TERENA Activities Internet2 Members Meeting, International Task Force 8 October 2007

TERENA Organisation A not-for-profit association of European National Research and Education Networks Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands Membership: 36 National Members (NRENs) 2 International Members (CERN & ESA) 10 Associate Members (DANTE, NORDUnet, equipment vendors & telecoms operators) Main goals: Representing common interests and opinions of membership Knowledge transfer Developing, testing and promoting new technologies Fostering new services

NREN Compendium Compendium has been published annually since 2000. Collection of relevant information about European and some African, Asian and N & S American NRENs (58): Organisational information and legal form Funding and staffing details Number of users/clients, and type of connectivity Internal and external connectivity, capacity of links, technologies, dark fibre availability Traffic data Types of services offered Provides overview of network status in each country. New 2007 edition available on TERENA website, and as published report. http://www.terena.org/activities/compendium/

EARNEST Foresight Study GN2 networking activity to investigate the evolution of European research and education networking over next 5+ years. Seven sub-study areas: Organisational and Governance issues Economic issues (move to dark fibre, and provision of new services) Researchers’ needs (what type of network and services are required?) Other users’ needs (e.g. schools, healthcare, arts & humanities) Technical issues (transmission, control plane & routing, network virtualisation, operations and performance, middleware) Geographic issues (developing measures to quantify digital divide) Campus issues (infrastructure, services, expertise and collaboration) Aims to identify trends, developments and to make recommendations for future research and education networks. All sub-study reports plus final conclusions available shortly. http://www.terena.org/activities/earnest/

TF-Mobility Promotes, develops and tests technologies that allow roaming between networks. Established the eduroam pilot service that permits inter-institutional WLAN roaming. Currently involved in GN2-NA5 activity to develop eduroam into full production service. New activities include: Improving monitoring and measurement of eduroam service. Considering how to facilitate interoperability with other roaming services. Looking at Mobile IP implementations, particularly MIPv6. http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-mobility/

TF-EMC2 Discusses middleware issues and fosters collaboration. Established Secure Certificate Service (SCS). Setup Schema Harmonisation Committee (SCHAC) to develop standard identity schema for higher education inter-institutional data exchange. Currently working on REFEDS (Research and Education Federations) initiative: Investigating technical specifications for authentication and authorisation between identity federations Defining policies and guidelines for peering of federations, starting from common denominators. How to handle overlaps between R&E, government and commercial sectors. Agree “Levels of Assurance”. Identify major projects that can benefit from cross-federation peerings. Organised 1st International REFEDS meeting on 3 September 2007 in Prague. http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-emc2

TF-CSIRT Promotes collaboration and knowledge transfer between European CSIRTs. Includes NREN, ISP, government and commercial CSIRTS. Meets three times per year, to discuss issues of common interest and new approaches. Establish pilot services (e.g. trusted introducer, tracker database) and common standards and procedures). Assist new CSIRTs (e.g. through training and mentoring). Prevent miscommunication between NRENs, the EU, and national governments. Developed TRANSITS training material and runs training courses (with FIRST and ENISA). http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-csirt/

TF-PR (Public Relations) Promotes collaboration in areas of public relations and information dissemination. Aims to improve exchange of information within the European R&E community. Established PeAR news wire – online system for posting news items. Develops and publishes publicity material of common interest. Produces Glossary of Terms, HOWTOs and FAQs. http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-pr/ http://www.terena.org/news/community/ (PeAR)

TF-LCPM (Life Cycle and Portfolio Management) Works to improve service and product delivery amongst NRENs. NRENs must provide services to increasing demanding and critical users. NRENs are facing competition from commercial ISPs, so must continue to distinguish themselves. Compares and analyses NREN service portfolios (e.g. what services are offered)? Compares service level agreements. Shares information and ideas for new services (e.g. Mail Dike). http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-lcpm/

Server Certificate Service (SCS) Established in response to need for SSL server certificates in research and education community. Many NRENs had set-up a CA, but issued certificates not listed as trusted by web browsers (the ‘pop-up’ problem). Purchasing certificates directly from commercial CAs is expensive. TERENA contracted GlobalSign to run dedicated CA for NRENs (and by extension their user communities). Service commenced in 2006, and will run until at least 2010. Enables certificates to be issued for low cost. Currently 14 participating NRENs (acting as RAs), and >10K certificates issued. http://www.terena.org/activities/scs/

TERENA Academic CA Repository (TACAR) A trusted repository for holding verified root CA certificates of TERENA members. Holds certificates directly managed by the member NRENs, belonging to national academic PKIs, or related institutes or projects (e.g. EUGridPMA). Operating since 2003. Accreditation process for collection and updating of certificates in root CA. Certificates made publicly available via secure website, along with policies http://www.terena.org/activities/earnest/

6DISS Project Provided IPv6 training and knowledge transfer in various regions around the world. Utilised operational experience of 6NET and Euro6IX projects. Organised 13 practical training workshops & 2 informational events. Developed extensive IPv6 tutorial material that may be freely used. E-Learning package with Portuguese and Russian subtitles (others can potentially be added) available online and as CD image. IPv6 Deployment Guide available. IPv6 testbed available for training and testing purposes. http://www.6diss.org/

FEDERICA Project New EC-funded project (under FP7 e-Infrastructures). 21 partners, including 11 NRENs, Juniper & Siemens. Aims to develop a European-wide scalable and technology agnostic network infrastructure for disruptive experiments. Testbed will initially comprise dedicated 1 GE circuits between CH, CZ, DE, IT and PL, with ES and GR connecting via existing production circuits using Ethernet over MPLS. Will offer virtualised resources such as routers and circuits using the ‘slice’ paradigm that can support multiple experiments in parallel. A tool-bench will be developed to leverage existing virtualisation and network control mechanisms, and extend these to support multi-domain management and monitoring. Testbed planned to be operational in late-2008, initially offering VLANs supported by L2 MPLS. Plan is to offer usage of facilities to NRENs and other FP7 ‘FIRE’ projects.