Apologies for the cross-posting A RARE UPDATE no. 12, July 1994 (Double Summer issue) COA Information RARE members gathered in Darmstadt, courtesy of ESOC, on 19 and 20 May 1994. Meetings included a joint meeting with the EARN Board of Directors dedicated to the proposed merger between RARE and EARN and subsequently the 29th CoA meeting. The joint meeting was perceived as very constructive. The Executive Committees of both organizations had provided the members with draft Statutes, Rules and Regulations, a Charter, a Technical Structure and a budget, encompassing proposals for membership fees and voting rights. The conclusion of the meeting was that the merger was feasible and should take place still during 1994 and this event is scheduled to take place at the event of the next (and last) RARE Council of Administration meeting on 20 October 1994, in Amsterdam. A call for a new name for the merged organization has been issued and several proposals are under investigation. During the CoA meeting, the RARE accounts were - as is traditional in May - presented and 1993 financial year was closed with the approval of the Council of Administration of the accounts 1993. Two networking organizations were unanimously accepted as RARE Full National Members: UNICOM-B from Bulgaria and UNIBEL from the Republic Belarus. The CoA has asked the Executive Committee to reorganize the RIPE NCC's management structure by the creation of a management body that is representative of the whole customer base in order to enhance cooperation with the RIPE NCC's commercial customers. This management body will be involved in the fund raising for the RIPE NCC. RARE Technical Programme The most recent main event for the RARE Technical Programme was the INET'94/JENC5 conference, organized by RARE and the Internet Society (ISOC), which took place in Prague in mid-June. All the RARE Working Groups took the opportunity to meet at the conference and were able to present their work to visitors from across the whole world. The Working Group on network operations (WG-NOP) was relaunched under its new convenor, Manfred Bogen. The new convenors of the Working Group on Information Services and User Support (WG-ISUS), Dave Hartland, and the Working Group on Network Security (WG-SEC), Ruediger Grimm, were able to introduce themselves in person. Also at the conference, the final stages of two RARE projects were reported. The task force on Computer Emergency Response Teams has presented plans for a European coordination centre for liaison between the front-line support organizations dealing with network security incidents. This is now being developed into a business plan (which will be the subject of a call for tender) for approval by the CoA on 20 October 1994. The project of the Working Group on Character Sets, which is developing software for conversion between a wide variety of coded character sets, was presented at the conference in the form of a live demonstration of the conversion program. Two new RARE Technical Reports are in the course of production. RTR12 on Writing O/R Names is a revision of the guidelines of the Working Group on Mail and Messaging (WG-MSG) which takes into account recent international standards in this area. RTR13 is a Status Report on Network Information Retrieval, a regularly-updated report which gives an overview of the "state of the art" in this field. RTR8, 9, 10 and 11 are currently available in printed form and can be ordered from the RARE Secretariat. RARE has recently entered into contracts with INRIA to work on the integration of directory-service access with the World Wide Web. RARE is also contributing to the support and development of the World Wide Web project which is seen as a key element in the development of information services for researchers. Looking to the future, RARE has launched its UPTURN (Umbrella Proposal for Telematics for Users and Research Networks) initiative to encourage participation in the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme. The Fourth Framework offers the possibility of European funding to assist in collaborative projects between commerce and researchers which will result in the delivery of telematic services which add to the productivity of industrial and academic researchers. RARE is providing information on the programme and is assisting in the information exchange between potential participants via its UPTURN mailing list. To join this list, send electronic mail to mailserver@rare.nl containing the text: SUBSCRIBE UPTURN your-first-name your-last-name replacing your-first-name and your-last-name as appropriate. Once you have joined the list, you can send mail to the other subscribers at the address upturn@rare.nl. A large, common RARE Working Groups Meeting is planned for December 1st and 2nd, in London, subsequent to EARN's NSC conference, November 28-30, 1994. Information about the UPTURN initiative, and about RARE's technical programme, can be obtained from: - ftp.rare.nl (by anonymous FTP) - gopher.rare.nl (by gopher) - http://www.rare.nl/ (by World Wide Web) Conferences and Seminars INET'94/JENC5 RARE's annual Joint European Networking Conference (JENC5) was held this year in Prague (Czech Republic), in conjunction with the Internet Society's (ISOC) annual INET conference. In every respect it was considered a great success. The participants numbered around 1200 and came from over a 100 different countries. The Czech Technical University and the Czech Educational and Scientific NETwork (CESNET) were responsible for the local arrangements. They furnished the terminal room with over 70 workstations, terminals and desktop computers with worldwide Internet connectivity. The technical staff also supported the connectivity in the demonstration area, where up to 12 highly advanced networking applications were presented to the public at large. With the support of various sponsors leased lines with a total capacity of 2.5 Mbit/s connected the conference centre to the rest of the world. This connectivity allowed interactive Mbone broadcasts of the plenary sessions of the conference to hundreds of sites in many countries. That the conference was a truly global event also became apparent in the more than 100 presentations and panel discussions in six different topical areas: user support and training, distributed applications, policy issues, regional issues, network engineering and network technology. The programme presented the developments in technology on ATM, Multimedia, IPng, Routing and Addressing, Network Information Tools, Broadband Technology, Performance Analysis, Electronic Documentation, Networked Simulation and Virtual Reality and Future Generations of Internet Technology, to mention only a few of the subjects covered. These new technological developments, and the exponential growth of networking in the last few years are bringing past side issues to the foreground. Policy issues are becoming more and more important with the increasing number of active Internet users and its broader scale. Also new user communities are emerging every day, and each of them has their own specific demands with regard to service, support and training. The conference proved a good discussion platform for all of these important issues. A full set of proceedings was distributed at the conference and a number of selected papers of high quality are being prepared for publication in a special issue of Computer Networks and ISDN Systems. Preceding the conference there was a one day tutorial on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), organized and sponsored by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The week prior to the conference the workshop for Technologically Emerging Countries took place at the Czech Technical University. A selected number of participants (approx. 170) from around 80 countries had the unique opportunity to learn how to access and use worldwide Internet resources, as well as build and manage national networks in their own countries. The Soros Foundations funded participation of many Eastern European and CIS attendees. RARE, with the financial support of NATO, took direct responsibility for the Network Navigation and Services Track. JENC6 With the Prague event still fresh in memory, preparations have already been made for next year's conference that will take place in the new Dan Panorama Convention Center in Tel Aviv, Israel from 15-18 May 1995. The Programme Committee, under the leadership of Jose Barabera (FUNDESCO, Spain), has already prepared a Call for Papers that is available from jenc6-sec@rare.nl. The conference theme, "Bringing the World to the Desktop", may be looked upon as a metaphor for two major changes under way: - the increasing penetration of daily research/educational work and practices by networks and networking technology; - the new set of requirements that desktop networking implies for the underlying technology and the structures of service provision. The goal of this conference is to survey the current situation in networking, to illuminate major unresolved issues and technologies, but most of all to stimulate discussion on possible future directions. The local arrangements are taken care of by ILAN. Further information For more information about RARE contact: Internet: raresec@rare.nl or kiers@rare.nl X.400: C=nl; ADMD=400net; PRMD=surf; O=rare; S=kiers X.400: C=nl; ADMD=400net; PRMD=surf; O=rare; S=raresec fileserver: gopher.rare.nl, ftp.rare.nl or http://www.rare.nl/