Tony Bates Joins RARE/RIPE NCC

[Daniel Karrenberg <]

Tony Bates Joins RARE/RIPE NCC for two Important Technical Projects
===================================================================

I am very happy to announce that Tony Bates will join RARE to work with
the RIPE NCC team starting January 18th for a period of six months. 
Tony is a well known personality within RIPE due to his participation in
many RIPE activities and his work for the UK Joint Network Team
including international connections. 

Tony will work on two projects: "Internet Service Specification" and
"Implementation of a Route Server for policy based routing across the GIX".
A short description of these is appended below; Tony will present them
in more detail during the Praha RIPE meeting. 

The projects are run in conjunction with the RARE technical programme. 
The main funding for the projects has been provided by SURFnet through
RARE.  Both projects have a tight schedule.  Their success depends on
the cooperation of many people within RIPE.  I urge all of you to give
Tony the support he will need. 

Daniel Karrenberg 
RIPE NCC Manager



Internet Service Specification
------------------------------

The goal of the project is to produce a document describing all aspects
of a "useful Internet service".  The intention is to provide guidance to
both service providers and customers.  All important aspects of Internet
services will be covered.  This includes essential secondary aspects
such as DNS service, routing protocols, routing policy features.
Service providers will be able to use the document to specify the
service they intend to offer.  Users will be able to use it as a
checklist for the services they require. The document will reference
existing sources such as the relevant Internet RFCs.

It is intended to give the document wide circulation including publication 
as RTC report, RIPE document and/or RFC as appropriate.


Implementation of a Route Server for policy based routing across the GIX
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of this project is to produce a functioning route server
(RS) as specified in "Internet Routing in a Multi Provider,
Multi Path Open Environment" by Bates, Karrenberg, Lothberg, Stockman
and Terpstra.  The function of the RS will be to present unified routes
to European destinations to routers on the GIX.  The results of the
project are:

	- refining the specifications on routing policy information 
	  storage in the RIPE database

	- route server software
	
	- software to derive route server configuration
          information from the RIPE database 
	  
	- a technical report describing the above
	

This project requires close coordination with the RIPE NCC for the database
related aspects and with the operators of transatlantic links, especially
EBONE.

The resulting software components should be realised with generalisation of
the route server concept in mind. The results will be publicly available.
It is intended to give the resulting documents wide circulation 
including publication as an RTC report, RIPE document and/or RFC as 
appropriate.



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