Chaos Digest Mercredi 20 Janvier 1993 Volume 1 : Numero 4 Editeur: Jean-Bernard Condat (jbcondat@attmail.com) Archiviste: Yves-Marie Crabbe Co-Redacteurs: Arnaud Bigare, Stephane Briere TABLE DES MATIERES, #1.04 (20 Janv 1993) File 1--Connectivite Internet en Europe de l'Est Chaos Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost from jbcondat@attmail.com. The editors may be contacted by voice (+33 1 40101775), fax (+33 1 40101764) or S-mail at: Jean-Bernard Condat, Chaos Computer Club France [CCCF], 47 rue des Rosiers, 93400 St-Ouen, France Issues of Chaos-D can also be found on some French BBS. Back issues also may be obtained from the mail server at jbcondat@attmail.com: all incoming messages containing "Request: ChaosD #x.yy" in the "Suject:" field are answered (x is the volume and yy the issue). CHAOS DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing French information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of diverse views. ChaosD material may be reprinted for non-profit as long as the source is cited. Some authors do copyright their material, and they should be contacted for reprint permission. Readers are encouraged to submit reasoned articles in French, English or German languages relating to computer culture and telecommunica- tions. Articles are preferred to short responses. Please avoid quoting previous posts unless absolutely necessary. DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent the views of the moderators. Chaos Digest contributors assume all responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not violate copyright protections. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 10:43:25 EDT From: budd@cspgas11.bitnet (Ricahrd Budd ) Subject: File 1--Connectivite Internet en Europe de l'Est +++++++ draft version 5 September 1992 An overview of East and Central European networking activities Milan Sterba 1. Introduction This paper is based on work of the RIPE Connectivity Working Group. It summarises the main issues of international connectivity of East and Central European countries (ECE). It is based on reports and information gathered by network representatives of these countries, who have been present at the meetings or contacted on other occasions. Thanks are due to all those who helped us to gather the information. Some countries however, are not represented in this report, due to lack of information. Please contact the author if you have amendments or suggestions. This report contains lists of people who are responsible for international networking in each of their countries and a map of the current situation in IP networking in the those countries. The map doesn't show all existing international lines of those countries but it seeks to be complete for IP lines and other leased lines without usage restrictions for the academic and research communities. This report has been written by Milan Sterba and it does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the authors of the national reports nor those of the RIPE community. 2. Present situation - External networking This chapter gives as detailed as possible description of the various network activities in the East and Central European countries. The sections for particular countries will be subject to regular amendments or changes. Considerable progress has been made during the last year in IP connectivity of ECE countries. Czechoslovakia and Poland have today, several hundreds of connected hosts each and are the most advanced ECE countries with respect to IP connectivity. Bulgaria, Estonia and Hungary do also have IP connectivity today and have several tens of connected hosts each. By the end of 1992 IP connectivity will probably also reach Latvia an dLithuania through NORDUnet and maybe also Romania and one of the CIS republics. In all the connected countries the initial capacity of international lines has rapidly become insufficient and it has been sought to upgrade existing lines and set up reasonable backup solutions. Inter- networking is rapidly spreading and good IP connectivity is considered as the first priority by the national academic network organisations. All the countries considered have at the present time some (often more than one) connection to international networks. Certain countries have only a dial-up e-mail connectivity, others have low or medium speed leased lines. The present state of international leased lines to ECE countries is represented on the map in Appendix A. RIPE broadly contributes to this rapid evolution by technical advice and by coordination efforts. 2.1 Albania Curently an electronic mail connection exists between the University of Tirana and the Internet. The gateway and relay function resides at CNUCE, Pisa, Italy. Contact Persons: Maksim Raco - University of Tirana Francesco Gennai - CNUCE, Pisa, Italy 2.2 Estonia Estonia works in close co-operation with NORDUnet in setting up external IP links. Currently a 64 kbits/s IP satellite link is operational between Tallin and Helsinki (Finland), and between Tartu and Helsinki. These will eventually connect the planned Baltic backbone network (BaltNet) to the rest of the Internet. Contact persons: Ants Work - Institute of Cybernetics, Tallin 2.3 Latvia A dial-up EUnet connection exists between Riga and Helsinki (Finland). A 64 kbit/s IP satellite link between Riga and Helsinki (Finland) is planned for later this year. This link will eventually connect to the planned Baltic backbone network (BaltNet). Contact persons: Sergei Rotanov - Institute of Electronics Riga Sergeijs Dmitrijevs - candidate for Latvian EUnet backbone (now RELCOM Riga) 2.4 Lithuania A dial-up EUnet connection exists between Vilnius and Helsinki (Finland). A 9.6 kbit/s X.25 link, used for X.400 electronic mail and sponsored by Norwegian Telecom, exists between Vilnius and Oslo (Norway). Contact persons: Laimutis Telksnys - Institute for Mathematics, Vilnius Algirdas Pakstas - Institute for Mathematics, Vilnius The Baltic states are coordinated within the BaltNet body which plans to build a backbone connecting Baltic states with NORDUnet. A LISTSERV mailing list exists for this purpose (NORDBALT@searn.sunet.se). 2.5 Bulgaria A switched international X.25 connection connects the Bulgarian EARN node in Sofia to Linz (Austria). A dial-up connection over public X.25 connects the Bulgarian EUnet via the backbone node in Varna to the Internet via the EUnet node in Heraklion (Greece). Co-ordination between both projects, resulting in a shared fixed IP connection, is under study. Several tens of EUnet sites are now connected over dial-up links to the national EUnet backbone. A public X25 service is available to a limited extent. EARN services have been opened recently at Sophia University but no gateway exists between the two services yet. Contact persons: Daniel Kalchev - EUnet backbone manager BG, contact for BG. top level domain Anton Velichkov - EARN president for Bulgaria Alexander Simeonov - Center for Informatics, Sophia 2.6 Commonwealth of Independent States. Dial-up connections between Helsinki (Finland) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) on the one hand, and Moscow on the other hand connect the Relcom network in Russia and a few other former USSR republics to the Internet. Currently the services consist of electronic mail and Network News. A 9.6 kbit/s leased line from Moscow to Copenhagen (Denmark) connects the EARN node in Moscow to the EARN/BITNET network. A 4.8 kbit/s leased line between Moscow and DESY, Hamburg (Germany), supporting IP, delivers HEPnet services to two research institutes in Moscow. Low speed links between Moscow and ESOC (Germany) and CNES (France) serve the space physics community. A considerable effort undertaken by the RELKOM networking organization has brought e-mail connectivity to several thousands of sites all over the former Soviet Union. The growth of the network is several 100% a year. RELKOM operates now an IP backbone which goes from St. Petersburg to Novosibirsk. The whole network has some 60 regional centres, some of which connect more than 500 sites. RELKOM's international traffic is split over two dial-up lines, one to the the Finish EUnet backbone and one the central EUnet node in Amsterdam. Both operate as gateways on application level. The rapidly growing volume of international mail traffic makes the need for a medium speed IP channel to Europe an urgency. The first EARN node started its operation in Moscow late in 1991, but the spreading of EARN services is still expected. Negotiations are still underway to set up an e-mail gateway between both networks. Contact persons: Dima Volodin - EUnet backbone manager SU Misha Popov - EUnet - RELCOM Nickolay M.Saukh - EUnet - RELCOM Valery Bardin - EUnet - RELCOM Andrej Mendkovich - CIS EARN director Igor Sviridov - EUnet - Ukraine contact. 2.7 Czechoslovakia A 64 kbit/s IP link between Prague and Linz (Austria) is operational today. The line is shared between general IP, EARN and czech EUnet traffic. A second link, 14.4 kbit/s between Bratislava and Vienna is shared between EUnet traffic and general IP traffic and IXI. Both links connect into the upcoming national academic backbone networks CESNET (Czech Educational and Scientific Network) and SANET (Slovak Academic Network). Both networks are interconnected over a 19.2 kbit/s IP link between Prague and Banska Bystrica. Both CESNET and SANET are now setting up national backbone infrastruc- tures connecting major academic towns in the country. 64 kbit/s lines are used wherever available and considered necessary, 19.2 kbit/s on all other links. The first protocol supported is IP. Connected to the backbones are appearing metropolitan networks in major cities. The major coordinating bodies are CESNET and SANET where universities as well as Academy of Sciences, EARN and EUnet are represented. A good cooperation exists between both separately funded projects as well as good cooperation with ACOnet, EARN, EUnet, WIN, INRIA France and others. Contact persons: Jan Gruntorad - EARN director for Czechoslovakia and CESNET coordinator Pavel Rosendorf - contact for .CS top level domain Jiri Orsag - CS NIC and EUnet Prague Peter Pronay - president of EUnet Czechoslovakia Gejza Buechler - EUnet backbone manager CS Karol Fabian - SANET Vladimir Kassa - SANET Jaroslav Bobovsky - SANET Milan Sterba - author of this report, CESNET Ivo Smejkal - CESNET - user services 2.7 Hungary Hungary is connected to EARN by a 9.6 kbit/s IP line between Budapest and Linz (Austria). For the time being the same line is used also for the Internet and EUnet connection. It is planned to upgrade this line to 64 kbit/s in 1992. The High Energy Physics community has access to HEPnet services via a 9.6 kbit/s leased line between Budapest and CERN, Geneva (Switzerland) which is now running IP. Hungary has a good operational public X25 network which is the base of Wide Area Networking between small and medium sized sites. Currently there are about 250 X.25 access points in the country. A high speed leased line backbone is foreseen for connecting large sites in the near future. In Hungary a national program under the title "R&D Information Infrastructure Program (IIF)" is responsible for the research net- working. The "HUNGARNET" co-ordinates the networking activities of different user groups, such as "HUNINET" (Universities and high schools), "AKANET" (academic research institutes), and the user group of public collections (libraries, museums), meanwhile part of the funding goes through IIF. Contact persons: Nandor Horvath - EUnet backbone manager, domain contact for HU Laszlo Zombory - EARN president, chairman of HUNINET Laszlo Csaba - EARN director for Hungary Istvan Tetenyi - EARN deputy director Peter Bakonyi - President of IIF Exec Com. Geza Turchanyi - HUNGARNET CRIP Piroska Giese - HEPnet Ferenc Telbisz - HEPnet 2.8 Poland The main external connection consists of a 64 kbit/s satellite link between Warsaw and Stockholm (Sweden). The link is an IP one and carries all Internet, EARN and EUnet traffic. A new 64 kbit/s IP link is being set between Warsaw and Vienna with the objective to set up an Ebone Bondary System in Warsaw. A 9.6 kbit/s IP connection is in place between Krakow and CERN, Geneva (Switzerland) for HEPnet services. Public X25 services have only started in 1992. Thus connections at national level can only be implemented on switched or leased lines. The country already has an infrastructure of leased lines, shared between EARN and IP traffic operting at speeds between 9.6-64 kbit/s. The Polish network is coordinated by an organization called NASK (National Academic and Research Network) which also includes the Polish part of EARN. Realistic plans exist to substantially extend IP connectivity over the territory in 1992 using 64 kbit/s lines on their national backbones wherever possible and economically viable. A National Network Operation and Monitoring Center has been set up in early 1992 which operates the whole national and international infrastructure. A system of network user training and support has also been put in place. Contact persons: Tomasz Hofmokl - EARN director for Poland Rafal Pietrak - Warsaw - Copenhagen connection Krzystof Heller - contact for PL domain Daniel J.Bem - Polish academic network (NASK) Jerzy Gorazinski - Polish State Committee for Scientific Research Jerzy Zenkiewicz - Polish academic network (NASK) 2.9 Romania Romania doesn't have any international connectivity yet. A 9.6 kbit/s leased line will be put in before end 1992 between Bucarest and Linz (Austria). This line will be able to carry both IP and EARN/NJE/BSC traffic. Romania has no internal networking infrastructure at all. A government project of building a public X25 network is under commercial negotiations and should start to offer some services in early 1993. In Romania the emerging networking activities seem to be coordinated by the National Council for Informatics and the Institute of Informatics. Contact persons: Florin Paunescu - National Council for Informatics Paul Dan Cristea - Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest 2.10 Slovenia Slovenia is connected over a 64 kbit/s IXI access point in Ljubljana to the IXI backbone. Over this connection an IP link via NIKHEF, Amsterdam (Netherlands) provides Internet connectivity. A PSDN X25 connection connects the main EUnet node in Ljubljana to EUnet. Another IXI access point, also located in Ljubljana, connects Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina to IXI over the YUPAK PPSDN. Currently Slovenia have achieved a good degree of capillarity of their national networks due to the existence of a wide spread public X25 network. Yugoslavian academic networking activities have been coordinated by the National Academic Networking Organization YUNAC. Beside this both EARN and EUnet are present in Slovenia and Serbia. YUNAC is now applying for international membership in RARE and works to reorganize itself in a NORDUnet-like way. In Slovenia the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES) is coordinating network activities. Contact persons: Leon Mlakar - EUnet backbone manager YU Borka Jerman-Blazic - YUNAC Marko Bonac - ARNES Executive Director Denis Trcek - ARNES 2.11 Serbia and Montenegro Serbia has had a 9.6 kbit/s leased line between Beograd and Linz to carry EARN traffic. Currently this line is cut according to a decision of the Austrian government about the UN embargo of new Yugoslavia. Contact persons: Jagos Puric - EARN director for YU 3. Evolution All the ECE countries are very interested in European as well as world wide IP connectivity. In Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland there has been rapid growth of connected IP networks and hosts in the academic community. Their existing international leased lines infrastructure is now shared by EARN, EUnet and raw IP services. Linz University (Austria) has becomme an important concentrating point for Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and in the future for Poland and Romania. The financial resources dedicated to networking in these countries are limited. The sharing of the existing national and international leased lines between EARN, EUnet and other IP traffic as well as between academic and starting commercial traffic is thus a very important issue. Lightweight but robust IP gateway solutions (over dial-up lines, leased serial lines or X25 networks) are of great concern in this respect and are continuously studied and further developped (e.g. COPERNICUS). By the end of this year the Budapest-Linz IP link at least will be operating at 64 kbit/s. It is probable that new IP lines will be operational at this time (Bucarest-Linz, Sophia-Linz, Varna-Amsterdam). In the same time the national infrastructure of the countries will also evolve. We can expect an increase in national coverage in countries with working public X25 networks and in Czechoslovakia and Poland. 4. International Initiatives Several international support initiatives have been launched in the past by different bodies to improve international network connectivity of the Central and Eastern European coun tries. The following list presents some of them : The Ebone 92 consortium has shown itself very supportive during 1992 by allowing traffic of ECE countries to pass freely over the Ebone and letting so the ECE countries traffic cross Europe. RIPE and the RIPE NCC have widely contributed to the rapid integration of new ECE networks into the global Internet. RIPE has acted as an initiator of a common coordination effort of academic networking organizations in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. A first co-ordination meeting has been held in Prague in february 1992 and a successfull cooperation has started since, continued on 3rd Joint European Networking Conference in Innsbruck, where RARE has proposed to be the coordinating place on ECE integration to european academic networking and another meeting in Prague in August. CEEC@RARE.NL is now the focussing mailing list on common ECE networking issues. Also both EARN and EUnet have widely contributed to the successfull start of international networking in ECE countries, by placing the first network nodes to these countries, supporting the activity of these nodes both financially and by extensive know-how transfer. Despite this large cooperation willingness (RARE, RIPE, EARN, EUnet etc.) an EC PHARE project dedicated to extend the not really successfull COSINE IXI project to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania has started this year. This project places a 64 kbit/s IXI link to each country starting from the IXI backbone. These national access points should provide OSI as well as IP services. The primary goal of the project (improve regional A&R computer communications) is very laudable. Unfortunately no coordination with RIPE has taken place and no serious technical information has been given. The project has not taken in account the plans of the national academic organizations in at least some of the countries involved, nor the european A&R networking reality. Austria is the major relay point between ECE countries and Western Europe (and further). The Austrian government is very supportive and either covers fully or participates in a significant manner to costs of international connections to these countries. In February 1992 ACONET has made an even larger proposal, offering these countries (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland) double connectivity to both Vienna and Linz. Each of these countries should have one link to both places, thus permitting line backup. The Linz-CERN line should be replaced by a Linz-Amsterdam line and both Austrian lines should be upgraded in order to accomodate traffic increase from these countries and offer a real backed-up connectivity to EBONE 92. With relation to the Ebone 92 initiative the idea of setting up an EBS for ECE countries in Austria is well justified. CERN plays also an important role in the IP connectivity of the new countries. It houses actually a 9.6 kbit/s line from Krakow and another HEPnet 9.6 kbit/s line from Budapest. Due to lack of resources CERN prefers not to house a lot of low rate lines from every country but rather to house a higher rate line concentrating traffic from several countries. This is in fact in perfect conformance with the ACONET proposal. The German DFN network has launched several regional initiatives to connect sites in geographical proximity of Germany (e.g. Dreilaendereck project connecting Liberec in Czechoslovakia, Wroclaw in Poland and Zittau in Germany using leased links based on X25 with further connectivity to DFN). There is also strong cooperation of the Slovanian academic network with DFN within the scope of the COSINE project. The Italian government has financed in 1990 and 1992 successfull network workshops (NetSchool) to which about 50 network specialists from ECE countries have attended. A second extended edition of NetSchool has taken place in April 1992 with participation of network specialists from RIPE and attendees from ECE countries, some South American, Asian and African countries. A similar event has been organized by NORDUnet for network users and operators from the Baltic states. The French government has expressed its willingness to help the integration of new countries to the world of academic networking by launching in co-operation with INRIA a project called Copernique, which aims to improve network connectivity of several Eastern European Countries. One of the first results of this project has been the cooperation on design and implementation of the academic IP backbone CESNET-SANET (Prague - Brno - Bratislava ... Banska Bystrica - Kosice) in Czechoslovakia. The project consists of network management and administration know-how transfer, common development of tools and some software and hardware donations. A similar activity is now starting with Romania. IBM is also present in these countries with its academic initiative in which IBM mainframes have been offered to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. IBM and EASInet act also as sponsors for the T1 US link usage for academic networks in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The assistance of countries with developed networking shouldn't be uniquely oriented to basic network connectivity. A lot of work is to be done in the ECE countries to offer and improve higher level network services like e-mail, teleconferencing, archive services, online databases and library catalogues etc., as well as in basic network concepts, user information services and advanced networking know-how transfer. That's why new EC projects proposals are now oriented not only on infrastructure but also on higher level services (e-mail, electronic directory, user information and training). Lack of funds is extremely disadvantegeous and the exchange rates make it very difficult for ECE network experts to attend international network events. 5. Technical issues As already mentioned, distributing international network access over the local territory is a major problem for the countries considered. While it is relatively easy and cheap to set up a local TCP/IP network it is more difficult to connect it to the national access point. Generic router solutions are rather expensive on one side and not completely free of administrative exportation problems for all countries involved. The solution to these problems are software routers based on PC's or workstations and public domain or easily available software. A low cost capillarity of networks being of great importance to ECE countries, good dial-up IP solutions both industrial and public domain, which are under study and evaluation in EUnet, RIPE, Copernique, NetSchool and others, are of great interest as well as low cost IP solutions on synchronous lines (X25 or PPP) The technical speed limitations for international leased lines seem now to become less restrictive than in the past. For Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, international links up to 2 Mbit/s are now feasible. With the basic connectivity problems being progressively solved the network services and network management are now becomming major issues in the most advanced ECE countries. PC's remain the most spread technical basis, thus network solutions based on this platform (routers, mail, news, archive and information servers and clients) either Unix or MS DOS oriented are of major concern today. 6. Organizational issues The starting period in international networking is often characterized by a fuzziness in the organizational structure together with a lack of information about the people actually responsible and working in the area. The situation is nearly stabilized in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, where national academic networking groups have been founded and are coordinated with EARN/EUnet activities, and a coordinated effort tends to build nation wide multiprotocol academic network infrastructures. A similar effort is underway in Bulgaria (UNIKOM, EARN and EUnet Bulgaria). These countries seem also to have found a stabilized position in international network organizations (EARN, EUnet, RARE, RIPE). The situation is more complicated in other countries where international contacts are for various reasons much more scarce. ------------------------------ End of Chaos Digest #1.04 ************************************ Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253