ERCIM News No.35 - October 1998
ERCIM News No.35 - October 1998
ERCIM will be Alpha Test User of Managed Bandwidth Services in TEN-155
by Siegfried Dickhoven
DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe Limited), the international network service provider for the European research networks has accepted ERCIM as alpha test user of managed bandwidth services in its new TEN-155 backbone. So far, five ERCIM members (CLRC-RAL, CNR-CNUCE, CWI, GMD and INRIA) are already planning to cooperate in this joint project, other members might follow.
During Dante’s Quantum project (October 1998 - December 1999) ERCIM-Labs and their research partners will get direct access to Dante’s
TEN-155 Network for experiments and testing of managed bandwith services. This ERCIM project will be coordinated by the networking Directors of the participating ERCIM labs and administrated by ERCIM. The participation in the experimentation is open to partners from outside ERCIM, depending on their networking capabilities.
The Service to be provided by ERCIM includes:
- participation in the detailed specification of the Managed Bandwidth Service
- participation in the testing of the Managed Bandwidth Service as the alpha user and then subsequently
- production of a report detailing the testing conducted in the alpha test, the results of the testing and making recommendations based on the early experience
- active participation in the Group Network Managers’ meetings, providing input to the continued development and deployment of the service
- sharing experiences with other users and potential users of the service, and encouraging take-up of the service
- participating in publicity events
- towards the end of the project, conducting a survey of the users of the Managed Bandwidth Service regarding their satisfaction with the service, and their requirements with respect to future developments
- conducting a formal evaluation of the service after 15 months of the project based on ERCIM’s own observations of the network service and those obtained via the survey of the users of the Managed Bandwidth Service
- collaboration with DANTE in the production of User Evaluation of TEN-155 Network, incorporating the survey results and the input of the National Research Networks.
Following persons so far have been nominated for the coordination in the ERCIM labs:
- Chris Cooper, Advanced Communications Unit, CLRC-RAL
- Siegfried Dickhoven, Director networking, GMD
- Frank Kuiper, Director IT department, CWI
- Guy Sergeant, IT-coordinator, INRIA
- Marco Sommani, IT coordinator, CNR-IAT.
Each participating partner has to solve the problem of national access to TEN-155. DFN (Deutsches Forschungsnetz) in Germany has agreed to provide Permanent Virtual Channels to DANTE’s access point in Frankfurt/Main. The situation in France, Italy, the Netherlands and UK is under investigation.
As a first step, research projects with user potential for managed bandwidth services will be identified among the initiatives with more than one ERCIM lab involved.
ERCIM and the project coordinators strongly encourage the research teams of its members to participate in this experimentations. Interested teams should contact Marie-Christine Imbert (marie-christine.imbert@inria.fr). GMD provides a mail-group for information exchange with the address alphaten155@gmd.de. Please contact Siegfried Dickhoven or Paul Mies of GMD (dickhoven@gmd.de or mies@gmd.de) for access.
Please contact:
Marie-Christine Imbert - INRIA
Tel: +33 1 3963 5201
E-mail: marie-christine.imbert@inria.fr
Christopher Cooper - CLRC
Tel: +44 1235 446211
E-mail: c.s.cooper@rl.ac.uk
Siegfried Dickhoven - GMD
Tel: +49 2241 14 2021
E-mail: dickhoven@gmd.de
Frank Kuiper - CWI
Tel: +31 20 5924121
E-mail: frank.kuiper@cwi.nl
Guy Sergeant - INRIA
Tel: +33 92 38 7888
E-mail: guy.sergeant@inria.fr
Marco Sommani - CNR-IAT
Tel: +39 050 593313
E-mail: Marco.Sommani@iat.cnr.it