EBONE is established as an Association and prepares for 34 Mbps

The Ebone association
---------------------
In the recent past Ebone, a European Network providing Internet IP
and ISO CLNS, has gained substantial stability and its prospects for
the future are clear.

Ebone enjoys a rapidly expanding membership, both in terms of capacity
and in terms of new members organizations. Seeing this high demand it is no
surprise that Ebone is being upgraded continuously. From 1 July 1994 to the end
of January 1995, the overall backbone and trans Atlantic capacity will be
increased by a factor of 75 % to 12 Mbps.

This proves the strong need for Ebone services, therefore the Ebone
Consortium of Contributing Organizations decided to re-model Ebone into
an Association to provide further stability also in legal terms.

On 2 November 1994 the Ebone Association was formed under French law.
Its first Executive Committee officers are:

Christian Michau from Renater, France, President,
Peter Rastl from ACONET, Austria, Vice-President,
Dave Morton from ECRC, Germany, Treasurer and
Dennis Jennings from HEANET, Ireland, Secretary.

Technical development
---------------------

The global Internet is developing at a speed without parallel, with
connected organizations multiplying exponentially. A serious challenge to the
Internet infrastructure capacity is the so-called multicast services that have
recently found a growing market. Therefore Ebone is configuring multicast using
Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) in its PoPs in order to reduce
multiplication of multicast packets. This new development will be operational
by the end of January 1995.

Ebone configuration planned for January 1995
--------------------------------------------

 

 Vienna
 2048 Munich EBS--------ACONET (AT)
 US (GIX) ------------EBS / CARnet (HR)
 | / CESNET (CZ)
 | / Hungarnet (HU)
 2048 | /1536 NASK (PL)
 | / Roman. AC net (RO)
 | / SANET (SK)
 3584 Paris 2048 Geneva
 US (GIX) -------------EBS-----------EBS -------ILAN (IL)
 |
 |
 RENATER (FR)
 BELNET (BE)
 BT (UK)
 CINECA (IT)
 DATAnet (FI)
 ECRC (DE)
 FCCN (PT)
 FCRU (EG)
 FORTH (GR)
 HEANET (IE)
 Internetway (FR)
 Lisbon University (PT)
 PIPEX (UK)
 SwipNet (SE)
 Tipnet (SE)
 Transpac (FR)
 Transpac (SE)

 

 

 

Plans for 1995 and beyond: 34 Mbps and more.
-------------------------------------------
The Ebone Association with its state-of-the art-capabilities in terms of
equipment, manpower and routing, is in an excellent position to start piloting
34 Mbps networking for research in Europe in order to provide high speed
services, compliant with the Bangemann report.

Ebone is looking for participation to its initiative to organize a
framework for interconnecting between service providers (peering) at 34
Mbps in Europe.

Ebone is also interested in participating in the ACTS programme and
sees the interconnection of the ACTS's National Hosts as a highly
valuable contribution to coordination of national interconnections in
Europe. Ebone will put forward a proposal to the EC in the framework
of ACTS.

For more information contact:

Christian Michau, Ebone chairman, Renater, France,
phone +33 14427 4260, fax +33 14427 2613, e-mail
christian.michau@urec.fr

Frode Greisen, Ebone general manager, UNI-C, Denmark,
phone +45 3582 8355, fax +45 3183 7949, e-mail frode.greisen@uni-c.dk