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Service Télématique et Communication
Les Nouveaux Chemins de la Connaissance
Newsletter
The New Paths of Knowledge
N°12 January 1998
 
 
EDITORIAL: 
Happy and busy new year!
As the new year starts, you may notice in this Newsletter that quite a few of our titles read "extension of our contract with...": we take this fact of course as a very positive sign of confidence from the many companies and institutions we are working with, and it surely motivates us to keep working hard and maintain the level of quality which we believe is the main reason of our successes. 

We are also very proud to renew a three year contract with BELNET, which will be our first contract to take us to the end of 
 the year 2000! Besides that, two new European Commission contracts are being finalized (with the Telematics Applications Programme and with ACTS), while another one is in the final phases of negociations, also with ACTS, and will be reported on in 
 a further issue. But there is more to discover in this Newsletter, including about the long-term faithfulness of some of our staff and colleagues... 

Happy New Year and happy reading, 

Paul VAN BINST 
 
  		 
 
 

In November 97, Rosette VANDENBROUCKE and Daisy PIRNAY celebrated 25 years of faithful presence and activity at the University of Brussels (VUB/IIHE); 
for Rosette, that also meant 25 years of collaboration with Paul Van Binst ...
 


 
 
 
GINA plus
ULB-STC will be prime contractor of the ACTS GINAplus project which is an extension of the present GINA project. 
Other partners are ALCATEL, COMINFO, ITALTEL, MARTEL, TELCONSULT and TELSCOM. 
GINAplus aims to produce guidelines in the domains of "satellite communication" and "Internet and ATM interworking". In particular, ULB-STC will be editor of the "Internet and ATM interworking" guideline. 
This guideline will cover Internet/ATM interoperability, protocol encapsulation, complementarity of services and integration 
 between real-time services such as IP and ATM telephony.
 
 
 
 
   
At the invitation of the Brussels Trade Mart/Buro&Design Centre, a trip to Dallas was organized in October 97 for some representatives of the government, institutions and companies of the Brussels Region.
Paul VAN BINST participated as vice-president of the Brussels Teleport.  ; He is seen here as an atypical "Dallas cowboy" (with cattle running away in the background ...)
 
Extension of our contract with BELNET
For some years now, BELNET (the Belgian network for research and academic institutions) and Service Télématique et Communication are collaborating to offer the X.400/SMTP gateway service. At the beginning, the service was run in the name of BELNET, 
 by STC. Afterwards, the service was migrated and is still running on a BELNET machine with the support brought by STC people. This support mainly consists in our experience in X.400 and gatewaying matters. 
With the emergence of Internet and thereby the SMTP service, the X.400 mail system has lost some interest in Belgium and only a few sites are still connected to the BELNET MTA. 
Due to those changes in the telematic world, the terms of our collaboration have been reviewed at the occasion of the prolongation of the contract between BELNET and STC. We will be more involved in the daily management of more BELNET matters, that 
 means, among other things: set-up and management of IP connections, still the management of the X.400 MTA, management of the BELNET services (WWW, FTP server, Proxy, etc.).
 
Extension of our ETIC contract
Through 1998, ULB/STC continues its support to ETIC (European Telecommunication Industries Consortium) for the implementation and management of their networking infrastructure and services. 
At the ETIC secretariat in Brussels, basic local area network applications and services are in place. Internet services such 
 as World Wide Web, FTP and Electronic Mail are in use by ETIC and their project partners CONCORDIA and CONVAIR. 
During 1998, Internet services as well as local area infrastructure and applications will be extended and enhanced to keep up with the growing demand of the involved projects. 
Promotion and supervision of these services will continue to be an important activity during this new year.
 
BRUNETTE à ZANZIBAR
BRUNETTE, the Brussels Network for Telematics in Education, has started its third phase.  At this moment, more than twenty sites are connected to the Internet at 64 kb/s, on a permanent basis through the BiLAN Service of BELGACOM. 


Die Zauberflöte  Photo Johan Jacobs  La Monnaie/De Munt 

Now, many applications are being developed by and for the City of Brussels schools in collaboration with others; several contacts have already been established between some Brussels schools and other schools or institutions situated in Belgium or abroad, and among them a project is taking shape with the Belgian National Opera ("La Monnaie/De Munt") education and multimedia departments. 
In particular, the Belgian National Opera Educational Service, in collaboration with Service Télématique et Communication (STC), VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and the City of Brussels' Education Department are developing a common project called "BRUNETTE à ZANZIBAR".  This project aims at using BRUNETTE as a testbed to promote the Opera ZANZIBAR project whose objective is to address schools with interactive and multimedia tools meant to help students get acquainted with opera and with culture in general. 
ZANZIBAR is designed as an educational project allowing students to obtain information but also allowing them to give their opinion on culture, to exchange ideas with other people all around the world, ...  An experience has already been carried out in one of the dutch speaking schools through an Internet site where students have discovered a Mozart opera: the Magic Flute. 
At this moment, a team of students of one of the City of Brussels' schools is translating this site into French.  The site is presently reachable in Dutch at the following address: http://www.demunt.be/zanzi/zanzihm.htm. 

* Il s'agit des Etudiants de 1e Licence du Département de traduction et d'interprétation Cooremans de la Haute Ecole Francisco Ferrer de la Ville de Bruxelles
SARMENT: SAIT & STC together again;  a promise of a new "grand cru"!
About one year after the end of the OSISIM (Open System Integrated Simulator) project, SAIT Systems and Service Télématique et Communication have obtained a new F.R.I.A. grant for the SARMENT (Services and Resources Management) project. OSISIM has consisted in defining and building a model of a WAN communication network where satellite links are involved. A prototype called AMS ("Atelier de modélisation et simulation") has been built on top of Simulog MODLINE and QNAP2 products on a SUN workstation. 
The first part of SARMENT is the continuation of OSISIM on various sources of traffic with an 
emphasis on trafic management, flow control and resources management, notably in high-speed switches (ATM, SMDS, Frame Relay). In a second part, a generic interconnection model of networks across a new generation transport network, with service integration, will be defined and simulations will be done in order to study the features described in the first part. The objective is to provide recommendations for better configuration and dimensioning. 
A more complete description of the research project is available by contacting Mrs Atika COHEN or at our Web address.
Federal Webmasters Workshop 1997: another EuroDemo success
The NSF/NCSA World Wide Web Federal Consortium sponsored a Web workshop specifically for US federal employees. It was held on October 27-31,1997 in the Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland). 
The topics covered in this workshop were: Policy / Management, Security, Design, Technical, General, Vendors/Products. 
The workshop included a panel discussion session on the evening of October 30th. 
This panel discussion was focussed on the need and opportunities for multi-sector, multi-disciplinary cooperation in TeleWork and R&D technology transfer. The panel discussed the need for such cooperation, the framework for supporting existing and proposed cooperation, how international communities can leverage global resources cooperatively, and some proposed action items. 
Speakers from Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands participated in the discussions through a video conferencing system that was setup on each of those sites. 
Mr. Maarten Botterman, Expert to the European Commission, DGXIII, Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of 
 Research, participated in the panel discussions from the EuroDemo demonstration room setup by STC in Brussels. 
Complete News and Information about this event can be found at: Federal Webmasters 97 website:      http://www.excelgov.org/wm97/
Seminars for NCR A contract with Région Wallonne and DIGICABLE
ULB-STC has been contracted by NCR as consultant and will present a series of internal seminars. In a first phase, these seminars will cover ATM and the services which can be provided on top of ATM, e.g. Classical IP, MARS, NHRP, LANE, MPOA, Label switching (MPLS),... 
ULB-STC will also present a seminar on Telephony over IP and ATM; this will cover models such as the ITU-T H.323 and H.310 models, the ATM Forum VTOA-D and RMOA models, and the IETF model. Future seminars will cover X.400, Internet messaging and Internet security.		 Digicable S.A. is a company located on the "Aéropole" of Gosselies which is specialized in data communications over mixed infrastructures such as cable TV and ATM. 
In the scope of the FIRST programme of the Walloon Region, Digicable has contracted ULB-STC to provide state of the art information in different domains such as cable modem protocols, VLANs, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), ATM MIBs and network management (e.g. latest versions of SNMP, TMN and CMIP).  In addition, Digicable and ULB-STC will work together on the definition and design of new end-to-end services (including IP and virtual LANs) which may be provided on such infrastructures.
 

Some of the "older" members of STC
Jean Marc VERBERGT, Olivier PARIDAENS, Eric MANNIE and Ramin NAJMABADI KIA have spent between 7 and 9 years with STC now and have obtained a permanent status at 
 ULB
 
 

Extension of our contract with the EUREKA Secretariat
The EUREKA Web server was officially launched in June '96 during the ministerial conference held at the end of the Belgian Chairmanship. From that moment onwards, the EUREKA Secretariat took the responsibility of the maintenance of the server even if it was physically located in the premises of the Belgian office. 
At the beginning of 1997, the machine was moved to the EUREKA Secretariat premises and has been connected to Internet via a BELNET connection. Since then, the Web server has shown its usefulness, the number of requests addressed to the server growing month after month (53.000 in January '97, 93.000 in June '97 and more than 120.000 in November '97). The maintenance and the continuous development of the server have been realised as part of a contract between the EUREKA Secretariat and Service 
 Télématique et Communication. That contract will be extended in '98 to continue to ensure the high quality of the server. 
Besides the Web server aspects, a lot of things will be developed during our fruitful collaboration: installation of a firewall, development and management of an FTP server, installation and management of a DNS server, management of the mail system, etc. 
The main goal of the different tasks being carried on in the course of our collaboration, is to keep the EUREKA Secretariat at the top level in terms of telematic technologies.
TERENA
TERENA Networking Conference 1998 (TNC'98) - 5-8 October 1998, Dresden, Germany. 
Extension of our contract with SIEMENS 
Info: TNC'98 Secretariat 
Tel: +31 20 639 1131 
Fax: +31 20 639 3289 
Email: tnc98-sec@terena.nl; 
URL:http://www.terena.nl/tnc98/
 
Studying a telematics infrastructure for EEBIC
During the last months of 1997, ULB/STC conducted a feasibility study for EEBIC (European Business and Innovation Centre) that hosts over thirty young and innovative Belgian enterprises. The study concerns the implementation of local and wide area networking facilities at EEBIC premises to answer the needs of the hosted enterprises. In order to assess the network configuration and services, a number of enterprises were interviewed, which showed great enthusiasm. 
The study covers all aspects of the implementation from cabling of offices, LAN and WAN equipment, to provision of Internet services such as World Wide Web and Electronic Mail.
A new EC Project on Telematics European Industry Standards Support
TEISS is a European project of the Telematics Application Programme (Telematics Engineering) in which ULB/STC participates together with CEN/ISSS (the coordinator) and three UK-based companies.  The project is starting in early '98 and will last 18 
 months.  The aim of this project is to identify areas where standardization efforts would be desirable in the ICT sector.  This will be achieved through different approaches.  Several other selected projects of the Telematics Applications Programme will be analyzed in order to determine where the lack of standards has been  an obstacle in their work. TEISS will identify synergies with the industry for the development of the necessary standards. Also, the project will suggest how to best proceed for the development of the identified standards.
Extension of our contract with SIEMENS
After the successful series of seminars that were carried out in 1997 for SIEMENS clients by STC, new activities are planned 
 to take place in the first half of 98, including two technical seminars on state-of-the-art topics, and a tutorial to be delivered in a high-level SIEMENS conference.
 
At the annual symposium of the Belgian ATM Platform in November, Zlatica CEKRO gave a presentation on our experience in management and performance monitoring of 
 European ATM networks, in  the scope of the TEN-34 and JAMES projects.
 
MEMBERS of SERVICE TELEMATIQUE ET COMMUNICATION
Denis AUQUIER, Frédéric BRAS, Justin CASTERA, Ehsan CHIRAZI, 
Marc DE PRETER, Faïrouz DABBARH, Eric MANNIE, Ramin NAJMABADI KIA, Olivier PARIDAENS, Nadia PARONI, Robab SATTARI SADAT, Paul VAN BINST, Jean-Marc VERBERGT. 

Our VUB collaborators: 
Zlatica CEKRO, Rosette VANDENBROUCKE 

Our Student collaborators: 
Jean-Pierre FLORISOONE, Olivier VERLOOVE (ULB) 

(for all of the above, e-mail is 
surname@helios.iihe.ac.be  or  c=be; admd=rtt; prmd=iihe; o=helios; s=surname) 

Other regular collaborators: 
Atika COHEN, Luc GOLVERS, Marie-Paule SPINETTE, Anne SPOIDEN (ULB), Yves BRANTS, Guy DEPIESSE, Daisy PIRNAY, Georges ROUSSEAU (IIHE/ULB-VUB), Philippe LANGENAKEN, Nathalie MESSORI (Haute Ecole Francisco FERRER), Alain NYS (City of Brussels' Education Department). 

Contact: 
Service Télématique et Communication - Professor Paul VAN BINST 
ULB - CP230 - Boulevard du Triomphe - 1050 Brussels - Belgium 
Tel.: + 32 2 629 3211 or 3209 - Fax: + 32 2 629 3816 

Rosette VANDENBROUCKE 
VUB - ELEM - Pleinlaan 2 - 1050 Brussels - Belgium 
Tel.: + 32 2 629 3210 - Fax: + 32 2 629 3816 

World Wide Web Address: 
http://www.iihe.ac.be