From comp.vuw.ac.nz!hine Tue Jun 23 16:25:29 1992 Subject: Review of R&E Networking Activity in SE Asia and the Pacific Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1992 16:25:29 +1200 From: John Hine Status: OR A Review of Educational and Research Networking Activity in Southeast Asia and the Pacific John H. Hine Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington, New Zealand John.Hine@comp.vuw.ac.nz Abstract The author hasbeen working with UNESCO in the Southeast Asia and Pacific Region to recommend ways in which the developing countries in the region can be interconnected and connected to international academic and research networks. As part of our investigations we have discovered that a variety of mission oriented projects are already in existence. At least two projects, Pactok and PEACESAT, have targeted international connectivity and provide gateway services to other networks. In addition the expansion of the Internet into the region is being actively studied. This paper attempts to present an overview of the various individual projects to provide a basis on which greater interconnectivity can be established. Introduction The benefits of rapid communication and remote access to information provided by modern research and educational networks are well known, especially to participants in INET `92. As a resident scientist of a relatively isolated country I can testify to the benefits that we have derived from eight years of international connectivity. Attention is now turning to those countries that have not achieved a high degree of connectivity. Indeed they may have no connectivity. Most of these countries are classified as developing or underdeveloped countries. In many cases, they stand to gain considerably more from access to networks such as the Internet than do the developed countries. For many years organisations such as UNESCO and VITA have been involved in transfering technology from the developed countries to the developing countries. Similarly, efforts such as PEACESAT have attempted to bring improved education to isolated countries. This paper attempts to summarise the current state of educational, research and associated networking in southeast asia and the southwest pacific rim. The information was gathered as part of a project sponsored by Unesco's International Informatics Programme. The paper does not claim to be complete, partly because of the diversity of activities that are present and partly because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate information from some areas. The RINSEAP Project UNESCO's IIP Programme is administered through UNESCO's regional offices. Thus the programme tends to have a regional focus including the countries in each UNESCO defined region. The southeast asia and pacific region covers an area bounded by DPR Korea to the north, Malaysia to the west, New Zealand to the south and Tonga to the east. The goals of the current project are to examine activities in the region and produce a proposal to provide member countries with improved access to exisiting international services. The current scope is limited to the design of an international backbone providing a gateway in each member country. Of course, it is still necessary to look at the communication services and skills available within the countries to determine the types of gateways that will be feasible. The project is based at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand with cooperation and support from Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia and AARNet. Practical Scope In theory, the project covers the entire RINSEAP region. In practice, we have had different levels of cooperation from different countries. DPR Korea, the Republic of Korea, Japan and several smaller Pacific island nations have not participated. Other countries have been eager participants recognising that, if nothing else, they stand to learn a great deal about the posssibilities that are available within the region. This paper covers activities in the following: Australia New Zealand China Papua New Guinea Fiji Phillipines Indonesia Thailand PDR Lao Tonga Malaysia Western Samoa These twelve countries are distributed across a third of the world's circumference. They range from Tonga with an area of 700 sq. km. and population of108,00 to China, the most populous country on earth and covering 10 million sq.km. Australia and New Zealand are members of the OECD and both have nearly a decade of experience with education and research networks. At the other extreme PDR Lao still relies heavily on its telegraph service and a number of countries have problems providing an adquate number of telephones. Regional Survey The diverse geography of the region means that one solution may not be best for all concerned. The pacific islands are widespread and thinly populated. Southeast asia is densely populated. Some southeast asian countries have quite a bit of high technology industry giving them a greater degree of expertise and experience. They are at least "technology aware". The following sections present an overview of the region including current networks, the state of computer and communications technology in the education and research sectors of the countries. Following that we turn our attention to four regional initiatives that are already in place. The Pacific Islands The island nations of the Pacific Ocean have a history of satelite communication for education. The Peacesat project, based at the University of Hawaii, was started in 1971 and reached fourteen pacific countries. The author first participated in 1978 in Wellington, NZ. One university, the University of the South Pacific, serves the entire region. With headquarters in Fiji, USP has campuses in a number of the island nations.. The university has considerable experience in distance education as a result of meeting the requirements of campuses on distant islands. It is likely that any connection to international research and education networks would be through the University of the South Pacific, using its facilities to reach other countries. USP is currently connected to NZ by dial-up uucp and is incorrectly included in the NZ domain. A significant problem in the region is politics. Each state guards its independence, including its telecommunications, jealously. Even USP has problems gaining cooperation in areas such as distance education. Extending more sophisticated networking into the reigion will require substantial training. The retention of expertise in the region is difficult because of the minimal opportunities available in each country. Many skilled residents of the island nations emmigrate to New Zealand where there are greater opportunities. (A work permit is not required.) Tonga Tonga is generally representative of the pacific island states. Telecommunication services are provided by the government owned Tonga Telecom and the British Cable and Wireless. Dial-up and leased analogue circuits are available. Use at speeds above 2400 bps is rare. There are plans to introduce X.25 in the near future. Access to new telecommunication services is fairly difficult to obtain. Computing equipment is pretty much limited to personal computers. Only a few institutions have any data communications whatsoever. Australia and New Zealand Both Australia and New Zealand have a number of years experience with education and research networks. Since the intent of the paper is to deal primarily with developing countries only a brief summary of the Australian and New Zealand situations is presented. Australia The Australian Academic Research Network, AARNet, connects over 200 organsiation throughout Austrlia. Internet connectivity is provided by a 256 kbps link to Fix-West in the United States. Both the internal and international use of AARNet has grown substantially. In fact, Australia ranks behind only Canada in the amount of internationaltraffice to and from NSFnet. Users of the Australian network benefit (in the authors opinion) from the fact that AARNet was established by a major initiative rather than simply growing to its current state. As a result AARNet provides a number of services including documentation that encourage use. New Zealand New Zealand has an internetwork rather than a single research network. The universities' network, Kawaihiko and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research's network are interconnected at a number of locations. Other smaller research institutes are also connected. All share a 64 kbps link to Fix-West. New Zealand is currently reorganising its government funded research through the dissolution of DSIR and the creation of a number of research institutes. It was originally envisioned that this change would see the introduction of a national research network along the lines of AARNet. Unfortunately, the politics of this change have resulted in a degree of confusion and what will emerge later this year is not yet clear. Southeast Asia A typical situation in the countries of this region is to have a single site that has established an international link to support electronic mail. These links are commonly X.25 to UUNET in the United States or dial-up to the University of Melbourne in Australia. The latter are generously supported by AARNet. Connectivity within each country is often ad hoc, depending on a variety of dial-up technologies to access the gateway machine. Internal networking is generally characterised by UUCP over either an X.25 or a direct dial-up connection. Thus most countries are at the stage where "some services are present and available to some organisations in some cities some of the time." China China has a fledgling national network, the China Research Network. It is principally operated by the North China Institute of Computing Technology with help from seven other educational and research institutes. As of early 1992 there were ten institutions connected and several others with plans to make a connection. Landweber's report [1] also indicates that China has a small number of UUCP sites with international connectivity. The China Research Network has its international connection through Karlsruhe, Germany, using an X.25 link. There is no TCP/IP connectivity. X.25 is used to establish a link to the Karlsruhe gateway providing Internet, BITNET and UUCP connections. All telecommunication services in China are provided by a government owned monopoly. Both analog and digital leased circuits are available in addition to the X.25 service. Speeds up to 64kbps are available both within China and internationally. The X.25 service is currently not available throughout China, there are still provinces awaiting this service. While the quality of transmission appears to be good establishing a connection can be difficult with greater than 50% of incoming calls failing because of the lack of lines[2]. A wide variety of hardware and software has found it's way into China. There are also some locally manufactured systems and, of course, locally developed software. There are some DECNET networks within China but the extent is not known, nor is the experience of the Chinese with networking technology. Indonesia Indonesia has an educational network, UNInet, serving six of its universities. There are plans in place to include all 45 state universities by the year 2000. UNInet uses UUCP over both X.25 and dial-up links. There is also a network, IPTEKnet, operated by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPTeknologi) and Indonesia's National Science Foundation (LIPI). UNInet has a UUCP over X.25 link to UUNET in the United States. UUNET provides gateways to both the Internet and BITNET. Usage in the latter part of 1991 was about 2 MB per month, mostly electronic mail. Over the past six months the connection to Indonesia has not been available. Telecommunication services in Indonesia are provided by state owned enterprises. Services include analog leased links and X.25 circuits. DIALCOM's electronic mail service is also available. Many of Indonesia's circuits use an extensive satelite system. International X.25 is limited to 2400 bps. UNInet achieves an effective data rate of only 800 bps on its X.25 links. It is extremely difficult to get a new connection or a service upgrade for an exisiting connection. The quality of service is reported as not really adequate, but improving slowly. In the educational and research environment PC compatibles with DOS dominate. Some PCs running Unix are available. The use of networks is minimal because of the lack of phone lines. Computer and communications equipment is expensive in relation to university resources. Malaysia Malaysia has a development project to construct a research and education network named JARING[3]. The project is coordinated and managed by MIMOS -- a government research and development institute. JARING follows on from an earlier experimental effort, RangKoM. The planned network will link hubs in eleven centres using dedicated leased lines of up to 64kbps. All the hubs will support X.25. Both UUCP and TCP/IP will be offered over the X.25 connections. The current international connection is an X.25 link to UUNET in the United States. JARING finds this expensive. Individual sites must currently pay the use charges for traffic they generate and this is inhibiting use. There is also a 4.8kpbs BITNET connection to Singapore. Papua New Guinea Unitech, in Lae, operates a small number of Unix systems on PC AT hardware and maintains a 1200 bps UUCP link to Melbourne supported by AARNet. This is the only system used for mail, and receives all mail for the PG domain. Other MS-DOS systems use uupc to send and retrive mail through the gateway. It is planned to extend this service to the University of Papua New Guinea and Goroka Teachers College in the near future. They will also use uupc to connect. Telecommunication services are provided by a government owned monopoly. Services offered include analogue leased lines, a public X.25 service, PANGPAC and IDD. Digital leased circuits should be available this year. Line speeds are restricted to 9600 bps. The quality of service is low with connections frequently broken. It is unusual to sustain a data connection for more than ten minutes, either within Papua New Guinea or internationally. There does not appear to be any problem obtaining new services or upgrading existing services. Although computing seems to be reasonably widespread within PNG it is pretty much limited to experience with DOS and the basic PC applications. Networking within Papua New Guinea is limited to a few, very small Novell local area networks. There are also a number of "environmental" problems in PNG including the heat, humidity, poorly regulated power supplies, etc. PDR Lao Lao PDR currently has no national or metropolitan networks. There are only a handful of local area networks in Vientiane. All telecommunication services are provided by a state owned enterprise. Telephone and telegraph services are available nationally. There are no domestic leased circuits. International connections are provided by a microwave link to Thailand and via satelite to and through Australia to the rest of the world. International leased circuits are available, with priority going to diplomatic and government services. Private switching over a leased circuit is forbidden. The internal telephone system is saturated and no significant improvement is expected until the end of 1993. Internationally there is congestion at peak times. This will be alleviated when the link to Australia (and the rest of the world) is upgraded to a digital circuit in August of this year. At that time an international direct dialling service will be available to those lucky enough to have a phone. Phillipines Educational and research networks in the Phillipines appear to be limited to local area networks on two campuses and a network of bulletin board systems using FIDONET technology. In [1] Landweber also reports a small degree of uucp connectivity. Telecommunication services have traditionally been provided by a government owned monopoly. Recently, long distance services have been deregulated and at least two private companies have entered the market. Dialup access to X.25 is very limited. It is largely restricted to private networks run over leased circuits. Four companies provide international X.25 services. Links up to 64 kbps are available. Service is of medium quality. Connections can be immediately established 90% of the time, however,local calls are frequently broken. International connections are much more reliable[4]. New services can take up to six months to be installed. Upgrades to existing services are also difficult to obtain. Direct dialing (nationally and internationally) is only available in part of the country. A wide range of computers appear to be in use in educational and research institutions. The purchase of new computing equipment suffers from high import duties. Thailand Thailand has a national research network named after and run by NECTEC. As well as NECTEC, Chulalongkorn University, Mahidol University, AIT and KMIT are connected. There are plans to expand NECTEC to the remaining Thai universities. NECTEC is an X.25 network, with an international gateway is at AIT. This is a dial up UUCP connection to Melbourne, again supported by AARNet. Only electronic mail is provided. There are plans to connect to the Internet and to BITNET by the end of 1992. Telecommunications services are provided by government owned monopolies (TOT and CAT) and private companies regulated by the government. Services include both analog and digital leased circuits, public X.25, and ISDN. Not all services are available throughout the country. Similar services are available for international connections. The availability of leased circuits on certain popular routes is low and circuits are difficult to obtain. Regional Initiatives There are a number of existing initiatives in various states of development within the region. Most of the initiatives are targeted at a specific service, e.g. distance education, or a specific client, e.g. environmental issues. The technologies chosen for these initiatives is universily different making it difficult for a developing country to make use of the full range of services available. In this section we summarize the initiatives that we know about. There may well be others that have avoided our search over the past nine months. Peacesat The Pan-Pacific Education and Communications Experiments by Satellite, better known as Peacesat, is most likely the oldest effort at network communications in the Pacific region, having been initiated in 1971. The project is funded by NASA and run from the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. There are currently about 30 Pacific sites in at least 20 countries (including PNG, Australia, New Zealand and the United States) either connected or about to connect. Contained within the Peacesat network are also: o Micronet, a network linking the educational institutions in Micronesia, and o FFAnet, a network linking the Forum Fisheries Agency sites. The services provided by Peacesat include library access through the University of Hawaii library, a bulletin board, electronic mail and file transfer. It is not clear whether or not gateways are provided to networks such as the Internet. Peacesat presently uses the GOES-3 satellite. The receiving stations provide a range of channels for each site. o voice: 9 half duplex, and 3 full duplex channels. o data: 9 half duplex at least 2400 bps, and 3 full duplex, supporting 9600 bps. These channels facilitate the use of voice, data, slow scan and facsimile transmissions. The present access to the GOES-3 satellite runs out at the end of 1994. A possible future route may be the ETS-V satellite, currently part of a research project underway at Japan Communications Research Laboartoy. Pactok Pactok is a networking project now in its first stage of implementation. "It is designed to bring low-cost, reliable and user-friendly computer-based communications services to the countries of the South Pacific region."[5] It is principally targeted at community organisations. Pactok provides three main kinds of services: o Electronic mail o Computer conferencing o File and document transfer Pactok is a joint project of the Australian Foundation for Peoples of South Pacific, Ideas Centre Sydney, Centre for South Pacific Studies, University of NSW and Pegasus Networks. Pegasus itself is part of the worldwide network of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) which has interconnections with all major electronic mail networks in academia, science and commerce. The approach employed has been to implement a private Fido Technology Network (FTN) as an adjunct to the Pegasus node. Pactok subscribers at present are in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia. This is expected to expand quite significantly over the next two to three years. APCCIRN Followers of the development of research networks will be aware that a common scenario is for a country to establish a connection to the United States to gain international connectivity. From the countries point of view this is a logical move. The country has a reliable and knowledgeable partner to work with and pays nothing extra in international traffic costs. This is typical of the Pacific region. Most nations on the western rim of the Pacific communicate with each other through NSFNET connections in the United States. In August, 1991 the Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking was formed. At the same time an Asia Pacific Engineering and Planning Group was also established. One of the goals of this group is to rationalise the cross Pacific connections. This can be expected to lead to some form of backbone along the western Pacific rim. However, at the time of writing the APEPG had not made any plans public. RINSCA PROPOSAL Adjacent to the southeast asia and pacific region UNESCO has another region covering south central asia. This region has already adopted a proposal for a network to support its activities. A joint meeting of the two regions was held in November, 1991. The meeting received a proposal for a Regional Informatics Network for Asia and the Pacific (RINAP). The proposal was based on the design previously accepted by the south central region. The principal goal of the project is to provide access to information held in the many databases built up by UNESCO. It is proposed that this access be by both network and the distribution of CDROMs. The design appears to be targeted at groups that require interactive access to databases rather than the exchange of messages or transfer of files. The network envisioned consists of one X.25 gateway in each country. Each gateway provides international X.25 connections to networks such as Tymnet or BITNET, both X.25 and X.28 dialup connections within the country and a connection to any national X.25 networks. The proposal to distribute databases on CDROMs through UNESCO is apparently independent of the proposal for the RINAP network. Distance Education The author knows of several new initiatives in the distance education arena. In general, these involve application level protocols rather than the establishment of networks per se. However, it is important not to lose site of these developments. The designers expect to be able to present information to learners in many locations simultaneously. In many instances this information will be held in local storage, however there will be times when access to the resources available on, for instance, the Internet will be needed. We should not lose sight of the need to integrate these new applications with existing services. Conclusion We have reviewed the state of development of education and research networks in the southeast asia and pacific region. While many countries are currently lacking any widespread access to such services there are a number of initiatives underway. These current initiatives should be seen as complementary rather than competitive. Pactok is focused on the exchange of information among community groups, Peacesat on support for education, and the Internet on communication and access to remote resources. The next stage of development within the region should take a true internetworking approach and look at how to provide as many people as possible effective access to the full range of services. This is important not just because the services are complementary, but the technologies used by the different initiatives are appropriate to different situations and should continue to be supported. Combining these services while tackling the problems of networking in developing countries will be a substantial challange. References 1 Landweber, L.H., INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIVITY, Version 4, The Internet Society, Feb. 1992, electronic communication. 2 Gou, Zhensheng, Jan. 1992, personal communication. 3 Awang-Lah, Mohamed B., JARING Project: An Introduction, APCCIRN Meeting, Aug. 1991, Honolulu. 4 Disini, Joel, March 1992, personal communication. 5 --, Pactok Computer Networking for Community Organisations in the Pacific Region, The Centre for South Pacific Studies Newsletter, University of New South Wales. .