EARN BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING Minutes of the Meeting Held May 21 and 22, 1987 PLACE: Hotel Splendid, Nice, France EARN DIRECTORS: Kurt Bauknecht, Switzerland Paul Bryant, United Kingdom, EARN Technical Director Mats Brunell, Sweden Avi Cohen, Israel Frode Greisen, Denmark Michael Hebgen, Germany, EARN Secretary General Matti Ihamuotila, Finland Jean-Claude Ippolito, France, EARN Treasurer Dennis Jennings, Ireland, EARN President Arne Laukholm, Norway David Lord, CERN, EARN Vice-President Manas, Turkey Kees Neggers, Netherlands Jean Nuyens, Belgium Orphanoudakis, Greece Charles Sola, Spain Stefano Trumpy, Italy, EARN CEPT liaison EARN HEADQUARTERS: Joe Chester, Ireland, Assistant to the EARN President GUESTS: OBSERVERS: ABSENT: Alain Auroux, IBM Europe Herb Budd, IBM Europe Thedi Hatt, Switzerland Bernd Kirchner, IBM Germany S. Norve, Norway Mr. Seres, IBM France Marco Somani, Italy Jim Staton, IBM Germany Jan Clausen, CEPT Nick Newman, CEC Austria, Ivory Coast, Portugal, Iceland Draft Minutes, to be approved by the EARN Board of Directors (BOD) at its next meeting. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00002 87.1 WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS Dennis Jennings, chairman, opened the meeting, welcoming all participants . 87.2 MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING AND MATTERS ARISING The minutes were approved and will be put onto NETSERV by Michael Heb-gen. Michael Hebgen described the situation in Germany where the german PTT (DBF) is going to introduce volume dependent tariffs on the international EARN links. Kurt Bauknecht proposed that a very important PTT press campaign be made and a letter be sent to rectors of universities of all countries. Decision: A letter from the EARN President will be sent to DBP and other PTTs of these countries where there is a volume charging threaten. If the volume charging is introduced and imposed, the EARN Board of Directors expects unforeseeable consequences and has to refuse. A press campaign will be considered if necessary. To continue the liaison with the CEPT Stefano Trumpy will arrange a meeting. 87.3 APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA The chairman suggested some changes in the agenda which were approved. 87.4 EARN FUNDING 1988 David Lord explained the proposal and mentioned the following points Not subsidize other countries, Impossible to get traffic figures on a useful and reliable basis, Tariff data are taken from the Eurodata Handbook, No extra costs for administration and central organisation are considered. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00003 Decision: 1) The costs in 1988 – and only in 1988 – for the EARN interna tional infra-structure will be calculated on the basis of Model F for the Reference Configuration, i.e. the present topology but with the transatlantic link moved to Montpellier and the Pisa-Geneva link replaced by a Pisa-Montpellier link. (Due to the open tariff situation, Germany does not know what the cost will be for the country and therefore agreed with reservation. ) Configuration changes will not be made independently by bi lateral agreements but must be presented to the EARN Executive Committee to ensure that proposed changes will not create satu ration elsewhere. A Reserve Fund should be set up. Each country should consider addition of some small percentage to charges under model to cover: currency changes tariff increases extra lines The EARN Executive Committee will make a detailed proposal to each country and develop a mechanism for funds transfer. Most countries have either an agreement for 1988 funding or are at least confident to get it. It was agreed that a detailed discussion on future (after 1988) cost calculation and distribution is needed. Some countries like Denmark and Germany recommended usage dependent cost distribution. Information items: Joe Chester is appointed as an Executive Assistant to the EARN Pres On EARN’s request, Alain Auroux will become EARN Manager and will be a full time EARN employee. Coach to IBM La Gaude for lunch and further discussions. 87.5 PRESENTATION OF EARN MIGRATION STRATEGY Paul Bryant presented the EARN migration strategy (paper PB351) developed by a group of 6 people over many months and agreed at the recent EARN Technical Meeting in Crete in Spring 1987. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00004 87.6 IBM, OSI AND THE MIGRATION STRATEGY Etienne Gorog, Director of the IBM European Telecommunication Center, and Henri Vidil, Manager of the IBM OSI Competence Center, welcomed the EARN Board of Directors and gave a short introduction in IBM’s OSI position and the following IBM presentations: IBM OSI products (Philippe Piton) IBM X.400 Product (Jim Staton) IBM SNA Interconnection – XI (J. Cournouble) Afterwards Paul Bryant gave a short presentation on an example of X.25 hardware switches as an alternative to the IBM XI product which is a X.25 software switch. 87.7 DISCUSSION The EARN Board of Directors had a detailed discussion on costs private X.25 network migration forced by the CEPT in this time scale OSI applications like X.400 (see also the following point) 87.8 EARN MIGRATION PLAN & PUBLICITY EARN has to ensure that for technical and political reasons, current services continue and that the migration should be carefully phased so that the current services are not disturbed. The migration plan should be developed and implemented together with EARN experts from the many countries and RARE. All the countries should provide comments on the general strategy by July 1, 1987, to the chairman. Paul Bryant will incorporate the comments and then circulate the summary for approval. The EARN Technical Group should present a detailed plan for the next EARN Board of Directors meeting. No objection from the Board for the continuation on the experiments on X.400 products. 87.8A TOPOLOGY CHANGES The following plans for topology changes will be submitted to the EARN Executive Committee for decision at the next meeting: * Movement of the lines to Israel, Turkey and Greece from Pisa to Montpellier – has to be checked officially with PTTs. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00005 The german international node will be moved from Darmstadt to Bonn. The tariff situation and line utilization may require some changes, a detailed plan will be submitted. United Kingdom considers a direct connection to Montpellier. 87.9 EARN87, NEXT BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING EARN87 Meeting is cancelled. Joe Chester will inform Prof. Schulz and Dr. Paul in Austria. The proposal to hold an EARN88 meeting in Turkey (Izmir) is accepted. 0. Manaz will setup a programm committee. The next Board of Directors Meeting will be held in Paris, November 19 and 20, 1987. 87.10 TECHNICAL GROUP REPORT The last meeting was held in Heraklion, Greece, on migration strategy and improvements in services (LISTSERV e.g.). The X.400 product report was delayed due to technical changes (IBM S/l -> IBM 3725). Information on software tools EARN rely on and support requirements, logical traffic statistics and availability of conference systems will be collected for the next EARN Board of Directors meeting. 87.11 RARE The chairman attended the RARE COA (Council of Administration) and the RARE Network Meeting. He explained that EARN is seen positively and that there seems to be a strong feeling of cooperation between RARE, who plans the future (OSI Academic network provider) and EARN (provider of international services). Dennis Jennings and Paul Bryant will investigate how EARN can contribute to RARE and COSINE activities. 87.12 FINANCIAL REPORT Today EARN has a clear and simple budget. The initial $90K from IBM came now to a $65K balance with expenses just for travelling of the EARN Executive Committee and for EARN Technical Meetings. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00006 In progrssing to more formal budgets An auditor has to be appointed, A formally audited budget report will be presented before the next Board of Directors meeting. Budget proposals have to be developed when current funding arrange ments are completed. 87.13 CEPT AND CEC LIAISON EARN is encouraged to expect an invitation from CEPT to meet in Copenhagen in June/July 87 with the President and Vice-President of CEPT/CAC. 87.13A EARN DEVELOPMENT PLAN Dennis Jennings explained his view on what is the EARN vision of future networking for the european academic community. The initial discussion will continue using the network. 8.14 MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE Earn has inquires from Algeria, Cyprus, Yugoslavia and Italy in the framework of WORLD LABORATORY on behalf of the Russian Academy of Science. EARN will provide information and expects formal requests. In case of Associate Membership some documentation is awaited from EDS, Oxford Instruments and ECMWF, the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting. The President will discuss expediting hte membership application procedure with the EARN Membership Committee, through which any application must come which is not clearly an academic institution. 8.15 OPERATING PROCEDURES EARN operating procedures should be setup if and when they are needed. It was agreed that procedures for Electronic Voting, Deputizing for EARN Director and Membership application are to be discussed at the next EARN Executive Committee meeting. 8.16 BITNET Dennis Jennings gave a brief summary on the BITNET network: * BITNET INC., New Jersey, is a legal entity and a non-profit organisation. 00000004 EARN-MIN Z5 VM/XA CMS 5.5 Atlas Centre 201.07 27/10/89 Page 00007 Each BITNET node pays the leased line cost to the next node. The membership fee ranges from $1.5K to $8K which is mainly used for the support of the BITNET EXEC and EDUCOM to run BITNIC. BITNET has setuo a protocol project to allow RSCS to transit a TCP/IP network like the NSF funded TCP/IP backbone. The BITNET migration strategy (IP backbone) is similar to the EARN strategy (X.25 backbone). There are activities merging BITNET and CSNET which EARN will “aggressivly watch”. The question of taking portion of funding the transatlantic link because of the importance of EARN was answered by BITNET “Not yet, but maybe in the future”. 8.17 ANY OTHER BUSINESS Matti Ihamuotila raised the question of coordination of the X.400 pilot projects between EARN and RARE. It was agreed to bridge related mailing lists and to assign formal liaison if needed or appropriate. Michael Hebgen July 10, 1987 Share this:FacebookTwitterReddit