***************** A RARE UPDATE No.7, October 1992 ***************** NEWS FROM THE COA by Josefien Bersee at the RARE Secretariat The 24th meeting of the RARE Council of Administration took place on September 24/25 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. The major results of the meeting are summarized below. _________________________________________________________ MEMBERSHIP MATTERS Two new members and two changes in existing membership were accepted in Bratislava. The Turkish national research network TUVAKA and the Croatian CARNet are new Full National Members. Poland and Hungary changed their membership status from Associate to Full National Member. This brings the total number of RARE members to 41. EXECUTION TECHNICAL PROGRAMME GUARANTEED By accepting a 33% membership fee increase the CoA has guaranteed basic support for the execution of the RARE Technical Programme. Execution of a Technical Programme is felt to be an important factor determining RARE's influence on the development of future research networking activities. TECHNICAL STRUCTURE The CoA decided to accept the slightly changed Technical Structure as proposed by the RTC: the establishment of one Multi-Media Working Group instead of the previous two (on Interactive Multimedia and Multimedia Document Transfer), and the establishment of a Working Group on Character Sets. The following RARE Working Groups (followed by the name of its convenor) are now officially established: International Character Sets (WG-CHAR), Borka Jerman-Blazic Multimedia (WG-IMM), John Dyer Information Services and User Support (WG-ISUS), Jill Foster Lower-Layers Technology (WG-LLT), Piet Bovenga Mail & Messaging (WG-MSG), Harald Alvestrand Network Applications Support (WG-NAP), Paul-Andre Pays Network Operations (WG-NOP), Bernhard Stockman Security Technology (WG-SEC), Klaus Truoel RARE welcomes anyone who wishes to join one of the above-mentioned working groups. Joining is easy: send electronic mail to: mailserver@rare.nl containing in the body of the message: SUBSCRIBE wgname yourfirstname yourlastname where wgname is the abbreviation for the name of the working group. SIGNING OF 2Mbps CONTRACT RARE accepts to sign and manage the 2Mbps contract with the CEC on behalf of those national networks which will use EC funds in support of their participation in the 2Mbps pilot service. The 2Mbps pilot is part of the European Multi-Protocol Backbone (EMPB) service. OPERATIONAL UNIT The CoA agreed that RARE should act as a legal body on behalf of the Operational Unit under establishment, under the condition that shareholders are accepting the commercial risks. Shareholders should also organize the provision of management of the execution of OU activities. RELATION RARE/RIPE REDEFINED RARE and RIPE will remain independent bodies. The CoA agreed that RARE will continue to rely on RIPE for the coordination of IP activities - and not establish its own IP coordination group - , while RIPE will rely on the RARE Technical Committee and IETF for the setting up of a technical development plan. To enable close cooperation between RIPE and the RTC, RARE has invited RIPE to appoint a representative on the RTC. With regard to the RIPE NCC, the CoA agreed that it should remain under the umbrella of RARE until at least the end of 1993, even if the funds for operation of the RIPE NCC were to be channelled via the Operational Unit. LIAISON WITH ISODE CONSORTIUM RARE will become a member of the ISODE Consortium. This organization has been founded to support further development of ISODE, a package of OSI upper layer software and applications. Many organizations in the research community have used the ISODE as a tool for working with a range of OSI applications. COMBINED JENC5/INET94 The CoA has agreed that the 5th Joint European Networking Conference should be organized in combination with INET 94. The REC is asked to proceed with the investigation of the Prague offer to host the event, and to negotiate with the Internet Society on the basis of that proposal.