Francois Fluckiger welcomed the participants to CERN. Apologies were recived from: Antonio Blasco Bonito, Paul Bryant, Anders Hillbo, Juha Heinanen and Mats Brunell.
The agenda was agreed.
Rob Blokzijl reported about contacts and discussions he had with RARE. As a result of these discussions the RARE Council of Administration invited RIPE to continue it's present work as an official RARE activity according to the original RIPE terms of reference. RARE will give it's full support to the RIPE work. This means that there are no differences between RARE and RIPE and nobody should feel shy to participate in RIPE.
Details of the actual support from RARE to RIPE are still under discussion. It is clear that in the forseeable future there will be no COSINE or EEC funds available to support the RIPE activity. However support is possible from the RARE association itself. In particular it has been agreed that RIPE representation on behalf of RARE towards other organisations will be funded by RARE.
Finally Rob Blokzijl reminded everybody that the structure of RIPE is different from the RARE WG structure: according to its Terms of Reference, RIPE has organised itself based upon all existing organisations actually providing wide area IP services in Europe; i.e. membership consists of regional, national and international networking organisations.
Wolfgang Schroeter of IBM presented the current state of EASInet as well as the EASInet and EASIgate connection and usage guidelines. EASIgate is IBM's name for the CERN-CORNELL T1 link.
GMD has been contracted by IBM to do the design, implementation and management of EASInet. All EASInet funding is for 3 years. Sharing bandwidth with others where possible is a principle policy.
An EASInet Project Comittee (EPC) has been set up. It consists of three fixed members: CERN, GMD, and IBM. There are four elected members with terms of 1-2 years. Currently these are: CFA, CINECA, GSI and SARA. The EPC decides on direct access to EASInet, that is access not via a current EASI site.
EASIgate can be used either directly or indirectly via EASI sites. Requests for direct use of EASIgate have to go to IBM. Indirect use via EASI sites has to be requested via the site concerned. Currently traffic through EASInet is not access controlled. Those present urged EASInet to coordinate such controls within RIPE should they be deemed necessary.
Addresses:
Thomas Lenggenhager presented his latest connectivity maps. These maps are available from nic.eu.net as usual. The meeting expressed thanks to Thomas for his excellent work. Thomas clarified that infrastrcutures drawn as buses in the maps are located at the connections without a speed value.
Francois Fluckiger presented the traditional maps, prepared by CERN, illuminating the leased line situation in Europe. The IP part was not updated recently. Rob Blokzijl requested to include ESA lines in these maps as well.
Rob Blokzijl draws attention to the emerging connections to Eastern block countries. He urges to coordinate these connections in general and IP connections through RIPE in particular. Rob Blokzijl will be the contact point in RIPE in these matters.
Yves Devillers reported that NSF will issue a call for tender shortly for the common management of the US parts of both the Princeton-INRIA and the JvNC-NORDUnet IP connections. The idea is that this might be a nucleus for further connections. Interested parties can contact Yves.
Daniel Karrenberg reported that an update of the EUnet connection to UUnet/NSFnet from 56 to 64 kbit/s has been ordered as well as 19.2kbit/s EUnet links to the Technical University of Vienna and the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Due to organisational problems in both Austria and Belgium sharing with EASInet sites in the same locations has not yet been achieved.
Arnold Nipper reported that the XLINK US connection will be upgraded to 56 kbit/s in October.
Bernhard Stockman reported that the nordunet-nsfnet link will be upgraded to 64kbit/s as well. The nordunet leased line connection to Iceland will be operational any day now.
Peter Merdian reported that BelWu will put in a link to SWITCH (Basel) which will be for internal use only. Thomas Lenggenhager also reported that traffic from the RIPE backbone to Sophia-Antipolis could not use the SWITCH-INRIA link.
Olivier Martin reported that a substantial amount of EARN/BITNET traffic is now routed over the CERN-CORNELL T1 link using the VMNET software.
Martin Wilhelm reported for DFN, being present for the first time. DFN provides a national X.25 network called WIN (WIssenschaftsNetz). Nearly all Universities and Research Institutions are connected (about 130). Some members decided to run IP over WIN (about 60 so far). DFN was asked to coordinate IP activities. DFN policy is OSI. An IP planning and coordination group was set up. Rules for IP traffic over WIN have been made because WIN is only financed for a fixed amount of traffic and multipe IP hops over WIN should be avoided. DFN provides gateways for SMTP-X.400; FTAM-FTP is planned. A 64kbit/s connection to the US is being tested. It will be available to WIN users shortly, at extra cost for straight IP access. An upgrade of this line is being negotiated. For European IP connections DFN will use IXI. DFN has issued a call for tender to provide an IP service and gateways to DFN members. This is expected to be awarded in the summer.
Concern was expressed by the meeting about the international transit traffic caused by the lack of coordination in Germany at present. All German representatives were asked to work on this with high priority.
Phill Jones reported from the JNT, also present for the first time. The JNT policy is to provide interworking but to disallow wide area IP traffic within the UK. There is essentially no IP traffic over JANET. Mail gateways are provieded and FTP gateways are almost ready. The meeting expressed grave concern over the poor reachability of UK name servers. (A secondary server on nic.eu.net has been installed on the second day of the meeting.) Also some concern was expressed that traffic from the UK gateways to other European countries was routed via intercontinental lines. Phil replied that the JNT was considering continental links via IXI.
Ignacio Martinez reported from Spain, also a newcomer. IRIS operates a 64kbit/s X.25 net between the major traffic centres Madrid, Barcelona, Santander and Sevilla at present. More links are planned, including the Canary Islands. IRIS coordinates IP activities. There is an EASInet site in Barcelona.
Spain also plans to engage in links to Central and South America.
Mike Norris from UCD reported also for the first time, for Ireland. An
internal IP service is being established within HEAnet. International connectivity is clearly needed and RIPE was a welcome forum to make contacts.
Currently there are early plans to connect to the RIPE backbone in Amsterdam.
1. Rob Blokzijl to request IP network number for IP connections over IXI.
2. Erik Huizer and James Barr to write a proposal on X.500 access to RIPE Databases.
3. Daniel Karrenberg to progress task 2-4.
4. Jean-Michel Jouanigot to progress tasks 2-2 and 2-3.
5. Olivier Martin to make SAS programs for statistics reporting available.
6. Rob Blokzijl to contact Internet authorities about in-addr.arpa problem.
7. Rob Blokzijl to follow formation of EEPG and liaise as necessary.
8. Rob Blokzijl request RIPE travelling budget from RARE.
9. Daniel Karrenberg to prepare RIPE NIC requirements document together with Rob Blokzijl, Ruediger Volk and Yves Devillers.
10. Arnold Nipper to make input data for task 3.1 available to Daniel Karrenberg for inclusion in RIPE Database.
11. Daniel Karrenberg to define RIPE DB format with long names, to revise output of whois server, to implement domain objects in DB software and to add country designator to network objects.