Trans-European networking

Citation

Melve, I. (2006), "Trans-European networking", Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 23 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cwis.2006.16523daa.001

Trans-European networking

Trans-European networking

TERENA coordinates and carries out technical activities and provides a platform for discussion to encourage the development of a high-quality computer networking infrastructure for the European research community.

TERENA is an acronym for the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association. This is an association of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in and around Europe. These NRENs provide advanced, high-speed and high-performance internet connectivity for universities and research institutions in their countries.

TERENA is first and foremost a collaborative organisation. The development and advances in internet infrastructures and technology have been led by the academic community since the very beginning of the internet, some 25 years ago. In Europe, this leading role has been made possible by cooperation and collaboration between network engineers, managers and researchers in the academic community all over the region. TERENA and the founding organisations and initiatives that preceded it contribute significantly to this leading role.

The core business of the association is to bring together managers, technical specialists and other people in the research networking community with their counterparts from other countries in Europe, mobilising the expertise and experience of hundreds of professionals in the research and education networking area.

TERENA activities are highly dependent on the human and other resources that are contributed by the research networking community. The membership of TERENA encompasses not only NREN organisations but also regional research networking organisations, research organisations that are large users of networking infrastructure and services, and equipment vendors and telecommunications operators.

Many of the people who participate in TERENA task forces, projects, conferences or workshops are not employees of TERENA member organisations but work the wider research networking community: in universities, research institutes or in industry.

National research networks form the supporting infrastructure for campus information systems, both the internet lifeline and the advanced network support for research and education.

Trends and observations from the conference: “The Internet is a Place”

The TERENA Networking Conference 2006 ended in Catania, Sicily, with an inspiring “call to arms” from Harald Alvestrand of Google, Norway. The theme of the conference was “Follow the User”, but the “bumper sticker” for the conference, as recommended by Mike Nelson, Director of Internet Technology and Strategy at IBM, would have to be “ THE INTERNET IS A PLACE”. “It isn't a simple network to communicate: it's a place to go to work and play where people go everyday,” he said. We have been challenged to create an “Internet place” for research and education in Europe: to build it, to provision it, to provide the services needed for our community to use it and to protect it.

The opening session came from the bottom of the sea, as presented by John Delaney. The Neptune Project is just beginning to explore the oceans and to discover just how much we do not know about them and how vital they are to the planet and to our future. At 3,000metres below the sea the internet provides a place for scientists to observe, to measure, to experiment in a place that is too remote and often too dangerous for them to be; a place for scientists of many disciplines to collaborate and also a place where all the rest of us can watch them do it, share with them and learn.

Harald Alvestrand pointed out that in his keynote address in the opening plenary session, Oceanographer John Delaney just assumed the internet was there as a tool for him to use: an internationally accessible interactive, real-time natural laboratory for collaborative scientific research and able to reach millions of users.

Egon Verharen, Innovation Manager at SURFnet, explained the work being carried out to test the transmission of high-definition television over their research and education network in The Netherlands. The NREN community should educate policy makers, provide an unbiased source of technical advice, tackle issues like privacy and security early, test out new technologies and standards and promote open standards and open source.

Ann Doyle, Manager of the Internet2 Arts and Humanities Initiative and Marco Berni of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence demonstrated how the network can make available resources that are both uniquely educational and visually stunning.

Ted Hanss (University of Michigan Medical School) presented the application of leading-edge information and communications technologies that are changing biomedical research, education, and healthcare delivery, enabling international collaborations and using grid computing, advanced videoconferencing, remote visualisation and modelling, simulations and mobile computing.

Two other large applications were presented of current work being done in Catania. Participants were given an interesting look at the control laboratory that monitors Mt Etna and other volcanic activity in the region and worldwide. At the University of Catania, the Department of Astronomy has developed a useful tool for visualisation (VisIVO) and another (VizieR2) for datamining on the internet.

In the past, the NRENs built the foundation – the network – and they continue to strengthen it. It is important create doors and even locks to control who gets in and who can do what in the internet space created. Keeping the balance of open and closed created a lot of discussion on how to police undesirable traffic and users. Security is also a key element in mobility and roaming and eduroam is big step forward, providing users with seamless, secure internet (wireless) access from any other eduroam university in Europe and beyond. The NREN community should educate policy makers, provide an unbiased source of technical advice, act as a “canary in the coal mine” to warn of danger, tackle issues like privacy and security early, test out new technologies and standards and promote open standards and open source.

“Follow the User”, the conference theme, meant an emphasis on education and services, with interesting presentations in the sessions on campus networks, content networks and real-time services of streaming, videoconferencing and on connecting schools and providing them with the services they need. An increasing amount of scientific work is dependent on large-scale data collection and on sharing the analytic work between researchers, both within and outside the grid community. The next steps in this scientific ecosystem are large-scale-data storage, data visualisation and user-adapted presentation of results. Supporting data are an important trend in the community, and there were discussions on how to put in place structures for sharing services.

An archive of the videostream of the conference presentations is available from the TNC 2006 web site at: www.terena.nl/events/tnc2006/programme/

Papers selected

TERENA networking conferences offer an opportunity to present and discuss technical and strategic aspects of the provision of networks and services to the research and education community, and the corresponding research and development activities. NREN have been challenged to build better networks for their users, in order to enhance applications and provide better services.

Extreme bandwidths on optical networks form the backbones for our user communities. In particular, grid users challenge today's solutions to provide sufficient resources.

Worldwide campuses are a result of cheaper network access combined with the increased use of mobile networks. NREN face important challenges to build efficient low-cost networks and at the same time to provide advanced services for demanding research on high-speed environments. Important middleware issues are related to developing the infrastructure by building campus-centric federations, managing overlay networks connecting selected parts of campus areas, security issues and look-up services. These developments represent the step beyond bandwidth for our community, focusing on the user and her everyday needs for research and education.

Performance measurements are becoming more important as reliability requirements increase. Virtual learning environments (eLearning) where students work at all hours have implications for the type of campus networks and backbone networks needed.

The papers selected for this publication give background information about the foundations of the supporting infrastructure for interconnecting campus information systems. The role of the research and education networks is to provide this supporting infrastructure and facilitate the use of networked applications.

The paper on “Metadata Harvesting in Regional Digital Libraries” in the PIONIER network was one of several presentations that considered the relationships between the underlying network provision layer and the higher level services offered through grids and peer-to-peer networks. Service-oriented architecture means that each service can be installed on a different host, and services do not need to know their locations. The aim of using this architecture for metadata harvesting is to be able to provide distributed searching, virtual collections and distributed exhibitions and to receive comments and annotation on the material in the digital library. It is suitable for larger scale systems, like international digital libraries. Libraries form an important part of the academic support infrastructure and interconnecting libraries and connecting users to digital library services is vital for learning and research.

The role of the research networks has two major components: providing an infrastructure for users in education and research; and providing a platform for doing research on infrastructure. The paper on “Semantic Overlays in Educational Content Networks” explores some of the issues involved in an eLearning infrastructure. For many years the research and education networks have provided tools for the research community. Now the educators are using the network as another tool in their portfolio and are discovering the flexibility and freedom that the network can offer to a wide range of users. Service-oriented architecture and the semantic web depend on metadata in order to provide good services to the user. The ongoing development work in eLearning, where eLearning objects form part of the eLearning infrastructure is one underpinning of the eLearning fabric.

Few scientific projects occur in one institution alone. To ensure good quality for collaboration, monitoring and analysing network infrastructure is essential. Monitoring the network is useful for the network operators, but recently there has been an increased demand from users for information about network performance. Some of this is related to the new class of demanding applications with extreme network requirements. One practical example of monitoring systems is presented in the paper on “SMARTxAC: A Passive Monitoring and Analysis System for High-Speed Networks”. The system provides continuous monitoring of high-speed links without packet loss, detection of network anomalies and irregular usage, multi-user system with both network operators and institutions on a low-cost platform. The interest in monitoring and measurements is high, and there are varied systems being developed across Europe for integration according to campus requirements.

Access control and middleware for integration of identity management with service-oriented architectures is an area with much activity. The paper on “GridShib and PERMIS Integration” shows how important the middleware infrastructure is, and outlines experiences with interconnecting the campus access controls with the project-based access controls for grids. The paper explores the issues involved with integration of Shibboleth and Globus Toolkit.

Ingrid MelveUNINETT, Norway