BELNET GRID Initiative

The Belnet Grid workshop held on 29 October 2003 with its mix of international and national speakers attracted more than 100 participants. Below you see the pictures of Pierre Bruyère, the director of Belnet opening the workshop, Rosette Vandenbroucke explaining the Belnet Grid Initiative and Inez Martinez giving a life demo of the submission of a job on the grid. All the presentations and more pictures can be found at http://grid.belnet.be/. Meanwhile BEgrid is growing with contributions from several Belnet clients and a first real application will be executed on the grid very soon. With these contributions of equipment and manpower and with the interest of the Flemish Government for grid computing and its call for proposals for equipment to be integrated into BEgrid it is clear that the Belnet Grid Initiative is becoming a success.

 

MEMBERS of SERVICE TELEMATIQUE ET COMMUNICATION

Antal BULANZA, Ines MARTINEZ MORENO, Nadia PARONI, Manuela PROFILI, Krzysztof SOCHA, Clémentine VALAYER, Paul VAN BINST, Fuhua YIN.

Our VUB collaborator:

Rosette VANDENBROUCKE

Our Student collaborator:

Olivier PONCHAUT

(for all of the above, e-mail is: surname@helios.iihe.ac.be)

 

Secretariat:

Daisy PIRNAY (IIHE/VUB-ULB)  (pirnay@hep.iihe.ac.be)

Other regular collaborators:

André-Robert GRIVEGNEE (Institut Bordet), Joël CANNAU (ULB), Georges ROUSSEAU, Edwin TORISAEN (ULB-VUB /IIHE).

 

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

 

 

Belgian IPv6 event in the scope of the NGN-LAB, Eurov6 and 6NET projects

In September 2003, ULB/VUB organized, with the support of the European Commission (DG Entreprise and DG Information Society) and in collaboration with ETSI, three simultaneous events in the field of IPv6 and the New Internet: the International Workshop on IPv6 Testing, Certification and Market Acceptance, the ETSI Plugtests event and the Eurov6 project Showcase. This took place at Hotel Le Plaza in central Brussels with very great success. Native IPv6 connectivity was provided by BELNET.

 

The Workshop drew 120 participants from Belgium, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK and USA; 60 more people participated in the Plugtests and about 50 visitors came to the Showcase; more information can be obtained on the site www.ipv6event.be.

           

 

    

The Brussels IPv6 Showcase was organized in close collaboration with our Eurov6 project partners: CONSULINTEL, ERICSSON, TELSCOM, and in synergy with the NGN-LAB and 6NET projects. The whole event was supported by the IPv6 Forum.

ULB/VUB and the Eurov6 Partners demonstrated native IPv6 Multicast Videoconference tools (VIC, RAT, SDR, ISABEL), VideoLAN, Windows Media Server and Player, Three Degrees, Web server (Apache2 on Linux), DNS (Bind-9.2.1 on Linux), SSH (PuTTY on Windows 2000 and OpenSSH on Linux), Home automation system, etc. We also had active participation and support from 6WIND, ALCATEL, JUNIPER, PANASONIC and XYBERNAUT.

This event has built on the successful relations established since the beginning of the Eurov6 project with a number of Asian partners, namely the IPv6 Promotion Council of Japan, the 6TNET group in P.R. China, and the IPv6 Fora in Korea and Taiwan.

High-level representatives from these countries came to Brussels, as well as a strong delegation from the Chinese Internet Society. A representative of the Government of India was also present, with the intention to establish more formal relations in the nearby future, with an eye on the forthcoming EuroIndia event in March 2004.

  

 

Press Release for Journalists, Initiated by Reporstag-e Project Partners

 “A growing crisis in journalism where more than 40 per cent of reporters and writers say they are not ready for the challenges of using new communications technologies was revealed in a survey conducted by the International Federation of Journalists and which concludes the first phase of the "Reporstag-e" project.” This press release, sent to European journalists, summarizes the results of the survey, made public through the user’s requirement report available on the Reporstag-e web site ( http://www.reporstage.org ). (The project is partly sponsored by the European Commission under the Leonardo da Vinci programme.)

Another initiative following the dissemination plan is the e-newsletter, for which journalists can subscribe through the project web site. Regarding the eLearning content of Reporstag-e, the top priorities provided by respondents are very clear: searching the information on the Internet, using databases on the Web and getting to know more on digital photography. Other important project milestones have been the description of the Functional Specifications and the Architecture and Structure of the Course Management System (CMS), platform to the Electronic Scientific Centre for Added-Value Journalism.

The choice of an Open Source CMS – Claroline – was decided during the last project meeting in Granada.  Hosting the courses, this CMS provides a wide range of functionalities allowing a tailored choice of the tools to be used according to the chosen pedagogical scenario – it allows users to publish documents in any format (Word, PDF, HTML, Video...), administer public or private discussion forums, manage a list of links, create learner groups, compose exercises, structure an agenda with tasks and deadlines, make announcements (also via email) and have learners submit papers. Courses can be hosted in different languages.

 

Isabel 10th Anniversary Event

The "Isabel 10th Anniversary Event" took place on the 23rd of October 2003. The event commemorates the 10th anniversary of the first RACE Summer School on Advanced Broadband Communications, which took place in 1993 and where Isabel was first used in a public event over the first ATM transnational interconnection, between Spain and Portugal. The distribution of the Isabel 10th Anniversary event was performed in an IPv4 to IPv6 transition scenario over the Euro6IX IPv6 testbed, as well as the NRENs and GEANT, which have migrated to IPv6. The event debated the present and future of synchronous collaboration over the Internet and made a critical reflection of the achievements and opportunities lost during all those years.

The event was attended by up to 23 participating sites from all over the world: 6WIND (Paris, France), Agora Systems (Madrid, Spain), British Telecom (Ipswitch, UK), CONSULINTEL (Madrid, Spain), CRC (Ottawa, Canada), DEMOKRITOS (Athens, Greece), ETSIT (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya - Universidad Carlos III - Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain), FI (Universidad de Murcia, Spain), IJS (Ljubljana, Slovenia), INT (Paris, France), MCLAB (Basel, Switzerland), PT INOVACAO (Aveiro, Portugal), Telecom Italia (Turin, Italy), Telefónica I+D (Madrid, Spain), ULB (Brussels, Belgium), Universidad de Oviedo (Spain), WUT (Warsaw, Poland) and WUW (Vienna, Austria).

 

Telework Study – a Workshop on Results and Debate for Future Actions in Belgium

Results of the completed telework study are presented and debated during a workshop at KU Leuven, on February 4th, involving also the Belgian Telework Association. Carried out on behalf of DWTC/SSTC of the Belgian federal government (http://www.belspo.be) and in collaboration with the HIVA (Hoger Instituut voor de Arbeid) of the KU Leuven, the study delivered deepening insights about different qualitative aspects of telework, such as barriers and obstacles to introducing telework, the organisational conditions to be met, ‘teleworkability’ of functions, and solution strategies. As a complement for the data retrieved out of the EMERGENCE survey – a large-scale international research project sponsored by the European Commission – a quantitative mapping of telework was also undertaken,

as it is organised in SME’s in different sectors of the Belgian economy. Such statistically significant data will be used to guide future policy on telework.

The workshop speakers present results of the qualitative and quantitative research, as well as of the EMERGENCE project. A round table follows gathering researchers, politicians, but also teleworkers and telework project managers addressing key issues regarding enablers and obstacles, without forgetting a focus on telemedicine. For more information: http://www.belspo.be/belspo/home/publ/rappS2_fr.stm

or

http://www.belspo.be/belspo/home/publ/rappS2_nl.stm

 

 

NATO goes to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan!

The whole NATO Advisory Panel on Computer Networks participated in the formal opening ceremonies of the Virtual Silk Road project in Almaty and Dushanbe. International Internet connectivity is now greatly enhanced in these cities, and it is also improving significantly in the whole of the countries involved in the project: Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Ouzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, to which Afghanistan will soon be added.

See www.silkproject.org for more information.

 

STC Reports

 

IRISmammo

Service Télématique et Communication (STC) regularly produces on the Web internal reports on different subjects.

Here are some of the most recent topics:

STC-03-01     IPv6 Diffserv Study and Test Report

STC-03-02     Freenet6 Tunnel Setup Protocol Test Report

STC-03-03     VideoLAN's Video Streaming Test Report

STC-03-04     Report on NGNI-Isabel workshop

STC-03-05     International Summer School on Metaheuristics

STC-03‑06     Paper presented at EvoCOP 2003 Essex, 14-16 April 2003

STC-03‑07     Paper presented at GECCO 2003 Essex, 12-16 July 2003 

STC-03‑08     Report on the installation of the UNIVERSAL Brokerage Platform

STC -03-09    First European HEALTHGRID conference

STC -03-10    ITU Telecom Asia 2002

STC -03-11    18th CENTR General Assembly

STC -03-12    1st Multi-sites Remote IPv6 Interoperability event, Madrid Global IPv6 Summit 2003

STC -03-13    Report on Terena Networking Conference 2003 and 6NET Workshop

STC -03-14    Report on 56th IETF meeting

STC -03-15    Report on the Eurov6 demonstrations with Steria-MBDS application on an iPAQ and with Xybernaut Mobile Assistant MA V

STC/03‑16      A Status Report on EuroDemo in the Context of the NGN-LAB/Eurov6 Projects May 2003

 

Coordinated by the BRUMAMMO association, and involving the Brussels Region IT Centre (CIRB/CIBG) and the Brussels universities (ULB and VUB), the digital telemammography project of the Brussels Region is now approaching preliminary operational level. After some prototype transmissions of digital mammograms were realized in early 2003, more studies were conducted during the year, based on existing and new hardware and software, from commercial vendors and academia, to gather enough experience before proceeding with orders for production equipment.

An important part of the work being carried out deals with taking into consideration the experience of  telemammography, in view of the more general problems of digital medical imaging and telemedicine procedures. A significant new trend in the ICT world, namely Grid computing and data storage, is also being considered.

A prototype Grid cluster will be established by STC at VUB/ULB and will be linked with the Belgian BEGrid project initiated by BELNET (see elsewhere in this Newsletter); collaboration with the European MAMMOGRID project is also taking place.