Discussion SessionGroup C

Chairman: John Boland, Rapporteur: Jorge-A. Sanchez-P.

Participants: Mauro Campanella, Avi Cohen, Kees Neggers, Dirk Franke, Steen Pedersen, Niels Raun, Jan Windmueller,

Martin Bech, Martin Klimo, Rossend Llurba, Ian Clarke

Berlin, 24 May 2006

Question 1: How will (National) Research and Education Networks distinguish themselves (in the

next 5-10 years) from commercial providers?

• A successful NREN has to anticipate the needs of the users, otherwise will soon become obsolete.

• NRENs need to focus on advanced services (e.g. λ switching), not commercially available.

• NRENs need to keep full control of the networking infrastructure while at the same time leave it open.

• NRENs can/should invest in projects with higher risk and serve user’s minorities with specific needs which will never be a "business case“.

• NRENs should go up in the protocols stack creating economies of scale but be careful that moving up may change the operating model (millions of users instead of decades).

• The Pan-European NREN solidarity, the collaborative role of European NRENs that allows for taking care of aspects like the digital divide or e2e services also differentiate their role.

• Marketing the mission and role of NRENs is important.– Comparing solely on a cost-basis, NRENs can be challenged since more

than 90% of our users are “normal users” in terms of demand.– Carriers/ISPs may be able to provide most of the services that an NREN

provides but, unlike NRENs, will do so on a “project”-basis.

Question 2: The essence of the Norwegian GigaCampus project is that the national network/services and the local network/services are no longer seen as separate responsibilities but as a joint responsibility of the NREN and the local network people. Is this an example that should be followed (perhaps in

slightly different forms) in all European countries?

• NRENs in many cases are doing similar things already.

• Nevertheless since e2e service provision is a key differentiator of NRENs, they have to put more attention to it and potentially take additional steps in that direction.

• Besides creating a “reference document” of the services that the NREN provides, in an effort to create awareness and influence the developments at the campuses, additionally consider also to:– coordinate common specifications– achieve endorsement by campuses – even influence their common or separate procurements.

• Eventually how far an NREN will go depends on local conditions.

• NRENs have to be careful since in this process they have to deal with different administrations and therefore different budgets and decision makers.

Question 3: Can research networks as launching customers of new technologies and products exert enough market pressure on

vendors to enforce global standardisation?

• Standards is mainly an industry-driven process.

• NRENs have demand-aggregation power and are always operating on state-of-the-art.

• The best way to influence standards is by communicating an “NRENs’ wish-list” - potentially in a coordinated (collective) way.

• The vendors will then come with solutions, potentially standardizing them, as has happened before in many areas.

• NRENs should also avoid “standardization-on-paper” and go for “standardization-on-the-field”.

Question 4: Research networks give a lot of attention to “high-end” users. Do they give enough attention to “middleclass” and “low-end” users, making them aware of the technologies and services that they

could use? Is there “latent usage”?

• NRENS should ensure "transparency" of their network to allow any user to work with and on the network in an innovative way.

• NRENs *have to* take into account the high-end/advanced users. – Currently these are the grid users, later may be others as grid

services could become commodity in some years. – Why? because they are the ones with the new requirements

asking for innovative solutions.

• For the low-end users the campuses have the major role to play.

• NRENs should not build networks according to any specific application, but build "general" purpose networks, which can be enriched/complemented by ad-hoc implementations.