Service Télématique
et Communication
| Les Nouveaux Chemins de la Connaissance |
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N° 9 January 1997
| Editorial: Happy New Year! |
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We wish you lots of progress on the New Paths of Knowledge, which are
proliferating more and more as this new year begins. |
Paul VAN BINST |
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BRUNETTE, FORMALLY LAUNCHED IN OCTOBER, GIVEN AS AN EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS
BY EDITH CRESSON IN DECEMBER! |
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In de closing address of the European Conference "Learning in the Information Society", held in Brussels in December 96, Commissioner Edith CRESSON mentioned BRUNETTE as one of two successful examples of using Internet for schools in Europe (the other example was Bologna).More about BRUNETTE appears inside this issue; here is a picture taken after the formal opening at the Brussels Town Hall, showing Prof. VAN BINST, Mrs. VERREPT (Director General of the Education Department of the City of Brussels), Mr. THIELEMANS (Deputy Mayor of Brussels), Prof. VANHERWEGHEM (Rector of ULB), Mr. VAN WAYENBERGE (BANKSYS) and Mr. GERTH (ALCATEL). |
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Activities under the SWITCH contract |
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Service Telematique et Communication has been contracted by the SWITCH company to participate in a study aiming to provide various high-tech multimedia services at the airport of Zaventem (Brussels). One of the goals of this project is to create a cyber lounge, open to the public, inside the airport itself. This place should provide services such as Video On demand, video-confer encing, digital telephony, WWW access and extended VRML features. Many real-time services would be available such as real-time images from the airplanes, events happening at the airport,... All these services should be accessed through a WWW interface and supported by a high-speed ATM backbone. Several kiosks providing the same kind of features would also be installed in some selected places. |
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YOUNGER FACES ...
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EUREKA Secretariat |
IETF activities |
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Between June 1995 and September 1996, ULB STC had a contract with the EUREKA Belgian chairmanship to develop and set up a World Wide Web access to the EUREKA database (which is based on the ORACLE software). At the end of the Belgian chairmanship, responsibility of the WWW server was passed on to the EUREKA Secretariat which is also responsible for the information stored in the database. Given our experience in telematics matters and given that we closely participated to the development of the EUREKA WWW server, the EUREKA Secretariat contracted us as of 1st of October 1996 to help them realise, among others things :* the set-up and management of their Internet connection,* the migration of the WWW server from the Belgian office to the EUREKA Secretariat premises,* the improvement of the World Wide Web site to fit the requirements of the users,* the management of the e-mail infrastructure. |
Since a few years, STC closely follows the activities of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF is an open organization which creates "de facto" standards for the Internet. These standards are called RFCs (Request For Comments) and cover all engineering aspects of the Internet. At least one researcher of STC attends each IETF meeting and, more recently, STC has started to contribute to the standardization process by making comments, proposing new solutions and writing draft standards. Our activities mainly focus on the lower layer aspects, such as IP over ATM, IP switching, Integrated Services (QOS), unicast and multicast IP routing, IP over cable TV, multicast transport protocols,... And also on specific upper layers topics such as video-conferencing, security and e-mail gateways. |
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EuroDemo: a success story |
EuroDemo is a project carried out by ULB-STC and VUB-ELEM, with partial
funding from the European Commission Telematics Application Programme (DGXIII/C/
3,
Telematics for Research). The aim was to establish a European telematics
demonstration centre offering advanced facilities, as was described in
our previous Newsletter. The contract was signed in July 96, and we were
to be ready for the Annual Review of the projects to take place in the
EuroDemo room, in October. The main problem was that the room itself did
not exist as such, but it had to be constructed from two smaller existing
rooms. Now everyone knows that construction works don't normally happen
during summer (at least in Belgium), so that our schedule has been remarkably
tight, from the end of August until the 20th of October...A lot of efforts
were put in, particularly by the VUB Technical Department, and in time
we made it! Below is a summary photographic record of this success story. |
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| First there were two old equipment and meeting rooms ... | ...then there were lots of works ... | |
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| ... and then it was all finished on time | ||
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| and it all worked well .... | ||
| and then of course there was a party | ||
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| and from October 20th, the Telematics for Research projects could successfully prepare and conduct their Annual Reviews. And now EuroDemo is ready for more activities! | ||
| The formal launch of BRUNETTE (Brussels Network for Telematics in Education) | ||
On October 25, the City of Brussels' Education Department and Service
Télématique et Communication celebrated the formal opening
of the BRUNETTE Project pilot phase.The event took place in the magnificent
Gothic Room of the City of Brussels' Town Hall, and drew an attendance
of more than two hundred people.The pedagogical aims and objectives of
the project were highlighted by Mr. Freddy Thielemans, Deputy Mayor, and
Mrs. Monique Verrept, Director General of the City of Brussels' Education
Department while Prof. Paul Van Binst, Director of Service Télémat
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et Communication, covered the infrastructure aspects and the evolution
perspectives.
The BRUNETTE project, whose main purpose is to equip all of Brussels' schools with a full permanent access to the Internet, has completed its pilot phase; the ten sites involved in this phase have a whole worldwide connectivity and are able to supply the BRUNETTE server with accurate and up-to-date information. In order to provide BRUNETTE users with an adequate training, expert members of Service Télémat ique et Communication have developed a three levels training programme: guide, trainer, administrator. The first level is meant to give new Internet users the necessary basic knowledge. The trainer level addresses people who fulfill the following two requirements: - they already possess some competences in computing and telematics, - they have the intention to train the future participants in the project, to become guides and/or trainers. The third level has a more technical orientation; it aims to provide attendees with a number of the required skills to manage local and wide area networks. |
Each seminar combines a theoretical part, where participants can learn
new concepts, and a practical part, where they can make use of the telematics
equipment and evaluate their know-how.
The idea is to supply the pilot phase staff with the required skills to make them able to train their colleagues entering the project, in a snowball effect.The two first levels have already been conducted and have drawn respectively more than fifty and thirty active participants. The third level seminar will be organised in early February. At this very moment, the second phase of the project involving ten new French and Dutch speaking sites (seven schools and three libraries) is underway. It is planned that their connection will be realized at the end of the present academic year. 
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| A broadband network in the Brussels Region? | Conducting Seminars for SIEMENS | |
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Although we may still be far away from a real implementation, the Government
of the Brussels Region has taken a significant step towards the possible
existence of a broadband regional telecommunication infrastructure. During
the summer, a call for proposals was published, to conduct a detailed study
of a broadband network for the Brussels region. The contract was awarded
to SEMA GROUP, for which STC is carrying a few tasks as a subcontractor.
The study will be completed soon in the beginning of this year. |
A new contract has been signed with SIEMENS, under which STC will conduct a number of seminars in the coming months; various up-to-date topics in Telematics will be covered, both for "VIPs" and for more technical audiences.The subjects will range from infrastructure aspects, such as cabling or ATM, to application and services, such as messaging or information servers. |
| ELISE II: Library Image Server |
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The ELISE (Electronic Library Image Server for Europe) project bid was initially put together during 1991/2. It was presented to the Commission of European Communities DG XIII, Libraries Programme, and was accepted with a start date of February 1993, to run for 2 years.ELISE II is the second phase of this project. It will move ELISE on from its current early prototype stage into an operational framework for interconnection of image banks in libraries in Europe. The ELISE II Partners include the ELISE I partners:De Montfort University (Lead Partner)IBM UK Scientific CentreThe Victoria and Albert MuseumKatholieke Universiteit Brabant (Tilburg University - Netherlands)and the following new partners University of LimerickHunt Museum (Limerick)Radio Telefis Eireann (Dublin)Laboratorium voor Biomedische Informatika (Netherlands) Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)The project will develop an operational framework for a business environment providing an open system for access by end users to distributed image banks in libraries and related heritage and scientific sites in Europe. A distributed approach is taken in recognition of image bank owners\022 need to retain control of their collections whilst taking advantage of the capability offered by network technology to benefit from an infrastructure which keeps up to date with technical developments and provides cooperative expertise and support. The ULB participation is led by the Libraries department, with technical assistance from STC. |
| Consultance for Swiss PTT | BOLD | ||
| In the margin of its collaboration with Belgacom, STC is doing consultancy work for the Swiss PTT in the field of Directory Services. Both Belgacom and Swiss PTT are, together with other European PNOs, involved in the Eurescom P416 project. The aim of this project is to pilot a European harmonized Directory Service based on X.500. The project which will terminate near the end of January '97, is essentially a feasibility study to investigate whether X.500 is suitable as a platform for a distributed European-wide directory. At the same time, on a national level, this new directory service should be stable and efficient enough to replace the existing systems like TPH28. For some PNOs this transition is still in a very early stage and their involvement is restricted to collaboration in international projects like Eurescom P416. Other PNOs, like the Swiss PTT, have plans which go beyond this and even have target dates for operating full-service pilots. In the scope if this consultancy work, STC is helping the R&D department of the Swiss PTT in migrating from their current directory system to a new platform. Possible candidates for this new platform are LDAP and X.500. So far this collaboration has resulted in two parallel experimental systems, one based on X.500 and one based on the existing system. Both are accessible through an LDAP front-end. | Together with the libraries of ULB and UIA, STC started off near the end of 1996 in the project called BOLD (Belgian On-line Libraries Directory), led by the federal Office for Scientific, Technical and Cultural affairs.Among the information that will be stored in this directory are addresses (postal as well as mail), telephone and fax numbers, name of contact persons, collection s held by the libraries (and possibly their scope), WWW pages, etc.. The structure of the directory will allow each library to at least maintain its own data, and if possible, also to host it. This requires the establishment of a directory of a distributed type.With its involvement in the European Commission's library project LIRN (Library Information Referral and enquiry Network), for which we established an X.500 backbone, STC is well placed to contribute to the technical aspects of this project. The main difference with the LIRN project is that BOLD has decided to go for the LDAP approach. In the first stage of the project, mainly the librarians will be active in specifying the required service.Once this is stable, STC will investigate how this service can best be mapped onto the LDAP system. |
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MEMBERS of SERVICE TELEMATIQUE ET COMMUNICATION Frédéric BRAS, Justin CASTERA, Ehsan CHIRAZI, Faïrouz DABBARH, Marc DE PRETER, Lionel FERETTE, Hyoung-Jun KIM, 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 (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, 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 |