BOD 02 86 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.0727/10/89Page OOOOTT EARN BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING. Minutes of the Meeting Held 29 & 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 ABSENT: Th. Huebner, CEPT. LOCATION: Hotel Intercontinental, 30th October 1986. 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 Hultzsch, Germany. Berlin. MINUTES, to be approved by the Board at its next meeting in May 1987. WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS. D. Lord, Chairman, opened the meeting, welcoming all participants. 86.1. MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING AND MATTERS ARISING. The minutes were approved. 86.2. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA. 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. agreed He also suggested that the minutes of the meeting should essentially be 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00002 limited to: decisions (proposals, motions voted on) call for actions issues remaining open the positions of members on specific issues, when they want them record ed – the text must then be given to the secretary before the end of the meeting. This was agreed by the meeting. 86.3. FINANCIAL REPORT. 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, agreed 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 alreadyagreed 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. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00003 86.4. ORGANIZATION. INSTITUTION/SITE/NODE. 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. NEED FOR BYLAWS. 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. Decision: basic set of operating procedures within the next six months. Hebgen was appointed as Chairman of this Operating Procedures Group. CODE OF CONDUCT/CHARTER. Copies of the most recent versions of these papers were distributed to the members of the Board. 86.5. FUTURE FINANCING OF EARN. FINANCIAL MODEL. 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. 86.6. RARE. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00004 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 Commissionfor next two years – but develop own relationship between RARE and EARN. Chairman indicated that RARE has the following working groups: X.400 MHS File transfer Directories and information systems Layers 1-4 Full screen working 5. High speed/ISDN 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. 86.7. COSINE. 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 86.8. ELECTION OF OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00005 (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 untilFebruary 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. Vote for President. Jennings was voted unopposed new President of EARN. Lord thanked Board members for all of their help and support in the past two years. Vote for Vice-president. Lord was voted unopposed new Vice-President. Vote for Treasurer. J.C. Ippolito was voted unopposed as Treasurer. Vote for Secretary General. Hebgen was proposed as candidate and was voted unopposed as Secretary. __________________________________ ________________________________ Technical Working Group Chairman. 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. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00006 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. Membership Committee Chairman. 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. Liaison Officers. 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. 86.9. MEMBERSHIP QUESTIONS. Application of Ivory Coast. Decision: Unanimous vote to accept the application of Ivory Coast for membership in EARN. Application of South Africa. 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 theproposal was voted unopposed on. RESULT of the vote: Negative: 10. Conditional Yes: 1. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00007 (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. 86.10. TECHNICAL MATTERS. Bryant gave a report concerning the work in the Technical Working Group. X.400 PROJECT STATUS: UK, France, Netherlands, Germany: ok Ireland: problematic Norway: excellent progress Sweden: no installations Italy: starting now Finland: may withdraw Switzerland: excellent 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. 56 KB/S SATELLITE LINK – MONTPELLIER / USA, 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. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00008 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 howprotocols are implemented and to ask specific questions. TECHNICAL MEETING. 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: availability on all of the main types of systems within EARN (systems and user interfaces). distributed systems. well supported systems. practical migration strategy. A report on the second part of the Technical Working Group’s meeting was given by M. Walsh: In December a new version of GRAND to run at Montpellier and at DEARN Explore use of GRAND to build up experience in conferencing, the 1VAX‐question’ was raised, the implementation of a user interface was not considered to be a major problem. Report from Germany on GRAND; study to be carried out early ’87. Items discussed in the Technical Working Group: Mail standards: RFC 822 to be emphasized X.400 migration of EARN; interaction P. Bryant and Heidelberg/ENC. Queen’s Univ./Canada – their software is available. As the Techni cal Working Group requested resources for, the Chairman asked for a paper from the Technical Working Group. Report prepared by IBM/P. Streibelt News Letters: no user services activity as yet Development in BITNET line upgrades; heavy congestion on some lines, being improved. Reorganization of backbone – no decision taken. Better rerouting possibilities – decision deferred for Board. 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 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00009 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. 86.11. EARN86. 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. 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. 86.12. NEXT BOARD MEETING. 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. _____________________________________________________ AGENDA POINTS NOT DISCUSSED. Review of Charter and Code of Conduct. The Situation with the PTTs; transmission costs, volume charging. The Role/Function/Services of the Association. The National Nodes and their Services. The Difficulties of the ‘smaller’ Countries. Membership Questions: Norwegian Foundations. Eastern Block Countries, including China. High Schools. Other countries: SE Asia, India, Brazil, Cameron, Morocco. Technical Matters: 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00010 Security Issues. Transfer of Large Files. CEC Data Base for Electronic Mail User Directories. Barbara Kirchner & Michael Hebgen. EARN BOD – ACTION LIST. Minutes of the Meeting Held 29 & 30th October 1986. DISTRIBUTION: EARN Executive Europe Committee. Herb Budd, IBM Europe Alain Auroux, IBM ACTION LIST. The following is a list of actions agreed at the last EARN BoD meeting in Berlin: Produce Minutes in short time. [B.K., M.H. & D.L.] Appoint an accountant/auditor and inform Board [J-C.I. & D.L.] Seek new sources of funding and support. [J-C.I.] Verify that all Membership Application Forms have been signed and by people authorized to do so. [All Directors] Propose a Basic set of Operating Procedures for the Association [OPG]. Prepare a proposal for an Operating Procedure to control the partici pation on the Technical Group. [OPC]. Establish a number of alternative models for the financing of the line costs. [D.L.] Identify and seek solutions for problems arising because of end of IBM support at end ’87. [TF] Ask RARE to appoint its observer to EARN Board Meetings. [D.L.] Appoint liaison officers to the RARE Working Groups. [P.B.] Organize the support staff for the President. [D.J.] Set up the organization of the Technical Sub-committee and the Techni cal Group. [P.B. & A.C.] Set up technical studies to be done by Technical Group to be completed by 1/5/87, to evaluate the various technical options for migration to ISO methods of operation, including time scales, costs and paths. [TSC] Set up studies of GRAND and PORTACOM. [TSC] Proceed with setting up the satellite link between Montpellier and the USA. Identify the node for the US end and negotiate the necessary agreement with them. [J-C.I. & A.A.] Organize EARN87 [EEC & A.S.] Organize next Board Meeting in May 1987. [D.J., A.A. & D.L.] Examine the membership request from EDS [M.H. & MC] ———————————————- *————————— Key. ( A. Alain Auroux. C. Avi Cohen. S. Arno Schulz. J. Dennis Jennings. 00000003 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00011 L. David Lord. EEC EARN Executive Committee. J-C. I. Jean-Claude Ippolito. H. Membership Committee. Michael Hebgen. OPG. Operating Procedures Group. B. Paul Bryant. Task Force. TSC. Technical Sub-Committee. Lord. 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