Europe ’ s EARNEST recommendations: Innovation, Integration and Deployment 26 th APAN Meetings Queenstown (NZ), 5 August 2008 Karel Vietsch TERENA Secretary General

Slide 2 Foresight studies ›SERENATE ( ) ›Presented at 18 th APAN Meetings / QUESTnet 2004 ›SERENATE website: ›EARNEST ( ) ›EARNEST website: ›next? › ›smaller, update

Slide 3 What is EARNEST? ›EARNEST was a set of strategic studies into the expected evolution of research & education networking in Europe over the next 5-10 years › EARNEST ( ) was funded by the European Union as part of the GN2 (G É ANT2) project ( ) ›EARNEST study was led by TERENA. Other involved organisations: DANTE, European Science Foundation, EUNIS, CRU, RENATER, Archway Computing, JNP

Slide 4 EARNEST publications ›EARNEST Summary Report ›EARNEST Report on Technical Issues › EARNEST Report on Researchers ’ Requirements ›EARNEST Report on the Requirements of Users in Schools, the Healthcare Sector and the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences ›EARNEST Report on Campus Issues ›EARNEST Report on Organisation and Governance Issues ›EARNEST Report on Geographic Issues ›EARNEST Report on Economic Issues ›EARNEST Report on Regulatory Issues

Slide 5 SERENATE and beyond ›SERENATE predicted: ›paradigm shift: ›‘ self-owned ’ networks ›hybrid IP-optical G É ANT2 dark fibre cloud

Slide 6 SERENATE and beyond ›SERENATE said: ›roaming users ›need for authentication and authorisation services ›campus bottleneck ›digital divide issues ›attention needed from governments and European Parliament ›EARNEST found: › eduroam ® ›various European AAI initiatives ›problem appears to have been largely solved ›still there and still a big problem ›research networking higher on European political agenda

Slide 7 Past and current impact on research ›ESF conducted large-scale survey

Slide 8 Impact of network-related services on research

Slide 9 Challenges for the next 5-10 years ›Historically, leaders of research networking in Europe faced two major challenges: ›economic issues ›fast developments in technologies ›Challenges for the next 5-10 years: ›technical challenges ›wider deployment of services ›serving users ›integration ›economic challenges ›digital and geographic divides

Slide 10 Technical challenges ›EARNEST has conducted a detailed and broad study of technical developments, focusing on four main areas of investigation: ›transmission technologies ›control-plane technologies ›operation and performance issues ›middleware ›The EARNEST study of technical issues will be presented tomorrow morning by Kevin Meynell (TERENA) in the APAN Backbone Committee meeting

Slide 11 Wider deployment of services ›Services that are available in principle, are often not deployed in practice or not used to the extent that one would expect Use of videoconferencing

Slide 12 Wider deployment of services ›Sometimes a service is available, but potential users do not know about it ›Sometimes a service is available, but it is badly supported (lack of staff, lack of skills) ›Sometimes a service is not offered, because campus networkers know that they will not be able to cope with the demand › Sometimes a service cannot be offered, because the network infrastructure is incorrectly configured (sometimes for questionable reasons of ‘ security ’ ) Therefore we need: ›adequately staffed and trained IT service support teams ›training and documentation for end-users ›more attention for service roll-out from university management ›……..

Slide 13 Serving users ›Research networking organisations are primarily technology-driven, and are still in the process of becoming more demand-driven and user-oriented ›When the community becomes more user-oriented, the emphasis shifts to the campus networkers ›Provide knowledge transfer from national level to local level: ›documentation ›training courses ›national meetings where campus networkers can learn from each other › Pay special attention to users who are ‘ different ’ ›Realise that nowadays innovation also happens outside the research networking world, and do not ignore new services coming from outside

Slide 14 Integration ›When best-efforts IP connectivity was the only service, collaboration between campus networkers and national networkers could be minimal ›This is no longer sufficient in a world of end-to-end services and a range of end-user services ›Three areas of coordination and collaboration between national and local networkers are particularly important: ›security policy ›middleboxes cause problems ›enhancement of network performance ›PERTs ›Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures ›harmonisation of AAI standards

Slide 15 Economic challenges ›leased-capacity connectivity remains expensive if the number of potential suppliers is small G É ANT procurement (2001) G É ANT2 procurement (2005)

Slide 16 Economic challenges › Where dark fibre is available, G É ANT2 is much cheaper ›Where access to fibre is not available or where required capacities are so small (< 2.5 Gb/s) that investment in DWDM equipment is not justifiable, one has to lease capacity from telecommunications operators ›Relatively, SDH connections at speeds of less than 2.5 Gb/s are much more expensive than wavelengths (2.5 and 10 Gb/s) G É ANT2

Slide 17 Economic challenges / geographic divide ›Obtaining dark fibre is not the end of the economic challenges ›In optical networks, costs are intrinsically distance-dependent: longer routes bring higher costs ›As a consequence, countries at the edge of Europe are at a disadvantage

Slide 18 Geographic divide ›Countries at the edge of Europe are at a disadvantage: › they are “ at the end of the line ”

Slide 19 Geographic divide ›Countries at the edge of Europe are at a disadvantage: › they are “ at the end of the line ” ›not only are countries in the centre closer to the centre, but they are also closer to neighbouring countries

Slide 20 Geographic divide ›Countries at the edge of Europe are at a disadvantage: › they are “ at the end of the line ” ›not only are countries in the centre closer to the centre, but they are also closer to neighbouring countries ›Population, and hence economic activity and research & education, and hence traffic, is concentrated in the centre of Europe

Slide 21 EARNEST recommends … ›Innovation ›Integration ›Deployment

Slide 22 More information: ›EARNEST website › ›EARNEST reports › › Printed copies of the reports are available from the TERENA Secretariat ( € 15 + shipping costs) Thank you for your attention!