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.