PRESENT: David Lord, President/CERN Dennis Jennings, Vice-President/Ireland Jean-Claude Ippolito, Treasurer/France Stefano Trumpy, Secretary General/Italy Paul Bryant, Chairman of Technical Group/UK Ira Fuchs, BITNET President/USA Arno Schulz, Austria Rene Florizoone, Belgium Frode Greisen, Denmark Matti Ihamuotila, Finland Michael Hebgen, Germany Stelios Orphanoudakis, Greece Pall Jensson, Iceland Michael Walsh, Ireland - partly present on 30th Abraham Cohen, Israel Kees Neggers, Netherlands Arne Laukholm, Norway Fernando Parente, Portugal Luis Ferrer, Spain Charles Sola, Spain Birgitta Carlson, Sweden Kurt Bauknecht, Switzerland Oguz Manas, Turkey Larry Landweber, CSNET/USA Christopher Wilkinson, CEC. Alain Auroux, IBM Europe Herb Budd, IBM Europe Alessandro Fusi, IBM Italy Frans Insinger, IBM Netherlands Bernd Kirchner, IBM Germany Colin Setford, IBM UK Jean-Claude Seres, IBM France Barbara Kirchner, Secretary H. Hultzsch, Germany. Berlin. ABSENT: Th. Huebner, CEPT.
MINUTES, to be approved by the Board at its next meeting in May 1987.
D. Lord, Chairman, opened the meeting, welcoming all participants.
The minutes were approved.
The Chairman suggested some sequence changes in the agenda, also addition of item: "Availability of user directories and electronic mail addresses for data base". He also announced a closed session for the election of officers during the morning of 30th. This was agreed to. He also suggested that the minutes of the meeting should essentially be limited to:
This was agreed by the meeting.
Treasurer supplied a financial statement in writing:
1st contribution. $ 55,000 EARN migration project of approx. $ 40,000 interests from deposit account in London: $ 5,000 TOTAL: $100,000 Expenses: Travel expenses for meetings approx $ 15,000 Travel expenses for migration project $ 4,000 TOTAL: $ 19,000
It was agreed that in future a clear budget should be established. It was agreed that the Treasurer should investigate possibilities of getting agreed support and/or funding from industry, etc.
Decision: President and Treasurer should appoint an accountant/auditor
Decision: once a year the members of the Board should be informed of this in writing.
Decision: The Executive Committee has to agree to what are acceptable expenses to be charged to the Association, other than those already agreed for the migration project.
Membership of RARE: Its Membership fees are calculated according to the GNP of the individual Countries; for an international association the fee amounts to 50% of the lowest rate, i.e. 1.000 Ecu/Year. The Board agreed to the payment of the RARE Membership Fee.
It is increasingly important that we can clearly identify who are the member organizations and who are their 'official1 representatives. Problems will arise in the cases of institutions that have several distinct sites, which may even be in more than one country.
Decision: It is the responsibility of the EARN Director in each country to verify that the application forms are signed by persons authorized to do so by the institutions concerned. They should keep these forms and keep the information up to date.
Bylaws, referred to as Operating Procedures in the Statutes, are needed, they will give the regulations and formal procedures that have to applied to specific problems and situations not foreseen in the Statutes.
Decision: To set up a working group to study and to propose a. basic set of operating procedures within the next six months.
M. Hebgen was appointed as Chairman of this Operating Procedures Group.
Copies of the most recent versions of these papers were distributed to the members of the Board.
A model for payment of the networks operating costs after '87 has to be set up in order to guide the way that this issue is handled at the country level.
It was agreed that D. Lord should work on establishing several different models for the payment of the costs, which should be as simple as possible.
He asked members for their cooperation in supplying information on the costs in their countries.
It is considered important now for EARN to quickly establish an active relationship between itself and RARE.
Decision: The official EARN representative to RARE Council of Administration is the President of EARN; his deputy is the Vice President. If either are official country representatives to RARE, then they are replaced by the Secretary General and/or the Treasurer.
Comment: Ch. Wilkinson/CEC; Users of RARE and EARN are related groups. Explain to PTT's what you need. Count on good offices of EEC Commission for next two years - but develop own relationship between RARE and EARN. Chairman indicated that RARE has the following working groups:
1. X.400 MHS 2. File transfer 3. Directories and information systems 4. Layers 1-4 5. Full screen working 6. High speed/ISDN 7. CEPT liaison
EARN should be involved in these working groups. Involvement means liaison and active participation, with an emphasis on keeping RARE well aware EARN's particular problems in carrying out a migration policy.
It was agreed that the Chairman of the Technical Group, Paul Bryant should appoint liaison officers as and when desirable to the RARE working Groups 1 to 6. The EARN/CEPT liaison officer should participate in group 7.
Decision: The EARN Board warmly welcomes the decision by RARE to accept EARN as an international member. The EARN Board appoints the President of EARN to liaise with the RARE Council of Administration and invites the RARE Council to appoint an individual from their Council to attend EARN Board meetings as an observer.
It was explained that RARE has been charged with carrying out the definition phase of COSINE. COSINE itself is directed by a policy group made up of government representatives.
While both RARE and COSINE are intended to provide communications support not only for Universities but also for industrial research, EARN as an academic network has a more restricted definition, academic
(Closed session for directors only)
The Chairman pointed out that the Presidency is a very time consuming function but that generally speaking a person can only provide one day of his time per week. This was one of the reasons why the Association had tried to get a full time paid Executive Director. The attempt was not successful. It was pointed out that this was tried over the summer period which is not the best time for trying to recruit people.
It is clear that the setting up of a central EARN office with such a Director on a long term basis, is not at this time supported by the membership. On the other hand no candidate for the Presidency can make more than 20% of his time available to this function, which is vital and especially so in the next one to two years.
A possible solution is to provide the President with some assistance on a short term basis using some funding offered by IBM to help the Association get over this critical period.
Decision: To proceed with the election of a new President rather than to delay this until February 1987. D. Lord to remain in office until February 6th, when the President elect will enter into office. Until February the prime activity of the President elect will be to establish his support staff.
D. Jennings was voted unopposed new President of EARN.
D. Lord thanked Board members for all of their help and support in the past two years.
D. Lord was voted unopposed new Vice-President.
J.C. Ippolito was voted unopposed as Treasurer.
M. Hebgen was proposed as candidate and was voted unopposed as Secretary.
P. Bryant asked for greater participation of Board members in the organizing of the activities of the Technical Working Group. It was suggested that several people from the Board should serve on a Technical Subcommittee to help guide the work of the Technical Working Group.
Decision: To set up a Technical Subcommittee, with as Chairman: P. Bryant and A. Cohen as member. These two initial members will co-opt other members as and when necessary. The first task of this Subcommittee to setup a proper structure. The main work will be done through the network.
(Open Session continued)
D. Lord informed the invited members of the morning's decisions.
Decision: It was decided in addition to form a Task Force to identify and seek solutions for all of the problems that are arising because of the termination IBM's current level of support at the end of '87.
Membership: Chairman: D. Lord, IBM representative: A. Auroux, Members: K. Bauknecht and F. Greisen. They will co-opt further persons to assist when required.
B. Carlson accepted to continue as chairman. The committee consisted of B. Carlson, F. Greisen, K. Neggers. It was agreed to add Ch. Sola and E. Orphanoudakis to this committee.
BITNET: EARN's representative traditionally has been the President, who is a voting member of the BITNET Executive Committee. It was agreed to maintain this arrangement.
CEPT Liaison: M. Hebgen is the present liaison officer; a new person had to be appointed.
Decision: New Liaison officer with CEPT is S. Trumpy, with support from M. Hebgen and H. Hultzsch.
Decision: Unanimous vote to accept the application of Ivory Coast for membership in EARN.
The Chairman presented this application for membership and after some discussion it was agreed that a decision had to be made at this meeting, so the proposal was voted unopposed on.
RESULT of the vote: Negative: 10. Conditional Yes: 1.
(Not all Board members were present for this vote, since then the Chairman has received 5 further Negative votes)
Decision: The application from South Africa was refused, the Chairman was instructed to write to them informing them briefly of this negative decision by the Board.
P. Bryant gave a report concerning the work in the Technical Working Group.
This system is experimental. It is not easy to mount, so people need expertise for installation. Visit of representative from IBM is expected. This is a demonstrator project, to gain experience with X.400, whether we could use this package operationally is unclear at this stage.
In the Technical Working Group six possible methods of operating this high speed link efficiently were discussed; Tentative ranking: JES-SNA, RSCS-SNA, RSCS-IPO, TCP-IP, TP4, DECNET.
During a lengthy discussion the technical advantages of using SNA as a means to operate high speed lines were pointed out, as was the fact that it is the basis of IBM's present and future OSI products. Against this was considerable concern at the 'political sensitivity' of introducing SNA and of course its high cost. The Board was at this time not in a position to make a decision on such a choice.
It was agreed that J.C. Ippolito should proceed as quickly as possible with arranging the installation of the link and in particular should start active negotiations for the arrangements at the USA end.
Decision: The Board asks the Technical Subcommittee to set up technical studies, to be completed within five months, to evaluate the various technical options for migration to ISO methods of operation, including time scales, costs and paths.
H. Budd proposed: a) to provide an official IBM statement on OSI b) to visit IBM Lab in La Gaude/France during next Board meeting to, see how protocols are implemented and to ask specific questions.
Approx 40 persons. In practice one of its roles turns out to be educational. The participants are mainly young, enthusiastic people. However, there are too many people at the meetings which complicates decision making. In future Technical Meetings should deal with specific items, asked for by the Board.
NEXT MEETING: March 26th- 27th, 1987, in Crete, by invitation of the university. Comments were made by several Board members on the real need for a Comments conferencing system. There are currently two possibilities GRAND and PORTACOM.
Decision: The Board requests that the Technical Subcommittee should as rapidly as possible study both GRAND and PORTACOM, with no specific time scale, bearing in mind the following criteria:
A report on the second part of the Technical Working Group's meeting was given by M. Walsh:
Items discussed in the Technical Working Group:
For more details see the Minutes of the Technical Working Group's Berlin meeting.
At the end of this Agenda Item the question of whether the participation in Technical Working Group meetings needs to be controlled in any way was discussed.
Decision: The Operating Procedure Committee is asked to define by February '87, procedures concerning participation in the Technical Working Group.
By this point of the agenda only a small group remained.
They discussed the desirability of holding another meeting of this type. Their feeling was that we need a meeting in about 12 months for various reasons in particular we must have an Ordinary General meeting at least once a year to ensure that the membership understands what the Board and the Executive Committee are trying to achieve and to get their approval. This can usefully be combined with technical presentations (applications?) and discussions.
The general feeling was that there is clear need for EARN87 in Oct/Nov. of next year.
A. Schulz kindly offered to organize EARN87 in Vienna.
For the next meeting Dr. Manas offered to organize it in Izmir and if for some reason that is not possible Prof. Parente offered Lisbon as an alternative.
As far as place is concerned there seemed to be agreement that it would desirable to have during the meeting a presentation by IBM of its OSI migration strategy, to help us judge the issues around migration, use of SNA etc. The best place for the meeting would then be in or near Nice and we should foresee consequentially a full two day meeting to accommodate this presentation. Some dates were proposed in May 1987, starting on the first day at 09.00 promptly, i.e. arrival the night before.
These dates are to be checked with Board members before a final date is fixed. The meeting was closed at 16:00.
The following is a list of actions agreed at the last EARN BoD meeting in Berlin:
Key. A. A. Alain Auroux. A. C. Avi Cohen. A. S. Arno Schulz. D. J. Dennis Jennings. D. L. David Lord. EEC EARN Executive Committee. J-C. I. Jean-Claude Ippolito. M. H. Membership Committee. MC. Michael Hebgen. OPG. Operating Procedures Group. P. B. Paul Bryant. TF. Task Force. TSC. Technical Sub-Committee.
