RARE UPDATE, Nr.7

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A RARE UPDATE
No.7, October 1992
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NEWS FROM THE COA

by Josefien Bersee
at the RARE Secretariat

The 24th meeting of the RARE Council of Administration took place on
September 24/25 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.  The major results of the
meeting are summarized below.
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MEMBERSHIP MATTERS
Two new members and two changes in existing membership were accepted in
Bratislava. The Turkish national research network TUVAKA and the Croatian
CARNet are new Full National Members. Poland and Hungary changed their
membership status from Associate to Full National Member. This brings the
total number of RARE members to 41.

EXECUTION TECHNICAL PROGRAMME GUARANTEED
By accepting a 33% membership fee increase the CoA has guaranteed basic
support for the execution of the RARE Technical Programme.  Execution of a
Technical Programme is felt to be an important factor determining RARE's
influence on the development of future research networking activities.

TECHNICAL STRUCTURE
The CoA decided to accept the slightly changed Technical Structure as
proposed by the RTC:  the establishment of one Multi-Media Working Group
instead of the previous two (on Interactive Multimedia and Multimedia
Document Transfer), and the establishment of a Working Group on Character
Sets. 

The following RARE Working Groups (followed by the name of its convenor)
are now officially established: 

International Character Sets (WG-CHAR), Borka Jerman-Blazic
Multimedia (WG-IMM), John Dyer
Information Services and User Support (WG-ISUS), Jill Foster
Lower-Layers Technology (WG-LLT), Piet Bovenga
Mail & Messaging (WG-MSG), Harald Alvestrand
Network Applications Support (WG-NAP), Paul-Andre Pays
Network Operations (WG-NOP), Bernhard Stockman
Security Technology (WG-SEC), Klaus Truoel

RARE welcomes anyone who wishes to join one of the above-mentioned working
groups. Joining is easy: send electronic mail to: mailserver@localhost
containing in the body of the message:

SUBSCRIBE wgname yourfirstname yourlastname

where wgname is the abbreviation for the name of the working group.

SIGNING OF 2Mbps CONTRACT
RARE accepts to sign and manage the 2Mbps contract with the CEC on behalf
of those national networks which will use EC funds in support of their
participation in the 2Mbps pilot service. The 2Mbps pilot is part of the
European Multi-Protocol Backbone (EMPB) service.

OPERATIONAL UNIT
The CoA agreed that RARE should act as a legal body on behalf of the
Operational Unit under establishment, under the condition that shareholders
are accepting the commercial risks. Shareholders should also organize the
provision of management of the execution of  OU activities.

RELATION RARE/RIPE REDEFINED
RARE and RIPE will remain independent bodies. The CoA agreed that RARE will
continue to rely on RIPE for the coordination of IP activities -  and not
establish its own IP coordination group - , while RIPE will rely on the
RARE Technical Committee and IETF for the setting up of a technical
development plan. To enable close cooperation between RIPE and the RTC,
RARE has invited RIPE to appoint a representative on the RTC. 

With regard to the RIPE NCC, the CoA agreed that it should remain under the
umbrella of RARE until at least the end of 1993, even if the funds for
operation of the RIPE NCC were to be channelled via the Operational Unit.

LIAISON WITH ISODE CONSORTIUM
RARE will become a member of the ISODE Consortium. This organization has
been founded to support further development of ISODE,  a package of OSI
upper layer software and applications. Many organizations in the research
community have used the ISODE as a tool for working with a range of OSI
applications.  

COMBINED JENC5/INET94
The CoA has agreed that the 5th Joint European Networking Conference should
be organized in combination with INET 94. The REC is asked to proceed with
the investigation of the Prague offer to host the event, and to negotiate
with the Internet Society on the basis of that proposal.