1. TERENA and European NRENs News
1.1. TERENA News
1.1.1. TERENA General News (GA, TA)
Invitation for Technical Project Proposals. First Deadline is November 27, 1998
8-9 October 1998: TERENA General Assembly meets in Dresden. Minutes.
8 October 1998: TERENA Networking Conference '98 in Dresden, Germany
October 5, 1998: TERENA TA Meting in Dresden. Minutes.
4 September 1998: TERENA to organise workshops on caching and indexing in DESIRE II Project
Contact for updating TERENA GNRT have been signed with Margaret Isaacs
4 November 1998: New Task Force TF-TANT on testing of networking Technologies.
http://www.dante.net/tf-tant/
The main TF-TANT activity is the Quantum Test Programme http://www.dante.net/quantum/qtp/
TERENA Working Group WG-LLT, WG-ISUS, WG-MSG/WG-i18n, WG-SEC, WG-NMA and Task Forces TF-TEN, TF-CHIC, TF Cache had their meeting on October 4, 1998. Minutes are available at
Jackob Palme (Stockholm University and KTH) announced about his plans to write a book about Internet application protocols and standards. Until now, only one chapter has been written, the chapter about coding. You can find it at URL http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/internet-course/book/application-protocols.html
Web page with demonstration of multi-lingual message technology in Web4Groups
and KOM 2000 messaging systems is available at http://cmc.dsv.su.se:9001/w4g.dsv.su.se_9001/try/18/?lang=en
The systems use new header named "Translation-Of", every translation
has an ISO/IETF standard language mark on it. This new header is the only
change needed to e-mail standards to support multi-linguality.
Informational document that explains aspects of caching; what it is, why it is good, and how to go about it (with server-specific instructions) was written by Mark Nottingham, Australia. The target audience of web designers, webmasters and the like - anyone who creates content on the Web http://mnot.cbd.net.au//cache_docs/cache_doc.html
November 3, 1998. TNC98 Report and presentations are available from TERENA Web Server
October 18, 1998. New Design of TERENA Homepage
8 October 1998: TERENA publishes final
reports of projects
Draft of a paper commissioned by UK funding body regarding future architectures
for Academic Networking in the UK by John Dyer
URL : http://www.ja.net/documents/net_arch.html
Paper consists of Summary of JANET, Common problems of NRENs, Trends
and Developments in Internet Development, Network Architectures, Technological
Solutions for Connecting Regional Networks, possible Providers for UK Academic
Network.
1.3. The Works of DANTE (bi-monthly news -
http://www.dante.net/pubs/works/
No.29, October 1998. A bi-monthly electronic newsletter reporting on
the activities of DANTE, the company that organises pan-European research
network services for the European research community.
TEN-155: EUROPE JOINS THE FAST LANE
Starting in December this year, DANTE, together with the national research
networks of 16 European countries and with the support of the European
Commission, will replace the current TEN-34 network with the new TEN-155
network in 8 European countries.
QUANTUM TEST PROGRAMME (QTP) – http://www.dante.net/quantum/qtp/
In addition to the operational TEN-155 network, the Quantum project
will implement a testing programme (QTP) which has the objective of testing
and validating new technologies, products and services with a view to introducing
them into the operational network at a future date. The QTP is managed
by DANTE as the Co-ordinating Partner in the Quantum project and carried
out in a Joint Task Force with TERENA.
TEN-34 MBONE PILOT.
DANTE reorganised the distribution of the European Mbone and provided
a Mbone pilot service to the national research networks.
From 1 January 1999 DANTE will commence to run the NameFLOW Directory services to the European research community services in house.
Report of the Fall 98 Internet 2 meeting by John Dyer
URL : http://www.ja.net/documents/internet2.html
Joint Internet2 / NLANR workshop, CMU Pittsburgh, 1-4 Nov. 1998 by John Martin and Kevin Meynell
http://www.thestandard.net/articles/display/0,1449,1863,00.html?home.bf
Abilene is a project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet
Development together with Qwest, Nortel, Cisco and several major telecom
corporations will be in BETA Testing during November –December 1998 and
launch in January 1999.
UCAID is developing Abilene through Qwest’s nationwide fiber-optic
network as well as technologies provided by Cisco Systems and Nortel.
The backbone runs primarily on OC48 (2.4 gigabits per backbone links.
In the future, Abilene project managers expect to OC192 (9.6 gigabits per
second) links.
http://www.thestandard.net/articles/display/0,1449,1861,00.html?1447
The Internet2 project has been expanded to include a middleware focus
that will work on developing advanced network applications.
IBM will supply high-speed storage devices to the project’s Distributed
Storage Infrastructure Initiative (I2-DSI).
More information about I2-DSI can be found at "I2-DSI The Internet2
Distributed Storage Infrastructure Project" page (http://www.internet2.edu/html/i2_dsi.html)
and paper "The Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure Project: An
Architecture for Internet Content Channels" by Dr. Micah Beck or Dr. Terry
Moore (http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mbeck/i2-chan-pub.pdf).
IBM will also contribute supercomputer and video technologies to the
International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) as part of
the Internet2 Digital Video Network initiative.
The Internet2 QoS Working Group prepared proposal for implementation
of Qbone over Abilene. – http://www.ja.net/documents/internet2.html
Lucent uses IP Routing in Silicon to solve Speed and Quality Of Servicve
Demands building routers that can power the DWDM Internet.
For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net II
Next Generation Internet web site at http://www.canet2.net
The MASH Research Project at Berkeley has recently released a beta version
of its software -- the MASH multimedia/networking toolkit. This toolkit
is freely available for download from
http://www-mash.cs.berkeley.edu/mash/software/download.html
The MASH project and its software builds on the collective work of the
MBone research community (notably, the vic, vat, and wb multicast conferencing
tols from LBL) with new approaches to and variants of multimedia control
protocols, reliable multicast, real-time transcoding "proxies", wecasting
applications, multimedia archive systems, and network programmable "active
services". Further details of the project are available at
http://www-mash.cs.berkeley.edu/mash/
CANADA GETS SET FOR NEW INTERNET BACKBONE.
The Canadian government is investing USD120 million in a new high-speed
networking backbone, capable of moving data at speeds of up to 1.5 million
times faster than the average 28.8 Kbps modem. Built by CANARIE, a Canadian
research consortium together with a team from Bell Canada, the first stages
of development will be available only to university researchers and some
government departments and those who are using CANARIE's current research
network. The technology used by the new system will need advanced computers
to function properly. The new network, which as been dubbed CA*net3, is
expected to be in October.
THE I S O C FORUM. 24 September 1998. Vol. 4, No. 09.
Announcement of passing of Jon Postel at http://www.isoc.org/postel/
ITU to Expand Collaboration with IETF on IP-Related Aspects in Standards-Setting
[15 September 1998].
The Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) of the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has agreed on a set of procedures
to allow ITU-T Study Groups to develop technical specifications for Internet
Protocol (IP) based networks in cooperation with the Internet Society/Internet
Engineering Task Force (ISOC/IETF).
THE I S O C FORUM. 22 October 1998. Vol. 4, No. 10.
WASHINGTON, DC, September 3, 1998 -- Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice-president
of MCI, and one of the "fathers" of the Internet, has been elected chairman
of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC), the premier international
organization charged with the open evolution of the global Internet.
The Executive Committee is composed of Cerf, Susan Estrada, Huitema,
Kees Neggers, and Heath.
THE I S O C FORUM. 22 October 1998. Vol. 4, No. 10.
1998 Norbert Wiener Awards.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) has chosen
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to be honored with the 1998
Norbert Wiener award for Professional and Social Responsibility. This is
CPSR's highest honor, and it is only the second time in its 12-year history
that the Wiener award is being given to an organization rather than to
an individual. - http://www.cpsr.org/issues/98Wiener.html
Award for free software
MIT Tech Talk. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1998
Larry Wall, a programmer and creator of Perl and several widely used
software programs, received the first annual Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Award for the Advancement of Free Software at the Media Lab on October
9, 1998.
SURVEY ON DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET.
As part of his doctoral research on the global expansion of the Internet,
ISOC member Paula Uimonen is conducting a survey focusing on the experiences
and perspectives of individuals who are professionally active in the development
of the Internet in developing countries. The questionnaire can be found
at http://www.i-connect.ch/uimonen/pusurvey.htm.
More information about the survey can be obtained by contacting Paul
Uimonen at uimonen@i-connect.ch.
THE I S O C FORUM. 24 September 1998. Vol. 4, No. 09.
ICANN Press Release 06 November 1998 "ICANN asks Commerce Department
to begin DNS transition"
http://www.iana.org/icann/icann-pr06nov98.html
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today
advised the Department of Commerce that it is ready to negotiate the transition
agreement transferring Domain Name System administration from U.S. Government
control. The transition is expected to last about a year, during which
time the Initial Board of ICANN will create a permanent governance structure
with members and member-elected directors.
October 20, 1998. In his official answer (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/icann102098.htm) to proposed bylwas Ira Magaziner write that government will adopt the IANA plan, but only if ISI adopts some of the revisions most of which have been submitted by the Boston Working Group and the Open Root Server Confederation. The main points Magaziner is pressing ISI to adopt are open financial accountability of the corporation, the resolution of possible conflicts of interest between supporting organizations being both the policy advisors to the board of directors and responsible for choosing the board, and the introduction of some sort of membership scheme to directly elect the board.
October 7, 1998. New agreement between Department of Commerce
(USG) and Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) to facilitates the stable evolution
of the Internet domain name system (DNS) extends the Cooperative Agreement
through September 30, 2000.
Acording to this agreement NSI by October 1, 1999 the following work
will have completed: reengineering of NSI's registry/registrar interface
and back end systems so as to assure that NSI, acting as registry, shall
give all licensed Accredited Registrars (including NSI acting as registrar)
equivalent access ("equal access") to registry services through the Shared
Registration System.
IANA Draft Bylaws - Fifth Iteration.
Bylaws For Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers
October 2, 1998 last 5th virsion of New IANA bylaws
have been proposed by John Postel ICANN - INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED
NAMES AND NUMBERS (http://www.iana.org/bylaws-coop.html),
that became a result of previuos discussion of all interetsed parties and
realise all demands of US Government White Paper of June5, 1998 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm).
In his letter of October 2, 1998 to DOC John Postel also informed about
registration of new organisation as Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation
under laws of California and about forming Interim Board of 9 personalities
recommended during discussion of previuos versions.
The Bylaws suppose creating three Supporting Organizations -- for Addresses,
Protocols, and Domain Names -- which are delegated the primary responsibility
for developing and recommending substantive policies and procedures regarding
those matters within their individual scope.
A new report from the European Commission summarising the European RTD initiatives related to Internet development is available. - http://www.nectar.org/update/stories/1998100804.htm
White House Press Release (15.10.98): Vice President Gore Announces Five Challenges To Build A Global Information Infrastructure. - http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/veep101398.htm
The Vice President proposed five new challenges, which he characterized as a "Declaration of Interdependence."
First, he challenged the world community to improve access to Technology.3.2. Telematics Program
Second, he challenged the world community to bridge language barriers by developing technologies with real-time digital translation.
Third, he challenged the world community to create a global knowledge network of people working to improve the delivery of education, health care and other socially important goods.
Fourth, he challenged the world community to ensure that communications technology protects the free-flow of ideas and supports democracy and free speech.
Fifth, he challenged the world community to create networks that allow every micro-entrepreneur in the world to advertise, market, and sell products directly to the world market.
Update of the new Telematics Applications Programme’s projects in the
scope of SCIMITAR II activity are available at SCIMITAR Web Server
http://www.scimitar.terena.nl
SCIMITAR Project established coordination with NECTAR Project - http://www.nectar.org/
NECTAR is the central resource and focus of debate for the enabling
discipline of telematics engineering, underpinning the development of ICT
applications for the Information Society.
NECTAR collects, stores, refines and disseminates information and results
from projects concerned with ICT engineering research in the European Community's
Telematics Applications Programme and especially in its Telematics Engineering
Sector, publishing contributions from users as well as an international
editorial board of experts. More than 15 TAP Projects are contributing
to the NECTAR Repository.
The support action Telematics - European Industry Standards Support (TEISS) is now active. Details about the project are available from the NECTAR site http://www.nectar.org/teiss/ where results and a discussion forum on standardisation will be hosted. The project will investigate the major topics for standardisation in the telematics infrastructure. It will also identify the main standardisation issues the industrial organisations involved, key current and potential standardisation areas, in particular those that are common across a number of application sectors, and determine existing or possible synergies in terms of standards developments, including preparation of new standards and validation of existing standards.
Multimedia Access to Education and Training in Europe - Draft MoU – http://www2.echo.lu/telematics/education/en/news/mou.html
Lifelong learning, just-in-time training, re-training required to overcome
unemployment and changing skills, are all major challenges facing Europe
today.
Specific actions are now being taken to bridge the gap between research
and actual use of learning technologies, content and services. A new Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) on "Multimedia Access to Education and Training
in Europe A Partnership for a Common Approach to the Production and
Delivery of Learning Technologies, Content and Services". Feedback based
on the draft MoU is invited by 18 November 1998.
A Steering Committee will be elected to guide the implementation of
the MoU.
Initially to be proposed by the initial signatories, the Special Interest
Groups should be structured around the key areas for co-operation within
the MoU, such as:
4. Internet Technology News and Standardisation
J.Paalme’s personal Report from the IETF meeting in Chicago, August 1998, URL http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/meetings/ietf-chicago-aug-98-notes.html
Internet Monthly report for September 1998
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/imr/imr9809.txt
The IESG approved or recommended the following 19 Protocol Actions during the month of September, 1998:
The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Language Tagging in Unicode Plain Text' <draft-whistler-plane14-00.txt> as an Informational RFC.
A New Internet-Drafts are available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories:
Schema for Differentiated Services Integrated Services in Networks ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-rajan-policy-qosschema-00.txt
HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring -- WEBDAV ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-09.txt
This document specifies a set of methods, headers, and content-types
ancillary to HTTP/1.1 for the management of resource properties, creation
and management of resource collections, namespace manipulation, and resource
locking (collision avoidance).
SPKI Certificate Theory ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-spki-cert-theory-03.txt
The SPKI Working Group has developed a standard form for digital certificates
whose main purpose is authorization rather than authentication. These structures
bind either names or explicit authorizations to keys or other objects.
Shared Registry System Protocol (SRSP) ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-crispin-srs-00.txt
This specification describes a protocol for a Shared Registry System
(SRS) that allows multiple registrars to register domain names within a
single Top Level Domain (TLD).
Anti-Spam Recommendations for SMTP MTAs ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-lindberg-anti-spam-mta-05.txt
This memo gives a number of implementation recommendations for SMTP,
MTAs to make them more capable of reducing the impact of spam.
A brief summary of this memo is:
IETF is looking at providing protection to multicast data from re-multicast.
The paper "Watercasting: Discouraging Disclosure of Multicast Media" John
Crowcroft j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK
at ftp://cs.ucl.ac.uk/darpa/watercast.ps
19-20th November 1998, London UK. Essential Foundations for Secure
E-Business: A Learning Experience Centred on Digital Signatures.
‘The largest obstacle to the successful development of Internet Electronic
Commerce is the lack of security of the medium itself’. The answer
is a Public Key Infrastructure. A Certification Authority plays the central
and crucial role in this infrastructure.
November 4, 1998.
EEMA/ECAF and the ICC ECommerce Global Action Plan.
The International Chamber of Commerce presented A Global Action Plan
for business with Governments towards Electronic Commerce at their meeting
in Ottawa. The full document and covering letter is available by request
from the EEMA office. A short extract follows for further details can be
found at http://www.nectar.org/update/stories/1998110402.htm
EEMA formed the ECAF to consolidate the Certification Authority
Market in terms of a MoU for Interworking, Codes of Conduct, Cross-Certification,
Legal Issues, Education and Best Business Practice.
The Technology group met on the 10 September when the initial actions
list was agreed.
The Awareness Group plan to meet at the end of the Security WorkShop
on the 20 November, 1998.
http://www.eema.org/ECAF.html
The EGAR project (European Generic Article Register), has beeen approved
during plenary meeting held in Paris 25 September.
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/ec/EGAR/egar_009.doc
This project aims at developing a model which can be applied in different
sectors and different EC scenarios (administration-business, business-business,
business-consumer).
CEC study on Electronic Commerce and public interest is available at
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/ec/documents/054.doc
CEN/TC304 – Information and Communication Technologies - European
Localization Requirements
TC 304 Project teams provided their results
EEMA and CEN/ISSS Survey of Standards-related Fora and Consortia. This
information is available at
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Survey.htm.
Documents specifying the current schema specification used by the EuroView
X.500 pilot service are available at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/x500/euroview/deliverables.htm
This schema is a set of rules which define the structure and content
of an X.500 database.
Forthcoming EC Workshop Plenary and XML/EDI Meeting will take place
December 3-4, 1998 in Munich hosted by Siemens AG. General information
about CEN/ISSS Workshops
http://www.cenorm.be/isss/
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/15557.html
A new prototype, developed jointly between Spyglass and Lucent Technologies,
allows telephone-based Web browsing using voice control.
The device allows users to dial a phone number and then navigate standard
Web pages using voice commands, and "listen" to voice-synthesized pages.
The phone browser is a joint product of Lucent's speech-recognition
and text-to-speech technologies, and Spyglass Prism, a Web server system
that selectively filters Web pages to extract and package content for computing
platforms with limited display and interface capabilities.
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998-10/lw-10-thesource.html
Intel: Linux inside? The giant chip maker Intel decided to invest into
LINUX supporting company RedHat.
HP avaluating Linux for its applications.
The upstart OS has gained enough power in the commercial sphere that
computing giant Hewlett-Packard is evaluating whether to fit it into its
product plans, just as a new version of the increasingly popular software
is readied.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27853%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.ts2.1022
Informix courting Linux users
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27836%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs4.1022
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27660%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs6.1019
DSL modem standard due soon. Participants in the standards setting
process, including representatives from companies such as Intel, report
that a preliminary, or "determined," standard for DSL modems will likely
be set by Friday at a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27831,00.html?dd.ne.tx.wr
An effort to extend Ethernet to heavy-duty data tasks that's being
spearheaded by gigabit-speed start-up Alteon Networks will be submitted
to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as soon as this
fall.
http://cnnfn.com/digitaljam/9809/30/motorola/
Motorola Inc. apparently is set to unveil a new voice command technology
that will enable telephone and computer users to more easily retrieve information
off the Internet.
IBM, Intel Team Up on Security for e-business
IBM and Intel will promote adoption of the Common Data Security Architecture
(CDSA) specification for Internet security across multiple computing platforms.
IBM will ship KeyWorks*, the first CDSA-based product, in AIX*, OS/400*,
and OS/390*; in IBM Vault Registry* certificate management software; and
in the IBM eNetwork Firewall* for AIX and NT** products. http://www.ibm.com/software/news/sw/c3c8/
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?981019.ehoansa.htm
The Adaptive Network Security Alliance have been formed to ensure that
companies' security products will interoperate with each other, with ISS'
intrusion-detection technology providing the lynch pin among them. The
Alliance consists of 40 members, including 3Com, Compaq, Lucent Technologies,
Check Point Software, Entrust, WatchGuard, Trustwork Systems, Security-7,
GTE Internetworking, Trend Micro, ODS Networks, and Aventail.
Internet Security Systems, in Atlanta, is at http://www.iss.net.
http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=30152
Jini - Java code that automatically discovers computer devices on the
network and then registers their services. Jini is a key part of a broader
architecture to distribute operating system services across the network.
Although aimed at easing network compatibility problems, Jini is far more
exciting for its promise to allow computing devices and applications to
efficiently interact and cooperate with each other across a network.
5. Internet and IT Industry News
5.1. Companies, Telecommunications, Infrastructure
Information Society Trends. Issue number: 85 - (16.9.1998 - 18.10.1998)
http://www.ispo.cec.be/ispo/press/press85.html
Global Crossing, a US company specialised in laying fibre-optic cables in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, has said that it would invest 640 million Ecu in developing, by the end of 1999, a high-capacity network linking up 18 European cities to the USA, Asia and Latin America.
The French and German incumbent operators France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom said they would jointly develop a state-of-the-art telecoms network linking Europe's main financial centres to offer corporate communication services. This would include 40 cities in 16 countries. The new network, to become fully operational by the year 2000.
The Belgian national railway company SNCB said it plans to start offering corporate telecoms services in 1999 based on its private telecoms network.
Angel Technologies, a US company founded in 1996, has announced a successful real-life condition demonstration of its HALO broadband wireless network, featuring a transmission speed of 52 megabit per second. The High-Altitude Long-Operation (HALO) network is a new concept developed by Angel. It would provide high-speed communications services based on HALO aircrafts circling the sky above commercial airline traffic.
September 14, 1998 - WorldCom (Nasdaq: WCOM) completed its $47 billion merger with MCI, officially forming MCI WorldCom. This could happened after receiving July 15, 1998 final approval from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) following selling their Internet backbone facilities and wholesale and retail Internet businesses for $1.75 billion in cash to Cable & Wireless. The decision removed the last regulatory hurdle to the completion of the merger.
Information Society Trends. Issue number: 84 - (1.8.1998 - 15.9.1998)
http://www.ispo.cec.be/ispo/press/press84.html
New founded Joint venture Symbian (by Britain's Psion, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericcson) specialised in hand-held communications devices would aim at promoting Psion's EPOC operating system as an industry standard for wireless computing over hand-held devices, in particular smartphones and personal communicators.
Belgium's Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (L&H), a world leader in speech and language technologies, products and services, has said it would acquire Globalink, a leading US supplier of translation software and services, in an all-stock deal. The move would give L&H access to new translation language pairs, electronic commerce products and global customers.
The leading UK telecoms operator BT has announced the roll-out on September 15 of a new multimedia communication service, BT Highway, which would allow customers to make phone calls and surf the Internet over the same phone line simultaneously.
October 27, 1998 -- Sun Microsystems announced the latest major release
of its Solaris operating environment. Full 64-bit operating system kernel
is complete. Solaris 7 incorporates significant new features and functionality,
including a complete 64-bit operating system kernel and application environment,
mainframe-class reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features,
and ease-of-use features for installation, administration, and management.
http://www.sunworld.com/swol-10-1998/swol-10-solaris.html
IBM Web browser talks to visually impaired. IBM launched a talking Web
browser that is designed to give blind and visually impaired computer users
access to the Internet.
http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=33276
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?981019.wnnds.htm
Novell teams up with Lucent in face of Cisco-Microsoft alliance.
Novell is setting out to prove that it does not need the support of
Cisco Systems in order to be the leader in policy-based and directory-enabled
networking.
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?981019.ehodish.htm
Satellite provider SkyCache announced partnership with Novell and Cyberstar
to feed data from its internet caching service to Novell's FastCache network
cache server for enterprises.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/explode-infobeat/technology/story/15276.html
Wired News Report that new hardware that can turn existing phone lines
into high-speed networks for apartment dwellers and residents of apartment
buildings and hotels. To carry ISDN or DSL connections to multiple tennants
within a building the technlogy establishes an Ethernet local access network
over existing telephone wiring within the building. It does so without
interrupting normal telephone service over the same lines and elimiates
the requirement to have individual DSL modems in each unit.
MCI WorldCom introduced a Web-based tool that will make it easier for
ISPs to establish peering relationships at its major Internet access points
(NAPs). The new PeerMaker software can be used to setup, reconfigure, or
delete ATM Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) in near real time at MCI WorldCom's
Metropolitan Area Exchange (MAE) sites in Vienna, Virginia; Dallas, Texas;
and San Jose, California.
6. Legal and Social Issues of Internet/IS
6.1. Legal Issues (Merges, DOJ news, Crypto, Tax)
A new Swedish law which makes most of the Internet illegal in Sweden
took effect yesterday. The law is named personal information handling law.
It makes much of the publication of information about individual persons
on the Internet illegal, such as criticism of named persons, publication
of lists of references in scientific papers or the sending of e-mail messages
outside of Europe.
More about the new law at URL http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/personal-register-law.html
A significant study entitled "Eliminating Legal and Policy Barriers
to Interoperable Government Systems" was undertaken by the U.S. Intergovernmental
Enterprise Panel (IEP). The study was conducted by David Landsbergen and
George Wolken of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, among others.
The report of study recommendations is available at http://iep.fedworld.gov/library/elapbigs/phase2.html
New 3rd edition of Oppenheim's "Legal & Regulatory Environment for Electronic Information" to be published in January 1999, it has been completely updated and revised and features significant new material covering domain names, recent cases, the EU Directives on copyright and databases, ISP liability and site licensing.
Ottawa OECD Ministerial Conference Agenda October 7-9, 1998
http://www.ottawaoecdconference.org/english/announcements/res_center.html
The International Chamber of Commerce presented A Global Action Plan
for business with Governments towards Electronic Commerce at their meeting
in Ottawa. The documents introduce conception of Rules-based commerce in
a dynamic electronic environment.
The full document and covering letter is available by request from
the EEMA office. A short extract is available at http://www.nectar.org/update/stories/1998110402.htm
CANADA ANNOUNCES CRYPTOGRAPHY POLICY
The Canadian government announced its new policy on cryptography in
September 1998 as part of its strategy to make Canada a world leader in
e-commerce by 2000. The policy aims to develop e-commerce opportunities,
to establish Canada as a leading exporter of cryptography technology, and
to provide appropriate legislation to protect public safety. The new legislation
means that not only can Canadian companies freely export cryptography software
around the world but that there is no requirement to furnish the government
with a key to encryption codes on software sold in the domestic market.
For more informationsee http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15362.html.
http://www.ic.gc.ca
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15362.html
IAB STATEMENT ON "PRIVATE DOORBELL" ENCRYPTION
(Statement issued by the IAB on 15 October 1998. For information send
e-mail to iab@ietf.org or see http://www.ietf.org)
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) are concerned by published descriptions of the "private doorbell" approach to resolving the encryption controversy. Essentially, the private doorbell requires that encryption and decryption be done at a gateway, rather than at an end system; see http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/govtaff/policy/paper/paper_index.html for one description. This is in conflict with the "end-to-end" principle, a fundamental tenet of the Internet architecture. While there is certainly a place for gateway-based encryption in some circumstances, to require it in all places (and to exclude end-to-end encryption) would warp the protocol structure. Furthermore, it offers a significantly lower level of security, in that there is no longer protection against inside attacks.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15037.html
The federal government Wednesday relaxed its controversial regulations
strictly limiting the export of strong data-scrambling technologies.
http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=31561
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 96 to 2 to approve a Internet Tax
Freedom Act "ITFA" (S.442) bill that places a prohibition on taxes of Internet
access and goods bought online.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/15486.html
Online video and music broadcasters are beginning to argue that the
Web's original killer app -- unfettered hyperlinking -- is hurting their
business.
"Linking without permission is stealing. Period, end of story," asserted
Mark Cuban, CEO of broadcast.com, one of the biggest online broadcasters.
"It's like tapping your neighbor's cable box."
Diamond's MP3 Player Rio to Roll The record industry's challenge to halt distribution of a portable player for MP3 music files downloaded from the Internet failed in federal district court in Los Angeles. Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. (DIMD) said it expects to ship the $200 player, named Rio, next month.
http://www.isoc.org/internet/issues/copyright.shtml
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27440,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh
The House today passed legislation to impose new safeguards for software,
music, and written works on the Net, and to outlaw technologies that can
crack copyright protection devices.
6.3. Spam and Content Abuse problems
The same day as the signing, a California superior court judge threw
out a lawsuit calling for mandatory filters on library computers usedto
surf the Internet, basing the decision on a remaining portion of the discredited
Communications Decency Act which says an access provider is not responsible
for the content downloaded by third parties. Theattorney who filed the
suit said that the case will not end here.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,27818,00.html?dd.ne.tx.wr
http://www.ora.com/catalog/spam
New Oreily’s book "Stopping Spam: Stamping Out Unwanted Email and News
Postings" by Alan Schwartz and Simson Garfinkel (O'Reilly, $19.95), is
a recipe book for those who like their spam burned, toasted, nuked.
http://www.isoc.org/internet/issues/spamming/
ISOC page against spam.
7. Conferences, Workshops, Meetings
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 European Deployment Conference, to
be held at the Acropolis Convention Centre, Nice, France on 7th - 9th December
1998.
This conference will focus on the strategic technical information you
need to successfully deploy Microsoft Windows 2000 in your IT environment.
Windows 2000 is the new name for the next release of the Windows NT®
line of Operating Systems - formerly known as Windows NT 5.0.
For further information see Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/europe/win2000/
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium '99 (NDSS) 3 - 5 February, 1999, San Diego, USA.
3rd IEEE Metadata Conference 1999.04.6-7, Bethesda Maryland.txt
http://www.llnl.gov/liv_comp/metadata/md99/md99.html
Fourth International Web Caching Workshop. San Diego, California. March
31-April 2, 1999.
http://www.ircache.net/Cache/Workshop99/
Sixth ICECS: The IEEE CAS Society Region-8 Conference.
The Sixth IEEE International Conference On Electronics, Circuits And
Systems (ICECS '99). September 5 - 8, 1999. Pafos, CYPRUS
http://www.vlsi.ee.upatras.gr/~icecs99/