meeting. It was chaired by the North American CCIRN co-chair, GeorgeStrawn of the National Science Foundation.

www.ccirn.org

*-Internet Society

The Internet Society is a professional membership organisation with more than 150organisational and 16,000 individual members in more than 180 countries. It aims to provideleadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and it is the organisationalhome for groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the InternetEngineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

TERENA was one of the original charter members of the Internet Society. Since the Society wasfounded in 1991, there have been important changes in the Internet community at large and inthe activities of the Internet Society in particular.The organisation has been gradually movingaway from the international research networking community as the other, commercial parts of theInternet grew in size and importance. In recent years there has been a marked decrease in theinvolvement of TERENA’s constituency in the activities of the Internet Society. For thesereasons,TERENA decided to conduct a critical review of its membership of the Society.

After careful consideration, the TERENA General Assembly decided in its meeting in Zagreb inMay to continue TERENA’s membership, but to convey in a letter to the Society’s Board ofTrustees that in TERENA’s opinion the Society’s reason for existence is in its support for theIETF and the IAB, and that therefore that support should have absolute priority over any otheractivities that the Internet Society might undertake.The letter was received positively by theBoard of Trustees, who confirmed that their own policies are very much in line with TERENA’sviews.

www.isoc.org


p.53



>TERENA Membership in 2003(as at 31 December)

> National Members

ACOnet Austria Peter RastlBELNET Belgium Pierre BruyèreCARNet Croatia Jasenka GojsicCYNET Cyprus Agathoclis StylianouCESNET Czech Republic Jan GruntorádUNI•C Denmark Dorte OlesenEENet Estonia Mihkel KraavCSC Finland Markus SadeniemiRenater France Dany VandrommeDFN Germany Klaus UllmannGRNET Greece Lazaros MerakosHUNGARNET Hungary Lajos BálintRHnet Iceland Jón Ingi EinarssonIPM Iran Siavash ShahshahaniHEAnet Ireland John BolandConsortium GARR Italy Enzo ValenteLATNET Latvia Janis KikutsLITNET Lithuania Petras SulcasRESTENA Luxembourg Antoine BarthelMARNET FYRoMacedonia Margita Kon-PopovskaUniversity of Malta Malta Robert SultanaSURFnet Netherlands Kees NeggersUNINETT Norway Petter KongshaugPCSS Poland Jan WeglarzFCCN Portugal Pedro VeigaANSTI/RNC Romania Dana GheorgheSANET Slovakia Pavol HorvathARNES Slovenia Marko BonacCSIC/RedIRIS Spain Victor CasteloSUNET Sweden Arne SundströmSWITCH Switzerland Urs EppenbergerULAKBIM Turkey Tugrul YilmazUKERNA United Kingdom Shirley Wood

> International Members

CERN Olivier MartinESA Stefano Zatti

˘

˘

¸

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[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX A[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX A


> Associate Members

Cisco Systems Graça CarvalhoDANTE Dai DaviesEMBL Peter StoehrFLAG Telecom Peter BolandIBM Brian CarpenterJuniper Networks Jean-Marc UzéKPNQwest Benno MensingLevel 3 Communications Geert-Jan SpeldeNORDUnet Peter VillemoesSun Microsystems Philippe TrautmannTeleglobe Yves Poppe

> Membership Fees

The annual membership fees for National Members are in seven categories, depending on theGross National Product of the country they represent. A National Member pays the unit feemultiplied by the number of units linked to its category. International Members pay the unit feeand Associate Members pay half the unit fee.

The unit fee for 2003 was set at 4,700 euro.

Category Units Country

1 1 Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, FYRoMacedonia2 2 Croatia, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia3 4 Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Romania4 6 Denmark, Finland, Greece, Iran, Norway, Poland, Portugal,Turkey5 8 Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland6 12 Spain7 16 France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom

p.55

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX A[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX A


p.56

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX B

> Financial Report 2003

The financial statements consisting of balance sheet, statement of income and expenditure, andsummary cash-flow statement for TERENA for the year 2003 are presented below.

The information in these pages is extracted from the ‘TERENA Financial Report 2003’.ThisReport was audited by Horlings, Brouwer & Horlings, Registeraccountants te Amsterdam.They havestated that in their opinion the financial statements give a true and fair view of the financialposition of the association as of 31 December 2003 and of the result for the year ended inaccordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the Netherlands

Balance sheet as at 31 December 2003(in €)

31-12-2003 31-12-2002

Fixed assets 15,002 29,313

Current assetsAccounts receivable 643,111 643,379Cash in bank and on hand 1,366,275 1,694,146

2,009,386 2,337,525

Current Liabilities -1,198,433 -1,400,830

NET CURRENT ASSETS 810,953 936,695

Long-term liabilities / Provisions -46,067 -98,961

NET ASSETS 779,888 867,047

Financed by:RETAINED EARNINGS 779,888 867,047

>


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Statement of Income and Expenditure 2003(in €)

budget

2003 2003 2002

INCOMEContributions 942,000 949,400 965,850Projects, workshops and conferences 557,000 631,897 509,437Other income 29,000 27,104 13,816

TOTAL INCOME 1,528,000 1,608,401 1,489,103

DIRECT EXPENDITUREProjects, workshops and conferences -1,095,000 -979,620 -669,499Technical programme -115,000 -84,992 -85,524

-1,210,000 -1,064,612 -755,023

INCOME LESS DIRECT EXPENDITURE 318,000 543,789 734,080

INDIRECT EXPENDITUREPersonnel costs -249,000 -279,103 -338,352Other administrative costs -394,000 -372,169 -372,439

-643,000 -651,272 -710,791

OPERATING RESULT -325,000 -107,483 23,289

Interest received 45,000 39,953 49,679Financial expenses -14,000 -4,082 -13,848Bad debs written off , 0 -15,547 -56,966

31,000 20,324 -21,134

SURPLUS OF INCOME LESS EXPENDITURE -294,000 -87,159 2,154

>


p.58


Summary Cash Flow Statement (in €) 2003 2002

NET RESULT - 87,159 2,154Depreciation charges 14,311 13,681Bought tangible fixed assets 0, -19,712(Increase)/Decrease in accounts receivable 268, -62,756Increase/(Decrease) in current liabilities -202,397 194,913Increase/(Decrease) in long-term liabilities -52,894 -41,248

NET CASH FLOW - 327,871 87,032

Increase/

(Decrease) 2003 2002

Accounts receivable -268 643,111 643,379

Current liabilities -202,397 1,198,433 1,400,830

CASH IN BANK AND ON HAND 327,871 1,366,275 1,694,146

>


p.59

> TERENA Staff in 2003

> Secretary General Karel Vietsch

> Chief Technical Officer John Dyer> Acting Chief Technical Officer Valentino Cavalli (until 30 April)> Project Development Officers Valentino Cavalli

Kevin MeynellLicia FlorioBaiba Kaskina (from 1 February)

> Senior IT Support Officer Alex de Joode> System/Network Manager Dick Visser> Webmaster Jeroen Houben

> Chief Administrative Officer Bert van Pinxteren> Financial Administrator Wilma Overdevest> PR and Conference Officer Carol de Groot-Crone> Workshop Organiser Raquel Corredoira (until 31 May)> Secretary Roos Stouthamer

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX C


p.60

> List of Acronyms

> 3G Third Generation Wireless Network3GPP Standard defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project6LINK IPv6 Projects Linkage Cluster6NET Large-Scale International IPv6 TestbedAAA Authentication,Authorisation and AccountingALICE America Latina Interconnectada Con EuropaAPI Application Programming InterfaceATM Asynchronous Transfer ModeBGP4+ Border Gateway Protocol 4+BSD Berkeley Software DistributionCA Certification Authority CAESAR Connecting All European and South American ResearchersCASG Controlled Address Space for GatewaysCCIRN Co-ordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research NetworkingCDN Content Delivery NetworkCEENet Central and Eastern European Networking AssociationCERN European Laboratory for Particle PhysicsCERTA Centre d’Expertise gouvernemental de Réponse et de Traitement

des Attaques informatiquesCOM-REN Compendium of Research & Education NetworksCRU Comité Réseau des UniversitésCSIRT Computer Security Incident Response TeamCTI Center for Tele-InformationDANTE Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to EuropeDHCPv6 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6DiffServ Differentiated ServicesDNS Domain Name SystemDNSSEC DNS Security ExtensionsDWDM Dense Wavelength Division MultiplexingeCSIRT.net European CSIRT NetworkEARN European Academic & Research NetworkEGEE Enabling Grids for E-science in EuropeEISPP European Information Security Promotion ProgrammeENISA European Network and Information Security AgencyENPG European Networking Policy GroupESnet Energy Sciences NetworkETSI European Telecommunications Standards InstituteEU European UnionEurescom European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in TelecommunicationsEuro6IX European IPv6 Internet Exchanges BackboneFEIDE Federated Electronic Identity for Education

[TERENA / annual report 2003] / APPENDIX D


p.61

FIRST Forum of Incident Response and Security TeamsGb/s Gigabits per secondGÉANT Gigabit European Academic Network TechnologyGN2 Multi-Gigabit European Academic NetworkGNRT Guide to Network Resource ToolsIAB Internet Architecture BoardICT Information and Communication TechnologyIdeal-IST Information Dissemination and European Awareness Launch for

the IST ProgrammeIETF Internet Engineering Task ForceINFN Istituto Nazionale di Fisica NucleareIODEF Incident Object Description and Exchange FormatIP Internet ProtocolIPv4 Internet Protocol Version 4IPv6 Internet Protocol Version 6IRT Incident Response TeamIS-IS Intermediate System to Intermediate System ProtocolIST Information Society TechnologiesIXP Internet Exchange ProcessorJANET Joint Academic NetworkJISC Joint Information Systems CommitteeLDAP Lightweight Directory Access ProtocolMACE Middleware Architecture Committee for EducationMAPI Measurement Application Programming InterfaceMb/s Megabits per secondMCU Multipoint Control UnitMIME Multipurpose Internet Mail ExtensionsMOME Monitoring and Measurement ClusterMPLS Multi Protocol Label Switchingmulti6 Site Multihoming in IPv6NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisationngtrans Next Generation Transition NIC Network Interface CardNREN National Research and Education NetworkPAPI Point of Access to Providers of InformationPC Personal ComputerPCI Peripheral Component InterconnectPERT Performance Enhancement Response TeamPGP Pretty Good Privacy



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PKI Public Key InfrastructurePR Public RelationsQoS Quality of ServiceRADIUS Remote Authentication Dial-in User ServiceRFC Request for CommentsRIPE Réseaux IP EuropéensRIPE NCC RIPE Network Co-ordination CentreRTIR Request Tracker Incident ResponseSAML Security Assertion Markup LanguageSCAMPI A Scaleable Monitoring Platform for the InternetSEEREN South-Eastern European Research & Education NetworkingSERENATE Study into European Research and Education Networking

As Targeted by eEuropeSIBIS Statistical Indicators Benchmarking the Information SocietySIP Session Initiation ProtocolSNMP Simple Network Management ProtocolTACAR TERENA Academic CA RepositoryTERENA Trans-European Research and Education Networking AssociationTF-AACE Task Force on Authentication and Authorisation Co-ordination for EuropeTF-CSIRT Task Force on Collaboration of Incident Response TeamsTF-Mobility Task Force on MobilityTF-Netcast Task Force on Academic NetcastingTF-NGN Task Force on Next-Generation NetworkingTF-PR Task Force on Public Relations and Information DisseminationTI Trusted IntroducerTRANSITS Training of Network Security Incident Teams StaffUNIRAS Unified Incident Reporting and Alert SchemeUS United Statesv6ops IPv6 OperationsVPN Virtual Private NetworkWLAN Wireless Local Area NetworkXML Extensible Markup Language


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[TERENA / annual report 2003] /

TERENA Secretariat Staff (December 2003). From left to right:Back row: Karel Vietsch, Wilma Overdevest, Alex de Joode, Dick Visser and Jeroen HoubenMiddle row: Kevin Meynell, John Dyer, Baiba Kaskina, Licia Florio and Bert van PinxterenFront row: Valentino Cavalli, Roos Stouthamer and Carol de Groot-Crone


terena annual report 2003 · [terena / annual report 2003 ] / policy and outlook def def terena -...

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