Research Networking in Europe
by Stefano Trumpy
In present times, industrial competitiveness
is highly dependent on investments in research. European researchers need
a more powerful networking infrastructure in order to increase the possibilities
for cooperative work. The availability of multimedia services and of on-line
knowledge bases are essential elements to improve the 'productivity' of
the researcher, ie the time spent between the inception of an idea and
the realization of a prototype, or of a related experiment.
Our main industrial competitors are located in North America and Eastern
Asia; in some countries, like the USA and Japan, thanks also to governmental
support, both the public and the industrial research sectors, are ahead
of Europe in taking advantage of a powerful networking infrastructure.
Building a high performance infra-structure in Europe has much higher
costs than in the US; the cost for international trans-European links is
almost the same as for intercontinental links. This is partially a consequence
of the monopolistic regime set up by the telecommunication providers in
each country. As a result of pressure by the European Union, this monopoly
is due to end by next year, but it will take time before the tariffs to
the users are significantly reduced because of the free competition.
This market situation provides an explanation of the enormous effort
that Europe, with the fundamental subsidy of the EU, has had to make in
order to establish a 34 Mbps infrastructure for research (see the articles
by Dai Davies, Michael Behringer, Hans-Peter Axmann and Sabine Payr). When
the TEN34 infrastructure was finally established, after exhaustive negotiations
with a number of providers, the research community was already convinced
that it was time to upgrade the capacity of this infrastructure. It is
now time to renegotiate the unit price per Mbps in order to be able to
reach the capacity we need at affordable prices (155 Mbps and more) and
to try to rationalize the situation and the cost of interconnecting to
US so that the European networking infrastructure for research can grow
adequately. This implies that, in a fast moving market, an almost continuous
process of negotiation must be carried on with the providers in order to
obtain an efficient and rapidly adapting infrastructure, at affordable
prices.
The Role of the European Union
The role of the EU in this is crucial; a general consensus has been
reached in the member states that the EU should dedicate adequate resources
to provide the research sector with a networking infrastructure able to
supply high performance telematic services of at least the same quality,
or even better, than those available to our colleagues in North America
and East Asia. However, of necessity, the EU funding will have to be complemented
by the member states which will also be responsible for upgrading their
national research networks, in order to take advantage of the improved
continental backbone. I am not alone in believing that this funding scheme,
which is an evolution of the current one, is that with most probability
of success in Europe; see the articles by Karel
Vietsch, Peter Axmann, Jean-Pierre
Euzen and Dai Davies in this section. The
process of procurement of the infrastructure with the related negotiations
with the TLC should not be carried out directly by the EU, because of the
many political ties, but by independent organizations involved in the provision
of European based services or in the coordination of the national research
networks, such as DANTE and TERENA.
Another important issue is the response to be given by Europe to the
US initiatives concerning the research sector. US universities, with the
sponsorships of some important industries, have launched the Internet 2
project aiming at improving by at least two order of magnitudes the present
performance of the commercially provided Internet; on its side the US government
has launched the New Generation Internet (NGI) program, which has similar
objectives and is complementary to Internet 2.
Europe has been solicited to participate in Internet 2. The US universities
are now trying to find partners in Europe and in the rest of the world;
they are contacting groups that are already collaborating with them and
which conduct applications that require high level multimedia telematic
services. Larry Landweber of Wisconsin University is coordinating a committee
which is in charge of finding the right partners and proposing such applications.
Europe must not miss this opportunity. It is my opinion that the best approach
to convince the policy makers and the funding bodies that research really
needs an infrastructure at the fore front of those available in the market
is to start by setting up some cutting edge applications, that could not
be deployed in a commercially available network, and demonstrating their
utility.
Moreover, some of the governmental funds available for NGI, might also
be devoted to improving the status of the connections between Europe and
North America. This leads to the issue of sharing the costs for transcontinental
links between Europe and US. For historical reasons, the costs of such
links have been paid by the European partners with only a small contribution
from the US, supplied by NSF (varying from 5 to 10% of the total bill).
It is the intention of the European side to discuss this aspect of cost
sharing, at least with respect to the future evolution of high performance
links. The situation is not easy, since the funding models for research
networks in Europe and in the US are not the same.
In Europe, the EU and the national governments subsidize the research
networks serving the whole research community, including both 'normal'
traffic and high bandwidth demanding applications. In the US, there is
a distinction between the so-called 'commodity Internet' which is purchased
by the research institutions on the commercial market, with no support
from the government, and the broadband network, which is subsidized by
the government. An agreement will have to be found which takes into account
both models.
In addition to articles on European strategy and initiatives for research
networking, this special section of ERCIM News includes information on
the status of some important national initiatives such as the high speed test-bed in Germany by Peter Wunderling,
the wireless solution for the national network in
Denmark by Allan Jensen, the situation of national
networks in Hungary by Balázs Martos and in Sweden
by Lennart Forsberg. Last but not least, the view of the space community,
which is known for being vocationally international and highly demanding
of applications is reported in the article of Ludwig
Moeller.
Please contact:
Stefano Trumpy - CNUCE-CNR
President of TERENA (Trans European Research & Education Networking
Association)
Tel: +39 50 593 323
E-mail: s.trumpy@cnuce.cnr.it
