SERENATE Marko Bonač ARNES, Slovenia

Topics  What is SERENATE about ?  What are the strategic questions?  What should be the message from CEENet

What is SERENATE about?

What is SERENATE ?  SERENATE is a strategic study aiming to provide input on how European research and educational networking should evolve over the next years  SERENATE = Study into European Research and Education Networking as Targeted by eEurope  Funded as an EC project - FP5  Runs from 1 May 2002 until 30 July 2003  Comprises 14 areas of work, of which some workshops, some studies and some report writing

Who are the partners?  Academia Europaea  Centre for Tele-informatics (CTI), Technical University of Denmark  DANTE  European Science Foundation  TERENA (coordinating partner)  Considerable involvement from the NRENs, industry and users is expected.

Steering Committee Williams-CERN, TERENA president Bonac-ARNES Butterworth-AE Davies-DANTE Jaume- RENATER Liello-chair NREN Consortium Mayer-ESF Skouby-CTI Vietsch-TERENA

Workshops  Initial workshop (17-18 Sept 2002 in Brussels)  Operators’ views on infrastructure status and evolution (8 Nov 2002)  User needs and priorities ( Jan 2003 in Montpellier)  Possible NREN models for the future (5 Feb 2002)  Final workshop (June 2003)

Reports  A report will be generated after each workshop PLUS  Deployment and trends in transport and infrastructure market (~Jan 2003)  Regulatory situation, especially for alternative approaches (~Jan 2003)  Equipment trends (~Feb 2003)  Telecoms market and infrastr. deployment forecast (~April 2003)  Possible infrastructure scenarios (~April 2003)  Overall strategic plan – input to Final Workshop (~May/June 2003)

Addresses   mail:

What are (some of ) the strategic questions ?

Key Questions - Geography  How to provide equal opportunities for researchers everywhere in Europe  How to provide connectivity to the research and education community in other parts of the world

Equal opportunity for researchers in Europe  Where are the problems/less opportunities  in EU accession states  in poorer EU countries  in remote and less favoured regions/less developed parts of any country  Should we aim at equal opportunities everywhere (irrespective of costs)?  Are the main problems in local, national or international connectivity?  Are there enough computers?  Is there any lack of infrastructure (optical fibre)?  Are high tariffs of telecommunication infrastructure linked to slower liberalisation of telecommunication markets in certain parts of Europe?

Equal opportunity for researchers in Europe Equal opportunity for researchers in Europe  Do problems of computer/networking expertise exist ?  Do Universities see computer networking as an essential infrastructure for high quality research and a necessary condition for better education ?  Should less developed parts of Europe get more EC support ?  Should NRENs in richer countries directly or indirectly subsidise poorer NRENs ?  What is the minimum for any NREN (now, in the future) ?  Could structural funds and European Investment Bank support be useful ?

Better connectivity to R&E community in other parts of the world  Connectivity between Europe and US is relatively good. What about connectivity to  Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, China and other Asian countries  South American countries and Africa.  Has European research community any priorities for establishing better connectivity...  to non-accession states in Central and Easter Europe and those bordering the Mediterranean ?  to those countries where a lot of research is going on (Russia, India, China...? ) ?  To what extend should Europe finance connectivity to other parts of the world?  Should Europe try to export the European model (one NREN per country, one pan-continental network and uniform connectivity) to other parts of the world?

Key Questions - Economics  What are the economic implications of different models for ownership of network facilities (leasing vs. deployment of own facilities)  What will be the main sources of financing of research networks in the future ?  How should user charges (if any) be structured ?  Do the licensing conditions constitute barriers to exploiting new kinds of infrastructure model ?  Are there rules for rights-of-way that constitute barriers ?

Key Questions - Research User Needs  Can we balance support of research (that challenges network) against ordinary internet connectivity  How could educational needs be weighted against research needs ?  Can we exploit very advanced network facilities in the different countries in Europe and in different subject disciplines ?  Which current research is being limited by the present networks ?  Who is considering the use of network speeds much faster than today ?  What effect will this have on the way we currently conduct research ?  Do we expect completely new research disciplines to emerge ?

Key Questions - Specific End-Users  New user communities for NRENs: schools, libraries, hospitals ?  What is the current situation ?  What are the networking requirements of these communities ?  Are the services scalable ?  Opposition from commercial ISPs ?  How should this be funded ?

Key Questions - Technical Evolution  What services do research networks expect to provide in particular in terms of middleware, embedded network intelligence and resource allocation ?  How to address the multi-management domain issue ?  Control of the network moves from the core to the edges - how will that affect the use and the development of the NRENs ?  All Optical Networking: what are the issues, what needs to be tested and what needs to be developed ?

Some of my answers  EC should have the following priorities for supporting international R&E connectivity: - European countries and neighboring countries - Countries where a lot of research is going on  Rich countries benefit most from research results therefore they should be interested in financing international research connectivity  NREN has to have access to the fibre  Economic reasons are forcing NRENs in small countries to enlarge their user communities

What should be the message from CEENet ?

Networking is expensive in small countries

NREN budget par capita 2002 It is dependant on size of the country and not on its GNI per capita (as one would expect) ! NREN budget per capita in 2002 (Terena Compendium) 0,5 EUR/cap 1 EUR/cap More than 1 EUR/cap France Czech Rep. Ireland Germany Estonia Portugal Italy Litva Croatia Spain Latvia Slovenia Denmark The Netherlands Belgium Norway United Kingdom Finland Switzerland

Running an NREN in small country is expensive In a small country it is more expensive (calculated per user) to provide the same level of service.  Relatively more international capacity is needed  Low capacity circuits are relatively more expensive  Circuits of the same capacity are often more expensive  The NREN needs the same effort to introduce a new service

International capacity needed (2001) NREN total int. pop. capacity/ in country capacity mil.pop  Germany  France  UK  Slovenia  Ireland  Switzerland  Luxembourg

Average traffic received from GEANT July 2002 Average received traffic per capita in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Switzerland was at least 6 times greater than in France, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain

Price for international circuit is not a linear function of capacity

Circuits of the same capacity are more expensive in small countries  Telecommunication market is often not yet liberalised  Telecommunication regulator has the same task  In many cases there is only one operator  There is less demand for high capacity circuits

Even TERENA membership contribution is greater burden for small countries NREN fromTERENA contribution countryin EUR/1 mil pop Germany 873 UK Hungary1.756 Estonia2.985 Slovenia4.477 Ireland4.840 Luxembourg

What can be done ?  Enlarge user community (lower cost per user)  Foster a good relationship with Telecom (pay less for the infrastructure)  Foster competition in telecommunication sector (to pay less for the infrastructure)  Get more money from the government/from EC

Other considerations  Most small countries are underdeveloped  In most small countries there is not enough competition in telecommunication sector  Most small countries are far away from the center of Europe But  The development in the last ten years has been faster  It is easier to change things in a small country