Some results of URAN workshop

by Dmitry Galagan
Kiev, 1 October 1999

1. URAN is now an Internet provider. Most activities are concentrated on the external channels (increasing their bandwidth). All regional centers and corresponding universities see URAN as an Internet provider, with the major goal to have good external connectivity. At present time the capacity of external link is 64K, with the plan to install additional satellite downstream link 256K (this should be done during this month). External channel is 98% congested (during day-time).

2. URAN has almost no users. URAN now has only 3 actively working users: NTUU KPI (Kiev), National Mining University (Dnepropetrovsk), Kharkiv State Polytechnic University. All three organizations are basis organizations of URAN regional centers.

Three other regional centres (State University "Lvivska Politechnika" in Lviv, Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev, Internet Center of Ministry of Education in Kiev) are connected as well, but they do not utilize the available connections. Main reason - the price/quality ratio is not competitive comparing to commercial Internet providers. Representatives of regional centres say "for attracting users we need to demonstrate good Internet connectivity…"

Odessa regional center is not connected yet because of mistakes made when planning necessary equipment (purchased synchronous modems cannot work on big distances because of resistance problems). This problem hopefully will be solved soon (not later than the end of this year) by the acquisition of modems with necessary characteristics.

3. Negative balance (expenses exceed income) of the URAN backbone operator CEI (Center of European Integration). This is mainly caused by the lack of clients. There were and still are also delays with payments from regional centers to CEI.

Expenses include salaries of staff, payments for backbone channels leased from UkrTelecom and payments for the external (64K) channel.

4. Salaries are now very small - maximum 50$ per month, comparing to 300…400$ by commercial network providers. There is no full-time personnel (all personnel is part-time). Most of activities are based only on the enthusiasm of people. Their names can be seen from the list of workshop participants. But these people do not always have enough time to perform necessary activities. That's why the need to find and hire a full-time manager was discussed during the workshop.

While NATO cannot pay salaries, the representatives of Tempus/Tacis said that it is quite possible that Tempus/Tacis can pay salaries to people working in Ukraine (in a framework of a corresponding projects, submitted to and approved by Tempus/Tacis).

5. There is a strong need for cooperation. Prof. Nordhagen (Norway, University of Oslo) has expressed the idea, supported by other western experts and Ukrainian participants, of a great necessity of cooperation (collaboration). His slogan is "Networks are communication, communication is cooperation, consequently Networks are cooperation". Cooperation: 1) inside the country, 2) with international community. "URAN should run quicker than we (western) do".

Nowadays it seems that the cooperation inside the country hardly exists, while there are some activities on the international level in forms of projects, mostly aimed at getting financial resources (consumer position).

6. URAN needs to get a help from the state. There is now a hope to get state funding next year - an equivalent of 2 millions $. Without such a help it is very unlikely that URAN can become a real nation-wide NREN.

7. Content issue. A distinction was made about the two separate directions in academic networking: infrastructure/services and content. By opinion of western experts filling of URAN with the content should be done separately from the infrastructure projects, like the present one financed by NATO. All participants have agreed with the importance of content issue for URAN.

However, content issues have to be solved in projects, different from the present one financed by NATO. The present project was classified by NATO experts as one directed towards network infrastructure not content!

A representative from Springer scientific publishing house (www.springer.de) has made a small presentation about the Springer electronic library services (Germany), as an example of possible content for URAN.

Western experts have expressed an idea of making a report on behalf of each regional center: "How the regional centres can contribute to the content and the funding of URAN" with the deadline of 15 January 2000.

8. The issues of developing "fair accounting system" were discussed, with the emphasis on the usage-based charging scheme, when the client is charged on a basis of amount of transmitted bytes. The load condition of a link should be measured, with several load thresholds (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 100%) each having a separate pricing level. Night-time traffic has a preference (costs 6 times less) to a day-time traffic. Some issues of how to put this system into practice were discussed.

The working group, consisted from specialists of NTUU KPI and SU "Lvivska politechnika" (Lviv), has been entitled to work out this issue and formulate a clear document that will describe the accounting policy of URAN.