1. Paul BRYANT, Rutherford Laboratory (U. K. representative); 2. Miguel A. CAMPOS, Universidad de Barcelona (Spain representative); 3. Birgitta CARLSON, Stockholm University Computing Centre QZ (Sweden representative); 4. Avi COHEN, Inter University Computer Centre (Israel representative); 5. Ira FUCHS, City University of New York (BITNET representative); 6. Frode GREISEN, N E U C C (Denmark representative); 7. Hagen HULTZSCH, G S I (W. Germany representative); 8. Matti IHAMOUTILA, Finnish State Computing Centre (Finland representative); 9. Jean Claude IPPOLITO, C N U S C (France representative); 10. Dennis JENNINGS , U C D (Ireland representative); 11. Pall JENSSON, University of Iceland (Iceland representative); 12. David LORD, CERN (EARN Association President); 13. Kees NEGGERS, University of Nijmegen (Holland representative); 14. Jean NUYENS, F N R S (Belgium representative); 15. Friedrich ROITHMAIR, University of Linz (Austria representative); 16. Stefano TRUMPY, C N U C E (Italy representative); IBM Representatives 1. Alain AUROUX , IBM Europe; 2. Herb BUDD, IBM Europe; 3. Alessandro FUSI, IBM Scientific Centre Roma; 4. Bernd KIRCHNER, IBM Germany; 5. J. Claude SERES, IBM France; 6. Colin STETFORD, IBM U.K.; Invited guests 1. Thomas HUBNER, invited delegate from C E P T; 2. Larry LANDWEBER, Organizer of the Academic Network Workshop - University of Wisconsin; 3. Daniel OBERST, invited delegate from E D U C 0 M; 4. Marco SOMMANI, C N U C E; 5. Lars TINGSTEDT, invited delegate from C E P T; 6. Christofer WILKINSON, invited delegate from European Commission.
Birgitta Carlson gave the opening address welcoming the participants on behalf of the University of Stockholm. The President introduces the guests invited to attend the meeting. The proposed agenda is accepted.
The minutes are approved.
The groups are:
Paul Bryant reported on the meeting where the association RARE was created with the aim to promote multivendor OSI standard internetworking based on national research networks; anyone interested in this activity is invited to join RARE.
An official press release "IBM commitment to OSI; EUROPEAN NETWORKING CENTER established" issued in Paris July, 15 was distributed.
The EARN BoD expressed satisfaction with this very concrete initiative by IBM.
Paul Bryant described a proposal formulated by the Technical Committee in a meeting in Heidelberg for the adoption of the X400 standard and for the start of a test phase in which a number of pilot sites will install an X400/RSCS-Gateway and later an X400 implementation, both developed by the ENC, Heidelberg.
The next meeting of technical committee will be held near Geneva September 18th through 20th.
Ira Fuchs reported on the activities of BITNET and supplies some written documentation.
Hagen Hultzsch reported on the scheme for volume charge tarification proposed by German PTT; the proposal seems reasonable especially if compared with the proposal from U. K. PTT which implies much higher costs.
The question was put to Mr. Hubner as to how is it that tariffs in different countries, which should be coordinated by CEPT, can be so very different. The answer is that CEPT is only an advisory board and that national PTT administrations are completely independent. What could be very helpful for EARN is to discuss with the national PTT bringing different examples and proposals.
The CEPT offers to EARN the opportunity of setting up a technical joint group for studying the problems connected to tarifications for data networks. It has to be clear thought that the aim of this activity cannot be to obtain a preferential treatment compared to others users but to find in a cooperative effort the more suitable and convenient way to serve the academic community.
The BOD thanks Mr. Hubner for the proposal which intends to take advantage of.
Reports from countries are distributed. Description of the columns:
1. Active nodes.
2. Planned Nodes.
3. Planned Gateways.
4. Active Backbone Lines
5. Planned Backbone Lines.
Country 1 2 3 4 5
Austria 1 6 0 1-Germany
Belgium 1 15 1 0 1-France
CERN 8 1 1 3-Germany,Italy,Sweden 2-UK,France
Denmark 6 2 0 1-Germany
Finland 0 1 1-FUNET 0 1-Sweden
France 12 37 1-COSAC 1-Spain 2-CERN,Belgium
Germany 75 15 1-DFN 6-CERN,USA,Denmark
Netherland,
Ireland,Austria
Greece 0 7 7 0
Iceland 0 1 0 0 1-Sweden
Ireland 3 0 1-HEANET 1-Germany 1-UK
Israel 22 3 1 1-Italy
Italy 21 2 2-ARPA,INFNET 4-USA,Israel,Spain,CERN
Netherlands 11 16 0 1-Germany
Norway 1 0 1-UNINETT 1-Sweden
Portugal 0 6 0 0 1-Spain
Saudi Arabia 0 7 7 0
Spain 5 1 0 2-Italy,France 1-Portugal
Sweden 4 2 1-SUNET 2-CERN,Norway 2-Finland,Iceland
Switzerland 10 3 0 0
Turkey 0 7 7 0
UK 0 1 1-JANET 0 2-CERN,Ireland
Some of the entries in columns are omitted as they were corrupted in the transliteration.
The working group structured the topic for discussion as follows:
Most of the time available was spent on the matter on Policies and specifically on membership categories. As a basic for discussion the foiling documents were used.
BITNET membership criteria
Ira Fuchs gave a presentation on the BITNET membership categories. He informed that the document on BITNET membership criteria has been amended to accept governmental laboratories outside the US which correspond with University affiliated laboratories in the US as class B members.
Operationally there is no difference between Class A and B members. For Class C there is a difference in application procedure to become a member (EduCOM is a Class C member). Class D, finally, has limited privileges.
Regarding acception of applications clear Class A cases did not have to be brought to the membership committee. Any non-clear case had to be decided by the committee, BITNET applied very strict procedures to applications for Class D membership . They have to submit proof that there are strong link to universities, they were reviewed once a year and have to be brought back for vote by 10 Class A members. Default for Class D applications was rejection.
Ira also brought to our attention the notion of
For a cooperating network the privileges where the same of BITNET members.
EARN membership categories
The working group make a strong recommendation that the EARN classification of categories should be defined in such a way that EARN would be defined as a cooperating network.
The working group studied the charter and the document on membership classification to identify problems to be discussed and further defined.
It was found that the EARN definition of full members represents a broader of membership then BITNET Class A-C.
To be able to match EARN to BITNET we could either change the definition of full membership or define a set of subclasses of full EARN members so that a matching of these can be made to BITNET class A-C. This last solution was found a better way of solving this problem.
The working group spent some time on rephrasing the document of D. Lord to get a better matching with BITNET.
The chairman of the working group took on to continue this work.
Procedures of accepting memberships
To be able to handle received and incoming applications for membership, the working group proposes the following procedures.
Report from Electronic mail in EARN
This working group considered the document produced by P. Bryant as a result of the meeting at Heidelberg. This had been circulated to those present at the meeting and to the Board of Directors.
The Working Group was in favour of the project outlined but made a number of comments.
The first and most far reaching comment was that they thought that an organization such as BITDOC was needed with a staff of 4 or 5 people. One of their functions would be to provide a technical base for migration to ISO, to ensure connectivity with other networks such as BITNET, to ensure convergence with other European network activities and to ensure operation of the international backbone network.
The second comment was to reduce the number of pilot sites to 4 funded ones but to allow others to take part unfunded. GSI, CERN, Rutherford and QZ are the suggested sites but this needs further study.
Italy is interested in evaluating the IBM ISO strategic product and this was encouraged.
Holland was interested in testing the DEC X400 products and BAN against the ENC development, this was encouraged. It was noted that the international sites all run VM and for the initial work this was satisfactory. In the longer term the requirements of MVS and machines needed study although in th early days these could gateway onto the ISO network.
Further studies are now needed to produce a more detailed proposal.
The subgroup suggests that possible sources of income are:
The President asked all members of the Board to discuss with the member sites in their countries, before the next meeting of the Board, the serious question of financing of association making it clear to them what it is doing for them, which they may not be really aware of, so that when the Board next meets decisions can be taken.
The Working Group reported that the following organisation would seem to be appropriate for EARN:
General Activities
The EARN Executive Manager would be responsible for the following general activities: Network Operation. Network Information Services. Other EARN Services, Technical Services, and the development of Networking Tools.
Network Operation: The day-to-day Network Operation functions include
Network Information Services: As part of the EARN Network a range of Information Services need to be offered to users. These include
Technical Services and Tools Development will involve the development and coordination of the technical services provided by the EARN Network. Examples of the activities to be undertaken for both the current and planned networking technologies used by EARN:
For technology that EARN plans to use in the future, technical tasks will also include evaluating planned technology, and evaluating the migrating and interworking problems that will arise, and developing necessary tools to allow the introduction of new networking technologies.
The Working Group on Organisation recommended that EARN should take a step-by-step approach towards the restructuring of the EARN Organisation.
The first step recommended was the formation of the Executive Council. The Group recommended that the membership of the Executive Council should be the current Officers of the Board, namely: Lord, Jennings, Ippolito, Trumpy, Bryant, Carlson, Hultsch.
The Group recommended that the Executive Council meet between 4 and 6 times a year, and that the Board of Directors meet twice a year for the next year, and if that is satisfactory, the number of Board meetings can be reduced to one per Year.
The Group recommended that the Executive Council produce a Plan to implement the recommended EARN Organisation, and appoint an EARN manager, and report to the Board at its next meeting.
After working groups reports, the following statement of direction concerning the evolution of EARN towards the use of International Standards is adopted.
The EARN Board during its meeting in September 1984 decided to adopt a policy of 'evolving towards the use of international communication standards'.
In its latest meeting the Board discussed and agreed to a proposal for a first concrete step in this direction. Four EARN nodes located in different countries will act as pilot installations to test and study two software packages for computers operating with the IBM VM/CMS system. The first is an EARN to X400/X25 mail gateway and the second is a full X400 implementation with Message Transfer Agent, User Agent and a User Interface. It is hoped that the gateway software will be installed before the end of this year and the X400 implementation will follow a few months later.
These implementations of the CCITT and ISO standards for message handling are being developed by IBM's European Network Centre, Heidelberg and GMD in Darmstadt, at the request of the DFN.
The experience obtained from these pilot installations will then allow the planning of an introduction of the X400 standard for electronic mail into the EARN network as a whole. In particular, besides being used in the connections between EARN and various National Networks, the gateway software can facilitate the migration plan for EARN when the new standards must be used alongside the existing RSCS-based mail system.
As soon as similar implementations of other standards, such as FTAM for file transfer, become available then the Board expects in the same way to set up pilot installation with the view to then introducing the standards into the network.
The above mentioned implementations will of course open up to EARN the possibility to start to use the PTT's packet switching services. The members of the EARN Board are very concerned that, particularly once the file transfer standard has been implemented, the cost of the use of these services will be beyond the budgetary means of the Academic and Research Community.
Given the importance of the question of tariffs for communities of users like those of EARN, it was decided that EARN should cooperate with the CEPT to study the tariff issue