The meeting was co-chaired by the Continental Co-Chairs, Shigeki Goto, Asian-Pacific Co-Chair, Kees Neggers, European Co-Chair, and George Strawn, North-American Co-Chair. The meeting organizers expressed their thanks for sponsorship of the CCIRN dinner by Juniper Networks. Shigeki Goto expressed the regret of Kilnam Chon that he was unable to attend this CCIRN meeting due to a recent accident. The attendees introduced themselves.

2. Continental Reports

APAN Link Status

The Asia-Pacific Advanced Networking (APAN) organization maintains five links to the U.S. and one to Australia. SINET provides connectivity to over 600 sites. The JGNII network provides optical network components up to 20 Gbps. Dark fiber between Korea and Japan supports links primarily at 10 Gbps.

The KOREN network has a backbone of 40 Gbps to 2.4 Gbps. The Seoul to Daejun link is 40 Gbps. A China/Japan/Korea infrastructure has been proposed with 45-155 Mbps links to China.

KREONet is a 10 Gbps network. A domestic lambda network has been proposed to support Grid and supercomputing applications. The SuperSirenII network will be operational in 2005-2006.

CERNET in China has 20,000 Km of dark fiber to 36 cities, including all provincial capitals. A Beijing to Hong Kong link is 3.5 Gbps. The CERNET link to APAN is 10 Mbps with plans to increase it to 40 Mbps. A link to StarLight provides up to OC3 service. If higher capacities are required, dark fiber will be purchased. CERNET has eight national PoPs and 30 provincial PoPs, 38 GigaPoPs, 300 campus networks, 1500 educational institutions, and 15 million users.

CSTnet is focused on the China Academy of Sciences Institutes. They are upgrading from 2 Mbps to 150 Mbps. Their international bandwidth is 2 x 155 Mbps serving 1 million users.

The China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) plans to provide multiple national backbones in China. It cooperates with CSTnet.

The CERNET2 backbone will be primarily 10 Gbps with some links at 2.5 Gbps. CNGX-IX will have links to GEANT, North America, and APAN providing connectivity to GEANT, StarLight, Abilene, APAN, and other networks. Applications on this network include IPv6 peering, high performance Grid, real-time video, and virtual laboratory, mobile, and multicast for video conferencing.

The Australian Research and Education Network (AREN) is an alliance among Powerlink, the research and education networking community, and Leightons. It has been difficult to interest high capacity carriers to provide links to the region. Tasmania is particularly difficult because it has a monopoly carrier. Two new fiber initiatives in Australia went bankrupt. AARNet made a bid for dark fiber and partnered with Leightons, a fiber builder, to provide two fiber pairs. The first fiber pair is being used for a 10 Gbps trunk. They are adding drop-offs to existing STM1/OC3 and 155 Mbps networks. An international link goes from Australia to Suva to the University of Hawaii, Manoa campus. From Oahu it goes to Hillsboro, then to Pacific Wave in Seattle. AUSAID is providing some funding. It will interconnect in Hawaii with a Hawaii to Tokyo link. A second commodity PoP is being added in Los Angeles. They hope to complete a Pacific Rim loop with 10 Gbps to Los Angeles and Seattle with cross-connects to Hawaii to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Perth to Sydney.

GEANT and the Future of Pan-European Networking

GEANT connects 33 countries across Europe. The HEAnet component has seen a factor of 100 increase in traffic since 1991. GEANT has a high-speed European backbone peering with the commodity Internet and some intercontinental links. It has a 10 Gbps backbone with some 2.5 Gbps links. It is the building block for Next Generation Networking activities including IPv6, Grids, and optical networking. EC and the National Research Networks (NRNs) support GEANT as part of Framework Programme 5 (FP5). A next generation of the network will be implemented under FP6, starting in September 2004. The range of their connections, e.g. to the Asia-Pacific region is being extended. The GEANT budget is $230 M US dollars over the next 4 years funded equally by the EC and the NRNs. A proliferation of suppliers over the last few years has led to greatly reduced costs. 40 Gbps links are becoming available but costs of interfaces are very high. 10 Gbps links are more flexible and more cost effective. Costs for 10 Gbps links are still reducing. Other wavelength costs are expected to decline. The next GEANT architecture may use multiple 10 Gbps links multi-homed. There are an increasing number of dark fiber offers.

Primary joint research topics on GEANT include security, mobility, end-to-end guarantees, and performance monitoring. Service activities include procurement, network operations, basic services, and end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS). Networking activities include management of GEANT2, dissemination, support for users and user communities, foresight study, and coordination of research and technology development (RTD) activities.

GEANT is supporting the European very Long Baseline Interferometry (eVBLI) experiment using primarily 10 Gbps links. Next steps for GEANT include an improved backbone infrastructure and support for multinational research teams use of Grids.

CLARA

CLARA provides networking coordination in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). CLARA users need access to scientific instruments, to unique instruments, and to regional facilities. Users include the astrophysics community and other escience communities. LAC connectivity uses satellite connectivity to a US hub and submarine optical cables based on a US hub and on LAC hubs. The cables include Global Crossing and E-mergia cables around South America. MAYA and Arcos now have cables in the Caribbean area. AmPath promotes LAC connectivity using the Global Crossing infrastructure. They provide 45 Mbps links between Miami and Argentina, two sites in Brazil, Chile, Panama, and Venezuela. Mexico crosses the US border with multiple STM1 circuits. GEANT is developing connectivity to LAC. The ALICE program for improved Europe to LAC connectivity is providing $62.5 million Euros for EU-LAC information society issues. 10 million Euros are provided for LAC research and education communities. The CLARA Association provides networking cooperation in Latin America (LA) and contributes to the ALICE project. ALICE has a goal of providing operational capability between Europe and LA in August 2004. For information on ALICE, see: www.dante.net/clara The expected topology for CLARA is an initial 155 Mbps backbone ring with spur links at 10 to 45 Mbps. The European link will be 622 Mbps from Brazil and managed by CUDI and RNP.

NSF supports international scientific connectivity. CLARA is interested in cooperative links for cross-border fiber from Mexico to the US and direct access to South American countries including Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. A first proposal would provide a link to Mexico and to Brazil (RNP). A second proposal would provide a link form Argentina to the US.

North America Report

The US computational infrastructure is currently focusing on building cyberinfrastructure to be shared among many different science disciplines. It will link hardware, grid services, middleware, networking, and applications tools. The cyberinfrastructure will be community focused, multidisciplinary, and international. An International Network Research Connections (INRC) program will support international activities. The priorities of this program are to enable communications, collaboration, and cooperation to enhance connectivity to new regions and support connections between shared cyberinfrastructure grid networks.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) currently supports TransPAC at $1.7 million per year, Eurolink at $1.7 million per year, Naukanet to Russia at $800 thousand per year, and AmPath at $400 thousand per year.

StarLight, TransLight and the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)

StarLight is an optical networking infrastructure in Chicago supporting US domestic and international optical research networking connectivity. It is a collocation space for new implementations and integrations of networking. Funding is provided by the NSF, State of Illinois, Iwire, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, and many other funders.

StarLight supports 2 x OC192 links to Amsterdam, 3 x OC192 to Canada with connectivity to Seattle, Korea, Taiwan, New York City, and Ireland, an OC192 to London, OC48 to Tokyo (scheduled for upgrade to OC192 in August), OC3 to Russia, OC192 to CERN, 10 GigE to Fermilab, and several 10 GigE links to National LambdaRail (NLR). The lambdas are bandwidth concentrators. They also deliver Grid cyberinfrastructure.

3. High Performance Research Networking

High Performance Research Networking in Asia

Asia-Pacific Grid (APGrid) was established in July 2000 as a meeting point for Grid researchers. It has 49 participating organizations from 15 countries. The APGrid testbed is a virtual organization across international boundaries where participants bring their own grass-roots approach and their own physical resources. Most contributed resources are small clusters of equipments. Networking to support Grid activities exists but the bandwidth is often insufficient. They hope to grow from a testbed to a standing capability. It assumes each institution has installed Globus Toolkit 2 (GT2). They gather and exchange trust information. MDS is configured to build an APGrid MDS tree. They use Globus and additional software as needed. Accomplishments to date include sharing resources among 26 sites and using GT2 as common software. They have not formalized how to use the Grid testbed and the testbed has not been stable. They need to build an environment to support users including a help desk, training, and Grid management.

A Grid working group has been established and a Grid Activities Center is planned. The NSF has funded PRAGMA, the Pacific Rim Application And Grid Middleware Assembly to support changing the Grid from a testbed to a standing capability by deploying common middleware at all institutions, keeping the testbed stable, and defining and authorizing a security policy. Information about APGrid may be found at: http://www.apgrid.org

JGNII

JGNII is an open testbed framework with 63 domestic access points and a maximum speed of 20 Mbps. It provides Ethernet connection service (Layer 2) for domestic IP connections. It also provides an OXC connection service with optical wave service between OXC sites using 10 G services. JGN will have a link to Los Angeles and StarLight at 20 Gbps supporting the TransPac network. The APAN network will connect the service to JGNII. A TransPac user will be a JGNII user and will need to exchange a joint research agreement with the National Institute for Information Technology after August 1, 2004. JGNII has 9 research sites. For information contact ign2center@nuict.go.jp or sec@allocation.apan.org

EGEE

EGEE has 70 partners and is the primary communication vehicle for EU Grid projects. DANTE is working on the design of the interface between Grid middleware and the networks. The network infrastructure used is GEANT2. They are developing a resource allocation network resource broker and a measurements requirements interface. CERN requirements will need high network performance. They will implement basic network resource reservation for premium IP service in about month 15 of the project. Other services will be implemented in the future with the coordination of router and switch vendors.

U.S. Optical Network Testbeds

A wide range of optical networking testbeds are under development in the U.S. varying from national in scope (National LambdaRail) to regional (CHEETAH, DRAGON) to local (I-Wire). These testbeds respond to the need for high bandwidth data transfers and collaborations by specific, high-requirements applications. Since they are all being architected and constructed currently, the architects are directly collaborating to assure commonality, compatibility, and transparency of tools, hardware, and software to provide inter-domain services, management, security, and performance measurement.

UltraScienceNet is being constructed by the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to connect hubs close to DOE’s largest science users. It is a sparse, lambda-switched, dedicated, channel provisioned testbed. It provides separate funding for research projects to support applications including high performance protocols, control, and visualization. It will use two dedicated lambdas in the ORNL to Atlanta connector. It will connect to, and use National LambdaRail to provide a national scope. Further information is given at: http://www.csm,ornl,gov/ultranet.

CHEETAH and DRAGON are two optical networking testbeds funded by the National Science Foundation. They provide on-demand, end-to-end, dedicated bandwidth channels for high requirements applications to support high throughput file transfers, multipoint collaborative computation and interactive, remote science. CHEETAH has participation by ORNL, University of Virginia, North Carolina State University, and City University of New York. It will use high-speed Ethernet mapped to Ethernet over a SONET circuit and provide a 1 Gbps ORNL-Atlanta channel. DRAGON will provide all optical transport in the metro core with edge-to-edge wavelength switching using GMPLS protocols for dynamic provisioning of inter-domain connections. It will, primarily, be located at sites in the greater Washington, DC area with a connection to BossNet and MIT/Haystack in the Boston area.

National LambdaRail (NLR) is a national scale optical network operated and managed by a consortium of organizations to provide facilities and services for multiple experimental and production networks. Networks exist side-by-side on the same fiber but are physically and operationally distinct. It provides an experimental platform for research using optical switching and several network layers. Initially half of the NLR capacity will be reserved for research capable of disrupting the network. It will also deploy a high-speed Ethernet infrastructure for WAN transport. Point-to-point lightwaves will deploy 10 GigE with OC-192 Cisco systems. Initially four lambdas will be deployed, one for national switched Ethernet experimentation, one for a national 10 GigE IP network, one for a quick-start facility for new research projects, and one to support the Internet2 HOPI testbed.

HOPI is an Internt2 project to provide a hybrid of shared IP packet switching and dynamically provisioned optical lambdas. Basic service includes 1 GigE or 10 GigE unidirectional point-to-point links. It will provide a deterministic path from CERN to Los Angeles with services of Abilene, GEANT, Canarie, StarLight, SurfNet, and others.

Global Lambda Infrastructure Facility (GLIF)

GLIF is a collaboration among worldwide National Research and Engineering Networks (NRENs), consortia, and institutions with lambdas. It was established in August 2003 as a world-scale laboratory for application and middleware development on emerging lambda Grids where applications rely on networks dynamically configured from optical links. The network is becoming the most important architectural component providing access to distributed resources and to interconnect users. Participants include StarLight, NetherLight, New York (MANLAN), APAN, and Tokyo (WIDE). GLIF holds a series of workshops. The next workshop will be in the UK, Nottingham September3, 2004. The meeting will discuss:

1. Governance and policy

2. GLIF lambda infrastructure and lambda exchange implementations

3. Persistent applications

4. Control plane and Grid integration middleware

The GLIF 5^th Workshop will be in San Diego, September 2005. For more information on GLIF, see: http://www.glif.is

Optical Networking Testbeds in LAC

Latin America and the Caribbean have two optical networking testbeds, one in Brazil and one in Chile. The Chile testbed has an ATM backbone with 10 nodes and a backbone going between Valpariso to Santiago. Dark fiber is provided by three telco providers including AT&T and Chilesat. It is supported by the government of Chile and is used by two universities, UTFSM and USACH.

The Giga Project in Brazil is a partnership initiated two months ago to explore user control of optical fiber infrastructure. It interconnects 17 academic R&D centers. Two thirds of its budget is for R&D activities in optical networking, networking protocols and services, and applications. They are seeking to extend this testbed to additional areas of Brazil, outside its current extent in Southeastern Brazil. They plan to migrate this capability to production networks and to connect it to international testbeds.

HOPI

The end-to-end (E2E) piPEs framework is a basis for the Internet2 E2E Performance Initiative.. It enables users to identify end-to-end network performance, locate problems, and locate the correct person to address E2E problems. It provides measurement infrastructure components. In Phase I it will focus on the database, web-based display engine, the analysis engine, and performance measurement points. The regularly scheduled tests include latency (OWAMP), bandwidth (BWTCL), and routing information (traceroute). Phase II will provide measurement domain support, deploying a measurement infrastructure prototype on the Abilene network. This is complete. PiPES is being deployed across the Abilene infrastructure, Hawaii, US government labs, some GEANT nodes, and some APAN nodes in Tokyo and Korea. The GGF Network Measurement Working Group is creating and revising schemata for test requests and responses.

HPIIS, the INRC, and the Future

The High Performance International Internet Service (HPIIS) is ending, probably in about six months. It will be replaced by the International Networks Research Connections Program (INRC). The INRC provides peer review to identify highly recommended projects. Negotiations lead to awards and the awardees must procure infrastructure. Critical issues to address include security and performance measurement. CCIRN is encouraged to make a strong organizational statement on security and to foster a focus on resources to provide security. A work program is currently developing an Asian Observatory to extend the Abilene Observatory.

4. Journal for Advanced Research and Development

CCIRN members discussed the feasibility of supporting the creation of a Networking R&D journal. It was noted that there are significant differences between the "R" and the "D" communities, making it likely to be difficult to serve both with the same publication. The "R" community traditionally publishes its results and may already be adequately served by existing journals. The "D" community typically does not publish its results. Thus, although the need for such publishing was acknowledged, it was thought that motivating the "D" community to publish was a larger problem than journal availability.

US journals generally use an author-funded approach to publishing. Page charges lead to use of publication on a server to make research or development results available. Significant publication charges could discourage publishing by authors from disadvantaged countries. Three US organizations support electronic publication:

- Physics On-Line (POL): the Archive covers a wide purview and half of physics articles appear there.

- Biomed Central: offers services in bio- and medical sciences areas. Authors prepay for submission of articles.

- Library of Science: Harold Varmus started this author-funded model. They are interested in helping to start journals in areas outside biomedicine.

A CCIRN working group could investigate what is the best model for a networking journal. They should also consider if there is a driving need for an online journal. Many years ago TERENA started a journal but later experienced a serious drop in interest for having research published.

5. International Networking Coordination

Heather Boyles described an Internet2 International networking project to coordinate connectivity planning and programs for lesser-served areas such as Africa and Southeast Asia. A small Bird of a Feather (BoF) group has been meeting at Internet2 meetings to share information on needs for connectivity to lesser-served areas, to identify gaps in area and country coverage, and to coordinate NRENs and aid agency interests. About 80 people attended the last meeting in Washington, DC. Discussion at that meeting identified that providers expect a return on their investment. The various funding and user communities have a strong interest in cooperating with each other. The Internet is a strong leveling medium. There are compelling illustrations from the global NREN community that cooperation does work. The BoF sessions will continue. The next meeting will be at the Internet2 Fall member meeting in Texas. Further information on this topic is available at: http:/international.internet2.edu/intl_connect/agenda.html.

NECTARnet

Warren Mathews of Georgia Institute of Technology described NECTARnet, a concept for a high capacity, high performance network planned initially for West Africa and North Africa. It is intended to support medical and academic research of the CDC and NIH/NLM. There are primary connectivity sites identified in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and South Africa. The next steps are to document requirements and to solicit partners, funding, and donations. For more information see: www.nectarnet.org.

TEIN2

TEIN2 is an extension of GEANT to provide additional connectivity between Europe and Asia to foster regional cooperation. It has two phases. In a pilot phase of six months they are carrying out a supplier survey, establishing a TEIN2 technical committee, identifying organizations to participate, and exploring their interests and views. At least three letters of commitment are needed to proceed. Phase 2 provides for procurement and testing. Phase 2B provides for operation and management of the network.

EUMEDConnect

EUMEDConnect is being coordinated by DANTE to provide networking infrastructure around the Mediterranean Sea countries in support of research. Participating countries include Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Palestine Authority, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. The EU partners include the NRENs of France, Italy, Greece, and Spain. It is funded up to 10 Million Euros, 80% by the EC, the remainder by the beneficiaries. The objective of EUMEDConnect is to connect the world to the Mediterranean countries to address digital divide issues in the area. The service phase of the project is from June 2004 to June 2006. Its challenges include limited cable infrastructure in the area, monopoly national operators, high commercial prices, lack of regional cohesion, and a lack of an existing consortium. Services include IPv4, moving to multicast and IPv6 and commodity Internet as an additional charge. The foundations have been established for greater research collaboration between the Mediterranean countries and Europe. The next challenges are to find solutions for Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority.

SILK

The NATO networking panel agreed to install a regional network for the newly independent states (NISs) of the Soviet Union, the Southern Caucuses, and Central Asia for connection to the European NRENs and GEANT. There is funding of $2.5 Million for three years to provide VSAT technology with a hub in Hamburg using 5.6-meter dishes. There will be 8-9 connections in remote states using 2.4 or 3.8-meter dishes. Routers, contributed by Cisco, connect to the NRENs. A hub Earth station is located in Desy. Eight initial sites are operational now. A SILK board has been established and an Executive Committee holds twice weekly teleconferences. NATO provided $2.7 million, with additional funding from the EC, DESY, and the Cisco donation of equipments. Longer term they are discussing Central Asian connectivity plans with APAN, and considering satellite broadcast service. The EC is considering a specific Caucuses proposal. Further information is available at: www.silkproject.org.

Southern Cross, Trans-Pacific Optical Research Testbed

AARnet has worked with the Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN) on a continuing basis. In December 2003 they announced a new service with drop-offs of 155 Mbps dual circuits. And dual 10 Gbps circuits from Australia to the US West coast, initially for five years to provide an affordable high-throughput service from Australia and Hawaii. It has 10 Gbps circuits to Los Angeles connected to Pacific Wave and Oregon (backhauled to Seattle) and connected to National LambdaRail. Dave Lassner is coordinating the Hawaii part of this network. The SCCN is providing a double loop over a northern route from AARnet to Hawaii to Portland to Seattle. The Southern route goes to the Big Island , Mauna Kea Observatory with connectivity to the base facilities of 11 world-class telescopes, with connectivity to Pacific Wave.

6. Network Security Activities

Asia-Pacific

APCERT is a coalition of members with two levels of participation. There are currently 15 members from 12 countries. APCERT provides representation to other regional and international bodies such as TF-CERT, EGC, and FIRST. Its goals are education, training, and awareness. They have a traffic data share project for the Asia-Pacific region, an observatory for network traffic and a traffic-monitoring group.

Europe’s TF-CSIRT

There is a strong need to cooperate on security since incidents are international and no one organization knows everything. The Task Force of Computer Security Incident Response Teams (TF-CSIRT) in Europe provides collaboration points among the existing CERTs in Europe including about 30 research community CERTs, 30 commercial CERTs, and 15 government CERTs. TERENA is the professional facilitator for the group. TF-CSIRT meets three times a year. Twenty-nine countries are involved. Members share their experiences and operational people talk together. Additional cooperation activities include a legal handbook and policy contributions to the European Union’s plan to establish a Network Information Security Agency. They are working on:

- How to accredit CSIRTS so they can be trusted

- Incident Response Team database: An incident leads to identification of a CSIRT with purview for that address leading to a request for help from that CSIRT

- Clearing house of incident handling tools : Sharing information on the tools CSIRTs use

- Deliverables: Transfer of knowledge from one operational person to another

- Training for the trainers

Latin American and Caribbean Security

Latin America has many CSIRTs. CLARA issued a position statement on the importance of regional cooperation of CSIRTs. Regional cooperation in Latin America would be useful. CLARA has created a Latin America task force on security, LACSIRTT. For information on Brazilian security see: http://www.rnp.br/cais

North American Security

Internet2 is working on network security, middleware, and Trust Federations. REN-ISAC, the Research and Education Network Information Sharing and Analysis Center, is supported by Indiana University, Internet2, and Educause. It focuses on Research and Education network information derived from performance measurement. It receives and analyzes operational threat, warning, and actual attack information from ISACs, network engineers, and network instrumentation. Analysis is performed by network and security engineers and the Advanced Network Management Lab related to:

- Unscheduled outages

- Security related events such as DDoS attacks, virus alerts, systematic network vulnerabilities scanning, and systematic spoofing

- Other anomalies posing a threat to the networks

International Cooperation on Middleware and Security

Internet2 initiated a middleware program in 1999 focused on the enterprise campus. It supports collaboration access to digital resources, virtual organization conformation, and disbanding. It has resulted in the Shibboleth authentication, transport software, and open source software being deployed in the US and some other countries. Beginning in April 2004, Incommon federations are being established using Shibboleth.

The Internet2 work is addressing issues of:

- How do national level trust federations trust each other? There is an October 14-15 meeting of countries establishing national trust federations.

- How do you peer different country federations?

The Security at Line Speed Activity (SALSA) has a working group on network authentication. They have a relationship to similar activities in TERENA.

7. Native IPv6 Programs

APAN

The APAN 6NOC provides a dual-stack network. A 6GN is being established that will be run by the 6NOC. China and Japan have implemented IPv6 routers that are being used to implement a 2.5 Gbps IPv6 network. CNGI has coordinated technology, engineering, industry participation, and basic research elements to implement multiple backbones including an IPv6 backbone. CERNET2 has a pure IPv6 backbone. Problems being addressed for IPv6 include scalability, high performance, mobility, multicast, security, and models for charging. Transition form IPv4 to IPv6 is a difficult issue being studied.

Latin America and the Caribbean

RNP in Brazil has been using IPv6 since 2001. It provides connectivity to seven Brazilian states but has been largely unused. It peers with several networks including Abilene and Telefonica in Spain. Five research institutes participate in it.

CUDI has been using IPv6 since 2000. They organized an IPv6 workshop in February, 2004 attended by Argentina and Chile. Chile has had an IPv6 program since 2002.

8. Next CCIRN Meeting

The next CCIRN meeting is scheduled to be in conjunction with the 2005 TERENA Networking Conference being held June 6-9 in Poznan, Poland. See http://www.terena.nl/conferences/tnc2005/