European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Number 37 April 1999 www.ercim.org FRONT PAGE

he last 15 years saw the development of the Internet, and more generally of data services. I usually try to explain this development by quoting Ttwo strong forces, Moore’s law and Metcalfe’s law. As predicted by Moore’s law, the power of microprocessors has been regularly doubling about every 18 months for the past 25 years, the trend continues, computers are Christian Huitema, becoming much more powerful and affordable, and will pervade many more chief scientist at the places. The networking effect often referred to as Metcalfe's law states that the Telcordia (former value of a computer network grows as the square of the number of connected Bellcore) Internet elements. This law resonates with one of the principles of the Internet, the trend Ar c h i t e c t u r e to connect all computers on earth to a single network, and may well largely Research Laboratory, head of the explain the success of the Net. In any case, we observe that data transmission already RODEO research team at INRIA accounts for more volume than voice transmission, and grows much faster. from 1986 to 1996: “Next Generation Networks” Today’s telecommunication network have been designed to transmit voice, with data as an add-on service. But, at the current growth rate, in a few years, voice will only SPECIAL: represent a small fraction of the global traffic. It will then not make sense to maintain a voice network, and we will see an inversion of the current situation: voice will run as an application within network primarily designed for data. Networking Technologies 8 Next Generation Networks represent the convergence of multiple independent networks including voice, video and data into a single, unified, broadband network. C O N T E N T S The broadband network is built using optical fibers, waveband digital multiplexing, Joint ERCIM Actions 2 ATM switches or IP routers. Cable modems or digital subscriber loops can provide high speed access to home. Voice gateways can be integrated in these modems. They The European Scene: provide a classic telephony interface to the residential user, but send the voice signals The Social Impact as packet over the data infrastructure. Network-based servers, the Call Agents, manage of Networking Technologies 8 the establishment of phone calls. Other servers will manage the gateways to the Special Theme: existing phone network, including the translation between ATM or IP call set-up and Networking Technologies 12 the native signalling procedures of the phone network (SS7).Everything is designed Research and Development 38 to be ‘transparent’, at least in the first phase: the users will keep the same telephone handset, dial the same numbers, benefit from the same services such as call waiting Technology Transfer 43 or caller identification. There are already several such networks being planned, or Events 50 built, in the United States and in Canada. In Brief 51 The deployment is motivated both by short term economies and by long term strategies. First, next generation networks can be deployed for a fraction of the cost of classic ERCIM will networks built of telephony switches and digital multiplexes. New entrants such as celebrate its 10th Level3 Communications or Qwest can thus compete without having to replicate the anniversary with huge investments of the existing carriers. But, more important, the next generation a two days event networks are designed for the future. They will not only enable telephony and high speed access to the Web, e-mail and electronic commerce, but they will allow a next in Amsterdam, generation of applications. 4-5 November 1999. See My team at Bellcore, now Telcordia Technologies, has been working on the announcement architecture of these new networks, designing for example the ‘Media Gateway on page 6. Control Protocol’ that will be used by the Call Agents. But this is only the beginning of a new adventure. There are many new services that the ERCIM laboratories will Next Issue: help us invent! Christian Huitema Financial Mathematics JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS

The centralised The ERCIM Home Page. Technical Reference Digital Library goes On-line

by Antonella Andreoni, Carlo Carlesi and Pasquale Pagano

One of the declared aims of ERCIM is to advance European research and development in the areas of information technology and applied mathematics. It is thus extremely important that results of the R&D activities carried out at the ERCIM member institutions can be made immediately available to the interested scientific community in an easily accessible form. For this reason, ERCIM has set up a digital library service for the technical reports and other similar reference material European IT scientific community. These information seekers and information produced by its scientists: the ERCIM include the adoption of a common providers by offering two main options: Technical Reference Digital Library metadata description standard, the search/browse any collection; (ETRDL). An experimental service introduction of common classification submit/withdraw a document to/from a was first set up in 1998 – it is now schemes and methods to manage them, local collection. From the local home publicly available. the implementation of interfaces for pages, the search and browse functions languages other than English. An author can be activated over the entire NCSTRL The ERCIM Technical Reference Digital submission form has been included to collection, over the ERCIM collection, Library (ETRDL) is a collaborative facilitate the insertion of new documents or over the collection(s) of the local activity in which eight organisations by the users themselves. institution. In each case, the user is not (CNR, CWI, GMD, INRIA, SICS, only accessing a different collection (or INESC, SZTAKI, FORTH ) currently ETRDL is a distributed collection, sub-collection), but is provided with a participate. It is sponsored jointly by consisting of the set of the local different perspective on the information, ERCIM, by the DELOS Working Group collections. These are maintained on the depending on the functions that have (ESPRIT LTR No. 21057), and by the local servers of each partner institution. been implemented at that particular level. participating institutions. The objectives This has comported the implementation When searching on the ERCIM or the of the digital library service were outlined of two levels of Home Pages. A local collections, the user can switch in Ercim News, No.33, April 1998. We centralised access point has been between user interfaces in English or are happy to announce here that, after a provided to the system through the his/own language. On-line helps in both one-year period of testing and refining DELOS Web site, whereas a local home languages are available. the first prototype, ETRDL is now page is installed on each local server. The publicly accessible at user who accesses the system through the Adapting an existing system to meet new ht t p : / / w w w . i e i . p i . c n r . i t / D E L O S / E T R D L . centralised Home page is directed to requirements is rarely easy. We had to select one of the local servers in order to address a number of problems when The service runs on an infrastructure search the ERCIM DL collection. implementing the ETRDL. These based on the DIENST system (Version Depending on the local server selected, included the implementation of a 4.1.9) developed by the US Networked he/she is also given a choice of language powerful search mechanism which Computer Science Technical Reference as most local servers will maintain allows the user to perform a simple or a Library (NCSTRL) Consortium, which interfaces in English and in the local fielded search throughout the entire has been extended by the addition of new language. library or on selected collections. Queries functionalities to meet the needs of the The Local Home Page interface caters can include terms from controlled simultaneously for two user classes: vocabularies (ACM and MSC

2 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS

ETRDL Search form. EU-China High Performance Computing and Networking Initiative

by Eckart Bierdümpel and Thierry Priol

Following a request by the European Commission, ERCIM has set up an ‘EU-China High Performance Computing and Networking (HPCN) Initiative’ to foster business, industrial and technological co-operation between European and Chinese operators in this high-tech sector. HPCN is a crucial technology of strategic importance for European industrial and scientific competitiveness. It has the potential for great and far-reaching impact on classification schemes) and free please, try out the system, and send us productivity, industrial keywords. Constraints can be imposed your comments. competitiveness, environmental on the type, date or language of the management and many other aspects documents to be searched. For more information on the ETRDL of economy and society. The use of project and documentation on the system, HPCN systems for commercial ETRDL is now active. The next step will see http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/ applications is expected to be taken up be to build up the local collections. All EDL/edl.htm vigorously in the second half of the new technical documentation produced ■ decade, both in Europe and in by the eight ERCIM institutions Please contact: emerging economies, such as China. mentioned above (but hopefully others Stefania Biagioni – IEI-CNR will join the activity soon) should be ETRDL Co-ordinator The first meeting of a Chinese Delegation inserted in the library. Institutions may Tel: +39 50 593481 with European experts and officials from E-mail: [email protected] also consider including their most the European Commission was held in important past technical reports (eg from Brussels. The meeting was followed by 1990 on); this implies classifying them a familiarisation tour for the Chinese in according to the ETRDL rules. Europe, organised by ERCIM and included visits at companies in Belgium, In the mean-time, we are working on the France, Germany, England and Italy. development of the next version of the Two European workshops were system (which will include modules to organised by ERCIM in Pisa and handle multilingual issues such as Abingdon. There the organisers mechanisms for the correct search and presented the initiative, while the Chinese visualization of all character sets, the partners gave an overview on HPCN maintenance of separate and linked activities and the potential of IT in indexes to permit the definition of the general in China. As an example, the search language, semi-automatic experience of setting up a high-tech joint procedures to assist authors in document venture between a European and a classication, etc.). Chinese partner was presented, followed by a lively discussion on the obstacles In this stage, the feed-back we receive and problems. Also the chances of setting from users will be very important. So

3 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS

up such a joint venture and the initiative that they found the TTN scheme very participants said that they would in general was discussed. interesting. They were missing this kind recommend to the government to set up of action in the part they learned from a similar scheme in China. The Chinese It was concluded that considerable American and Japanese counterparts. At participants also showed interest in interest was shown by the participating that time, China had established several business contacts with the European organisations in a co-operation with HPC centres which mainly host HPCN companies represented at the meeting. Chinese companies and institutions. Furthermore there was a noticeable interest by other companies who couldn’t make it to the meetings. As a result of the European workshops, 75 companies registered as potentially interested in the initiative.

While ERCIM was waiting for the Chinese to organise a similar workshop in China, a preliminary report was released on the situation of HPCN in China. The report was based on the information gathered from Chinese web sites and newsletters; from people who visited China or already had experience in co-operations with Chinese institutions During the workshop in Beijing. and also with some input from China itself. systems neglecting information These companies were also quite The Chinese workshop was held in dissemination and technology transfer. satisfied with the feedback they got from Beijing in October 1998. It started with Therefore they were interested in setting the Chinese hosts. presentations of the participating up a remote node of the European TTN European companies, the Technology in China. In addition to the European In conclusion, the 4 goals of this initiative Transfer Network (TTN), a European TTN nodes, they would like to offer were mostly fulfilled: • raising the awareness of the available technology and expertise for companies with potential interest in HPCN in China and in Europe • informing the business community in this field about the market opportunities in China and Europe • offering a business forum, where direct contacts between potential partners Discussions between Chinese participants and representatives of European companies during the workshop in Beijing. from Europe and China can be made • trying to establish more co-operation between European and Chinese initiative for technology transfer in the access to HPCN platforms to Chinese companies. HPCN sector funded by the Esprit end-users. Such platforms should be ■ Programme of the European Union, and created from Chinese hardware with Please contact: the ten selected Chinese institutions. demonstration versions of European Eckart Bierdümpel – GMD After the presentations, the Chinese software including documentation and Tel: +49 2241 14 2256 participants could discuss issues directly training. Such a node could serve as a E-mail: [email protected] with the European representatives. An European window in China to promote Thierry Priol – INRIA immediate positive result from this European technology and know-how plus Tel: :+33 2 99 84 72 10 initiative was the contact established enhanced co-operation between China E-mail: [email protected] between different companies and and Europe. Another goal of this Chinese institutions from Europe and China. TTN node could be the summarised translation of documents from the The Chinese side stated that the European TTN in Chinese for workshop was a useful experience and dissemination in China. So the Chinese

4 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS

Conferences Workshops and Summer Schools CALL FOR CANDIDATES ER C I M sponsors up to six workshops or Cor Baayen and Workshops summer schools under the following sponsored conditions: Award 1999 • to be held at an ERCIM site The Cor Baayen Award was created • to have some ERCIM partners having by ERCIM in 1995 to honour the first ERCIM named individuals involved in the President. Any young researcher from organisation committee ERCIM sponsors up to five high one of the fourteen ‘ERCIM countries’ quality internationally recognised • participation from at least 2 non- (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, conferences and six workshops or ERCIM institutes on the Organising France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, summer schools per year.The funding Committee underwriting by one Italy, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, for both types of events is in the order ERCIM partner Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK) can of 2000¤. In 1999, the bids of two be nominated. The award consists of conferences and three workshops were The additional funding provided by 5000¤ together with an award accepted. ERCIM should be used to enhance the certificate. The selected fellow will be workshop by, for example, increasing the invited to the ERCIM meetings in Sponsorship guidelines for each category set of external speakers supported. This autumn. of events: is not seen as a revenue gaining exercise for ERCIM so that, in case such events Rules for nomination Conferences generated profits, the profit would remain • Nominations for each country are made with the external organisation. by the corresponding ERCIM Executive ERCIM invites sponsorship proposals Publication of the proceedings is left to Committee member. Those who wish from established conferences with the organising committee but ERCIM that a particular candidate is nominated international reputation with substantive would be prepared to help if appropriate. should therefore contact the ERCIM overlap between the conference topic and Executive Committee member for their ERCIM areas of activity. Typical cases Events sponsored in 1999 country (list with contacts for each would include annual conferences in country at: http://www.ercim.org/ Computer Science with international Conferences: contacts/execom/execom.html). Programme Committees, substantial • ICALP ’99, Prague, 11-15 July 1999 • Nominees must have carried out their international participation, and • SOFSEM ’99, Milovy, Czech work in one of the fourteen ‘ERCIM proceedings published with established Republic, 27 November - countries’. international scientific publishers. 4 December 1999 • On the date of the nomination, Conferences may receive funding under nominees must have been awarded their the following conditions: Workshops and Summer Schools: PhD (or equivalent) in the last two years. • the ERCIM sponshorship has to be • Fourth International Workshop on • Each institute is allowed to nominate acknowledged in all printed PR material Formal Methods for Industrial up to two persons from its country. • ERCIM information and promotion Critical Systems, Trento, Italy, • A person can only be nominated once materials has to be distributed to the 11-12 July 1999. • The selection of the Cor Baayen Fellow conference participants as a part of the • Summer School on Extended is the responsibility of the ERCIM participant’s conference package Database Technology, La Baule, Executive Committee. • an ERCIM information booth has to be France, 16-21 May 1999 Previous Cor Baayen Award winners: arranged at the conference location • IWAN ’99 - First International • conference organisers to provide free Workshop on Active Networks, • 1995: Christer Samuelsson (SICS) attendance to one ERCIM Berlin, Germany, 30 June-2 July 1999 • 1996: Dimitri Papadias (GMD) representative if ERCIM sends a (see announcement on page 50). • 1997: Kristina Höök (SICS) ■ representative to be present at the • 1998: Matthias Grossglauer (INRIA) information booth Please contact: • the conference organisers have to ERCIMOffice See also : http://www.ercim.org/activity/ include the ERCIM logo with a link to Tel: +33 1 3963 5040 cor-baayen.html the ERCIM web site at the conference E-mail: [email protected] ■ home page. Please contact: Frans Snijders – CWI Tel: +31 20 592 4171 E-mail: [email protected]

5 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION design for all principle in the field of • 10 October 1999: deadline for 5th ERCIM Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction, and electronic submission of camera-ready involves the development of user papers User Interfaces for All interfaces to interactive applications and telematic services, which provide For more information, see: Dagstuhl, Germany, universal access and quality in use to ht t p : / / z e u s . g m d . d e / 5 - U I 4 A L L - W o r k s h o p / 28 November - 1 December 1999 potentially all users. This user population call.html includes people with different cultural, or The 5th ERCIM Workshop on ‘User educational, training and employment ht t p : / / w w w . i c s . f o r t h . g r / e r c i m - w g - u i 4 a l l / Interfaces for All’ builds upon the results background, novice and experienced index.html. of the four previous Workshops held at computer users, the very young and the ■ Heraklion, Greece, 30-31 October 1995; elderly, and people with different types Please contact: Prague, Czech Republic, 7-8 November of disabilities, in various interaction 1996; Obernai, France, 3-4 November Constantine Stephanidis – ICS-FORTH contexts and scenarios of use. Chair, ERCIM Working Group "User 1997; and Stockholm, Sweden 19-21 Interfaces for All" October 1998. The emphasis of this Important Dates Tel: +30 81 391741 year's Workshop, to be held at Dagstuhl, Fax: +30 81 391740 Germany, 28 November - 1 December E-mail: [email protected] • 30 June 1999: deadline for electronic 1999 (local organisers Prof. Alfred Kobsa Michael Pieper – GMD-FIT submission of all papers and Dr Michael Pieper), is on theories, Local Organiser of the Workshop • 15 August 1999: conditional Tel: +49 2241 14 2018 methodologies, techniques and tools Fax: +49 2241 14 2167 which contribute to the development of notification of acceptance by e-mail for Email: [email protected] User-Tailored Information Environments. all papers (confirmation will be given upon registration) The vision of User Interfaces for All • 25 August 1999: deadline for advocates the proactive realisation of the registration

reliable than a washing machine?’, ‘Why Framework ERCIM 10th Programs don’t work’, ‘Alternatives to traditional scientific output metrics’, ‘Are European CS-curricula too theoretical?’ Anniversary Note that this is not an exhaustive list but just an indication. The presented ideas should be provocative and express Event opinions of individuals, not necessarily shared by their home institutes. ERCIM scientists interested to contribute to this Amsterdam, 4-5 November 1999 event are invited to contact their Executive Committee representative. ERCIM will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a two days event in Amsterdam, 4-5 November 1999. The first day ERCIM – leveraging European R&D for Business will be an internal event for ERCIM-member personnel and Society, Amsterdam, Friday 5 November 1999 only, while the second day will be dedicated to Information Technolgy users in industry. With the co-operation of world renowned European scientists and industry leaders, the November 5 event aims ERCIM – a virtual laboratory for IT research in at taking stock of information technology, its advancement Europe, Amsterdam, Thursday 4 November 1999 and its applications in business and society. Leaders from the fields of ICT, manufacturing, and information content Under this slogan scientists of the ERCIM institutes will be will give their vision of the future of European R&D. The given the opportunity to present their ideas on matters that event will be concluded with a panel discussion. Besides are closely related to IT research. It is not research itself that the management of ERCIM’s R&D members, attendance should be targeted with these presentations but rather the will consist of managers from industry, governmental issues that come up on a meta-level. To give some examples authorities and European bodies. of the topics that might be tackled, we mention: ‘The future of traditional scientific journals in the Internet Age ‘Should Please contact: Computer Science and Mathematics be kept separate?’, ‘Is ERCIM office freeware (cooperative development of software) a viable Tel +33 1 3963 5303 4 5 alternative to the traditional model?’, ‘Why is software less E-mail: [email protected]

6 THE EUROPEAN SCENE

The Social Impact of Networking Technologies by Truls Gjestland

New information and communication technologies provide addressed in many countries, and several research projects new ways of acquiring information, new ways of conducting have been launched to study the social impact of ICT. It is business and new ways of interacting with people and also a growing trend to stress the slogan: design for organizations. The technology is thus including, as it offers everybody, so that the concept is more than a dinner speech more people a possibility to play an active role in the item, but has become a reality, and a requirement in many society. However, this technology is also potentially new research projects: If feasible any new product or dangerous, as it may be excluding. Our society may be service should be available for as many as possible divided in those who have access and can use the new regardless of for instance personal handicaps. technology, and those who cannnot. These aspects are being

expertise established and to use parallel gain experience with how telework may Organising Wor k models for organising the projects. be used as a better way to organise jobs for some groups. The project, which is as Telework – The first project will gain experience of in its initial phase, will be organised in using telework in rehabilitation of close collaboration with the working New Possibilities disabled people. The plan is to set up a market authorities. ‘telework room’ in a rehabilitation ■ also to Disabled hospital. The project will find out which Please contact: activities and to which extent patients Eystein Fossum – Semco AS People? can benefit from a telework-like Tel: +47 67 10 19 61 situation, how to organise the E-mail: [email protected] by Eystein Fossum collaboration between the patients employer and the hospital and how to The Research Council of Norway has “transfer” the telework situation to other set up a research programme to institutions or the patients’ own home The Seniornett demonstrate how information after the hospital period. The present networks can be used in the develop- project is restricted to patients with motor Project ment of Norway as an information handicap, which have been employed in society. The programme supports the a job where they have used dp-systems building of networks between by Sidsel Bjørneby before they became disabled. These industrial and governmental actors in restrictions are chosen to limit the scope common value chains in such a way The SENIORNETTproject was about of the project. In the long term it is our that new knowledge about branches, user aspects of Internet that are hope to transfer the experiences from the services, processes and products is success criteria or create problems in project patients with other handicaps and gained. In collaboration with relation to human factors aspects of organizations in different business with other job background. elderly people. The project ran from areas there are set up several projects 20 October till 31 December 1998 and to demonstrate the possibilities. The second project will focus on how was carried out by Human Factors telework can give new job possibilities Solutions in Oslo, Norway for the One of the projects or group of projects, to people with mental or physical organisation Seniornett Norge. The in this programme has been the telework handicap. There are many reasons for users involved in the research were and telecommuting project. Until now which handicapped people often have job elderly Internet users at a library in the main goal of this has been to develop problems. Some handicaps make it very Oslo. telework as a good way of organising laborious for the person to get to an office work in the Norwegian society. every day, and therefore a full time job The research was done as a pilot for a may be impossible in the long run. Other main project in year 1999 and 2000, During this project an idea came up to try persons may have some mental handicap where user interface will be developed out how telework could help organising as for example not being able to perform as an iterative process, and where parallel work in a good way for disabled and a job in common working environment research will identify effects on the handicapped people. Two separate with others. These are only two examples communication patterns of elderly people projects now follow up this idea. These of handicaps that may be obstacles for on the Internet. projects are co-ordinated with the main getting into the work market and where telework project. The reason for this is to it might be that telework can be a part of The rapidly growing number of elderly get the benefit from using the telework a solution. The project will try out and people, and the interest they show in

7 THE EUROPEAN SCENE

using the Internet is the background for that requires specific adaptations to the The research is planned to be carried out starting the organisation Seniornett web sites designed for them. These by Human Factors Solutions, in Norge in 1997, with the aim of increasing aspects need to be taken into account cooperation with elderly users of Internet, the participation of elderly people in the when developing web sites accessible to the Faculty of Psychology at the information society. After some user elderly people. University of Oslo, The Norwegian trials the organisation wanted to create research centre NOVA and the potential their own gateway to world wide web The overall experience and attitude of European partners. through a web site where elderly people elderly people to the Internet is positive. ■ could feel more confident than when They enjoy being able to take part in Please contact: entering regular web sites. Human modern aspects of life, and to have the Sidsel Bjørneby – Human Factors Factors Solutions was asked to help them opportunity to collect information and to Solutions with this, and www.seniornett.no was communicate on the Internet and with e- Tel: +47 22 42 18 57 established early in 1998. Contents are mail. They demonstrate a curiosity and E-mail: [email protected] created and links mostly identified by a courage to take the Internet into use group of 18 active, resourceful elderly which far extends the expectations of Internet users, who are divided into five society at large. groups according to topics. The Role of the Contact with Senior Web Sites for The aims of project: Nordic and EU Co-operation Internet Society • Identification of aspects of Internet as a baseline for developing interfaces and Positive contact is established with senior by Klaus Birkenbihl contents which are adapted to the web sites in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, functional needs of elderly people. the Netherlands and Italy. There is a Growth rates of more than 100% per Norwegian group of elderly in Spain that annum since 15 years. Though: Who • Identification of types of networks are interested in contact/ co-operation. does take care of the Internet? In 1992, where elderly can and want to communicate on the Internet. a group around the Internet inventor As a result of the contact with organisations Vint Cerf established the Internet • Identification on relevant web for handicapped people, it was agreed Society (ISOC). In an environment information on Internet interface for that it is possible with synergy effects on increasingly influenced by market and elderly and disabled users. many points of interface design, but that competition, ISOC secures the • Start the design of a web site that can the actual sites are better kept separate. conditions for the continuance and be a good example of web sites adapted cohesion of the Internet. Since 1995, to the functional problems of elderly Future activities the Deutsche Interessengemeinschaft people. Internet (DIGI e.V.), which was also A main project is planned as a result of established in 1992, has been a Methods: this little project, in order to achieve the German section of ISOC. • Structured discussions with elderly aims of creating user interface and Internet users about their opinions and contents adapted to elderly Internet users. For the normal users, the Internet is experiences. Firstly the project will be started in simply there. They pay the required • Questionnaire to elderly Internet users. Norway, in close cooperation with charges to T-Online, AOL or another • Internet search for relevant web sites elderly Internet users, but the aim is to service provider and hope that the include the work in further research in a provider will guarantee that it works. • Contact with organisations of project under Creating a User Friendly However, the provider - even if it is handicapped people to find potential Information Society within EU’s Fifth called AOL or Telekom - maintains and similarities between their use of Framework Programme. This project will controls only a minor part of what makes Internet as compared to the Internet use include two parallel activities: up the Internet. And this is not only of elderly people • an iterative development process technology. The Internet is an important • Contact Nordic and European web sites part of the infrastructure for the global for elderly people to identify interest in regarding user interfaces of Internet for the elderly information society. The Internet is an common future projects. economic and political factor whose • researching the effects of Internet further development and regulation will communication on elderly people. Identified User Aspects and Attitudes influence the live of everyone decisively. The communication effects will be Age related changes of relevance to Hardly visible in the stir caused by the studied within different groups of elderly Internet are mostly within visual, sensory conflict among the Internet giants (geographically, more and less and cognitive abilities. These are not Microsoft, Netscape, Oracle, IBM, resourceful, within interest areas), identified as handicaps by the users CISCO and others, the Internet Society between generations and between elderly themselves, but rather as normal changes has undertaken the task to shape and that affect their use of the Internet, and people and society.

8 THE EUROPEAN SCENE advance the technical, political and access to the Internet. Further key subjects issues pursuing the further development cultural future of the Internet. The of INET are issues of political regulation of the Internet. Internet Society regards itself as the and social impacts of technology in international organization which furthers addition to technical innovations, new ISOC.DE clearly states its point of view the global cooperation and coordination applications and areas of application. on subjects such as safeguarding the for the Internet, its technologies and DENIC which manages the .de domain, applications. Everyone interested in the The Internet Society clearly gives its the cryptography discussion in Germany, further development of the Internet can members’ view on the cryptography Internet and censorship and structural become a member of the Internet Society. discussion, on the problem of admitted issues of the Internet in Germany. The Conferences and technical and political contents and on the free and secure flow annual conference, Opennet, to be held bodies give ample opportunity to exert of information on the Internet. this year in Bad Honnef from 15-17 influence on international and national November 1999 will give ample level. Individual members who want to Internationalization opportunity for discussions and first-hand participate in shaping the medium’s information. future are equally welcome as companies The statement that the Internet is which use or offer the Internet as modern prirmarily a US undertaking is certainly Representative? technology for their purposes. not completely incorrect. But it is changing. The Internet meanwhile shows With hardly 7000 members worldwide Technology and administration greater growth rates outside the USA and 250 in Germany, ISOC is certainly than within the USA. Within the Internet still in the initial states of its work. The standards for communication in the Society, regional “chapters” give the Therefore, the claim to speak for the Internet are defined in the Internet opportunity to exert influence on the Internet community cannot be backed by Engineering Task Force (IETF). More development on regional level. Many of the number of members. Today, it is than 80 working groups in 8 fields of these groups are still in the process of rather the expertise concentrated in ISOC, work are concerned with specific organization so that their effectiveness the efficient way of agreeing on standards technical subjects. IETF does its work will be visible only in some years. and the absolute independence of any during three big meetings of more than Recently, a number of the European business interests which lend weight to 1500 participants per year and by means chapters formed a group called ISOC- ISOC. But this is changing. More and of all the communication means provided ECC (ISOC European Coordination more companies discover the Internet as by the Internet. Council) to coordinate their activities and an important business sector where to better safeguard their interests towards showing technical and organizational On behalf of ISOC and the Federal the European Union. competence might be an asset. And the Network Council (FNC) of the USA, the intention of these companies to swamp central resources of the Internet, eg DIGI e.V. and ISOC.DE the Internet with proprietary standards is names, addresses and protocol not to be overlooked. The political parameters have been managed by the In Germany, where the Internet has been pressure to curb the Internet through Internet Assigned Numbers Authority poorly organized and hardly accepted till regulation is also increasing. The Internet (IANA) under the direction of Ian Postel, the early 1990’s for different reasons, in Society is therefore confronted with the who tragigcally died last summer. 1992, simultaneously with the Internet urgent task to recruit a solid basis of Currently ISOC is intensively involved Society - the Deutsche Interessengemein- members. This is the only way to attain in restructuring the management of these schaft Internet (DIGI e.V.) was the goal to exert a substantial influence resources within the new organisation established to improve the conditions for on the development of an open Internet. ICANN (Internet Corporation for propagating the Internet in Germany. The Assigned Names and Numbers). establishment of a national Network Links Information Center (DENIC), for Communication managing addresses and names on ISOC: http://www.isoc.org national level, is equally a goal of this ISOC.DE: http://www.isoc.de ISOC carries out its mission to propagate group as the technical and political IETF: http://www.ietf.org and advance the idea of the Internet on discussion about the Internet in Germany INET: http://www.isoc.org/inet98/ various conferences whose biggest - the in particular. DENIC: http://www.denic.de/ INET-Conference - is held alternatingly OPENNET: on different continents in summer. In 1995, DIGI e.V. was recognized by http://www.isoc.de/opennet97/opennet.html Pioneering efforts are put forth by specific ISOC as “German Chapter” of the W3C and ISOC.DE Offices: workshops on these conferences. The Internet Society. Since then, DIGI e.V. http://www.gmd.de/w3c/welcome.html workshop for developing and threshold uses the abbreviation and the Internet ■ countries, for example, contributed domain ISOC.DE e.V. Like the global Please contact: decisively to the fact that there is hardly ISOC, ISOC.DE gives its view on Klaus Birkenbihl – GMD any country in the world not having organizational, technical and political Tel: +49 2241 14 2910 E-mail: [email protected]

9 THE EUROPEAN SCENE

point out that we are all experiencing handed back to the consumer. This Introducing these problems to some degree; activity approach has two facets: Intermodality limitations (disabilities) simply • allowing compensation for functional exacerbate this. impairments • reducing the cognitive load by allowing for Social Tools We have chosen to use multimodality as the user to have information presented the main thrust of how to improve these in complementary channels (eg by Kent Saxin Hammarström interfaces, in the form that we call utterances from other participants and Kristina Höök ‘intermodality’, ie designing a modular through speech synthesis and software architecture that facilitates descriptions through a Braille display). The Convene project at the Swedish translating information from one Institute of Computer Science deals representation (initially primarily textual) with improving the interface to text- to one more suited to the user and the The project has a practical and problem- based virtual environments (MUD’s), situation. We take textual input from the oriented, rather than technology-oriented, used for recreational and social MUD world, such as, rooms descriptions, focus: Can we design a software purposes, for users with disablements dialogues between users, events in the architecture that allows creating programs (a group that constitutes 10-20% of the world population). These systems are potentially useful ‘social tools’ for those restricted from full participation in social relationships and leisure, but have received little attention in terms of how to make them more accessible.

MUD’s are a type of networked systems, primarily used for recreational purposes, such as games and social interaction, since the early 80’s. What distinguishes them from other forms of computer mediated communication is that they involve real-time interaction between multiple users and between users and a virtual world.

MUD systems could be excellent social tools for users with certain forms of disablements that would open up both an accessible form of recreation and a social venue with lower barriers to interacting with others. Palace: A graphical MUD system.

The aim of the project is to see what world, etc., and divide it into different that make existing MUD systems more problems – if any – users with channels: the room description channel, accessible, without requiring additional, disablements experience in these the dialogue channel, etc. The user can expensive equipment, using the resources environments and how these could be then choose which channel to present as the user would normally have at her alleviated. Our two studies done so far audio, text, pictures, etc. For example, disposal? The actual networking (one with a group of users with muscle the room descriptions might be sent to technologies used are thus the ‘tried and dystrophy and one of blind users) indicate the user as text, the dialogue with other true’ in the form of existing MUD that one of the major, software-related users might be presented as speech environments (predominantly using problems is not qualitatively different output, and the structure of the world TCP/IP and Telnet over the Internet) from that of any user: information (which ‘doors’ a room contains) can be rather than innovative ones, and the focus overload. This manifests itself in showns as a ‘map’. Our fundamental is on improving the software user problems with navigation in the MUD vision is to solve the problem that it is interface to these technologies. worlds, problems with keeping the pace the producer rather than the consumer of the quite fast interaction between determines the form of information - In summary, Convene aims to put the users, and finally, problems with the through dividing the information into control over the form of information into actual contents and social behaviours in different channels and allowing users to the hands of the (disabled) users in order these environments. We would like to set these up as they please, the control is to enable them to access existing textual MUD environments.

10 THE EUROPEAN SCENE

This project is financed by the Swedish scale. For three months the students only a minimum instruction concerning Institute of Computer Science (SICS), worked in teams consisting of team the structure of HTML documents. The Swedish Transport and members from remote places and Communications Research Board (KFB), different working and social background. Another interesting teaching experiment and The Swedish National Board for is being developed in the first IT course Industrial and Technical Development There were two videoconference sessions for seniors, which is being taught at the (NUTEK). The Swedish Handicap (at the beginning and at the end of the department in the 1998/99 school year. Institute (HI) and the Swedish National course) while most of the communication It is designed as a bi-semestral course Association for Disabled Children and was done via e-mail, file transmission stressing the practical aspect of computer Young People (RBU) contribute as service, and WWW presentations. We usage and does not include any advisors. tried to stress the social aspects of the programming. The enrolment of this projects so that the students were asked course is 35 people (10 men and 25 More information about the project can not to restrict their communication to women) whose age is between 55 and 79 be found at: professional issues. At the beginning, each years (65 on average). Mostly, these http://www.sics.se/~kia/convene/ student introduced him- or herself during people do not plan to use computers for ■ a videoconference and a more complete work since they are pensioned already. Please contact: presentation was done via personal WWW An important motivation factor for them Kent Saxin Hammarström – SICS homepages they were asked to prepare. was to be able to understand their E-mail: [email protected] grandchildren and perhaps help them Tel: +46 18 471 7041 For many participants the project was the when playing and learning with first opportunity to have real working computers. contact with a person from another It is a well-known fact that grown-up country. They acquired new knowledge people who have not had any opportunity Erasing concerning educational systems in the nor need to get acquainted with two countries and learned a lot about computers during their education or at Generation differences in living styles. For the Czech the beginning of their professional career students there was another positive have both objective and subjective and Country outcome in the strengthening of their problems to start using them. Upon our motivation to learn English. We noticed meaning, the most important obstacles Borders via a remarkable improvement in their are subjective in nature. These people are command of the language when frightened with the omnipresent buzz Networking comparing their initial and concluding about computers considering these presentations. All participating students machines too complex and themselves by Josef Koláfi, TomበMacek, got to know about current issues in the too far behind to be able to understand BoÏena Mannová other country and also spoke about their them properly. This is not a problem at and Barbara Williams personal interests. all for children ñ they have do not fear computers do not bothering what is inside Some IT courses delivered at the Most of us who have ever worked in a but playing the games that attract them. Department of Computer Science and different country realize that some of the Engineering, Czech Technical local issues look different from We are successfully trying to persuade University (CTU) in Prague permit elsewhere. The Global Cooperation our senior students that this is the way interesting educational experiments in Project helps the students to get this kind they should take it as well and Internet which we aim both at technical and of different perspective at almost no extra services (starting with WWW) is used social aspects of teaching that uses cost as compared to international student instead of games. The potential of these modern Internet-based tools. exchange. It gives them a background services and the ease of using them are that makes them more eligible for a stay very convincing. Once the subjective The first experiment was conducted as a abroad later on during their study. We barriers are removed, senior students part of the Global Cooperation Project anticipate that it will also result in a advance very well in other topics making during the summer term of the 1997/98 greater ability to establish personal usage of the features of grown-ups: school year with computer science contacts, which will greatly facilitate determination and dedication. classes at both the CTU and North future business cooperation. ■ Hennepin Community College, USA. Please contact: Although the main aim both classes was To the teachers the project confirmed that Josef Koláfi- CTU programming, the students also obtained good motivation helps the students more Tel: +420 2 2435 7403 a basic instruction as how to use modern than hours of lecture. We were surprised E-mail: [email protected] Internet-based communication tools. The by the intricate presentations the students project was conceived as a pilot project were able to prepare for their Web pages for teaching team cooperation on a global in spite of the fact that they were given

11 SPECIAL THEME

with significant efforts in convergence wavelength multiplexing and optical Networking toward one single protocol for the switches at 10 to 40 Gbps around 2002. Internet. Cooper (page 22) summarises As of today, ATM is still the preferred Technologies the problems to be expected in terms of operational protocol for Telcos to enforce scaling and of resource allocation and QoS over long distance networks at 155 by Yves Devillers reservation. Queueing theory allows the Mbps (TEN 155 in Europe) and 622 identification of undesirable behaviour Mbps (vBNS in the USA) with a few The tremendous increase in the when mixing real time and best effort extensions and testbeds at 2.5Gbps. Multi demand for and use of Internet, mobile traffic or flowing long-trailed traffic (see Protocol Label Switching (MLPS) – IP communications and multimedia along Borst on page 20); the invited paper by routing protocols controlling ATM with an improved or more exacting Matthias Grossglauser (page 21) switches to support IP flows labelled employment of existing facilities is advocates monitoring traffic at different according to requested QoS – is one creating new problems that call for time scales in order to improve resource example of convergence between IP and innovative solutions. This special control mechanism. ATM; Chatzaki and Sartzetakis discuss theme section on Networking this and related experiments, while Technologies discusses some of the In order to deploy simpler networks Sartzetakis on page 24 addresses multi- ways in which ERCIM institutions are capable of handling high speeds and vendor ATM management and Todrova addressing these issues. providing quality of service, emerging and Brandt on page 26 warn about operators in North America usually rely security issues raised by ‘ATM to the The basic technologies such as upon IP absorbing ATM and SDH with desk’ applications via public ATM Synchronous Data Hierarchy, the aim of running directly over networks. Wavelength Multiplexing and optical switching needed to deploy high speed CONTENTS networks running at gigabits per second as envisioned by initiatives such as Networking Technolgies HOT – Home and Office Technologies Internet 2, Canary, NGI and STARTAP by Yves Devillers 12 by Thomas Luckenbach 27 are marginal to ERCIM's scope of Gigabit Networking is Reality – Heterogeneous Inhouse Networking interest. Attention in the ERCIM 2.4 Gbps via ATM Wide Area Network Environment by Peter Wunderling by Dirk Elias 28 institutions is focussed on deploying and Ferdinand Hommes 13 testbeds to tame such speeds, to ARNO: Algorithms for Radio Network Designing High-speed Communication Optimization experiment new applications and to Systems by Heinz Mühlenbein 29 understand the impact of speed on by Dimitrios N. Serpanos 14 AMC - ATM based Wireless Mobile applications when the end to end Wormhole IP over ATM Computing throughput is in the order of hundreds of by Manolis Katevenis 15 by Enrico Gregori and Thomas Luckenbach 29 megabit per second. This question is High-Performance ATM Switching: treated in first paper, by Wunderling and the ATLAS I Single Chip Switch Internet Telephony merges with the GSM Hommes, on Gigabit Networking. by Dionisios N. Pnevmatikatos 16 Network by Jori Paananen 31 Integration of Multiple Switching New architectures that include dedicated Disciplines SFT – Smart File Transfer hardware and algorithms must be by Pertti Raatikainen 17 by Markus Laakso 31 designed to handle routing and switching Multiservice Internet: Activities at SICS's Computer and Network at such speeds since software alone is no Service Network or Ham Technology? Architecture Laboratory longer sufficient. The unification of by Chris Cooper 18 by Bengt Ahlgren 32 transport concepts will mean that one Resource Allocation Monitoring and Displaying Traffic on the in Integrated-Services Networks World Wide Web common architecture can handle several by Sem Borst 20 by Evangelos P. Markatos and protocols (such as ATM, IP and PDH), Athanasios E. Papathanasiou 33 Control of Network Resources see the papers from FORTH and VTT on over Multiple Time-Scales Investigation of Internet Object Cache pages 14 to 17. by Matthias Grossglauser 21 Performance Bottlenecks by Bertold Kolics 34 Internet Enhancements – Coexistence with The widely requested and long awaited ATM The Changing Face of Network introduction of multimedia on the by Magda Chatzaki and Stelios Management – A Hungarian Experience network cannot be achieved without Sartzetakis 22 by István Tétényi 35 Quality of Service enforcement. Several Technology Interoperation in ATM The new CNR Research Area in Pisa tracks are relevant to this field such as Management chooses ATM Local Area Network: why resource reservation, service by Stelios Sartzetakis 24 ATM? by Marco Sommani 36 differentiation, simplified and integrated ATM Security Aspects routing techniques, or even over by Petia Todorova and Hartmut Brandt 26 dimensioning of the bandwidth resource,

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The ubiquitous Internet is now entering design and operation of the next into our homes. Luckenbach (page 27) Gigabit generation network for the scientific and Elias (page 28) tell us more about community in Germany which is planned technologies and protocols of potential Networking by DFN. The focus of the testbed is on interest for hooking up the home and metacomputing as well as on dedicated gives research news on in-house is Reality – multimedia applications like ‘Distributed networking topics (‘ATM QoS to the virtual studio applications’. In this article toaster’). 2.4 Gbps only the networking aspects are shown.

‘Everywhere’ is anyway reachable by via ATM Wide The Gigabit Testbed West is one of two wireless local loops either via mobile Gigabit Testbeds in Germany (the other phones (GSM, DECT) for Personal Data Area Network one is Gigabit Testbed Süd) and started Assistant or even portable laptops, or for at August 1st 1997 with a 622 Mbps link immobile LANs (LMDS) in the suburbs by Peter Wunderling between both research centers. The and industrial areas. Mühlenbein on page and Ferdinand Hommes technique is Asynchronous Tranfer 29 talks about antenna dimensioning and Mode via SDH (Synchronous Data placement together with frequency One year after the successful start of Hierarchy). The SDH equipment and the assignment problems while Gregori and the first German Gigabit Network fiber optic link (about 100 km between Luckenbach describe a laptop technology Testbed (see ERCIM News Number the locations Sankt Augustin and Jülich) based on DECT with - an expectable - 31, October 1997) the participants of are provided by o.tel.o Service GmbH, a sub-optimal TCP performance over non the „Gigabit Testbed West” could subsidiary company of a German energy error-free media. GSM wireless and IP demonstrate transmission speeds of supplier. telephony are the topic of the papers from 2.4 Gbps using ATM technology VTT on page 31: Paananen discusses the (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). The In the first step ASX-1000 switches integration of a GSM network with the project is sponsored by the German (FORE Systems) connected the local corporate intranet and Laakso talks about Research Network Association ‘Verein ATM networks of both research centers reliable file transfer over GSM to zur Förderung eines Deutschen running the link with 622 Mbps. The high communicate with Finnish icebreakers. Forschungsnetzes, e.V, (DFN)’, and performance computing (HPC) systems Research news from SICS (page 32) the Federal Ministry for Education, on both sides (CRAY T3E with 512 spans from network conscious Science, Research and Technology of nodes in Jülich and IBM SP2 with 34 applications to IP telephony and Germany with additional funding of nodes at GMD) were connected to the differentiated services. the participants GMD and the ATM network via 155 Mbps interfaces. Research Center Jülich (Forschungs- The first tests and measurements of the Finally case studies tell us more about zentrum Jülich - FZJ). throughput between the HPC systems the monitoring and displaying of Web were disappointing - far below of 155 traffic (Markatos and Papathanasiou on The goal of the testbed is to get Mbps. page 33), about Web cache monitoring experiences in high speed networking in Hungarnet and the day to day network and to show the necessity for next Since the announced 622 Mbps ports management of this net (papers from generation applications. Experiences and (ATM) for both systems are up to now SZTAKI on pages 34-35), and reasons knowledge of the testbeds are base of the not available, the following solution was behind the not so evident choice by CNR for an ATM rather than a Gigabit KHM Uni GMD DLR IBM Ethernet solution for its new Pisa Köln Köln 8 x Fore ASX-1000 Fore ASX-200 campus. SP2 ■ FZJ SUN Ultra 2 SUN Ultra 2 SUN HIPPI 2 Proc 2 Proc Enterprise 4000 Switch Please contact SUN Fore ASX-1000 SUN Yves Devillers – INRIA atm- atm- Tel: +33 1 3963 5976 fore sun Fore ASX-4000 E-mail: [email protected] Fore ASX-1000 Fore ASX-1000 Fore ASX-4000 SUN Ultra 60 SGI O200 2 Proc

HIPPI SUN Cisco A 100 SGI Cisco LS1010 atm- atm- Switch sun fore Legende: 155 Mbit/s CRAY CRAY CRAY SUN 622 Mbit/s T3E T90 atm- atm- 800 Mbit/s T3E sun fore 2,4 Gbit/s 256 Proc 512 Proc 16 Proc Stand: 14.01.99

Configuration of the Gigabit Testbed West.

13 SPECIAL THEME

implemented to connect the CRAY T3E between system memory and link with the IBM SP2: FZJ and GMD are Designing interfaces. We have developed a high- running HIPPI (High Performance speed, scalable and re-usable Queue Parallel Interface) to connect their HPC High-speed Manager, suitable for a wide range of systems with transmission speeds of up ATM systems, such as workstation to 800 Mbps. Using SUN and SGI Communication adapters, switches, routers, etc. The systems with one or more 622 Mbps Queue Manager is a special-purpose ports for the ATM network and interfaces Systems processor that executes memory for the HIPPI network it was possible to management instructions. To achieve re- by Dimitrios N. Serpanos run these systems as HIPPI/ATM usability, we have analyzed the gateways. High-speed transmission technology requirements of the most common ATM experiences significant progress for functions (flow control, segmentation- The great success was at August 5th over a decade. The development and and-re-assembly, etc.) and identified an 1998. Both research centers could deployment of high-speed links in the instruction set that is sufficient to demonstrate the first 2.4 Gbps ATM business environment and to the home implement these functions. To achieve WAN in Europe. Running ASX-4000 has triggered the development of a wide scalability, we have identified a minimal (the newest generation ATM switches of range of networks and services. As a set of instructions as well as a minimal FORE Systems) with 2.4 Gbps interfaces result, the design of communication set of data structures to support. We have on both sides the theoretical throughput systems faces significant performance developed an architecture and several of 2,17 Gbps for ATM data (in total: challenges, especially in light of the hardware implementations, which 2.488 Gbps capacity minus overhead for requirements for delivery of real-time provide increasing performance at the SDH and ATM) could nearly be reached. traffic (multimedia). cost of more complex hardware. A typical The tremendous data traffic was low cosqueues of t implementation generated by several SUN systems each The main problem in designing high- supports 1024 8192 ATM cells and of them connected to the ASX-4000 with speed communication systems, ie performs an Enqueue and a Dequeue one or more 622 Mbps interfaces (SUN adapters, bridges, routers, etc., is the operation in 132ns and 198ns, and FORE Systems). throughput preservation problem: the respectively. Such an implementation problem to preserve the throughput of a supports ATM systems with aggregate The performance measurements of the high-speed link to applications through throughput close to 1 Gbps. ATM/HIPPI gateways showed the protocol stack(s) implemented in a acceptable results: 430 Mbps between system. Solution to this problem requires Considering the processing power that CRAY T3E and H/A-gateway and 370 the development of ‘intelligent’ exists in some systems in the form of Mbps between IBM SP2 and H/A- communication system architectures, embedded processors, we have gateway. Between the gateways a which implement high-speed data developed a software implementation for maximum throughput of 500 Mbps was movement and protocol processing that embedded systems as well, using the measured. That means up to now both meet the necessary performance CYCLONE evaluation board with the HPC systems can communicate with a requirements. Intel i960 processor at 40 MHz. The maximum throughput of 370 Mbps. average delays of the Enqueue and We are working on modular, scalable Dequeue operations in the software The next steps in the Gigabit Testbed architectures for communication systems, implementation are 0.75 and 0.95 West are to get the link to Cologne because they are required to implement a microseconds, respectively. We have operational and to implement the planned wide range of functions and to meet the evaluated the performance, cost and applications like ‘Distributed TV- performance requirements of links as they scalability of all implementations, so that Productions’ and ‘3V - Distributed scale to higher speeds. Considering the wide one can choose the solution with the Traffic Simulation and Visualization’. adoption and deployment of ATM desired characteristics. technology, we focus on ATM systems, Fore more information, see: because they have demanding requirements, The Queue Manager provides the support http://imk.gmd.de/hsn/ for efficient queue management and fast ■ especially considering the scalability of the SDH/SONET physical layer. In our efforts, data movement in an ATM system, but Please contact: we evaluate and explore alternative it is necessary to provide additional support in order to implement Quality- Peter Wunderling – GMD technologies in order to obtain high Tel: +49 2241 14 2930 performance systems at low cost. of-Service (QoS) in data transmission; E-mail: [email protected] typically this is achieved with adoption of priorities. Scheduling of outgoing Ferdinand Hommes – GMD An important module in high-speed traffic constitutes an additional challenge. Tel: +49 2241 14 2932 communication systems is the memory E-mail: [email protected] manager, which manages logical data In this direction, we have designed in our structures – typically queues – efficiently lab an efficient scheduler that uses and enables high-speed data transfers weighted round-robin for QoS. The

14 SPECIAL THEME scheduler operates in co-operation with of ATM, thus getting the best of both ATM’s QoS capabilities; (iv) for IP the Queue Manager providing a complete worlds. This has been done in software, traffic, the system operates equivalently solution in a prototype 4x1 ATM on general-purpose computers; we do it to a network of low-latency gigabit IP concentrator with 155 Mbps Sonet links. in hardware, at a lower cost and with a routers, while being a lot less expensive; lower latency. (v) packet routing delay is minimized As design methodologies and owing to virtual-cut-through routing – semiconductor technology progress, we ATM has some similarity with wormhole segmentation and reassembly delays at can provide improved architectures and routing, the most popular multiprocessor intermediate routers are eliminated; (vi) designs that exploit these advances. We interconnection network technique of the packet routing delay is minimized for all are currently developing modules with eighties. Just like virtual channels in packets – not just for the rest of the more sophisticated and efficient wormhole routing carry packets packets after a flow has been recognized, architectures, targeting support of an segmented into “flits”, a number of as in IP switching; (vii) the number of increased number of functions and hardware-managed VC’s in ATM can pre-established connections (labels) is scalability to the higher speeds required carry IP packets segmented into cells small and fixed, and does not grow with by the emerging gigabit networks. according to AAL-5; each VC is the size of the network (as in tag ■ Please contact: Dimitrios Serpanos – ICS-FORTH Tel: +30 81 391663 E-mail: [email protected]

Wormhole IP over ATM by Manolis Katevenis

Speeding up the Internet is of capital importance; this will need some hardware assistance. Hardware switches operate best on fixed-size quanta, while IP packets, on the other 2x155 Mbps Wormhole IP over ATM Router Prototype. hand, have a variable size. It is not the first time, though, that hardware is called upon to route variable-size dedicated to one packet for the duration switching), yet all packets are routed packets at high speed: Wormhole of that packet, and is afterwards through pre-established connections. Routers did precisely that, in the reassigned to another packet, in hardware. Based on actual internet traces, we eighties, for multiprocessor inter- This was proposed by Barnett in 1997 showed by simulation that a few tens of connection networks. The same and was named connectionless ATM. hardware-managed VC’s per outgoing techniques are applicable today to the We, at ICS-FORTH in Heraklion, Crete, VP suffice for all but 0.01% or less of the Internet: we introduced a novel, Greece, modified the Barnett proposal to packets. wormhole-like way to route IP over make it applicable to existing ATM ATM, we simulated its performance, equipment: we proposed a novel single- We have built a first prototype of a bi- we built a first prototype, and we are input, single-output Wormhole IP Router, directional wormhole IP routing filter now proceeding to testing it in real that functions as a VP/VC translation with two OC-3 ports (155 Mbps in each systems. filter between ATM subnetworks. direction), which is shown in the photograph. Two 16-MByte DRAM IP is the uncontested protocol for data Our wormhole IP routing filter has a SIMM’s plug into the sockets on the communications. At the same time, ATM number of advantages: (i) it works right; they hold the two-level IP routing technology finds widespread use, owing together with standard, existing ATM table and the ATM connection table. The to its fixed-size “cells” that allow high- equipment; (ii) it allows the co-existence datapath, the control FSM, and the VCout speed hardware switching, owing to the and integration of both IP and native free list (bit map) are contained in one small size of these cells that allows fast ATM traffic in the same networks; (iii) FPGA. The routing delay is fixed, equal preemption and hence low latency, and the quality of service of native ATM to about one cell time (a couple of micro- owing to its quality-of-service (QoS) traffic can stay unaffected by the added seconds), for all IP packets. architecture. IP can fruitfully run on top IP traffic, while IP can benefit from

15 SPECIAL THEME

We are currently testing this prototype The ASICCOM Consortium includes two credit-based flow control (backpressure). by connecting it to our ATM and IP ERCIM members, FORTH and SINDEF. A cell in a backpressured service class network. Further development is needed, The other partners of ASICCOM are (priority level) can only depart if it especially on the software side, and we industrial partners (INTRACOM, Greece; acquires both a buffer-pool credit for its are seeking partners for that and for ST Microelectronics, France and Italy; outgoing link and a flow-group credit for commercially exploiting the technology. BULL, France), telecom operators its connection. A flow group is a set of (TELENOR, Norway; TELEFONICA, connections that are flow-controlled For more information, see Spain), and research institutes (Poli. di together; ATLAS I supports up to 32 http://archvlsi.ics.forth.gr/wormholeIP/ Milano, Italy; Democritos, Greece). thousand flow groups. Credit-based flow ■ ATLAS I combines several desirable control is useful in building switching Please contact: Manolis Katevenis – ICS-FORTH Tel: +30 81 391664 E-mail: [email protected]

High- Performance ATM Switching: the ATLAS I Single Chip Switch ATLAS I floorplan. by Dionisios N. Pnevmatikatos Sub-blocks are grouped Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) by functionality. networks have become mainstream for wide area networks (WANs) and also features such as a large number of links, fabrics with internal backpressure that in local area networks. They are based high bandwidth links, advanced operating provide the high performance of output on packet switching, where 48 bytes of features, large buffer space and hooks for queueing at the low cost of input data together with a 5 header form the more efficient network management. buffering, and in making ATM sub- transfer unit called cell. This fixed networks that never drop cells of data packet size allows the parallel ATLAS I is a 6 million transistor chip connections while fully and fairly processing of cells inside the relay designed in a 0.35 micron CMOS utilizing all the available transmission switches achieving high transmission technology with five metal layers capacity. An evaluation performed at throughput. ATM was originally provided by ST Microelectronics. It FORTH shows that the credit protocol designed to carry voice traffic, and as features 16 input and 16 output ports offers superior performance, especially a consequence, ATM networks can (links) each operating at 622Mbits/s for in isolating well-behaved connections efficiently handle voice, video and an aggregate outgoing throughput of from bursty and hot-spot traffic. other types of traffic making them 10Gbits/s; the links use the IEEE 1355 ideal for multimedia-type applications. ‘HIC/HS’ protocol. The switch operates ATLAS I also provides for efficient at 50 MHz and achieves a sub- network load monitoring by means of ATLAS I (ATm multi-LAne backpressure microsecond cell cut-through latency. accelerated Cell Loss Probability (CLP) Switch One) is a high performance, Buffer space for the ATM cells is measurement hardware. Very often in single chip ATM switch designed in the provided in the form of a 256-entry high-speed networks the probability of Computer Architecture and VLSI shared buffer, which is split into multiple cell loss (for non-backpressured traffic) Systems Division, of the Institute of logical output queues; ATLAS I also is very small, and measuring the CLP Computer Science of FORTH. It is being supports three levels of priorities, requires a very long observation period. developed within the ASICCOM Project, multicasting and header translation. The ATLAS I CLP hardware measures funded by the European Union ACTS the cell loss rate of an emulated set of Programme. The most distinctive and innovative small buffers. Software can then use these feature of ATLAS I is its (optional) measurements (over short periods of time)

16 SPECIAL THEME to extrapolate the CLP of the actual Configurable Multidiscipline Switch) traffic. ATLAS I also provides hooks for Integration project to develop a switching and switch management through the network. routing solution capable of supporting Special management cells are addressed of Multiple multiple switching disciplines. The target to an internal management port, which is to develop a network node that can execute read and write commands to Switching integrates circuit, cell and packet any of the internal structures of the switch. switching into a single fabric. The project The results of the operations are packed Disciplines is funded by TEKES (Technology in a reply cell and returned to the sender. Development Centre of Finland) and six Security is achieved by only accepting by Pertti Raatikainen industrial partners. The project was management cells from designated input started early 1998 and finishes by the end links and connections. Multimedia services presume that the of year 2000. underlying transport network ATLAS I is a powerful building block supports a large variety of connections Experimental switch for the construction of ATM networks. and guarantees required quality of The large number of links of the switch service. A number of networking A conventional telecommunications minimizes the number of switches concepts has been tested, but none of switch connects to a homogeneous needed for the construction of a network, them has gained ultimate acceptance. transport network whereas a multi- as well as the delay (measured in hops) ATM technology has been the most discipline switch operates in a through the network itself. In addition favoured one, but other transporting heterogeneous networking environment, the smaller number of chips reduces the solutions have also been considered ie, networks that utilise different transport physical dimensions of the network and and entirely new ones suggested, technologies. Due to the different nature increases its reliability. The advanced especially, for IP based of the associated transport technologies, flow-control features of ATLAS I allow communications. the switching equipment has to the fair and efficient use of the network implement a set of different line bandwidth in a mixture of services Development of a new unifying transport interfaces and signalling procedures and, ranging from real-time, guaranteed concept is a long process, and it can be additionally, to support a varying set of quality-of-service to best-effort, bursty envisaged that heterogeneous transport connection types, quality of service and flooding traffic. solutions will be used for multimedia measures and service types. service delivery for a lengthy period of Furthermore, the versatility in the transition. This implies that future A straightforward way to implement such management of the individual switches network nodes, such as switches, have a switch is to logically divide the switch allows for the creation of powerful to interface to different kinds of into separate ‘virtual switches’. In this network management software. networks, manage a number of parallel way, line cards, protocol stacks and call control procedures and support associated call control functions of each ATLAS I was fabricated by ST switching of dissimilar data units. virtual switch can work as if they were Microelectronics, Crolles, France, in run in a homogeneous network. At the December 1998-January 1999, and is As a solution to the emerging problem, bottom layer, a common control block is currently being packaged; we will VTT Information Technology and needed to manage resources of the proceed to testing by placing the chips Helsinki University of Technology have physical switch (eg switch in a demonstration system that was built launched SCOMS (Software configuration), convert application level by Intracom, Sindef and Telenor. Future interest includes the commercial exploitation of the chip, and further SWITCHING FABRIC development work in ATLAS-to- SWITCHING BUS BROADBAND ATM/E1 ATM NETWORK ATM/STM-1 ACCESS SONET interfacing, and in flow-control VIRTUAL NETWORK (SDH) ATM ATM/ADSL and weighted round-robin scheduling ATM/STM-1 SWITCH architectures. VIRTUAL IP/STM-1 IP Ethernet SWITCH IP INTERNET ACCESS For more information on the ATLAS I TRUNK N-ISDN NETWORK NETWORK PDH/E1 VIRTUAL switch see: PDH PDH/E1 SWITCH PDH/E1 http://archvlsi.csi.forth.gr/atlasI/ nx64 k ■

Please contact: PDH PSTN ACCESS (PDH) CALL CONTROL NETWORK Dionisios Pnevmatikatos – ICS-FORTH PDH SWITCH ATM S WITCH IP S WITCH Tel: +30 81 391657 CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL E-mail: [email protected] FABRIC CONTROL

Figure 1: Block diagram of an experimental multidiscipline switch.

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connection commands to physical The switch control module offers Currently, the SCOMS switch and its connections and perform physical level network specific application control architecture is in the routing of the by-passing data units. programming interfaces that implement implementation phase, and the first functions necessary to reserve resources prototype, offering interworking between The concrete goal of the SCOMS project and manage connections through the ATM and PDH networks, is expected by is to develop an experimental switch switch. The control workstation is the end of year 1999. Further work will integrating 64 kbit/s based circuit, ATM connected to the switch with an include interworking with IP networks, cell and IP packet switching (see Fig. 1). ATM/STM-1 link, and all protocols service architecture considerations as The physical switching platform is based receive and transmit their signalling well as development of configuration and on the Frame Synchronised Ring (FSR) messages in reserved ATM virtual management applications. The inherent concept, developed and patented by VTT channels. Therefore, a non-ATM line support for TCP/IP networking enables Information Technology. This platform interface must map the incoming interesting views, for example, to has characteristics necessary to signalling messages to a specific ATM develop distributed service control and implement the various fundamental virtual channel, assigned for transferring web-based management. features of a multidiscipline switch. the signalling to the control workstation. ■ These include, eg, inherent support for ATM/STM-1 was chosen for the Please contact: real-time multicasting, versatile workstation connection, because it is a Pertti Raatikainen – VTT Information addressing capabilities and support for cost-effective way to have a high-speed Technology simultaneous switching of different size signalling link, which offers a Tel: +358 9 456 5644 data units. FSR’s ring-shaped switching straightforward way to manage various E-mail: [email protected] bus is dimensioned to perform effectively control and signalling connections. An by implementing separate transport Ethernet interface is another possibility containers for circuit, cell and packet to connect the workstation to the switch. switched traffic. Multiservice The above configuration can be enhanced Operation of the switching fabric is by introducing an interworking call Internet: Service controlled by a workstation which model to route calls between the different implements fabric and call control networks (Fig. 3). In this configuration, Network or Ham functions. Signalling protocols of the the different protocol stacks are linked three different transport networks (ATM, together via a shared call control layer. Technology? PDH and IP) are implemented separately, The call control must be able to decode, although, they use services of the process and forward connection set-up by Chris Cooper common fabric control layer (see figure requests from each protocol stack. The 2). Interworking between the different call control interworking function maps As people collaborate over greater networks can be supported by a shared the connection set-up parameters distances on a regular basis, so an interworking call control module that is between the different networks and increasingly significant, if as yet able to manage calls that originate and maintains status information of all the potential benefit of the global Internet terminate at different networks (see established connections. is support of technical discussion, figure 3). training, seminars, etc. – in fact the complete range of computer- supported co-operative working made accessible from each participants

IP routing control PDH call control ATM call control desktop. Figure 2: Configuration and IP routing protocols PDH signalling ATM signalling In a previous article (ERCIM News Separate call management control stacks TCP/IP over ATM PDH over ATM SAAL over ATM No.35, October 1998), David Duce for the different IP API PDH API ATM API described work undertaken in the network European Framework 4 Telematics architectures. Fabric control module project MANICORAL to develop and begin initial trial assessment of a co- operative visualization system to support Routing Interworking call control a European community of geodetic control scientists and engineers. The experience Configuration IP IP PDH signalling ATM signalling and routing telephony gained with that project indicated that management Figure 3: Call TCP/IP over ATM PDH over ATM SAAL over ATM such desktop-based access to co- control stacks operative visualization had substantial IP API PDH API ATM API for potential: it also demonstrated how much interworking. Fabric control module still remains to be done to enable the

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Internet to support such styles of use in packets are delivered on a regular, timely into a few types, to mark packets practice. basis. Packets arriving too late are as accordingly at the edges of the network, good as lost: too late means that no more at the same time as operating admission The demands of this sort of application samples are available to play out to the control, so that the core need only are considerable when compared with, listener and there is a gap in the sound. perform very simple tests on a small field for example, a single user browsing Too many such gaps and speech becomes in each packet to determine which type world-wide web services. The latter incomprehensible. In the case of of behaviour (scheduling) is appropriate demands support from the underlying conversational speech, the round-trip for that packet, in the knowledge that the network for only a single type of traffic: delay also needs to be short to prevent it admission control will have effectively transport of traditional data, reliably, on interfering with normal conduct of the guranteed that the resources are available a point-to-point basis-which the Internet conversation. in the network to handle the packet. has been providing on a best-effort basis for many years. The traditional approach to the problem The other problem is that any form of of continuous media traffic transport in resource reservation by one party implies Collaborative visualization however networks is to reserve resources for the that in times of high load or potential requires not only traditional reliable data lifetime of the activity, as is done in the congestion some other party is denied transport (for the visualization) but also telephone network during a call. This is service. Without additional criteria, there continuous media transport for voice (and also a part of the approach taken in is no way of deciding who should be possibly video) communication. seeking ways of integrating this traffic given service and who should be denied. Moreover, both the data and continuous with traditional data traffic, whether the One possible way out is to introduce media support need to be on a multipoint network technology is asynchronous pricing: different qualities of service basis in order to support (small) groups transfer mode (ATM) for broadband attract different tariffs, and operators size of more than two people. Experience in ISDN, or integrated services Internet. their networks to provide service for the MANICORAL project indicated that There are two possibilities for reserving amounts of different types of traffic the current best-effort Internet fell far resources to handle traffic which cannot according to observed traffic patterns and short of expectations in respect of what tolerate delay: the resources either need specific contracts. One effect of such a was required for routine collaboration, to be reserved dynamically by some sort mode of operation is that there is a direct partly because multicast is not yet all- of signalling or they must be permanently incentive to upgrade a network to cope pervasive as a service, and partly because reserved through some service contract. with more traffic of a particular type as the quality of voice communication was In either case, some state has to be soon as traffic projections indicate too often so variable, including introduced into the switching elements approach to the region of denial of incomprehensibility or total loss, as to of the network, the Internet routers. service: suitable investment might not render a session abortive. There were a Resource reservation protocol, RSVP, only prevent subscribers moving to number of contributing causes to the has been developed as a means of letting another provider but also offer the project’s specific experience. Here, a a host signal its need for resources to be potential of further profit. few of the underlying technological reserved dynamically in the network on issues relating to the evolution of the a flow-by-flow basis. Considerable This article is based in part on a talk given Internet from a single-service (best-effort progress has also been made in the by David Duce last summer at Multi- data) to multiservice are remarked upon. development of queue management Service Networks’98, held each year a scheduling disciplines to enable packets Cosener’s House, Abingdon, The basis for multipoint transport in the to be transmitted on an output link in such Oxfordshire, UK. Details of this year’s Internet has been around for nearly a a way as to support the quality of service workshop will be available at decade in the form of the multicast required for the different flows to which http://www.acu.rl.ac.uk/msn99/ overlay network known as the Mbone. the packets belong. ■ Great progress has been made in Please contact: multicast routing, and this is now So what’s the problem? Well, two really: Chris Cooper – CLRC available in routers. Nevertheless, the a scaling problem, and a basic problem Tel: +44 1235 44 6211 transition from prototype multicast related to resource allocation. The E-mail: [email protected] overlay to integrated multicast service scaling problem arises from attempting still evidently has a long way to go to to associate state with potentially every approach coverage comparable with flow in the Internet. The memory space point-to-point service. Even greater is the and packet processing associated with problem represented by the need to carry this may be manageable in more or less more than a single category of traffic. local or small regional networks, but it Continuous media traffic, such as speech, is not possible to support it in the core or does not require that every bit is delivered backbone routers of the global Internet. correctly (though obviously most of it The generally agreed approach to dealing must be), but it does demand that voice with this problem is to aggregate flows

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three-level hierarchy. The lowest level scheduling. The best-effort traffic thus Resource of granularity is the packet level. Packets receives the capacity left-over by the real- are typically generated in bursty patterns time traffic. That remaining capacity may Allocation occurring at a moderate rate, defining the drastically fluctuate over time because burst level. Finally, at the connection of the bursty patterns in packet flows in Integrated- level, connections are established and described earlier. The available capacity terminated. is then shared among the best-effort Services connections in certain fixed proportions. Different service classes may also have This motivated a detailed investigation Networks extremely diverse quality-of-service at CWI of (discriminatory) processor- requirements. Important measures are the sharing models with time-varying service by Sem Borst amount of packet delay incurred during capacity. The results show that the transmission, and the fraction of packet average transmission time of best-effort Service providers race to develop next- loss caused by buffer overflow. Voice files is asymptotically linear in the size generation communication networks, traffic is rather sensitive to delay but can of the files, which is commonly viewed integrating a wide variety of services, sustain some packet loss, whereas data as a desirable fairness property. such as voice, video, and data, onto a traffic can tolerate some amount of delay common infrastructure. There are but is quite vulnerable to packet loss. A second major research topic at CWI major obstacles to overcome, however, concerns the occurrence of long-tailed since different services not only The heterogeneity in quality-of-service traffic characteristics. Measurements have drastically different traffic requirements and traffic characteristics have provided increasing evidence that characteristics, but also extremely requires sophisticated allocation packet traffic exhibits long-range diverse quality-of-service requirements. mechanisms to regulate the usage of dependence and self-similarity over a Performance evaluation research at network resources. The main resource wide range of time scales. Queueing CWI focuses on models and techniques allocation instruments include admission models with long-tailed input traffic offer from queueing theory for evaluating control, routing, scheduling, and flow a useful approach to evaluating the the relevant quality-of-service control. impact of long-range dependence and measures, such as delay performance. self-similarity on network performance. Important issues in integrated The design of efficient resource It was shown for example that if the input networks which have received allocation algorithms requires techniques traffic is long-tailed, then so are the buffer particular attention include the impact for evaluating the relevant quality-of- content and the delay (buffer content of long-tailed traffic characteristics service measures, eg, delay performance, even ‘one degree worse’). In integrated and the interaction between best-effort cell loss, call blocking. CWI has networks, where the transmission and real-time services. traditionally focused on techniques from capacity is shared by several traffic queueing theory, which is concerned with streams, even a single long-tailed traffic World-wide, the use of communication the study of congestion phenomena in stream may cause the buffer content to services is experiencing revolutionary stochastic service systems. The basic be long-tailed, unless the link rate is growth. The growth is fueled not only by queueing model consists of a group of larger than the peak rate of that long- the expansion of conventional telephone servers, where customers arrive who tailed connection plus the mean rate of services, but also the advance of data require some kind of service. In the the other flows. These results have communications, the spectacular context of communication networks, the important implications for admission development of the Internet, and the server usually represents a transmission control. Recently, the research has proliferation of wireless communications. link, or a buffer or port on a switch. The focused on the issue how scheduling Driven by these demands, service customers typically correspond to algorithms may be used to neutralize the providers rush to enhance their networks. transmitted packets, bursts, or offered negative effects from long-tailed traffic A major trend is the integration of voice calls, in accordance with the three-level phenomena. It was found that if traffic and data services. hierarchy described above. is not processed in order of arrival, but in processor-sharing fashion, then the tail Eventually, this is expected to result in Real-time traffic is traffic which is behavior of the delay is no longer any the consolidation of a wide variety of extremely sensitive to delay, such as worse than that of the input traffic. services onto a common platform. While voice and video-conferencing. In ■ offering potential synergies, however, contrast, best-effort traffic is tolerant of Please contact: the integration of heterogeneous service some amount of delay, as long as the Sem Borst – CWI classes also involves several fundamental average capacity received over somewhat Tel: +31 20 592 4205 problems. First of all, different services longer intervals is sufficient, file transfers E-mail: [email protected] may have radically different traffic being a typical example. Usually real- characteristics. To characterize traffic time traffic is given some form of priority processes, it is convenient to adopt a over best-effort traffic in packet

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Matthias Grossglauser was the winner of the 1998 Cor Control Baayen Award competition (see announcement on page 5). The work for which Grossglauser – an EPFL-graduate of Network – received the award was carried out at INRIA Sophia Antipolis under the guidance of Jean Bolot where he Resources was a member of the RODEO team. He defended his thesis in spring 1998 on the topic 'Control of Network over Multiple Resources over Multiple Time-Scales'. Grossglauser recently joined AT&T Laboratories in the US. Time-Scales Per-flow smoothing is not effective in an explicit specification. This approach removing the longer-term traffic has several important advantages. First, by Matthias Grossglauser fluctuations. To achieve high utilization, the user-specified traffic descriptor can Networked multimedia applications we therefore need a mechanism to share be trivially simple (eg, peak rate). require resource allocation because of the link bandwidth among multiple Second, an overly conservative their quality of service (QoS) flows. We advocate renegotiation as an specification does not result in an requirements. On the other hand, efficient mechanism to accommodate overallocation of resources for the entire network efficiency depends crucially fluctuations over time-scales beyond the duration of the session. on the degree of resource overbooking correlation horizon, which we call the inside the network. A key problem in burst time-scale. A new network service Relying on measured quantities for concurrently achieving both goals is model called RCBR (Renegotiated admission control raises a number of caused by the fluctuation over multiple Constant Bit Rate) combines network issues that have to be understood in order time-scales of the traffic load emitted simplicity with desirable quality of to develop robust schemes. by multimedia applications, because service guarantees, while achieving much it makes it hard to predict resource of the potential statistical multiplexing Estimation Error requirements with sufficient accuracy. gain of bursty traffic. With RCBR, the This in turn requires a careful design network guarantees a constant bit rate to There is the possibility of making errors of control mechanisms so that they the application. The application can associated with any estimation procedure. cover all time-scales. renegotiate this bit rate, but there is a In the context of MBAC, the estimation small probability of renegotiation errors can translate into erroneous flow In our work, we examine resource control blocking. A network implementing admission decisions. The effect of these over three natural time-scales. On the RCBR is simple because there is no decision errors has to be carefully packet time-scale, we evaluate the substantial buffering in the network, and studied, because they add another level performance of traffic smoothing as a therefore no need for elaborate buffer of uncertainty to the system, the first level mechanism to accommodate bandwidth management and packet scheduling being the stochastic nature of the traffic fluctuation. Our interest stems from the mechanisms. The quality of service is itself. mounting experimental evidence that determined by the renegotiation blocking packet arrival processes exhibit probability, which is kept small enough Dynamics and Separation ubiquitous properties of self-similarity by limiting the number of flows in the of Time-scale and long range dependence (LRD). A system. This is achieved through random process exhibits long-range admission control. A MBAC is a dynamical system, with dependence if it has a non-summable flow arrivals and departures, and autocorrelation function. Intuitively, this On the flow time-scale, we discuss parameter estimates that vary with time. means that the process exhibits measurement-based admission control Since the estimation process measures fluctuations over a wide range of time- (MBAC) as a means of relieving the the in-flow burst statistics, while the scales. This property is of importance application of the burden of a-priori admission decisions are made for each because it cannot be captured by traffic specification. The traditional arriving flow, MBAC inherently links Markovian traffic models, which have approach to admission control requires the flow and burst time-scale dynamics. traditionally been the analytical tool of an a priori traffic descriptor in terms of Thus, the question of impact of flow choice in the teletraffic community. the parameters of a deterministic or arrivals and departures on QoS arises. However, we show that in the case of stochastic model. However, it is Intuitively, each flow arrival carries the traffic smoothing, there exists a generally hard or even impossible for the potential of making a wrong decision, correlation horizon that separates relevant user or the application to come up with and each departing flow allows to recover from irrelevant fluctuation time-scales for a tight traffic descriptor b e f o r e from a past mistake. the purpose of performance prediction. establishing a flow. MBAC avoids this This illustrates the general principle that problem by shifting the task of traffic Memory the traffic, system, and performance characterization from the user to the metric time-scales together determine the network, so that admission decisions are The quality of the estimators can be set of candidate traffic models. based on traffic measurements instead of improved by using more past information

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about the flows present in the system. voice-over-IP, with more vendors However, memory in the estimation providing its elements, and with an Internet process adds another component to the increasing number of operators dynamics of a MBAC. Using too large a competing for market share. The Enhancements – memory window will reduce the resulting system is of very large scale adaptability of MBAC to non- and complexity, to such an extent that Coexistence stationarities in the statistics. A key issue one must assume that there is always is therefore to determine an appropriate something wrong somewhere. The with ATM memory window size to use. resulting flood of alarm information makes it difficult for human network by Magda Chatzaki Using a simple model that captures the operators to detect, isolate, and repair and Stelios Sartzetakis impact of measurement uncertainty and faults efficiently. This stresses the the interplay of burst and flow time-scale importance of network management. The IthACI project – Internet and the dynamics, we study all of the above Performance monitoring, fault ATM: Experiments & Enhancements for Convergence and Integration – aims at contributing to the Multi- Protocol Layer Switching (MPLS) standardization efforts by developing and demonstrating enhanced features in the areas of multicast, QoS and resource management in IPSOFACTO and Tag-Switching, and mobility in a multicast environment. The project is setting up a testbed consisting of three distinct technology islands based on ATM switching technologies of different vendors, which incorporate different approaches for short-cutting IP traffic. NEC’s ‘IPSOFACTO’, CISCO’s ‘Tag Switching’ and ALCATEL’s ‘Yalsa technologies’ are in operation in the test networks in Resource control mechanisms have to cover all time-scales at which the three different countries in Europe, the load fluctuates. Traffic smoothing absorbs short time-scale fluctuations. enhanced features are under Renegotiation in the RCBR service model accommodates traffic bursts and development on these technology allows to share the link bandwidth efficiently. Admission control acts at the islands, and their interconnection is flow time-scale to avoid overload. Traffic measurement for the purpose of planned over a Pan-European ATM admission control overlaps with the burst and flow time-scales, because wide area network. the quality of service depends on the burst time-scale, but admission decisions occur on the flow time-scale. Internet technology dominates communications today, with its TCP/IP issues in a unified analytical framework. identification and localization, planning protocols suite mostly appreciated The goal is to shed insight on the design and resource provisioning, and because of its simplicity and flexibility. of robust MBAC schemes which can configuration management are important Traditional Internet supports only best make QoS guarantees in the presence of and challenging future research topics, effort service. However it transforms measurement uncertainty, without encompassing both architectural and quickly into a commercial environment requiring the tuning of external system performance issues. demanding support for Quality of Service parameters. The figure illustrates how (QoS). In order to provide means to the traffic time-scales and control More information about this project is guarantee QoS in the Internet mechanisms considered in our work available at: environment we might increase its relate to each other. http://www.research.att.com/~mgross/ complexity by adding protocols for ■ resource management, like RSVP (Resource reSerVation Protocol), so In our future work, we hope to address Please contact: other problems that can affect the quality loosing some of its original simplicity. Matthias Grossglauser – AT&T Labs - Coming from the Telecom Operators of service experienced by the user. The Research Internet grows rapidly in size and Tel: +1 973 360 7172 world, ATM has been designed to capacity, enabling more services such as E-mail: [email protected] support different QoS requirements virtual private networks (VPN) and providing simple and clean solutions. IP switching seems to be a promising new

22 SPECIAL THEME approach to combine the speed of ATM of network resources whenever necessary service classes treatment. The Resource switching with the simplicity and for multiple SCs. We consider a network Management enhancements first task is flexibility of IP internetworks. The basic that supports a number of SCs with the development of a common prototype idea of IP switching is to use IP network different QoS guarantees. In our for the co-existence of a topology-driven control on top of an ATM switch. MPLS approach, network resources are initially unicast-oriented IP switching technique (MultiProtocol Layer Switching) is the standard solution for IP switching proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The MPLS standard is currently evolving to cover the areas of Quality of Service and Resource Management, Multicast support and Mobility for IP switching technologies.

QoS and Resource Management Enhancements in Tag Switching aim at providing QoS and Resource Management functionality to the Tag Switching technology and consequently to MPLS. The enhancements to Tag Switching towards QoS and Resource Management are based on the idea of establishing an overall QoS provisioning framework from the viewpoint of a Service Provider. The QoS provisioning framework should provide differentiation between the services in terms of their Architecture of a virtual network supporting QoS and Resource transfer characteristics and above all Management enhancements for Tag Switching. differentiation among customers in terms of the services they may request. The allocated to the different SCs according (MPLS) and a flow-driven IP switching framework is compatible with both to the administrative policies of the technique (NECs IPSOFACTO). IntServ and DiffServ approaches for QoS network operator. This means that Interoperability and resource management provisioning emerging in the Internet. It appropriate virtual networks are created issues involved with their co-existence entails two aspects: to accommodate the traffic demands of will be studied. The second task is the • definition of a set of discrete Service the SCs according to their QoS design and implementation of a Flow Classes (SCs) for requesting QoS- characteristics. ICS-FORTH is mainly Management Information Base (Flow based services involved in this task and together with MIB) to be used with NECs Algosystems S.A. develops the IPSOFACTO. The Flow MIB provides • definition of a suitable architecture architecture shown in the figure in order information on past and present flows. and protocols required for supporting to support the QoS and Resource the provisioning of the defined QoS- Management enhancements for Tag For the Multicast Service enhancements based services in the network. Sw i t c h i n g . we apply MPLS-style shortcut techniques to IP multicast in order to optimize the The basic idea underlying this QoS QoS and Resource Management network without modifying the end-user framework is to create and dynamically Enhancements in IPSOFACTO include environment and the existing IP multicast manage a virtual topology induced to the several tasks. The existing flow detection protocols. The shortcut point-to- physical one for allowing segregation of mechanisms in the IPSOFACTO multipoint ATM connections will follow network resources (ie bandwidth) to the architecture are being enhanced further dynamically the tree topology changes different SCs, cost-effectively and with an real time protocol (RTP) flow that are the result of IP hosts joining or according to business policies. We name detection mechanism. It should be noted leaving the group. Among various this virtual topology soft-network. The here that RTP applications are very Multicast Routing Protocols being soft-network is used to configure and important, as they are actually real-time implemented and standardised IthACI reserve the available network resources and therefore require a better service than selected the PIM-SM (Protocol according to the characteristics of the traditional data applications. Further flow Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode) supported SCs. Our architecture includes differentiation among the RTP flows is because of the scalability limitations of a mechanism that supports multiservice, done using some clever assignment of the others. PIM-SM is deployed as the multipath routing in Tag Switching flows with specific RTP profiles that will Multicast Routing Protocol in all three (MPLS) capable networks. It supports be mapped to the appropriate ATM switch IthACI islands. However, each island initial allocation and dynamic reallocation

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uses its own method to do the mapping and network resource monitoring of multicast streams onto layer 2 Technology functions. connections. Besides correct interworking of IP multicast and IP switching in the Interoperation The entire REFORM system operates separate islands, the goal is to demonstrate through a hierarchical model at different the interoperability between Alcatels, in ATM levels of time-scale and abstraction. The NECs and Ciscos multicast solutions, REFORM management system either on layer 2 or layer 3. Management integrates the tasks of network planning and dimensioning with dynamic The enhancements for mobility in a by Stelios Sartzetakis configuration, fault and performance multicast environment follow the management. The network planning and approaches supported by the IETF Providing cost-effective network dimension functions lie at the heart of standards. The realisations in IthACI will survivability and availability; fast- the REFORM system facilitating cost- conform to appropriate ‘Requests for responding, reliable fault detection and effective network operation and enabling Comments’ as long as they are available. self-healing mechanisms, distributed the implementation of the operator’s Some ongoing work in IETF will also be dynamic routing functions with business policy regarding service considered and related Internet drafts are inherent load balancing capabilities, provisioning for the range of services examined and applied accordingly. Two efficient VP layer design and dynamic being offered. Dynamic configuration, major schemes are possible to make the network reconfiguration functions in fault, and performance management are multicast service available to a mobile an ATM network is a complicated task. required for continuously optimising the node. While away from home, a Mobile Emerging technologies and standards performance of the network according to Node may be allowed to exercise its role are needed for the operation and actual usage levels. Traditionally, these either as if it were a logical entity in the management of ATM networks. The areas have been handled by disjoint home network or a logical entity in its ACTS REFORM project used a systems for network planning, current foreign network. In the first number of these including: ATMF UNI configuration management, performance scheme, the Home Agent acts as the and PNNI, OMG CORBA and management and fault management. logical point of service. In the second Component Model and TINA NRA scheme, the Mobile Node has to use a thus demonstrating the applicability, In our view, network management is temporary co-located care-of-address to coexistence and interoperation of some much more than a data collection exercise fulfil its role in the multicast scenarios. of these technologies. for supporting configuration, fault and performance reports to be subsequently The demand for higher throughput IP Having the network provider’s viewpoint fed to network operators to determine the networks is huge. IthACI focuses on in mind, who is offering QoS-based, next course of action. REFORM applying IP switching technologies to switched, on-demand connectivity considers network management functions better satisfy this demand. Most of the services, the REFORM project designed, as built-in, automated and intelligent major switch/router manufacturers have implemented and tested a prototype facilities, which respond to changes in already announced MPLS support in system which provides the necessary network conditions as and even before their products, and will deliver by years means and functions for ensuring network they happen. A human-orientated model end. IthACI also examines MPLS resilience (availability & survivability) of decision making may no longer be extensions and applicability to IP over within acceptable levels, and in a cost always viable for ensuring the cost- DWDM (Dense Wave Division effective manner. The REFORM system effective management of complex, multi- Multiplexing) layered networks. covers the configuration, performance service networks. Network management and fault management functional areas. functions need to actively interact with IthACI project partly funded by ACTS REFORM’s control plane system the network, exploiting and started March 1998. The other (embedded in the network elements) hosts complementing the capabilities of the consortium members are AlgoSystems the required connection-oriented network Network Elements (NEs), and therefore S.A., University of Surrey, ABT, GMD- layer functionality in addition to the should be seen as an extension of Fokus, CISCO Systems S.A., NEC REFORM-specific fast-responding fault embedded NE functionality. Europe Ltd. and IMEC. Further detection, self-healing and QoS-based information can be found at: dynamic routing functions. The REFORM used networks built from http://www.algo.com.gr/acts/ithaci/ management plane system is concerned multi-vendor NEs in its trials. As of today, ■ with the initial configuration and on-going implementations of the same signalling Please contact: dynamic management of the ATM VP protocol by different vendors rarely fully Stelios Sartzetakis – ICS-FORTH layer. Specifically it hosts dynamic VPC inter-work and co-operate. Furthermore, Tel: +30 81 39 1727 bandwidth management, VP layer design the other REFORM control plane E-mail: [email protected] and dynamic reconfiguration, fault components were required to co-operate Magda Chatzaki – ICS-FORTH management (filtering and correlation) with the signalling components for Tel: +30 81 39 1723 functions as well as generic configuration collecting statistics and providing routing E-mail: [email protected]

24 SPECIAL THEME information. This level of interaction with routing schemes. PNNI routing protocols CORBA was used as the ultimate embedded capabilities is not feasible with may co-exist with other signalling systems, integration means that allows transparent today‚s commercially available NEs, as which support source node or hop-by-hop communication not only between access to the internal functionality of the routing. However, some routing schemes, distributed objects, but also between network equipment is very limited. To such as the one adopted by REFORM, may objects located in the same machine; eg overcome these problems, the notion of be of a hybrid nature combining the merits between two components in the same network node. In the same way that CORBA insulates distributed Physical network applications from network details it also CoSs (distinct network topology classes of service) abstracts implementations from operating VPC Topology system peculiarities. We are in no doubt Design Route availability deterioration alarms that future management frameworks will be based on distributed object Admissible routes Management per CoS (distinct interface technologies, with CORBA being a Load Balancing class of LB prime candidate. It is also likely that Service) component CORBA can be used in the control plane LB LB to support open, object-oriented network layer functionality, though this requires lightweight operations and mappings of PNNI-based distributed its protocols over specific network REFORM topology information nodes LB exchange protocol technologies such as ATM AAL5. The use of the OMG Component Model in the REFORM control plane was a step in this direction. Routing in the REFORM system; a hybrid scheme involving centralised and distributed logic. The REFORM system is one of the first attempts to validate the TINA NRA the REFORM Node was introduced. The of centralised and distributed routing. The (Telecommunications Information REFORM Node incorporates the control PNNI specifications should not be seen as Networking Architecture Network plane functions of the REFORM system, dictating the particular routing scheme to Resource Architecture) in a practical allowing vendor-independent interaction be applied, but rather as a framework network management application with the NEs and uniform signalling and enabling distributed exchange of topology encompassing configuration, routing functions throughout the network. information. performance and fault management This is achieved by isolating vendor- aspects. REFORM field trials were specific technology from the system In the REFORM system, a hybrid routing conducted on several testbeds: the ACTS components through an intermediate scheme is adopted shown in the figure. EXPERT testbed in Basel, Switzerland, adaptation layer to the specific NE. An The centralised part (residing in the and on ATM networks in Norway, existing ATM Forum UNI 3.0 signalling management plane) defines the Greece and Japan. stack implementation was modified in admissible routes per source-destination order to offer uniform signalling and CoS (distinct Class of Service) so The REFORM system realisation showed capabilities at both UNI and NNI that the QoS requirements of the CoSs that the evolution towards flexible reference points of the REFORM Node. and certain network-wide cost-effective telecommunications systems built from However it should be noted that any NNI criteria are met. The distributed part is off-the-shelf intelligent software and protocol eg B-ISUP, PNNI could have responsible for influencing the routing hardware components is feasible in the been used. Appropriate modifications decisions (from the many possible pre- near future. The project REFORM was according to the REFORM model for defined admissible routes), according to part of the ACTS programme. The other QoS provisioning had to be made. actual traffic conditions, with the purpose partners were NTT, Telenor, OTE, to drive the network towards a load- Alcatel, UCL, NTUA, Skelton, IONA, The PNNI specification can be seen as balanced state. This hybrid routing with Algosystems as the co-ordinator. containing two parts: the routing protocol scheme maintains the merits of dynamic Further information can be found at: and the signalling protocol. The PNNI routing and at the same time harnesses ht t p : / / o l y m p u s . a l g o . c o m . g r / a c t s / r e f o r m / routing protocol was used as the basis for routing dynamicity to operate within the public.htm dynamic routing in REFORM. The overall network operational policies with ■ REFORM QoS-based routing algorithm respect to QoS provisioning. Experimen- Please contact: runs over the PNNI topology information tation has shown that the distributed Stelios Sartzetakis – ICS-FORTH distribution mechanisms. The PNNI PNNI routing protocols can interoperate Tel: +30 81 39 1727 routing protocol specifications constitute with overlying network management E-mail: [email protected] a rich platform for building intelligent systems for QoS-based routing.

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service’ attacks. They may monitor and Additionally, the inherent complexity of ATM Security analyze traffic at intermediate nodes. ATM protocols makes it hard to predict possible threats. So, for example, it is Aspects The ATM-Forum as one of the big ATM possible to establish a direct ATM standardisation bodies is currently connection to CLIP clients, if its address by Petia Todorova proposing an entire set of security is known. Because this connection and Hartmut Brandt mechanisms for ATM. These bypasses any IP firewalls, other mechanisms require changes in switch Due to the increased usage of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) for broadband backbones in local area and wide area networks and the introduction of public ATM networks, existing security concepts and protection mechanisms have to be revised. This article gives an overview of some aspects which are currently being studied at GMD Institute for Open Communication Systems.

Today ATM is used, on one hand, to provide bandwidth for high quality multimedia applications (ATM to the desk) and, on the other hand, to serve as backbone for local and wide area IP (Internet Protocol) networks. With the Interconnecting ATM islands through the public ATM Network. adventure of signalled public ATM networks it is now possible for companies with local networks and software and are partly based on mechanisms are needed to prevent these telephone systems in different locations hardware (for encryption and kinds of attacks. to integrate voice and data checksumming). For this reason these communication and to connect their local features will probably not become Conclusion systems through the public ATM. The available in the near future from the complexity of ATM and the variety of major ATM vendors. The ATM security studies performed in protocols and approaches involves the the Center of Competence for Advanced danger of bypassing traditional protection ATM backbones Network Technologies and Systems mechanisms and exposes the networks (CATS) at GMD Institute for Open to new threats. The main use of ATM in private Communication Systems indicate that companies is as high speed backbone for traditional IP security mechansims do not ATM to the desk IP networks. Companies which have apply to ATM networks. A long term facilities in different locations may need solution is the implementation of the High quality multimedia applications like to interconnect their local networks ATM-Forum security standard, a short video conferencing and video retrieval through the public network (see figure). term solution is the implementation of demand very high bandwidth and quality With the adventure of public switched an ATM-Firewall, which is currently guarantees from the network. ATM ATM networks it is now possible to done. Important topics for future work fulfills these requirements, but makes it connect local CLIP (Classical IP over include the implementation of user plane necessary to use native ATM ATM), LANE (LAN emulation) or authentication, data integrity and security applications, eg applications that build MPOA (Multiprotocol over ATM) audit and alarm reporting functions. directly on ATM and ATM signalling. islands more economically than by leased Connecting these systems to a public lines. Routing can be optimised and For more information on CATS, see switched ATM network (which only bandwidth resources need not to be pre- ht t p : / / w w w . f o k u s . g m d . d e / r e s e a r c h / c c / c a t s makes video conferencing useful) opens allocated. ■ these systemes to threats from third Please contact: parties. Malicious attackers are able to Connecting a local IP network to a public Petia Todorova – GMD establish connections to the local ATM ATM backbone involves an entire set of Tel: +49 30 3463 7251 systems to get access to sensible new threats to the IP network. Traditional E-mail: [email protected] information or to provide ‘denial of level 3 protection mechanisms (IP Hartmut Brandt – GMD firewalls) can be bypassed by attackers. Tel: +49 30 3463 7352 E-mail: [email protected]

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The realization of these Infranetworks The European Home System EHS is HOT – Home can be done by means of different designed as a ‘home communication networking technologies, which can be system’ supporting different physical and Office classified into wired and wireless Infranet media like power line, coax, twisted pair technologies (see figure). and wireless infra-red. Most of the Technologies current systems are based on power line Wired Technologies with 2.4Kbit/s. by Thomas Luckenbach Power line systems are using the existing HomeRun is currently being developed The realization of networks for the inhouse cabling installed for power with the goal of providing a simple, high- interconnection of sub-computer distribution for the exchange of control speed Ethernet technology for the home devices like light switches, sensors or information with a maximum bandwidth environment based on existing telephone actors can be done by means of a of a few Kbit/s. The Universal Serial Bus wires. It is initially planned for 1Mbit/s variety of networking technologies. is designed for the interconnection of low with upgrade plans to 10Mbit/s and The article will give an overview about some of these technologies for the SOHO (Small Office Home Office) market which are currently being studied in the I3C (Integration of Infra-/Intra-/Internet Communications) project at GMD Institute for Open Communication Systems.

The area of microelectronics is one of the fastest developing technical areas in the world. Microelectronics together with modern software technologies will become one of the driving forces behind the envisaged age of the information and knowledge society.

While there are ‘only’ about 200 million personal computers worldwide there are already about 12 billion microcontrollers Home and Office Networking Technologies. installed within nearly all kind of electronic equipment. In the home and office environment these microcontrollers bandwidth devices like keyboard, mouse, beyond and operates at distances of up can be found within stoves, washers and joystick or low resolution cameras. It to 150m. dish washers, coffee maschines, operates over distances of up to 5 meter refrigirators, TV-sets/VCR’s, video with a total bandwidth of 12Mbit/s. The Local Operating Network (LON) is beamers, etc. mainly based on the LonTalk IEEE-1394 is designed to interconnect communication protocol and the Neuron- The interconnection of these devices by high-end digital audio/video equipment Chip. LON currently supports different means of suitable network technologies like camcorders, digital VCR’s or video media like twisted pair, free topology will lead to a new type of networks printers as well as to interconnect networks, power line and network termed ‘Infranetworks’. These personal computers (1394 home PC interfaces like PC cards. Infranetworks can be used for a variety network). It supports data rates of up to of applications and services like facility 400Mbit/s at a distance of up to 4.5 Wireless Technologies management systems for home and office meters. The predecessor of 1394 is automation, theft and security control or FireWire, an initiative by Apple Comp. The DECT standard (Digital European personalized environments/person and while Sony has started a branding Cordless Telecommunication Systems) location aware systems based on active initiative for 1394, called i.Link. has been developed by ETSI (European badges and suitable sensors within the Telecommunication Standards Institute) Infranet. The European Installation Bus EIB is a for in-building voice communications. It free topology, decentralized system for operates around 1.9 MHz with a total home and building automation. It is based bandwidth of 1.152 Mbit/s (2 Mbit/s on a CSMA/CA technique via a 4-wire option available) and allows distances of bus and provides 2.4Kbit/s bandwidth.

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up to 300m between end systems and The project HINE - Heterogeneous base station. Heterogeneous Inhouse Networking Environment - aims to investigate the basis for the use of a The Bluetooth proposal is targeted Inhouse broad range of applications in a towards ‘a global specification for completely heterogeneous in-house Wireless Connectivity’ and will operate Networking networking environment as well as their initially with a bandwidth of 1Mb/s in integration, based on a CORBA platform the 2.4GHz ISM band. Environment (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), into public networks The Shared Wireless Access Protocol by by Dirk Elias (Internet) via broadband access networks. the HomeRF working group is based on Considered in-house networks will be a combination of DECT and W-LAN Starting with a kick-off meeting on 13 Narrowband Integrated Services Digital (802.11) technologies. It uses Time January 1999, the EURESCOM Network (NISDN), Ethernet and ATM Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and project P915 has been established. (Intranet) as well as networks for Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Main goal of the project is to establish entertainment, automation and control Avoidance (CSMA/CA) in the 2.4GHz a pan-european demonstrator for a applications (Infranet). Especially these band and provides 1Mbit/s or 2Mbit/s heterogeneous inhouse networking Infranetworks may lead to a paradigm depending on the modulation scheme. environment. Although the shift from traditional end systems like demonstrator will be distributed over personal computers, telephones or fax The IrDA (Infrared Data Association) Europe, it will be accessible over the systems as the mayor source of traffic specifications currently include protocols EURESCOM web server (and business) to stand-alone or for point-to-point as well as multipoint (http://www.eurescom.de). The integrated micro-/nano-communicators data transfer via short distances (<10m) availability of new broadband access in a home or office environment. To these with 115Kbit/s, 4Mbit/s and even network technologies forces the networks various transmission 16Mbit/s. European telcos to think about existing technologies can be applied. Besides and future inhouse networks and existing copper (telephony, power line, Conclusion communication applications for coax) infrastructures, new transmission residential customers to meet their technologies (wired & wireless, optical I3C is a project running since the demands and to provide new services. & electrical) have to be analysed for their beginning of 1998 at GMD Institute for suitability. Open Communication Systems. The goal Partners of the project are British of the I3C project is the provision of a Telecom, CSELT, Deutsche Telekom The direction of the HINE research seamless networking infrastructure as a Berkom, France Telecom, Swisscom, activities is the extension of the ATM basis for a ubiquitous communication Telefonica and Telenor. GMD Institute technology from a mainly public network environment. In order to reach that goal for Open Communication Systems is operators’ oriented exploitation towards current activities concentrate on the participating in the project for Deutsche new areas of operation and the seamless integration of LON (Local Operating Telekom Berkom. integration of already existing Network), power line, IrDA, Inhouse infrastructure for the provision of a ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Due to the increasing use of the ATM global, ubiquitous communication Network), Ethernet, ATM technology (Asynchronous Transfer environment. (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and Mode) as well as major enhancements of ADSL (Asymetric Digital Subscriber various forms of the Digital Subscriber Target environments today are mainly in Line). First results indicate the suitability Line (xDSL), the commercial the in-house, business and home area of standard Web-browsers to monitor and introduction of integrated broadband with wireline and wireless systems, control Infranet devices via the Internet. services for the home and office including those, which have generally environment is about to start. Although been out of the scope of global More information at: there is a clear view of the architecture communication scenarios until today. In ht t p : / / w w w . f o k u s . g m d . d e / r e s e a r c h / c c / c a t s of and supported services within access addition to ‘classical’ customer premesis /p r o j e c t s . networks (AN) today, the integration of equipment (telephone, fax, personal ■ heterogeneous customer premises computers, etc.), today one is surrounded Please contact: networks (CPN) and the related spectrum by a huge amount of microelectronic Thomas Luckenbach – GMD of application scenarios has not been controlled equipment (stereo/video Tel: +49 30 3463 7245 researched sufficiently until now. A products, home theatre, white goods, E-mail: [email protected] minor part of the work proposed by this light control, burglar alarm, person Project is currently being discussed under identification/location systems, etc.). the term SOHO (Small Office Home Today most of these systems are stand- Office) networking technology. alone by the means of forming small, not interconnected and proprietary islands.

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Including theses devices in an integrated services users. Also, the area has to be Cooperation partners communication environment using known from a geographic point of view. existing or easy-to-install networks Usually, this information is available in Cooperation partners are France Telecom (power-line, wireless, plastic optical the form of digital terrain data. Antennas - Centre National d’Etudes des fiber, etc.) will allow major have to be placed in such a way that users Telecommunications, University of enhancements to existing and the creation from the whole area may use the mobile Wales Cardiff - Department of Computer of completely new applications and services. Another task of the SPP is to Science, GMD - German National services. There already appears to be a predict the number of needed frequencies Research Center for Information number of chip design companies and for each antenna to allow for a maximum Technology, Laboratoire de Genie manufacturers developing single chip number of users to be served Informatique et d’Ingenierie de low cost solutions for connecting si m u l t a n e o u s l y . Production and Etude et Conseil en consumer devices to the Internet. The Techniques Informatiques Avancees. driving force for this development is After the SPP task has been completed, ■ unclear, but it may come from several the next step is finding an assignment of Please contact: directions. One example could be that frequencies to the antennas (the FAP Heinz Mühlenbein – GMD competition amongst manufacturers may problem). The number of possible Tel: +49 2241 14 2405 become so great that keeping contact frequencies is limited and always much E-mail: [email protected] with their products and customers smaller than the total number of becomes imperative. frequencies required in such a network. ■ Please contact: Frequency Assignment Problem AMC - ATM Dirk Elias – GMD Tel: +49 30 3463 7342 The assignment of frequencies to the based Wireless E-mail: [email protected] antennas must fullfill several requirements which reflect the following Mobile electromagnetic compatibility constraints: • the co-site constraint: frequencies which Computing ARNO: are assigned to the same antenna have to respect a minimum distance with by Enrico Gregori Algorithms for regard to the frequency spectrum and Thomas Luckenbach Radio Network • the co-channel constraint: identical frequencies may be assigned but only Within the framework of a scientific Optimization to antennas which are a minimum co-operation between GMD and CNR, distance from each other; otherwise, the at the end of 1997, GMD Institute for frequencies would interfere with each Open Communication Systems in by Heinz Mühlenbein other, making their use impossible Berlin and CNUCE-CNR in Pisa began to work on developing a wireless • the adjacent-channel constraint: same In the application-oriented project access technology to be integrated in as the previous constraint, but for Algorithms for Radio Network the ATM technology. adjacent frequencies regarding the Optimization (ARNO) the Breeder frequency spectrum. Genetic Algorithmis are used to solve The objective of a collaboration now optimization problems in the area of under way between FOKUS-GMD and Generally speaking, the FAP may be digital mobile telecommunication. The CNUCE-CNR in the wireless mobile viewed as the task of assigning a number optimization problems include the Site computing area is to implement an of available frequencies to a set of Positioning Problem (SPP) and the efficient connection of mobile devices requesters, subject to a set of given Frequency Assignment Problem capable of wireless communication with constraints. The main goal of a FAP (FAP). the World Wide Web. A wireless access solution is to find an assignment that technology (based on the DECT - Digital violates as few as possible constraints. The SPP consists of the task to place Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications Other usual goals are to find an antennas in the area where the mobile - interface) has been deployed to connect assignment which uses a minimum telecommunication network is mobile devices to backbone ATM number of different frequencies, or an developed. It is a very complex task, networks. Up to now, the emphasis has assignment whose span (the difference since many different factors influence been on mobility support in ATM between the smallest and the highest the positioning of the antennas. infrastructure networks. However, besides assigned frequency) is at a minimum. the wireless ATM technology, the user First of all, the developer must have also needs an efficient connection to The FAP is a NP-hard problem. The well information of the number and the Internet. Thus, we have also studied known Graph Coloring Problem (GCP) distribution of the potential mobile integration between the WATM protocol is a special case of the FAP.

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The MAC protocol has been designed and implemented in order to support real- time and non-real-time voice/video and data services as defined by the ATM Forum. In the WATM/DECT prototype the protocol runs on a TMS320C40 processor with parts of the software realized within XilinX PFGA’s (Field Programmable Gate Arrays).

As far as the integration of the WATM technology into Internet is concerned CNUCE has developed a simulator of our environment to identify and eliminate sources of inefficiency. The environment under study is shown in Figure 1: a transmitter (the fixed host) sends data to Figure 1: WATM/DECT a receiver (the mobile host) via Internet. protocol stack. The data transmitted by the fixed host cross the fixed network and arrive at the stack and TCP/IP protocols. In the first is 1.152Kbit/s based on a TDMA (Time base station, and from there they are sent stage of the project, we focused primarily Division Multiple Access) transmission to the mobile host via a wireless on performance problems caused by the scheme. connection. The TCP connections are use of TCP as an end-to-end transport modelled faithfully on the TCP protocol protocol when one end of the connection In the WATM prototype the access to the in accordance with the specifications of is a portable computer connected to our TDMA physical layer is achieved by the RFCs and, where such specifications WATM network. means of a WATM/DECT Media Access depend on the implementation, reference Control (MAC) layer developed for the is made to the TCP/IP version supplied The project activity was distributed prototype. Instead of allocating fixed parts by Berkeley: 4.4 BSD-Lite. We also between the partners: FOKUS-GMD has of the available bandwidth for the modelled the new protocol mechanism been primarily involved in the prototype duration of individual connections - as is included in TCP Thaoe, Reno, SACK development; CNUCE-CNR has studied done by the DECT higher layer protocols and New Reno. the integration of the WATM technology – the MAC layer of the prototype supports in Internet. the flexible allocation of bandwidth for Our simulator was used for an extensive different ATM connections on the basis performance evaluation of the The WATM prototype developed by of a ‘request/grant’ protocol between the TCP/WATM environment. The target of FOKUS consists of a base station base station and the end systems. Using our analysis on TCP throughput was controller and a terminal adaptor for Sun this MAC protocol, it is possible to re- twofold: i) a study of the impact of user workstations. The base station and the distribute the actual available bandwidth mobility, and, ii) a study of the impact terminal adapter communicate in the every 10ms (which is the duration of a of wireless links transmission error rates. 1.880 MHz radio frequency band as DECT time frame) on an on-demand Results obtained so far have shown that defined by ETSI within the DECT ba s i s . the extension of the TCP protocols to standard. The maximum available support nomadic computing are far from bandwidth on the DECT physical layer being optimal. We are currently investigating the use of a mechanism to split the TCP Connection (ie, Indirect TCP techniques) in order to prevent the wireless link from introducing severe throughput limitations. ■ Please contact: Enrico Gregori – CNUCE-CNR Tel.: +39 050 59 32 50 E-mail: [email protected] Thomas Luckenbach – GMD Tel.: +49 30 3463 7245 E-mail: [email protected] Figure 2: Simulator environment.

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cost-effective services will enable telecom Internet operators to improve customer loyalty SFT – Smart File Telephony and increase the use of mobile phones. Transfer The GSM Intranet Office prototype merges with the system demonstrated at CeBIT’98 was by Markus Laakso equipped with a Gatekeeper and an GSM Network Intranet Location Register (ILR) SFT, Smart File Transfer, is an developed by VTT. For the GSM phones application developed by VTT by Jori Paananen registered to the system, the Gatekeeper Information Technology for automatic is equivalent to a Mobile Switching transfer and distribution of files over VTT Information Technology has Centre (MSC). The other system network mobile networks. The need for this played a significant role in the elements are connected to the Gatekeeper emerged from the Finnish Maritime development of the Nokia GSM over an IP-based intranet. The Gatekeeper Administration as the Finnish Intranet Office product, which was checks the ILR to determine whether the icebreaker fleet had problems in launched at the CeBIT’98 exhibition. phones involved in the call are authorised transferring data to and from the This product is the first in the world to to use the system and whether they are icebreakers. Reliable data transfer is combine Internet Protocol (IP) located in the GSM Intranet Office area. essential for optimal fleet telephone systems and the worldwide If they are, it routes the GSM signalling management. Using SFT, the nine GSM standard using normal GSM and traffic inside the system. If either one Finnish icebreakers get satellite images phones as terminal devices. By merging is located outside the area, or is not and ice charts daily and use this the corporate intranet and the GSM registered as a user, it routes the call information in combination with network, the Nokia product makes through the A-interface Gateway to the information about the ship traffic to internal company calls extremely public GSM network. co-ordinate the assistance of ships cheap or even totally free of charge. through ice. The most cost-effective network in the areas of operation is still the NMT-450 analogue cellular network. In the Gulf of Finland GSM- data has been used and the newest multi-purpose icebreakers are equipped with satellite communication facilities.

Using SFT, the information is automatically distributed to the icebreakers. Controlled by its parameters, SFT scans predefined input directories and transfers any files found in these directories to the remote nodes and vice versa. As the connection is unreliable, and may break in the middle of a file transfer, SFT uses an acknowledging Nokia GSM INtranet Office. protocol with resendings if needed, to The Nokia GSM Intranet Office product The development of the GSM Intranet guarantee that a file, once queued for uses standard GSM phones as terminal Office system towards the final product sending, is received once and only once devices and GSM base stations connected has continued throughout 1998. VTT at the receiving node. to the corporate intranet. The system Information Technology has participated utilises the corporate intranet to route in the development of various parts of SFT uses standard transfer protocols on internal calls to other GSM phones or the system. top of which additional layers have been workstations (H.323 terminals) equipped built. In the present implementation, RCP with software for IP telephony. Outside Fore more information, see: (Remote Copy) has been used for file the office the calls are routed normally h t t p : / / w w w . n o k i a . c o m / n e t w o r k s / 1 6 / g i o transfer, but could be substituted by FTP through the public GSM network. The / i n d e x . h t m l or some secure transfer protocol if integration of the corporate intranet and ■ needed. In this way standard routers, with the GSM network represents a quantum Please contact: dial-on-demand features, can be used for leap towards total mobility and Jori Paananen – VTT Information establishing the connection. reachability of company employees at a Technology reasonable cost. On the other hand, new Tel: +358 9 456 5646 E-mail: [email protected]

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The applications using the services The results from the project include a provided by SFT, may have different Activities protocol compiler supporting the types of transfer requirements: small files development of ALF based applications, related to operational information should at SICS's control algorithms for network be transferred with as little delay as consciousness, a multicast based reliable possible, but maps and satellite images Computer distribution protocol, a QoS model for are large and do not have as stringent network conscious applications and a delay requirements. SFT implements and Network network bandwidth probing tool. two types of queues: a priority queue and an ordinary queue. Files in the priority Architecture We are also participating in the EU Esprit queue are sent before files in the ordinary project Pegasus II. The other partners are queue. In addition, new priority files Laboratory University of Cambridge, University of suspend the transfer of an ordinary file. Twente, University of Glasgow and This multiplexing makes it possible to by Bengt Ahlgren Citrix Ltd (Cambridge, UK, formerly send even large files as background APM Ltd). The Pegasus II project transfer without blocking the channel for The focus of the Computer and develops an operating system, Nemesis, time sensitive priority files. Network Architecture (CNA) which is a generic platform for laboratory is in the networking multimedia applications featuring Automatic file compression technology and the computing effective user control over resource platform for advanced distributed allocation policy. To save transfer time, the files are applications on the Internet. The compressed before sending using lossless networking technology ranges from A mobile ad-hoc network, or “MANET”, compression (Lempel - Ziw) and the design of hardware for IP routers is a self-configuring multihop wireless expanded at the reception. This enables over core Internet protocols in the packet network, where all nodes simple formats to be used by different network and transport layers to how participate in forwarding packets to their applications without the need of separate distributed applications use the destinations. All nodes are also mobile, compression prior to sending. To network service. and thus free to move arbitrarily. Ad-hoc guarantee that the file is correctly networking is a hot research area in the reassembled an MD5 checksum The CNA lab participated in the EU area of mobile communication. The algorithm is used to check that the Esprit LTR project HIPPARCH together research issues we are working on in this original file has been transferred with researchers from INRIA Sophia- area are power management, routing unchanged. Antipolis, University College London, protocols and addressing to provide Uppsala University, Dassault Internet connectivity to ad-hoc networks. Because SFT is used unattended 24 h/day Electronique (now part of Thompson- 7days/week, special logfiles are CSF) and University of Technology, In a previous project we have developed automatically created, which gives Sydney. The project was finished at the a dimensioning model for IP telephony. information about the performance of the end of August 1998 with excellent We are continuing this work with system as well as trace information in reviews. The project therefore received simulations and measurements in case of unexpected errors. additional funding for exploiting the experimental networks to validate the results further. model and to evaluate if an IP network To summarise, SFT atomises the with differentiated services can provide information exchange between the co- In HIPPARCH we have been the necessary network quality of service ordinating centre and the icebreakers investigating novel architectures for high for telephony. providing reliable unattended file transfer performance communication protocols over unreliable connections. Although based on the Application Level Framing For more information on the Computer the use of standard protocols does not (ALF) and Integrated Layer Processing and Network Architecture Laboratory, necessarily maximise the net transfer (ILP) concepts. The project also adopted see http://www.sics.se/cna/cna.html rate, the robustness and modularity of the notion of “network conscious ■ this approach are considered to be more applications”, that is, applications that Please contact: valuable for operational use than are aware of varying network conditions Bengt Ahlgren – SICS maximised channel capacity utilisation. and that adapt in one way or another to Tel: +46 8 633 1562 ■ these conditions in order to optimize E-mail: [email protected] Please contact: application performance. This notion is Markus Laakso – VTT Information based on the belief that it is only the Technology application itself that can make the best Tel: +358 9 456 4568 adaptation decision, for example, change E-mail: [email protected] audio encoding algorithm.

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of the requests on a geographical exceeded their time life (old requests) are Monitoring landscape (in pictorial form). The deleted. In this way a visualization of the geographical origin of the request is way that network traffic varies with time and Displaying found by comparing its IP address to is given! Moreover, Palantir checks databases of information about continually the log file to display new Traffic on the geographical locations of the address. In incoming requests at real-time. the case of addresses registered in the World Wide Web US, the addresses are compared to To facilitate its use, Palantir provides an registry databases and then that graphical interface with several functions by Evangelos P. Markatos and information in compared against a most important of which are: Athanasios E. Papathanasiou zipcode database to determine the • aggregation: requests originating from geographic origination of the address. several predefined (or user-defined) Developed by the Computer The type and magnitude of requests that Architecture and VLSI Group at the Institute of Computer Science - FORTH, Palantir is an application that can be used to display the origin, volume and type of the incoming requests of a web server. A good knowledge of the geographic distribution and access patterns of the clients creating these requests may indicate a more efficient way of erving them.

World-Wide Web traffic continues to increase at impressive rates. Busy web servers may get as many as several millions of hits (accesses) in a day. Accesses may originate from all over the world and may result in a ‘rush hour’ that Palantir’s Traffic Viewer Window. The picture shows the requests received by the Web Server of the Computer Architecture and VLSI Systems Division lasts 24-hours per day. Web traffic will of ICS-FORTH of Crete at Heraklion during two consecutive days. probably continue to increase as more people gain access and new applications (including commercial ones) are originate from each region are shown in regions are aggregated into a single emerging. To meet the demands of this the map either stacked bars or as stacked bar (or concentric cycle) ever-increasing traffic, webmasters concentric circles. Different types of • zooming: Palantir may zoom in a should design their web servers in such requests are easily identified by being specific location in order to study more a way as to disseminate information (and displayed with different colors. effectively the traffic that originates sell or advertise products) effectively and from a particular geographic region. reliably. A first step towards effective Palantir can animate the web traffic in information dissemination is static mode or in dynamic mode. In the • filtering: Palantir provides two kinds of understanding a web server’s client base, first case, the requests, which have filters: Domain Filter and Request and reaching out to it. Palantir is a web occurred during a specific period of time Filter. The Domain Filter is used to traffic monitor and visualization tool that and are contained in the selected log files, display only requests that come from a can be used to display the origin, volume are animated in the viewer. Each request specified domain, while the Request and type of the incoming requests of a remains displayed until the end of the Filter displays only those requests that web server. A good knowledge of the simulation (it has an unlimited time life). ask for a specific kind of files. geographic distribution and access Thus, the stacked bars (or the concentric patterns of the clients creating these circles) present the total amount of Palantir is completely written in Java, requests may indicate a more efficient requests cumulatively (summary of mainly for portability reasons and may way of serving them. traffic over a specified period). In the be accessed though its Home Page at Dynamic mode, Palantir’s viewer tries ICS-FORTH: Palantir reads the log files of a web server to capture the instant traffic of requests. http://archvlsi.ics.forth.gr/OS/www.html. and after categorizing the requests into Each request, contained in the log file, is six major types (text, graphics, audio, considered to have a limited time life. As A Palantir server is currently running at video, scientific, and other - that is any time passes, new requests are displayed http://sappho.ics.forth.gr:9000, which other kind of request) displays the origin on the viewer, while those that have may be freely used for downloading Log

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files and viewing Network Traffic Different levels of Internet object caching Calamaris) on a daily basis by using the Visualizations. are illustrated in Fig. 1. In the case of request log file of Squid. This log file Hungarnet a loose cache hierarchy has includes, among other things, the Current plans for Palantir include been deployed, with only one server at timestamp of the request, the service visualizing a domain’s outgoing requests. the top. TLC in a circle represents the time, the client’s IP address, the A simple way for achieving this is by place of the investigated host - the top- requested URL, the size of the object. monitoring outgoing TCP packets that level cache. This server acts as a parent From this summary the cache manager have as a destination port the 80 port cache, ie, its child caches request objects can identify what the cache is primarily (default port for http requests) of a host. from it if the requested URL cannot be used for (eg which sites/domains are ■ found in the local cache. (In this context popular), how the cache behaves towards Please contact Evangelos P. Markatos – ICS-FORTH Tel: +30 81 391655 E-mail: [email protected] Athanasios E. Papathanasiou – ICS-FORTH Tel: +30 81 391437 E-mail: [email protected] Different levels of Internet object caching (the numbers Investigation on the arrows represent the order of communication, the of Internet columns show the type of the Object Cache communication Performance network). an object is an entity identified by a different clients, what the gains of the Bottlenecks unique URL.) Furthermore, the top-level cache hierarchy are, how much savings server also changes information with the cache achieved on the given day. by Bertold Kolics other caches, ie, it can only retrieve an object from such a ‘neighbour’ cache if Third, the underlying OS is monitored. Internet object caching is one of the the requested URL can be found at the The top-level server runs on a recent biggest driving forces in the Internet neighbour. Therefore, in this kind of Solaris operating system. OS specific related development area, because it hierarchy the top-level server perceives tools as iostat, vmstat can be used for saves bandwidth and reduces access the largest load. monitoring the performance of the latency for popular objects. Since 1995 system, but at this server we use ‘The SE about 50 cache servers have been In most cases Squid is used as a proxy Performance Toolkit’. The toolkit makes installed in Hungarnet, the local cache software and it follows that the use of the standard libraries shipped with academic and higher education host operating systems are UNIX-clones. Solaris to read kernel values. It evaluates network in Hungary. These servers Thus, the performance problems can these values in every 30 second and logs form a loose, at most three-level have network-, Squid-, hardware- or the unusual or unwanted system hierarchy with one server at the top. UNIX-specific sources. performance specific events (eg too much It is in the nature of the currently used load on network interface card or on a hierarchy that the topmost server The monitoring of the caching host is specific disk). 30 second sampling time perceives the largest load. Accordingly, performed in several ways: First, an is long enough to eliminate bursts in the the investigation focuses primarily on SNMP client retrieves status data system load and small enough not to lose the performance of the top-level regularly from the caching software and valuable information by taking averages server. The primary goal of the project the result is displayed in a graphical for long periods of time. conducted at SZTAKI is to develop output produced by MRTG. Variables tools for identifying performance such as the number of requests, service By evaluating the information gained by bottlenecks, by using extensive time of hits (objects serviced from the this three-level cache analysis, the cache monitoring and log analysis at the cache) and misses (objects serviced using manager can identify possible investigated host. As the number of external sources), traffic volumes are bottlenecks in the cache infrastructure requests increases day after day, the tracked. Trends, unusual events can be more accurately in an easier way. prediction of performance bottlenecks easily identified with this type of in the future is also of interest. monitoring. Second, a summary of the The project itself is Hungarnet-specific, cache activities is created (with but the results and experiences of the

34 SPECIAL THEME investigations can be useful for other the commercial chore of selling the A cornerstone of our approach is: there cache operators as well. A cache services on the open market. NSD has should not be any dedicated console for management system with performance been managing Hungarnet’s IP network dedicated network management. We measuring/evaluation module is to be for many years. (Hungarnet is the Hungarian have to have tools that can be relocated built in the near future. Academic and Research Network in case of failures; we have to have a Organisation, http://www.hungarnet.hu) flexible environment where at least a Currently, two institutions from Hungary Some people define the task that we do group of people can share the same view are involved in the project: SZTAKI, as network operation. Well, it is true on of the network: Network Department and Systems & the one hand but a bit less than the full • Basic core tools: monitoring network Control Laboratory and the Technical image. It is true that we operate a network reachability (pinger), monitoring service University of Budapest, Department of infrastructure. On the other hand, this is availability (servers alive), network Control Engineering and Information ever expanding in capacity and has got events administration with ticketing Technology. The only international a wide range of technologies from ISDN (home-made ticketing software) partner of the project is the TF-CACHE to SDH. • Statistical tools: collecting interface project of TERENA. Co-operation with traffic statistics (mrtg, monster), other ERCIM members in this field Working in a conservative and under collection individual IP statistics would be welcome. funded environment sometimes helps. (home-made collection tool) ■ You do not have to worry about the • Extended monitoring tool: line database Please contact: management approval of requested funds and the bureaucratic procedures of (home-made), interface database Bertold Kolics – SZTAKI (home-made), network database (home- Tel: +36 1 349 7532 procurement. Although you will not end- E-mail: [email protected] up with glossy leaflets and boxes that are made), web based console for a bit outdated in the day of delivery. On monitoring network reachability (home- the other hand, you might collect and made), service level monitoring (home- develop a set of tools running on different made) The Changing platforms and providing the very services • Reporting - monthly reporting: service needed. Traditional network level reporting (home-made), line Face of Network management meant that there were a few overloads (home-made), traffic dedicated desktops from where the monitoring (home-made), ticket Management – operators and the real techies could check statistics (home-made) the network status. The Internet • Special tools:monitoring special events A Hungarian revolution and the web explosion (collisions, temperature, VC statistics), affected network management. We are backup handling (home-made), paging Experience somewhere halfway through. The big (SMS) regularly and in case of special names (Microsoft, Cisco) are about to network events. by István Tétényi invade this territory. Till it happens, there is room for home-made solutions. Below Expected future developments TEN-155 happened the other day. you will find our approach and the TEN-34 became history after 18 results. We plan to introduce netflow statistics months. Research networking is still collection this year to have even more fashionable. People, organisations As in every modern organisation, the precise information about traffic have accustomed to the results of the Intranet is the basic infrastructure characteristics. Application monitoring Internet revolution. We take component that supports groupwork. We will be extended. We try to strengthen ubiquitous, instant access granted. Is (NSD) do have a loosely coupled set of the database background for the tools we it not true? Just the opposite. The tools put together in the recent years in use. Security issues have to be refined. situation is only seemingly under order to manage the networks we operate. We plan to migrate interface statistics control. Networking is like teenagers Naturally, the tools alone - without the collection and visualisation from monster with long arms and legs and short people and procedures - cannot solve the to rrdtool (mrtg, cricket). We are looking clothes. Network management is much tasks. What we use at the moment is a forward to directory enhanced network like the caring parent that tries to meet Network Management Intranet that was management. We are open to co- operate the ‘demands’. This article tries to developed over the years. It has been with anyone who truly believes in vendor summarise the results that we have refined and its functionality extended independent tools and network achieved to manage the largest slice of many times. management. the Hungarian Internet of several ■ hundred institutions. Network Management Intranet = several Please contact: functions (tools) that are equally István Tétényi – SZTAKI The Network Services Department of available for a group of people solving Tel: +36 1 349 7532 SZTAKI (NSD) is a small ISP without common tasks together. E-mail: [email protected]

35 SPECIAL THEME

destinations. Only IP is used for inter- The ATM switches (IBM 8260s) are The New CNR institute traffic. Intra-institute traffic is located in the wiring closets of the central also based on other protocols, most hexagon (1.1 – 1.0 – 3.0 – 3.1 – 20.1 – Research Area commonly AppleTalk, IPX and 13.0). LAN emulation, MPOA, routing NETBEUI. and bridging services are provided by in Pisa chooses equipment (IBM MSS) co-located with The LAN of the new campus must be two ATM switches. All other wiring an ATM Local able to meet two conflicting closets are just one fibre hop away from requirements: it must keep a clear the nearest ATM switch. Every wiring Area Network separation between the broadcast closet contains Ethernet switches (IBM domains of different institutes and enable 8271s) with fibre ATM uplinks to the by Marco Sommani

Starting in late spring of 1999, the 15 CNR institutes in Pisa will move to a new campus, known as the ‘Area della Ricerca di San Cataldo’. The backbone of the local area network of the new campus has been designed using ATM LAN Emulation (LANE) and Multiprotocol over ATM (MPOA). The benefits of an ATM based solution appeared clear as recently as two years ago. Now, however, with the appearance on the market of powerful layer-3 switches with gigabit Ethernet interfaces, the advantages of ATM based LANs have become much less evident, to the point The fiber optic backbone. that their deployment is discouraged by many experts. This article claims that, even if layer-3 switching high-bandwidth and low-delay inter- nearest ATM switch. Fibre connections techniques over gigabit Ethernet can institute communications. This is because between peripheral wiring closets shown minimise the price/throughput ratio, (i) it has been considered undesirable to in the figure are currently not used. an ATM-based LAN remains the best force network users to change their habits solution if multiple broadcast domains suddenly, and (ii) inter-institute co- Typically one institute spans from two are scattered over the same physical operation is expected to become to six wiring closets and shares some infrastructure. increasingly important and some closets with other institutes. Ethernet institutes may be requested to host ports on the Ethernet switches are Design Goals and Constraints servers providing services to the whole statically assigned to broadcast domains; campus. every broadcast domain is associated Currently the 15 CNR institutes in Pisa with an emulated LAN (ELAN) in the are scattered throughout the city. The Solution ATM cloud. The Ethernet switches now Typically, each institute has its own in place are not MPOA-capable. As a internal LAN and communicates with the A graphical description of the new LAN result, all traffic between different rest of the world via a slow connection is available at http://soi.cnr.it/~mario/ broadcast domains must transit through (64 Kb/s or basic rate ISDN in most piante/Default.html. one of the two IBM MSS acting as a cases, with a few 2 Mb/s exceptions). router, resulting in an obvious bottleneck The router with the external Internet The figure gives a simplified schema for all inter-institute traffic. This will not connection is located in a block hosting representing the fibre connections be a real problem in the beginning, when four institutes: CNUCE, IAT, IEI and between wiring closets. The four big inter-institute traffic is expected to remain IMC. The internal WAN topology is rectangles represent the main buildings low; however, as soon as inter-institute roughly a star centred at the site with the in the campus (A, B1, B2 and C). Smaller traffic starts to increase, it will become Internet connection. rectangles represent the 27 wiring closets necessary to add MPOA-capable edge concentrating all copper cable coming devices such as the IBM 8371 to the Inter-institute traffic is quite low. Most from the rooms. infrastructure. communications are either internal within an institute or directed to remote Internet

36 SPECIAL THEME

Comparison with a Gigabit network management becomes too Strangely enough, ATM is also quite Ethernet Solution complex. uncommon on commercial sites. A possible explanation is the fact that many The alternative to the ATM solution is With complex VLAN topologies, it is network consultants prefer to promote to place layer-2 and/or layer-3 switches also very difficult to configure inter- what they already know (Ethernet) rather in every closet and to interconnect them VLAN routing in a way that minimises than spending time to learn something via point-to-point Ethernet links at the number of hops over inter-switch new (LAN emulation and MPOA). appropriate speeds (100 Mb/s or 1000 links. This problem is only partially Mb/s). reduced by special features that are If this trend continues, prices of Ethernet- common on many layer-3 switches, such based solutions will continue to fall and The non-ATM solution is appropriate as IP auto-learn. ATM prices will remain stable. Even when there is a close correspondence worse, switch manufacturers might between broadcast domains and the Conclusions decide to stop investments in ATM physical topology of the network. In all products. other cases, the answer in a non-ATM When the LAN structure is simple, world is to use Virtual LANs (VLANs), gigabit Ethernet and layer-3 switches can In order to stop this trend, every effort ie to use bridging to exchange traffic offer the best price/performance ratio. In should be made to clarify ATM between hosts of the same broadcast all other cases, ATM LAN emulation, advantages to as wide an audience as domain attached to different switches and with its two-level addressing structure, possible. to “tag” frames sent over inter-switch provides a much better solution, because ■ links with their VLAN identifier. it optimises traffic patterns and simplifies Please contact: network management. Marco Sommani – IAT-CNR With complex VLAN topologies, Tel: +39 050 593 313 management may be a real nightmare. In In the last two years, there has been a E-mail: [email protected] fact, if all inter-switch links are enabled tendency in the academic community to for transporting traffic for all the under-estimate the advantages that can VLANs, then all broadcasts and be obtained with ATM. This probably Multicasts of the VLANs are propagated depends on the fact that typically to all switches; otherwise, if inter-switch broadcast domains inside universities can links are configured just for those easily be mapped over the physical VLANs that they should interconnect, infrastructure.

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37 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

entails a recourse to brute force, that is worldwide. This environment is Software: to say to observe the behavior of the constructed around LOTOS, a language system for each set of data. This that makes it possible to describe Objective Zero procedure is equivalent to exploring all protocols for ‘asynchronous’ distributed the states that the system comes to and parallel systems. LOTOS was chosen Defect occupy, which are modeled by a ‘states because it is the only language of this graph’. type that has the status of an international by Maurice Mashaal standard and whose semantics are The problem is that the number of rigorously defined. To write programs that are at the same configurations to be explored is immense, time complex and without logical even if the elements of the system can Applications of the CADP toolbox range faults or bugs, that is a feat, or more only occupy a finite number of states, from databases to communication likely a utopian dream. In a day and which is often the case in practice. The networks including cryptographic age when computers are everywhere, difficulty thus resides in carrying out this security protocols for electronic one cannot help but be a little anxious exploration in an ‘intelligent’ way, by commerce. CADP is being currently used at moments: isn’t there any risk that restricting attention to significant cases by Bull, in the framework of the the people who deal with my credit or to sub-systems and so on. This can Bull/INRIA Dyade GIE, to validate the card will fleece me without my noticing avoid a comprehensive verification that multiprocessor architectures that the it? Are all the electronic circuits of the would be way too costly in terms of time company is devising for their future high plane I am about to board entirely and memory. In addition, the goal is to end servers. CADP was also used to compatible with one another? In design tools that can be used by non- detect an error in the ‘Firewire’ bus general, the software at work has been specialists. This is far from being a (IEEE standard 1394), a high speed serial validated and tested beforehand, all negligible aspect if one has industrial bus for micro-computers that was the more so if its malfunctioning can applications in mind. adopted by the main computer have grave consequences. Validation manufacturers, software publishers and and testing take time and effort, MEIJE audiovisual equipment manufacturers. however, which cost money. This error was practically impossible to Furthermore, how can we be sure that One of the projects that are working in catch by hand since it only occurs after everything was verified? this direction is MEIJE, which is a very definite sequence of some fifty interested in particular in the Esterel operations! This is the interest of research that aims language. Esterel is a programming at systematizing and automating such language developed within MEIJE that PAMPA procedures. The problem arises foremost is adapted to command systems that must for distributed or parallel systems that react in real time to an external The PAMPA project is developing comprise several communicating or environment and function in a validation tools in the framework of the interacting elements. For example, ‘synchronous’ fashion between parallel UML (Unified Modeling Language) communication protocols must be components. The applications considered object-oriented method, among others. certified to be locking free to avoid by MEIJE thus naturally concern This method is widely used in industry situations in which two different embedded systems for aircraft, to write programs and model them. One programs are waiting for each other to automobiles, or material circuits among of PAMPA’s strong points is the joint supply an information that is necessary others. This is an area where software development with CNRS laboratory for them to keep executing or in which reliability is crucial. MEIJE is thus Vérimag of a software called TGV (Test several programs need to write working in collaboration with Dassault Generation with Verification) that simultaneously at the same memory Aviation on the modeling of embedded automatically produces compliance tests. address. systems in aircraft for their verification. With this tool, PAMPA for example is Similarly in micro-electronics, MEIJE is collaborating with the European project Such research is being carried out by experimenting on the use of Esterel Modistarc whose goal is to set up a several INRIA projects, with a significant techniques for the synthesis and design testing methodology for embedded theoretical aspect. In effect, one of the of integrated circuits. From a formal communication and management approaches consists in analyzing the viewpoint, such devices are equivalent protocols in automobiles. A large part of semantics of the programming language to concurrent software systems. the applications of verification tools to obtain formal models of the software however concerns the field of under consideration. This step facilitates The VASY Initiative telecommunications, in which systems the design of the actual software are distributed in essence. Together with verification tools. The verification can The VASY initiative is contributing to four other INRIA teams, PAMPA is in fact be effected by trying to formally the development of a compilation and collaborating with Alcatel in the design prove properties and good functioning verification toolbox called CADP and of tools for formal operations within a criteria. However, most often verification already distributed to more than 172 sites

38 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT telecommunication software vague phenomena. Namely, it was these floats reach negative values with development line defined by Alcatel. supposed that the assumed durations of respect to all other paths indicates the particular activities are not exactly known possibility with which a delay in For more information see: in advance, and that the exclusive realization can jeopardize the punctual MEIJE: http://www-sop.inria.fr/meije/ character of some of them and fulfilment of given time-limits. These meije-eng.html objectively existing uncertainty of the possibilities of negative floats and their VASY: http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy technological and economic environment structure offers an interesting information PAMPA: http://www.irisa.fr/pampa influencing some others lead to only about the certainties and riscs being ■ uncertain idea about the time needed for related to the modelled production Please contact: their realization. Moreover, this process and, in this sense, the fuzzy set Robert de Simone – INRIA (MEIJE) uncertainty is not based on statistical theoretical analysis of paths and their Tel: + 33 6 92 38 7941 dispersion of possible values and, durations offers a more relief and more E-mail: [email protected] consequently, application of probabilistic finely structured information than the Hubert Garavel – INRIA (VASY) methods is not effective. Such situation deterministic model. The model is based Tel: + 33 4 76 61 52 24 may appear, eg, if some activities are on some former works of the researchers E-mail: [email protected] realized by new technologies going and it probably opens the possibility of Claude Jard – CNRS (PAMPA) beyond the stabilized experience, if a development regarding further elements Tel: +33 2 99 84 71 93 non-standard object (atypical building, of the network analysis. E-mail: [email protected] satelite or tanker) is produced, or if the complete production process modelled The fuzzy set theoretical analysis of the by the referred method is to last so long critical path has illustrated one that some exactly unpredictable changes methodological discrepancy of the Critical Path in of technologies cannot be excluded. operations with fuzzy quantities based on the so called extension principle, Fuzzy Network In such case a fuzzy set theoretical model namely the enormous increasing of of durations of activities was used, fuzzy uncertainty extent if the algebraic Analysis durations of paths and fuzzy float values operation of summation is used. The were derived, and it was also shown that paths in the network analysis which by Milan Mare‰ the concept of critical path itself is fuzzy. usually consist of numerous activities The described mathematical model of show this problem in an illustrative way. The project ‘Fuzzy Set Theoretical network analysis with vague components Such rapid increasing of uncertainty, Models of Cooperative Behaviour of is based on the paradigm due to which moreover, does not fully correspond with Economic Subjects’, was solved in 1996- the uncertainty of input data (durations the everyday practical experience. It 1998 at the Institute of Information of activities) generates also uncertainty appears to be useful to look for some Theory and Automation of Sciences of of some properties (criticism and sub- alternative approach to the arithmetical the Czech Republic. The project team criticism of paths, ordering of paths with processing of fuzzy numbers. Such has also included specialists from the respect to their durations) and output data approach could be based on the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the (floats of paths and activities). The separation of the quantitative and fuzzy Slovak Technical University. The derivation of the characteristic of semantic component of a vague number widely concepted orientation of the vagueness of the output data from the and on their separate processing by grant has included, beside others, the vagueness of the input ones is based on arithmetical an fuzzy logical methods, construction and investigation of the the processing of fuzzy numbers. respectively. One of the affiliated co-ordination of activities in complex outcomes of the referred research is a production and building processes From the point of interpretation the most suggestion of an alternative model of which is usually described by means of interesting output is the concept of fuzzy fuzzy quantities and their processing, network analysis and critical path floats which indicates possible riscs of respecting the heuristic principle method (CPM). delays with numerically structured formulated above. possibilities. The fact that being critical The deterministic version of the CPM becomes a fuzzy property of paths means Further information (reprints of algorithms is well known for many years that the critical paths form a fuzzy subset publications) is available on request by already and an effective software is of the set of all paths to which any path e-mail. commercially available. Anyhow, the belongs with some possibility. Also the ■ determinism of the model can be vague durations of paths mean that for Please contact: questioned in many practical situations any pair of paths each of them can last Milan Mare‰ – CRCIM in which non-standard procedures are longer than the other one with some Tel: +420 2 688 4669 used in the modelled sequence of possibility and it is meaningful to E-mail: [email protected] activities. The main goal of this part of compute the floats regarding all possibly research was to generalize the well critical paths. The possibility with which known model and include uncertain and

39 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

another creating a cluster of interoperable • Push Service – mainly responsible for EUROgatherer – services. Thus, an Internet user can filtering an information flow with access a single EUROgatherer service or respect to user long term information Personalised a composite cluster of services. Such a needs. cluster should provide a more complete • Wrapper Service – responsible for Information service (for example a personalized push retrieving HTML pages by querying or pull service). online Web databases and search Gathering engines and transmitting them to the System The openness of the architecture is Pull and Push services. guaranteed by the fact that all the system • Gatherer Service – responsible for components: retrieving HTML pages by spidering by Costantino Thanos • share a common user profile model the Web and transmitting them to the which complies with the standard Pull and Push services. The explosive growth of Internet and P3P (see the Profiling service below) the World Wide Web makes an enormous amount of information widely available; however, this abundance of information can easily become a mixed blessing without methods to filter and control the potentially unlimited flux of information from sources to their receiving end-users (the well-known information overload syndrome). The EUROgatherer project aims at alleviating this problem by making information available to users in the A federated view of appropriate form, amount and level of the EUROgatherer detail, and at the right time. services.

The EUROgatherer project aims at • share a common category taxonomy • News Service – responsible for designing and implementing a system • use standard communication collecting continuous information flows which provides a personalised mechanisms/protocols. transmitted by News Agencies or information gathering service on the Usenet news discussion groups using Internet. In particular, the EUROgatherer The EUROgatherer system is composed several transmission means (satellite, system will provide functionalities: of the following services: internet, teletext, videotext) and • to access a variety of information • User Service - the main entry point to transmitting them to the Push service. sources the system services. It provides the The project adopts an advanced federated • to create meaningful abstracts of the users with a global view of system approach to the Internet services domain retrieved documents and classify functionality and supports them when (see the figure). It will build on existing them appropriately accessing the system components. standards and contribute to the • to acquire and retain user profiles and • Profiling Service – responsible for the development of new ones. act upon one or more goals based on management (storage, maintenance and retrieval) of the user profiles. such profiles The users of the EUROgatherer system • to support a relevance feedback • Dispatcher Service – responsible for can be divided in two categories: dispatching information requests to mechanism. • Casual users – casual users are generic other system services. Internet users who use the A service-based architecture has been • Delivery Service – responsible for EUROgatherer system like any other designed to meet the project requirements delivering the results of information Web search engine. They have at their and is now under development. The set requests to the users according to disposal the AdHocQuery functionality, of EUROgatherer services specified delivery modes. provided by the EUROgatherer User (UserProfiling, Delivery, Pull, Push, and • Pull Service – responsible for collecting service, to issue queries to be executed Wrapper services) provided by the information meeting user needs by the system. This functionality system are visible to the user and expressed both as long term needs satisfies the short term information accessible both separately or as a member (specified in a user profile) as well as needs of a user. of a cluster of services (for example, Pull short term needs (ad hoc queries, results • Registered users – registered users are + Profiling + Delivery or Push +Profiling on demand). + Delivery, etc.). One service can access users who have specified their long term

40 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

information needs through the definition The interest shown in the cross-language The experience of the first CLIR track of a profile. This profile is stored in a track since its introduction into the TREC showed that it is difficult to produce database managed by the Profiling conferences in 1997 (TREC-6) shows the topics in several languages at a single service. Retrieval of information importance of this emerging area. There site. Thus, since TREC-7, a distributed specified in a user profile in pull/push are many applications where information approach to topic creation and results mode can be triggered either directly by should be accessible to users regardless assessment has been chosen. There are the user or by the dispatcher service on of language. In the global information currently four different sites, each located behalf of the user. Two interactive society, situations when a user is faced in an area where one of the topic modes are available: ‘Result on with the task of querying a multilingual languages is spoken natively: Demand’ and ‘Scheduled Queries’. document collection are becoming • English: NIST, Gaithersburg, MD, increasingly common. Many users have USA The EUROgatherer project is funded by some foreign language knowledge, but • French: University of Zurich, the Telematics Information Engineering their proficiency may not be good enough Switzerland programme. It is conducted by a to formulate queries to appropriately consortium composed of the following express their information needs. Such • German: Social Science Information partners: Italia On Line, Italy; Xerox users will benefit enormously if they can Centre, Bonn/University of Koblenz, Research Centre Europe, France; CINET, enter their queries in their native Germany Spain; Eurospider Information language, because they are able to • Italian: IEI-CNR, Pisa, Italy Technology, Switzerland; Consiglio examine relevant documents in other The track coordinator is Peter Schäuble, Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto di languages even if they are untranslated. EIT, Zurich, Switzerland. Elaborazione dell’Informazione, Italy; Monolingual users, on the other hand, University of Dortmund, Germany; can use translations aids to help them Each site is responsible for creating a Dublin City University, Ireland. understand their search results. There is certain number of topics and for ■ thus a growing demand for efficient translating the topics created by the other Please contact: cross-language query systems; the aim sites into the local language. In this way, an equivalent set of topics is created for Costantino Thanos – IEI-CNR of the CLIR evaluation effort is to EUROgatherer Project Coordinator stimulate research in this area by each of the four languages. Sites are also Tel: +39 050 593 492 providing a forum for the exchange of responsible for the evaluation of results E-mail: [email protected] ideas and communication of results and against the local language document to help create the necessary test collection. collections for effective evaluation. Although the CLIR track is coordinated Cross-Language The CLIR track at TREC-8 in Europe, the results are presented in the United States, at the TREC Conferences Information The main task of this year’s CLIR track in November. It is thus probably not is to search documents in a multilingual surprising that, so far, the participation System pool containing news documents in four has been dominated by US groups. At different languages: English, German, TREC-7, there were nine CLIR Evaluation French, and Italian. The goal is to retrieve participants: 6 from North America - 5 documents from all languages, rather US and 1 Canada - and just 3 from by Carol Peters than just a given pair. This is to Europe (1 each from France, Switzerland encourage groups to work with as many and the Netherlands). This is clearly not The development of methodologies languages as possible. For each topic (ie, representative of the European situation and measures for system evaluation is query), a list of document identifiers is where multilingual issues are an an important topic in the information to be submitted which are ranked in everyday reality. We very much hope retrieval field. In recent years, the US decreasing order of the estimated that this imbalance will be at least National Institute of Standards and relevance of the documents; the list will partially redressed this year at TREC-8. Technology (NIST) has done a great usually contain documents in all four service to the IR community with the languages. The main evaluation will be CLIR System Evaluation in 2000 organisation of the Text Retrieval based on this list, although a simplified Conference (TREC) series in which task will be considered with only English Together with the TREC coordinators at various types of IR systems are and a second language. In addition, there NIST, we are now looking towards the evaluated by assessing their will be a special subtask. This task future. It seems evident that issues performance against set tasks consists of a second data collection from regarding multilingual information (http://trec.nist.gov). Since 1997, the social science field. The rationale of retrieval system effectiveness will gain TREC has included a track for cross- this subtask is to study CLIR in a vertical in importance in the next few years. We language information retrieval (CLIR) domain (ie social science) where a are thus seriously considering the system evaluation. German/English thesaurus is available. possibility of setting up a European

41 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

forum specifically for cross-language the National Board for Industrial and and multilingual system assessment. In Technical Development. Since the main Mathematical this way, we could extend the scope of target groups are within Sweden, the the current CLIR evaluation activity to web-site will mainly be in Swedish Morphology cover other important, related issues, (‘svenska’ actually means ‘Swedish’ in such as cross-language evaluation for Swedish!); however, there will also be a and Image multi-modal systems, monolingual part targeted at other European groups evaluation for non-English IR systems, looking for Swedish research partners. Processing etc. Such a European forum would continue to participate with NIST but all SICS has been chosen as the coordinator by Henk Heijmans coordination activities would be centred for this project since SICS’s language in Europe, including the maintenance of group has a long-established reputation In the processing and analysis of a repository of tools, training data and as being one of the leading groups in the images it is important to be able to evaluation suites for use by the scientific field in the country. In fact, there are extract features, describe shapes and community for system evaluation already two projects at SICS with recognize patterns. Such tasks refer to activities. somewhat similar goals: in one project geometrical concepts such as size, SICS is building a platform for Swedish shape, and orientation. Mathematical For further information and instructions language processing and collecting morphology uses concepts from set on how to participate in TREC-8, see resources in the field from the various theory, geometry and topology to h t t p : / / w w w - i r . i n f . e t h z . c h / T R E C 8 / other research groups, freely distributing analyze geometrical structures in an index.html the results to the research community. In image. A substantial part of CWI’s ■ another project SICS is creating a digital research theme Signals and Images is Please contact: library by collecting language technology connected with multiresolution Martin Braschler – EIT, Zurich related research material from all the methods, based on the application of Tel: +41 1 365 3052 Nordic countries. fractals, wavelets and morphology. E-mail: [email protected] One line of research explores the The work on the information service will relationships between wavelets and mainly consist of two parts: on the one morphological methods, aiming at a hand, administrating the actual unified approach. Presenting information site; and on the other, the editorial work with creating and collecting The word ‘morphology’‚ stems from the Swedish the material which will appear on it. The Greek words morfh and logos, meaning latter part of the work will be carried out ‘the study of forms’. The term is Language by an editorial board consisting of encountered in a number of scientific representatives from several different disciplines including biology and Technology research groups, adding both geography. In the context of image geographical and competence spread. The processing it is the name of a specific by Björn Gambäck information content must reflect a number methodology designed for the analysis of research areas, and include and interest of the geometrical structure in an image. The Information and Language commercial partners as well as the Mathematical morphology was invented Engineering group at SICS is Swedish public. Thus, no single person in the early 1960s by Georges Matheron currently setting up a web-based will be able to keep the information and Jean Serra who worked on the information service for human accurate and up to date. The role of the automatic analysis of images occurring language technology in Sweden. The editor in chief will be to co-ordinate a in mineralogy and petrography. aim is to present the work done in the distributed, collective effort. The editorial Meanwhile the method has found field, both by researchers and by board will be headed by Björn Gambäck applications also in several other fields, industry, to the Swedish public. and Jussi Karlgren, both from SICS. including medical diagnostics, histology, industrial inspection, computer vision, At the same time SICS will act as a For further details, please see and character recognition. national coordination point for the http://www.svenska.sics.se/ academic and industrial language ■ Mathematical morphology examines the processing communities, that is to Please contact: geometrical structure of an image by channel information between the Björn Gambäck – SICS probing it with small patterns, called different groups working in Tel: +46 8 633 1535 ‘structuring elements’, of varying size Computational Linguistics and Speech E-mail: [email protected] and shape, just the way a blind man in the country. The work on the web-site explores the world with his fingers or a (www.svenska.sics.se) is funded by the stick. This procedure results in nonlinear Swedish government through NUTEK, image operators which are well-suited to

42 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT exploring geometrical and topological level. From a frequency point of view, sequential filters, are essentially structures. A succession of such operators the resulting difference signals (known multiresolution techniques. Bearing this is applied to an image in order to make as detail signals) form a signal in mind, one may wonder what are the certain features apparent, distinguishing decomposition in terms of bandpass- relationships between the existing linear meaningful information from irrelevant filtered copies of the original signal. (wavelets) and nonlinear (morphological) distortions, by reducing it to a sort of There is neurophysiological evidence that multiresolution approaches. Is it possible caricature (skeletonization). For example, the human visual system indeed uses a to unify both approaches into one in optical character recognition one may similar kind of decomposition. This tool mathematical framework? Does there transform the digital image of a symbol has been one of the most popular exist such a thing as a ‘morphological by reducing each connected component multiresolution schemes used in image wavelet’? The somewhat ambitious goal of CWI’s research effort is to answer such questions. First promising steps have been made by the author in collaboration with J. Goutsias (Johns Hopkins University). ■ Please contact: Henk Heijmans – CWI Tel: +31 20 592 4057 E-mail: [email protected]

Virtual Environments Decomposition of a grey-scale image by a morphological wavelet (max- lifting scheme). The original image is shown at the left and its decomposition into four subbands at the right. support Interactive to a one-pixel-thick skeleton retaining processing and computer vision. CWI is the symbol’s shape. Such a skeleton currently investigating a general Engineering suffices for recognition and can be axiomatic pyramid scheme handled much more economically than encompassing most existing linear as by Gerold Wesche the full symbol. well as nonlinear (morphological) and Jürgen Wind pyramids. Experience in image processing and Special-purpose Virtual Environments, computer vision has shown that for a The emergence of wavelet techniques designed to fit the needs of 3D comprehensive understanding of a scene has considerably boosted the visualization and simulation analysis at a broad range of resolution multiresolution approach. Unfortunately, applications, enter the research and levels is necessary. The resulting application of wavelets to problems in development departments of the car multiresolution techniques (quadtrees, image processing and computer vision is industry. They do not only support pyramids, fractal imaging, scale-spaces, sometimes hindered by its linearity. engineers in their daily work, they also etc.) all have their merits and limitations. Coarsening an image by means of linear provide a useful platform for For example, fractals have been exploited operators may not be compatible with a presentations to managers, to decision with great success in image compression natural coarsening of some image makers or to the public. GMD but to a much lesser extent for attribute of interest (shape of object, for pioneered this work introducing a segmentation problems. example), and hence use of linear Virtual Environment called procedures may be inconsistent in such ‘Responsive WorkbenchT M’, a In the earliest multiresolution approaches applications. horizontal table-sized stereo projection to signal and image processing, the most system. Together with a tailor-made popular way was to obtain a coarse level Mathematical morphology (nonlinear) is interface, it is the ideal workplace for signal by subsampling a fine resolution complementary to wavelets (linear) in 3D visualization and interactive signal, after linear smoothing, in order that it considers images as geometrical steering applications. to remove high frequencies. A ‘detail objects rather than as elements of a linear pyramid’ can then be derived by (Hilbert) space. Many of the existing The CyberStage, a CAVETM -like (CAVE subtracting from each level an morphological techniques, such as Automatic Virtual Environment) Virtual interpolated version of the next coarser granulometries, skeletons, and alternating Environment with an integrated eight-

43 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

channel sound system and a sound floor, Workbench. The user specifies vector objects are computed in real time supports interior design studies, visualization parameters - such as and emanate from the plane in the especially for car cabins. Interface insertion points for streamlines - using direction of the flow. design, ergonomics and inter-activity are six degrees of freedom input devices. the main research topics in this field of The system is running on a Responsive the GMD and its project partners or These parameters are continuously sent Workbench installation at Daimler-Benz, collaborators Daimler-Benz, BMW and from the Silicon Graphics computer to and it has been used for demonstrating Volkswagen. The visualization of the the computational server. In turn, the the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class to new Mercedes-Benz S-Class car cabin server rapidly computes high resolution members of the board of Daimler-Benz. for the board of Daimler-Benz and the visualization primitives, like streamlines VW Sharan presentation in the or iso surfaces, and sends these back to Interactive Steering of crash tests

Simulations of structural mechanics like crash tests benefit from the coupling of parallel numerical computation power and the rendering capabilities of a high- end graphics workstation. Adapting the interface or the Responsive Workbench to this application, a system has been built that integrates numerical simulation, 3D data exploration and interactive steering together with Virtual Reality techniques.

The major objective of this project is to evaluate the potentials and obstacles of interactive simulations. A parallel version of the PAM-CRASH simulation package from the European Software Institute, evaluating BMW´s crash tests, is running on a 12-processor SGI Onyx with InfiniteReality Graphics.

Interior design studies VW Sharan (Data courtesy of Volkswagen). The CyberStage as an immersive Virtual CyberStage for Volkswagen are a proof- the Silicon Graphics, where they are Environment is very suitable for the of-concept for the approaches developed displayed at high frame rates. exploration of interior car designs. Easy to date. orientation in space, head tracking and Scalar volumes such as temperature or interactivity give a nearly perfect illusion 3D visualization of Computational Fluid pressure fields, can be visualized using of depth and three-dimensionality. Dynamics, interactive steering of crash interactive cutting planes controlled by tests and interior design studies of car hand. The color coded temperature In a presentation for Volkswagen, the cabins are the main applications together visualization is updated every frame interior design of the VW Sharan model that have been developed together with without any noticeable latency. The was a convincing experience for our the car industry. intersection computation of the plane collaborators. At their lab they set up their with a 3D texture is implemented in own version of a CyberStage installation. Visualization of Computational hardware. This visualization technique ■ Fluid Dynamics is even usable for unsteady fields. Please contact: However, during the animation of the Gerold Wesche – GMD A 3D visualization application for fluid sequence the textures have to be reloaded Tel: +49 2241 14 2708 dynamics in Virtual Environments has into texture memory because the majority E-mail: [email protected] been developed by GMD and Daimler- of the memory is filled with the data Jürgen Wind – GMD Benz AG. It supports the evaluation and produced by one timestep. This may Tel: +49 2241 14 2290 exploration of huge simulation data sets reduce the smoothness of the animations. E-mail: [email protected] in a highly interactive way. Visualization In a 3D environment, interactive cutting of the simulation data and interaction planes are also applicable for the occur through the Responsive visualization of velocity vectors. Small

44 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Both research partners have many years Virtual Reality of experience operating projection based virtual environments such as the CAVE for Oil and Gas (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment), a four side room size rear Industry projection system and Responsive Workbenches table type rear projection by Bernd Fröhlich systems using high end SGI Onyx2s. and Martin Göbel GMD and the University of Houston will An International consortium has been develop the demonstrator for established to demonstrate the impact visualization, sonification and interactive of Virtual Reality in the Oil and Gas exploration within Virtual Environments. The CUBE: A new input device for GeoScience applications. industry. This effort involves the As a proof of concept the demonstrator development of prototype Virtual will cover aspects like device Reality applications specific to Oil and independence, intuitive interaction with Gas activities. geoscience data, telecommunication, distributed and collaborative The Virtual Reality applications will visualization as well as cross technology enable consortia members in Oil and Gas applications. industry to evaluate how working in Virtual Environments can most Goals effectively be used in Oil and Gas industry. Consortia members are Arco, The overall goals of the demonstrator Amoco, BHP, EXXON, Landmark, development are to apply and evaluate Mobil, Saga, Schlumberger, Shell, Virtual Environment technology for Smedvig, and Statoil. These members Reservoir discovery, characterization and represent both Oil and Gas companies management to enable multi-disciplinary Visualization of seismic data and and the software developers of Oil and collaboration, to generate synoptic views horizons. Gas applications. of data from multiple sources, and to support well planning by multi system and we will support video The consortium has selected the Virtual disciplinary teams. conferencing capabilities within the Environment Technology Lab of the distributed Virtual Environment University of Houston as the American Status and Future Work at GMD application. Additionally we are looking research and development partner and into the integration of a large SensAble GMD as the European Research and A first demonstrator is available since PHANToM force-feedback device to Development partner. Silicon Graphics late 1998. Important features of our facilitate more intuitive interaction. is supporting this consortium. system are the visualization of multiple ■ data types, support for well planning, Please contact: combined visualization and sonification Bernd Fröhlich – GMD of well log data, and multi-resolution Tel: +49 2241 14 2038 techniques. For navigation and E-mail: [email protected] interaction with the system we Martin Göbel – GMD engineered a new input device tailored Tel: +49 2241 14 2367 to geo scientific data. This new device E-mail: [email protected] allows users to focus on their exploration task rather than on operating the computer.

The highest priorities for the next two years are support for remote collaboration, exploration of other navigation tools and integration of SGI´s Volumizer volume rendering a Application Program Interface. In particular, we are going to extend our GeoScience data on the 2-sided current demonstrator to run under our Responsive Workbench. distributed Avocado Virtual Reality

45 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

simulation”, according to David W. Yen, common events. The relative frequencies Virtutech vice president and general manager of of events in real uses of computers are enterprise server products for Sun thus important both to guide design commercializes Microsystems, Inc. “Sun has worked choices, and to predict their relative with them for many years, and it is good impact. Because of limitations in existing SimICS to see they have discovered the simulation techniques in the late 1980s, commercial potential of their work and computer architects in academia were by Peter Magnusson are beginning to capitalize on its worth.” restricted to models driven by (a) scientific, rather than commercial, The SimICS simulation-based SimICS is now marketed under the label programs, and (b) only so-called ‘user- development tool was commercialized Virtutech SimICS, and is the first product level’ events, as opposed to operating in 1998, with rights of development sold by Virtutech, in addition to system involvement. By contrast, there and exploitation being licensed to specialized consulting services. Virtutech were indications that typical commercial Virtutech AB, the first formal spin-off expects to have a profitable first year of workloads, such as large databases, company in SICS’ history. operation, and 1999 is already “sold out” behaved rather differently. In later years, with customer projects. this was confirmed by detailed studies Software and hardware designers of high- performed by IBM, among others. end computer systems that play a key “The tools and technology that we role in emerging complex information provide customers are unique in the The first directions in the work leading systems, ranging from database engines commercial space,” says Virtutech CEO to SimICS was based on a to telecom/datacom transaction-oriented Peter Magnusson. “Historically, this class misunderstanding. An existing, ground systems, lack adequate debugging tools of technology has been restricted to in- breaking simulation environment both as far as functionality and house proprietary efforts, deemed too developed by Robert Bedichek at the performance issues are concerned. Such sensitive and strategic to be outsourced. University of Washington was extended tools would drastically reduce time-to- We have pioneered the concept of a to support a multiprocessor system and market thus improving competitiveness specialized, independent company in the to mimic real devices of a prototype in a fundamental way. field. The technical and economical research architecture, the SICS DDM. benefits of our specialization are The first programmer on the project Developed in the computer architecture significant. In todays competitive world, developed simulator device models group at SICS over a period of several no stone remains unturned in improving sufficiently accurate to boot and run years, SimICS is a “system level quality and time to market. Our first completely unmodified operating instruction set simulator”. It is a customers are exemplary leading edge systems, including commercial on-board specialized development tool for companies, early adopters of new firmware. This strategy was chosen on computer architects and operating system technologies and processes.” the - incorrect - assumption that it was developers that models a target computer common practice. The strategy proved at the level of individual instructions. It It began with Architecture cumbersome, and eventually it became offers unique benefits in high-end and a Misunderstanding evident that SICS was the first open computer system design work beyond research facility to seriously undertake traditional tools and methods. For The work leading up to SimICS such a programming task. The early example, SimICS can run a realistic originated in computer architecture and programmers on the project were commercial workload in a fully operating systems research at SICS in the confident that the task was not only virtualized system, allowing perfectly late 1980s and early 1990s. In projects feasible, but would take around six repeatable measurements that can track led by Seif Haridi, Erik Hagersten, and months or so. The obvious benefits of bugs that violate specifications regarding Andrzej Ciepilewski, it was observed that running a real, commercial workload, led function as well as performance. the existing simulation techniques failed a series of research managers at SICS to to capture significant characteristics of support continued work in that direction. Virtutech specializes in high-end full- ‘real’ commercial systems. A tradition system simulation technology. In the of focusing on scientific workloads had Some six calendar years, twenty man brief period since opening its doors in led to a general feeling in the field of years, and several hundred thousand lines the summer of 1998, Virtutech has signed computer architecture that available of code later, in 1997, the simulation a series of key strategic customer benchmarks and techniques had group in the Computer and Network agreements, including with Sun systematic methodological weaknesses. Architectures (CNA) group at SICS Microsystems, Ericsson, and Hewlett- finally succeeded in the original goal: Packard. A computer architect uses simulation to booting a commercial operating system provide input into his or her architecture (Solaris 2.6) on a simulated Sun “The simulator group that founded models. Much of computer architecture Microsystems server (sun4m Virtutech is one of the world’s foremost involves careful optimization of common architecture). This was the first known research groups in system level cases, perhaps to the detriment of less occasion of an academic group running

46 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER an unmodified commercial operating families of proteins, among entire system in a fully simulated environment. Gene-IT – genomes and/or specific sets. This process relies on an in-depth study of In the meantime, the architecture research A new INRIA gene duplications, which lead to the at SICS achieved great success, and disclosure of a number of unexpected and significantly influenced commercial Spin-off singular regularities, which have a strong designs. SimICS has followed in the predictive value and can be viewed wake of SICS computer architecture Company therefore as laws of Genomics. results, and has now also taken the step into the commercial field. Jean-Jacques Codani As a consequence, this straightforward and rigorous methodology is a powerful The simulation group at SICS eventually Gene-IT SA is a new start up of automatic annotation tool, which grew to five people, all of whom became INRIA, active in the BioInformatics favourably impacts on any Drug founding employees of Virtutech: sector. Gene-IT’s core technology is Discovery process. Moreover, once a Magnus Christensson, Fredrik Larsson, based on LASSAP (LArge Scale family of protein has been chosen, Peter Magnusson, Andreas Moestedt, and Sequence compArison Package), a LASSAP can perform complex tasks, Bengt Werner. The board of directors of multiple algorithms, intra- and inter- mixing public domain and private Virtutech include Bo Hedfors, an earlier databases high performance search databases (such as Geneseq and LifeSeq) chairman of the SICS Foundation, and engine, running on Unix platforms. It to reduce the set of ESTs candidates, Stig Larsson, the current chairman, as is a modern open system, based on a relative to this family. This methodology well as Per Stenström, professor of new approach to sequence comparison reduces drastically the amount of work computer architecture at the Chalmers (genomic, proteic, EXTs, patterns,...). usually needed to select EST clones as a University of Technology. LASSAP provides biologists tools and genetic material for candidates. methods that rigorously test their Other than those already mentioned, understanding of Genomics. LASSAP is progressive software, which significant contributions to the success does not pretend to provide the unique of simulation work at SICS over the years Designed to fit the needs of large-scale solution to the complex process of Drug were made by Torbjörn “tege” Granlund, sequence analysis, LASSAP has unique Discovery. It has been devised to let Anders Landin, and David Samuelsson. capabilities to analyse very large data scientist's design new strategies. They sets of sequence and pattern. By handling benefit from using a tool which lets them Virtutech is located in downtown annotation and sequence information think in terms of science, and not in terms Stockholm. For more information, see simultaneously, LASSAP allows the of informatics. LASSAP is not a fat http://www.virtutech.se scientist to ask complex queries on genomic data management system and http://www.simics.com databases or clusters of databases. designed to simplify navigation through ■ ‘mouse clicks’, nor a single-use database: Please contact: Various post-analysis techniques can be it is an automatic annotation tool, a data Peter Magnusson – Virtutech AB performed on the results, from simple mining engine which provides new Tel +46 8 690 0720 selections on alignment properties up to understanding and novel candidates. E-mail: [email protected] clustering analysis, allowing complex line of thought theories to be tested and Through its command line interface, answered immediately. The versatility LASSAP can be used by the of LASSAP allows different tasks to be BioInformatics team to implement performed by the scientist from a simple sophisticated tasks. A Java front and back web based client environment, for end is available which allows scientists example: to use the same functionality's using a • improvements of sequence quality Graphical User Interface. Its client/server and automatic analysis within model allows rapid deployment with sequencing centres minimum training to both BioInformatics and scientific personnel via the Intranet. • complex scanning on nucleic, proteic, ESTs and motifs databases For more information, see: • building protein families http://www.gene-it.com/ • reducing database redundancy, ■ checking for patents by using Please contact: proprietary algorithms. Jean-Jacques Codani – Gene-IT S.A. Tel: +33 1 39 63 52 48 From an application point of view, E-Mail: [email protected] LASSAP allows to build or to find

47 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

architecture to the knowledge manager’s with such questions and with outside Eidetica – A new workbench, each containing the document contacts, routing the continuous intake support browser technology. of documents and information, deciding CWI Spin-off on who should read what, and archiving In order to do more with electronic and arranging collections and providing Company information collections than search for a access mechanisms for clients. It also few words and wrestle one’s way through offers expanding possibilities in the by Henk Nieland endless lists of not very relevant results, analysis of large document collections,

Eidetica is the most recent of CWI’s spin-off companies (seven were established in the last five years). It was created by researchers in the Interactive Information Engineering theme, combining expertise in linguistics and mathematical clustering of dependency networks for textual domains. Eidetica provides software solutions for information managers, responsible for, eg, an intranet, a trend watching service, or a library, enabling them to easily set up high quality browsing, searching and analytic services, thus increasing both their productivity and variety of competence. Architecture of the Eidetica system. Eidetica is a Twinning venture – a concept introduced by the ministry of Economic Affairs to support emerging Eidetica’s software enables browsing such as personnel activity matching in a ICT companies with excellent office through document collections at a large organization, and trend watching facilities, business coaching and financial conceptual level. This is achieved in strategic literature. support in the form of seed or venture through the following steps: capital. Both CWI and Twinning have a • merge the complete, miscellaneous At the core of Eidetica’s system is a share in Eidetica. The company document collection into a uniform proprietary clustering method that can maintains intensive contacts with the format; efficiently find groups of related CWI research group, which focuses on information in collections about 1000 • read all documents to extract a automatic creation of user friendly access times larger than conventional methods, dictionary of subjects and control environments for large data and advanced methods to extract subject and information collections based on • create various ‘maps’ of the collection: keywords inside documents and titles. content analysis. which documents address which subjects, what authors write about what In a nutshell, Eidetica’s benefits are: subjects, which subjects are connected The unique quality of Eidetica’s software • simple and intuitive interfaces architecture is the ability to extract to other subjects • structured screen information quality controlled subject maps from • quality control: visualize the large collections of documents. (The term constructed maps and give the • better support of existing ‘eidetica’ refers to the ability to recollect information manager tools to refine functionality an earlier observation as a realistic image them • more efficient performance of in one‚s mind.) Using these expert • use the subject maps to build browsing traditional tasks supervised subject maps as a basis, and querying interfaces that guide the • analysis methods Eidetica‚s workbenches automatically user through the collection to find • open architecture. generate intranet browsers and document precisely the right information. delivery systems that reliably and For more information, see: efficiently guide their users through large Eidetica’s software helps improve http://www.eidetica.com data collections so as to obtain all – and efficiency and comfort in performing the ■ only – the latest relevant information. information and knowledge manager’s Please contact: responsibilities, such as: collecting Annius V. Groenink – CEO Eidetica Eidetica’s products range from a full text publications responding to a specific Tel :+31 20 888 4126 subject indexer through the metadata agent question, matching company expertise E-mail: [email protected]

48 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

The Computer makes Music in Pisa by Leonello Tarabella

The keywords characterising the activity of the Computer Music laboratory of CNUCE-CNR, Pisa, are man-machine interaction and real time gesture control. The computer interacts with the artist to produce music in many different ways. In order to achieve this, a special language The Aerial Painting Hands system set up. called Real-Time Concurrent Pascal Music (RTCPM) has been implemented. Using this language, a musical performance can be defined in terms of many procedures running simultaneously and interacting with the composition program during execution. As an evolution of RTCPM, a new language named GALileo (Graphic/ALgorithmic) which includes both visual programming and signal processing “facilities” is now under development. Leonello Tarabella at the Twin Massimo Magrini at the UV-stick. Towers. In order to create and control interactive detects the positions and movements of recognises the 2-D position and 3-D live computer music/graphics a performer’s hands; the performer performances, the CNUCE Computer rotations of the stick. The data acquired wears a pair of different coloured gloves is used to manage sound synthesis Music lab employs infra-red beams and and moves his/her hands in a CCD video captured image processing algorithms and create music in real-time. camera video range. The signal is sent • Imaginary Piano – where the hands of technologies for the remote sensing of to a computer which processes the moving objects handled by performers or a performer play in the air with no real images and recognises the x-y positions keyboard in front of a camera, of gestures made by them. The most of both hands and the open/close status important devices that have been connected to a video digitizer card. A of the right hand. The computer then special application running on the developed using this approach are: synthesizes in real-time coloured • TwinTowers (in collaboration with IEI- computer recognizes the player’s images projected on a large video gestures, interacts with a RTCPM CNR) – this system receives screen according to the movements of information from the movement of the program and executes an external the performer’s hands. While painting sampled piano sound. performer’s hands. It consists of two in the air, the performer is also creating sets of four infra-red sensing devices computer generated music in real-time The Computer Music Laboratory also that create two zones of the space (the An advanced version of this system is vertical edges of two square-based participated in the EC ESPRIT project now under development. The new CATS (Computer Aided Theatrical parallelpipedon, or towers) in which an system will recognise the posture, object can be detected in terms of Score) for theatre and cinema direction rotation and position in space of the simulation. distance and front and side rotations hands, enabling the transmission of with respect to a reference frame. The more sophisticated information and thus system thus implements a kind of For more information, see: a greater expressiveness during the ht t p : / / s p c o n s . c n u c e . c n r . i t / m u s i c / c m d . h t m l double aerial tri-dimensional joy-stick. perfomance. ■ • Aerial-Painting-Hands – this system, •UV-stick – this system consists of a Please contact: developed by Giuseppe Scapellato and short straight stick (lit by a UV lamp) normally used by the artist Marco Leonello Tarabella – CNUCE-CNR and moved in the visual range of a CCD Tel: +39 050 593 276 Cardini (see Ercim News No.35), camera connected to a computer which E-mail: [email protected]

49 EVENTS

SPONSORED BY ERCIM • Major Achievements (The Silver applications. Rather than running SOFSEM’98 - The Jubilee track) network elements with fixed • Parallel and Distributed Computing functionality, protocol engines and Successful Silver Jubilee applications can be dynamically • Electronic Commerce deployed at routers, switches, base by Gabriela Andrejkova • Electronic Documents and Digital stations, and end systems. Enhanced and Jan Vinar Libraries functionality for better resource • Trends in Algorithms. allocation and control of quality of SOFSEM (SOFtware SEMinar) is a service can be embedded into the full seven-day international conference The Proccedings of the conference network elements. This opens a new devoted to the theory and practice of appeared as volume 1521 of the Lecture dimension in networking paving the way software systems. Its aim is to foster Notes in Computer Science of the to future Active Networks. cooperation among computer science Springer-Verlag. professionals from academia and Tutorials (30 June) practice. Last year’s Silver Jubilee The next conference, SOFSEM’99, will Session was organized by the Slovak be held at Milovy in the Bohemian The first day is set aside for two tutorials. and Czech Societies for Computer Highlands (approximately two hours by Prof. Jonathan Smith of the University Science and SRCIM (Slovak Research car from Brno). We hope that it will be of Pennsylvania will speak on Security: Consortium for Informatics and as successful as it was on numerous • The Threat Model Mathematics). previous occasions in the same venue. • Techniques for Addressing Threats It was held from 21-27 November 1998 For more information, see: • Architectural Implications. and attracted 137 participants from SOFSEM ‘88 web page: The second speaker is yet to be fifteen countries, about two thirds from http://www.dcs.fmph.uniba.sk/~sofsem98 confirmed. Bohemia and Slovakia. SOFSEM’99web page: http://www.ics.muni.cz/sofsem/sofsem.html Conference (1-2 July) Sponsors played a very important role, ■ the main sponsors were the Andersen Please contact: On the following two days topics such Consulting, IBM, Digital Slovakia, SAP as: Gabriela Andrejkova and Jan Vinar – Slovensko, with other companies and SRCIM • Foes or Allies: Active Networks and organizations (ERCIM, Microsoft Tel: +421 95 6221128 Open Interfaces Slovakia, ORACLE Slovensko, VSZ E-mail: [email protected] • Emerging Standards Informatika) providing important contributions. Thanks to the support, • IP Services Creation SPONSORED BY ERCIM equip- ment, and staff of Telenor shall be presented and discussed. Slovakia the participants enjoyed the IWAN ’99 – First Jonathan Smith will hold a keynote Internet connection for the first time in International Working lecture on ‘Active Networks: Myths and the history of SOFSEM. Conference on Active Measurements’. Further Keynote addresses are to be determined. Networks The scientific program of the seminar was divided into four principal areas: A social evening is planned to allow for Berlin, 30 June-2 July 1999 Distributed and Parallel Systems, more informal exchanges among noted Electronic Commerce, Electronic researchers from both academia and The First International Working Documents and Digital Libraries, and industry. Conference on Active Networks will take Trends in Algorithms. There was also a place in Berlin, 30 June - 2 July, 1999. Silver Jubilee Track devoted to major For details please refer to the website It is being organised by the GMD achievements of computer science. There http://www.fokus.gmd.de/iwan99 Institute for Open Communication were twenty invited lectures and eighteen ■ Systems and Hitachi Ltd, Japan. The contributed papers which were selected Please contact: International Federation for Information from among 48 contributions by the Stefan Covaci – GMD Processing (IFIP) is sponsoring the Program Committee chaired by Branislav Tel: +49 30 3463 7171 conference. Rovan of the Comenius University of E-mail: [email protected] Bratislava. Scope Invited Lectures Recent advances in mobile code and agent technology allow for a new Invited lectures were given under the approach to the control and management following tracks: of broadband networks and distributed

50 EVENTS

SPONSORED BY ERCIM CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Topics ICALP’99 – 26-th Tenth DELOS Workshop Possible topics include: image/video/ International Colloquium on Audio-Visual Digital sound object representation; integrated on Automata, Languages, Libraries models; metadata (models and and Programming management); storage management for Santorini, Greece, continuous data; efficient indexing Prague, 11-15 July 1999 24-25 June 1999 algorithms; cross-domain searching; content-based retrieval; query languages; With respect to the positive experience The digital library of the future will automated summarization; multilingual from previous conferences, ICALP’99 is increasingly be multimedial and access; human computer interfaces; going to keep and to enhance the idea of multilingual. The collaborative interaction concurrent handling of heterogeneous a two-track conference. Similarly as in of image, sound, speech and natural me d i a . the case of two tracks of the journal language understanding technology is Theoretical Computer Science, Track A needed in order to successfully populate, Submissions of the conference will correspond to segment, index, and search digital audio- Algorithms, Automata, Complexity, and visual collections (such as film, music, We invite contributions in the form of Games, while Track B to Logic, or photo archives) with satisfactory recall position papers (2 pages) to be sent to Semantics, and Theory of Programming. and precision. [email protected] by 15 May 1999. Notification of acceptance will be e-mailed For further information, see the The Tenth Delos Workshop will provide by 1 June 1999. Each presenter will be conference website at: a forum to bring together researchers and asked to provide a technical note (5-6 ht t p : / / w w w . u i v t . c a s . c z / I C A L P 9 9 / content providers interested in this topic. pages) for the Proceedings by 15 June. ■ Invited speakers will present their views For more information, see Please contact: on the pressing issues in this area. The rest of the two-day meeting will be http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/ Jiri Wiedermann (Conference Chair) – dedicated to the presentation of position WORKSHOP/workshop.htm Institute of Computer Science, Czech ■ Academy of Sciences papers and the description of on-going Tel: +420 2 6605 2083 work. Ample time will be allowed for Please contact: E - m a i l :w i e d e r @ u i v t . c a s . c z discussion of the issues raised. Tarina Ayazi – IEI-CNR Tel: +39 050 593 401 E-mail: [email protected]

IN BRIEF

CNR – The Italian government has INRIA – UDLR (Uni Directional Link for an Internet standard on the subject, approved a decree for the Routing), a new protocol for satellite and might be definitely agreed upon in reorganisation of the National c o m m u n i c a t i o n has been set up by March 1999. Research Council. One of the main INRIA’s RODEO research team. UDLR ■ objectives is to bring the Italian scientific is a new routing protocol which solves INRIA – IN R I A has launched INRIA- community into line with the rest of seamlessly the problem of integrating in Transfert and I-Source Gestion, two Europe by providing the single research the Internet, at the IP routing complementary subsidiaries to promote institutions with greater financial and level,unidirectional satellite links. UDLR the creation of IT start-up companies. decisional autonomy and by setting up uses a terrestrial link to transmit the The mission of the INRIA-Transfer, a international groups of experts for each routing informations from the receiver 100% INRIA subsidiary, is to discipline in order to obtain a more to the emitter. A consortium led by accompany future entrepreneurs in the objective evaluation of research Alcatel, in partnership with INRIA, preliminary phases of company creation. programmes and results. The interaction Eutelsat, Polycom and Softway has I-Source Gestion (in partnership with between research and industry will be started experimenting this technology for other financial partners) has a budget of stimulated by encouraging the parallel broadcasting in video- 100MF (19 Mio¤) to invest as seed- participation in private consortia and the conferencing, videoservers, mirroring money in start-up companies. Since formation of spin-off companies. The and feeding cache servers. Applications 1984, INRIA has spun off 35 companies result should be a more efficient in connecting schools are also studied by which generated a global turnover of organisational structure with a greater another consortium to provide tools for almost 110 Mio¤ in 1998. It has acquired impact on Italian competitiveness in the cooperative work and tele-training. thus an experience in this field, worth world’s markets. UDLR is being studied by the IETF capitalizing upon. ■ relevant Working Group as a candidate ■

51 ERCIM NEWS

The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in the areas of information technology and applied mathematics. Through the definition of common scientific goals and strategies, its national member institutions aim to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co- operation with European industry. To further these objectives, ERCIM organises joint technical Workshops and Advanced Courses, sponsors a Fellowship Programme for talented young researchers, undertakes joint strategic projects, and publishes workshop, research and strategic reports, as well as a newsletter.

ERCIM News is the in-house magazine of ERCIM. Published quarterly, the newsletter reports on joint actions of the E R C I M partners, and aims to reflect the contribution made by E R C I M to the European Community in Information Technology. Through short articles and news items, it provides a forum for the exchange of information between the institutes and also with the wider scientific community. ERCIM News has a circulation of 7,000 copies.

ERCIM Central Office: Central Editor: E-mail: Telephone: Domaine de Voluceau Peter Kunz [email protected] +33 1 3963 5040 Rocquencourt B.P. 105 Local Editors: F-78153 Le Chesnay Cedex Gabriela Andrejkova (SRCIM) [email protected] +421 95 6221128 FRANCE Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú (SZTAKI) [email protected] +36 1 209 6990 E-mail: [email protected] Truls Gjestland (SINTEF) tr u l s . g j e s t l a n d @ i n f o r m a t i c s . s i n t e f . n o +47 73 59 26 45 Michal Haindl (CRCIM) [email protected] +420 2 6605 2350 Kersti Hedman (SICS) [email protected] +46 8633 1508 You can subscribe to ERCIM News Bernard Hidoine (INRIA) [email protected] +33 1 3963 5484 free of charge by: sending e-mail to Pia-Maria Linden-Linna (VTT) [email protected] +358 0 456 4501 your local editor; posting paper Siegfried Münch (GMD) [email protected] +49 2241 14 2255 Henk Nieland (CWI) [email protected] +31 20 592 4092 mail to the address above or filling Flemming Nielson (DANIT) [email protected] +45 89 42 33 63 out the form at the ERCIM web site Carol Peters (CNR) [email protected] +39 050 593 429 at ht t p : / / w w w . e r c i m . o r g / Martin Prime (CLRC) [email protected] +44 1235 44 6555 Constantine Stephanidis (FORTH) [email protected] +30 81 39 17 41

DANIT FORTH Central Laboratory Centrum voor Consiglio Nazionale Czech Research Danish Consortium Foundation GMD – of the Research Wiskunde delle Ricerche Consortium for Information for Research Forschungszentrum Councils for Informatics and Technology – In f o r m a t i o n s t e c h n i k en Informatica Technology Hellas and Mathematics GmbH Rutherford Appleton IEI-CNR Kruislaan 413 FI MU DANIT co/CIT Institute of Computer La b o r a t o r y Via S. Maria, 46 Science Schloß Birlinghoven NL-1098 SJ Botanicka 68a Aabogade 34 Chilton, Didcot P.O. Box 1385 D-53754 Sankt I-56126 Pisa CZ-602 00 Brno GB-Oxon OX11 0QX Amsterdam DK - 8200 Aarhus N GR-71110 Heraklion, Augustin Crete Tel: +420 2 6884669 Tel: +31 2 05 9 29 3 3 3 Tel: +39 050 593 433 Tel: +45 8942 2440 Tel: +44 123582 1900 Fax: +420 2 6884903 Tel: +30 81 39 16 00 Tel: +49 2241 14 0 Fax: +44 1235 44 5385 Fax: +31 20 592 4199 Fax: +39 050 554 342 h t t p : / / w w w . u t i a . c a s . c z / Fax: +45 8942 2443 Fax: +30 81 39 16 01 Fax: +49 2241 14 2889 ht t p : / / w w w . c c l r c . a c . u k / ht t p : / / w w w . c w i . n l / ht t p : / / w w w . i e i . p i . c n r . i t / CR C I M / h o m e . h t m l ht t p : / / w w w . c i t . d k / E R C I M / ht t p : / / w w w . i c s . f o r t h . g r / ht t p : / / w w w . g m d . d e /

SRCIM

Institut National Swedish Institute Swiss Association Stiftelsen Slovak Re s e a r c h Magyar Tudományos Technical Research de Recherche for Research for Industriell og Consortium Akadémia – Centre of Finland of Computer Science Teknisk Forskning en Informatique in Information for Informatics Számítástechnikai és Te c h n o l o g y ved Norges Tekniske and Mathematics et en Automatique Høgskole Au t o m a t i z á l á s i VTT Information Box 1263 Kutató Intézete Dept. Informatik Dept.of Computer Technology SINTEF Telecom & B.P. 105 S-164 29 Kista ETH-Zentrum Science, Comenius P.O. Box 1200 Informatics P.O. Box 63 F-78153 Le Chesnay CH-8092 Zürich N-7034 Trondheim University FIN-02044 VTT Mlynska Dolina M H-1518 Budapest Tel: +46 8 633 1500 Tel: +41 1 632 72 41 Tel :+47 73 59 30 00 SK-84215 Bratislava Tel: +33 1 39 63 5511 Fax: +41 1 632 11 72 Tel: +36 1 4665644 Tel:+358 9 456 6041 Fax: +46 8 751 7230 Fax :+47 73 59 43 02 Fax: +33 1 39 63 5330 http://www-dbs.inf. ht t p : / / w w w . i n f o r m a t i c s . Tel: +421 7 726635 Fax: + 36 1 466 7503 Fax :+358 9 456 6027 ht t p : / / w w w . i n r i a . f r / ht t p : / / w w w . s i c s . s e / ethz.ch/sarit/ sintef.no/ Fax: +421 7 727041 ht t p : / / w w w . s z t a k i . h u / ht t p : / / w w w . v t t . f i /

Directeur de Publication: B. Larrouturou Publication périodique réalisée par GEIE-ERCIM 52 ISSN 0926-4981