n-1-3-040.90 RARE by Kees Neggers NEW TECHNICAL STRUCTURE OPERATIONAL RARE's new structure for the execution of its technical activities has been completed and is now operational. The RARE Technical Committee (RTC), consisting of networking experts with a wide breadth of knowledge and experience, will manage a technical work programme to further the development and quality of international networking services within Europe. The RTC is chaired by Tomaz Kalin, RARE Secretary-General; Tim Dixon, RARE Project Development Officer act as Secretary. The other members are: Brian Gilmore (Edinburgh University, United Kingdom), Erik Huizer (SURFnet, Netherlands), Eicke Jessen (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany), Jean-Paul Le Guigner (CICB, France), Bernhard Plattner (ETH Zuerich, Switzerland), Sven Tafvelin (Chalmers Technical Institute, Sweden). Howard Davies (RARE Vice-President, University of Exeter, UK) liaises between the RTC and the RARE Executive Committee and Christian Huitema (INRIA, France) is temporary adviser to the RTC. The work programme is executed largely by Working Groups, consisting of volunteers, who share an interest in a particular area of technology. The RTC also funds a small number of Task Force activities which it believes to be so important that volunteer effort should be supplemented to achieve more expeditious results. Recent meetings of the RTC have established Working Groups on the following subjects: - Character Sets (WG-CHAR), Convenor: Borka Jerman-Blazic, RARE Issues related to the development of services supporting a variety of character sets in an international environment. - Multimedia (WG-IMM), Convenor: John Dyer, JNT The promotion of new services and the enhancement of existing services to make full use of emerging multimedia technologies. - Information Services & User Support (WG-ISUS), Convenor: Jill Foster, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne The development of networked information services and support for users who are not computer specialists. - Lower-Layer Technology (WG-LTT), Convenor: Piet Bovenga, University of Nijmegen Issues relating to the area of Lower-Layer Technology, i.e. layer 1 up to and including layer 4 of the OSI-RM. - Messaging Services (WG-MSG), Convenor: Harald Alvestrand, SINTEF The promotion and development of mail and messaging services. - Network Applications Support (WG-NAP), Convenor: Paul-Andre Pays, INRIA The development of the infrastructural support needed by distributed applications (e.g. directory and time services). - Network Operations (WG-NOP), Convenor: Bernhard Stockman, NORDUnet All issues relating to the problems of everyday network operations. - Security Technology (WG-SEC), Convenor: Klaus Truoel, GMD The development and promotion of basic technology and procedures needed to enhance network security. RARE welcomes anyone who wishes to join one of the above-mentioned working groups. Joining is very simple: send electronic mail to mailserver@rare.nl containing in the body of the message: SUBSCRIBE wgname yourfirstname yourlastname where wgname is the abbreviation for the name of the working group shown in parentheses in the above list, for example: SUBSCRIBE WG-ISUS Joe Public CONFERENCE >From May 11-14 RARE held its 3rd Joint European Networking Conference in the Kongresshaus Innsbruck in Austria. The conference, attended by 375 networking specialists from 29 countries, was very successful. This success was not only due to the more than 45 presentations on a variety of subjects - ranging from user services to purely technical topics - but also to the conference package as a whole. This included a demonstration evening, a poster session, forums on Eastern Europe and on the Internet Society, a large number of informal meetings and BoF's and of course social events offering a good opportunity to meet the right people. The excellent way in which the Kongresshaus Innsbruck and the city of Innsbruck hosted the Conference added to its success. In his keynote Klaus Ullmann - RARE President until May this year - analyzed the status of current European Research Networking. He concluded that a high-level European organizational body as well as a stable long-term funding structure are necessary to guarantee progress for European research networking. The new RARE President, Kees Neggers, stressed the importance of moving forward in European Research Networking in his closing address, moving forward in a geographical as well as an organizational sense. Geographically speaking he referred to the globalization of the Internet and provision of support to countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Organizational steps in the short term should be the setting up of the Operational Unit and the rationalization of funding mechanisms for research networking. Cooperation with the (new) countries in Central and Eastern Europe was addressed not only in a forum but also during a BoF session. All parties agreed that, in the short term, a lot of effort should be made to bring research networking in these countries in line with the rest of Europe. This was the first JENC to provide the opportunity of presenting demonstrations in a specially designed demonstration area in the conference hall. On Tuesday a demonstration evening was organized, where a selected numbers of demo's were presented separately. Proceedings of the conference will be published in the October issue of the Elsevier North Holland Journal 'Computer Networks and ISDN Systems'. Short news items: New members RARE has three new members: the national network of Slovenia (ARNES) was accepted as a Full National Member; UNINET-ZA (South-Africa) was accepted as new Associate National Member and EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) became an International Member. Furthermore a letter of application from CARNet - the academic network of Croatia - was welcomed by the CoA (Council of Administration). YUNAC, the network of former Yugoslavia changed its membership status from Full National Member to International Member. A number of other countries have expressed their interest in becoming a member of RARE. Collaboration RARE and EARN RARE and EARN (European Academic Research Network) are going to work more closely together. President, Vice-President and Treasurer of both organizations form a Task Force to review possible areas of cooperation; they reported for the first time in May. The task force will continue its study to develop complementary technical and educational programmes. It was agreed that RARE's activities will lie mostly in the technical area while EARN will concentrate more on educational activities. Amongst others, cooperation in the publication area is planned. RARE organizer IETF and INET meetings The RARE CoA decided that RARE should take responsibility for organizing IETF meetings that take place in Europe. Preparations are now starting to organize the first one to be held in Amsterdam in July 1993. RARE is also planning to organize the 1994 European INET Conference. Document server RARE now has a Document Server to make all documents of interest to the RARE community available to a wider audience. Via anonymous FTP: . Via e.mail: , send in mail body to receive manual. New publications The first RARE Technical Report has been published. It presents an overview of User Support facilities and Information Services in (most of) RARE's member organizations. The report was produced by the USIS (User Support and Information Services) group, a subgroup of the former RARE Working Group 3 and now a separate working group in RARE's new technical structure. Paper copies can be obtained from the RARE Secretariat; the document can electronically be obtained from the RARE Document Server (by anonymous FTP: under the directory: /rare/RTR). With the publication of its RTRs RARE aims to make a wider audience aware of the results of technical activities carried out by RARE task forces and working groups. A number of RTR's are now being prepared for publication. Furthermore RA RE's Annual Report on 1991 is available from the Secretariat.