Transcript Challenges and opportunities in IP interconnecting the Med

Challenges and opportunities in IP
interconnecting the Med
Andreas Pitsillides & Agathoclis Stylianou
Cyprus Research and Academic Network
(CYNET)
Background
• Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean Conference of 27-28 November 1995
– stressed in its economic chapter that the support for the development of
the scientific and technological community of the Mediterranean partner
countries, together with the upgrade and modernisation of local
telecommunication infrastructure, are two pivotal elements for the success
of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership.
• The EuroMed Net ’98 Conference (http://www.euromednet.ucy.ac.cy)
– The 350 delegates called for the initiation of a program to support IS activities in
the region, and through concrete suggestions laid the foundation stone for the
EUMEDIS program. The need for IP interconnection was clearly spelled out.
• In February 1999 the European Commission
– approved a comprehensive regional MEDA initiative for development of
the Euro-Mediterranean Information Society specifically designed to
reduce the region's informational and technological gap vis-à-vis the
neighbouring countries. The name of this initiative is EUMEDIS (EuroMEDiterranean Information Society).
Med Interconnection Initiative project
description  EuroMedNet’98 vision
• Among the conference conclusions was:
– Internet connectivity is a relatively scarce resource in the
Mediterranean partner countries; there is virtually no direct interMediterranean connectivity (between 2 Mediterranean countries),
modest internal connectivity (among research centres in a given
partner country) and very modest Euro-Mediterranean
connectivity.
– That the Commission takes necessary steps including the
provision of adequate funding support from MEDA program and
other sources to rapidly interconnect Euro- Mediterranean
research institutes via the Internet as a necessary facilitator for
application projects. Major European Information Society
initiatives in this field and in particular the TEN-34/TEN-155
project could be a target of this interconnection initiative.
Interconnection project main
objectives
• create main regional backbone infrastructure and
connectivity to interconnect the 12 Third Mediterranean
countries of the region, as well as provide connectivity to
the TEN-34/155 Pan-European Research and Academic
infrastructure.
• utilise and further develop existing national network
management and operation service centres.
• provide training and education of national network
management centres, to enable their collaboration with
others in the region, to encourage the sharing of experience
and facilities, and to offer advanced networking services so
that they can support the needs of the projects.
main objectives (cont.)
• facilitate and accelerate collaboration between Med
region and EU on projects
– will enable smooth introduction of technical know how necessary
for lifting and economic viability of the region and its gradual
introduction in the global marketplace.
• facilitate and accelerate collaboration on specific projects
between countries in Med
– Will enable subsequent collaboration on social, cultural, and
economic projects such as health, education, e-commerce, cultural
heritage and tourism, earthquake crisis management, water
management, solar energy etc.
• enhance Cultural Exchange and capitalise on richness of
heritage in region, where cultural civilisation is reported to
have been born, spanning over 4000 years.
Opportunities
• Current initiative by EC to act on the
EUMEDIS strand 1 Interconnect Project
– One of the main objectives of EUMEDIS is to fund the (Internet
based) interconnection between the European research network
and the research networks of the Mediterranean partner countries
(EUMEDIS Initiative Strand one Lot 2). This inter-connectivity
will not only boost the development of the Internet in each
Mediterranean country, but will also create an infrastructure all
around the Mediterranean region, which will transport any sort of
co-operative research application developed by the partners of the
Barcelona process.
Challenges
• Economic
– As Internet connectivity is a relatively scarce resource in some of
the Mediterranean partner countries, the rental of high-capacity
international Internet circuits presents indeed a challenge
– Current budget of 7 Million Euro to intra and inter connect the
Med is hardly enough for any reasonable interconnection topology
and bandwidth
– Current state of regulated monopolies in some of the 12 Third
Mediterranean Countries may not allow the best prices to be
reached.
• Political
– Due to the political climate of the region difficult to interconnect
according to the ‘best’ (technologically speaking) topology.
Challenges (cont.)
• Technology
 Provide a stable multi-megabit/s transport network for production-
quality data communications to meet expected end-user demand
resulting from the strong growth in Internet usage and emergence
of new applications and service.
 Be based on a multi-megabit/s (resilient) core capable of matching
the aggregated need of European and Mediterranean academic and
industrial researchers and the nationally available services.
 Provide an environment for demonstration and validation of
advanced networking applications based on new services on a
sufficient scale to test and improve desirable new capabilities.
 Offer a flexible and scalable access topology from all connecting
countries by providing one point of presence (PoP) in the largest
possible number of the 12 NRNCs.
Challenges: Technology (cont.)
 Be easily accessible for research needs, on an open nondiscriminatory basis, and provide access to pilot projects. The
NRNC organisations shall describe and publish detailed
procedures and the measures to be taken for accessing the services
offered in accordance with national policies.
 Include means for extensive traffic measurements. The NRNC
organisations shall take measures to provide access to these data,
and define terms and conditions for accessing this information,
while preserving the commercial sensitivity, privacy and
confidentiality.
 Aid in the Global connectivity by making the interconnection
network of the European and the Mediterranean partner countries a
valued peering partner to other research and education networks
organised nationally or collectively in broader geographic regions
world-wide.
Benefits
• The EUMEDIS IP Interconnection Initiative
– will address the limited Internet connectivity in the Mediterranean
area
– will foster relations between Northern and Southern scientific
communities by connecting the National Research Networks
(NRNs) in the partner countries (managed by the National
Research network Centres – NRNCs) among themselves and also
with the European backbone of NRNs (in Europe GEANT, which
interconnects all the European NRNs).
– will upgrade the Mediterranean partner countries overall
international Internet resources
– will provide a platform for the co-operative pilot projects to be
launched in the framework of the EUMEDIS Strand two initiative.
Economic and Social Impact
• high speed interconnection of Mediterranean NRN will
enhance future development in countries involved and
benefit the population at large by promoting the advance of
both pure and applied research, as well as improving
facilities for higher education.
• The advanced networking services offered by new network
will encourage development and deployment of
(networked) multi-media applications that will permit new
ways of working, teaching, and distributed collaboration
between Europe and Mediterranean region.
• These will enhance more effective competition in global
research community.
Economic and Social Impact (cont.)
• development of high performance communications
infrastructure critical to future of Euro-Mediterranean
industry, and will influence the well being of its economies in
years to come.
• will contribute to a more rapid integration of the region
towards Global Information Society, by bringing interaction
between industries, citizens, research communities and
government, and by creating an appropriate political and
regulatory framework.
• advances made in scientific and industrial research will lead
to improvements in quality of life through developments in
diverse domains of public interest, such as medicine,
environment, health, education, culture, tourism, etc., in view
of the forthcoming Information Society.
Exploitation of results
• provide an opportunity for Euro-Med networking research
community to benefit from information and know-how
exchange, in the area of new networking services.
• contribute to the development of the Euro-Med IS, as well
as the gradual introduction of the Med region to the global
marketplace.
• allow NRNs to optimise their investment in bandwidth,
providing quality of service provision to their users for a
given cost.
• Use of new technologies will allow wider use of advanced
multi-media applications and services.
• New generations of users will be trained in the exploitation
of new communications technologies.
Exploitation of results (cont.)
• enable, facilitate and accelerate collaboration between the
European Union and the Mediterranean region in order:
– to generate new R&D issues in the Mediterranean
region
– to promote social, cultural and economic cohesion
– to utilise and further develop existing network
management
– to enhance the evolution of networking in a uniform
level and generate a common and unified set of services
– to deploy and promote joint research projects and pilot
applications
Conclusions
• Despite the
–
–
–
–
Social
Economic
Political
Technical
challenges,
 the Euro-Med region will benefit from rapidly
implementing the IP Interconnection.
The EUMEDIS project can be the catalyst in the
implementation of such an initiative.
Conclusions
Of course, finally one wishes that peace and
prosperity in the region will prevail, which
in some small way has been aided by the
collaboration made possible by the IP
interconnection between the Med countries.