Last update at http://inet.nttam.com : Thu May 4 12:36:20 1995 The SANET : Further Evolution Peter Gajdos Abstract A short overview of wide area networking in Slovakia is mentioned firstly. Currently there are three WAN networks with "public" services in Slovakia. You can reach Internet from two of the networks and one is a purely commercial public data network. The most stable one is the Slovak Academic Network (SANET), which is the association of data network users. It arose after the split of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak Republics on Jan 1, 1993. Over the time of existence, the SANET organizational structure was built, which is also described with the network topological structure, covering the country of Slovakia, line speeds both on the backbone and outside the backbone, and international links. In this paper is also a description of the association's management teams and their tasks. Together with the topological information, the paper includes descriptions of all our nodes, in which institutions they are situated, and which other organizations are connected in this region. The paper's next part describes networking technology used. First of all the links are described and the method of their attachment, routers used, and node computers. Description of the SANET services for its users is also presented together with methods of user attachment. In this is also a description of all services provided through the Internet connectivity. In the next part are mentioned traffic statistics, which come from SANET's NOC, which is situated at the Institute of Communication (UAKOM) at the University of Matej Bel in Banska Bystrica. Our plans and future horizonts are mentioned at the end of the paper, together with ways to solve some of our problems. 1 Wide Area Networking in Slovakia Currently more organizations provide WAN services in Slovakia. Among them are the SANET association, EUnet and EuroTel. EuroTel is the association of Slovak PTT, US West and Bell Atlantic. Providing other telecomunication services, EuroTel provides X.25 public data network services. Its main purpose is to make data transfer possible between two places. EuroTel's orientation is to organizations which need direct data transfer from one place to another, e.g. banks. But EuroTel also has other important services currently, and so it has started to provide an X.400 based Message Handling System. European EUnet also has representation in the Slovak Republic. It has one node situated in Bratislava for the time being. It provides all standard Internet services like e-mail, gopher, www, etc. EUnet's orientation in Slovakia is more commercial than academic, so most of the customers are commercial firms. Apparently the most stable network in Slovakia is the Slovak Academic Network (SANET) which is the association of data network users in Slovakia. SANET arose from the Federal Educational and Science Network association (FESNET). The FESNET has been split between the czech CESNET and the slovak SANET since Czechoslovakia separated into the Czech and Slovak Republics on Jan 1, 1993. Both new networks have been keeping contacts and friendly relationships. This relationship is a result of certain problems at the beginning, when they started to build a joint network, and also some joint projects have been solved. SANET was first a purely academic based network. Currently we also have commercial users, who use the network for e-mail first of all and as an entry point to information databases. It's very interesting to trace the type and specialization of our users - they range from financial firms to dress sellers, technical firms to government institutions, hospitals, etc., and of course R&D institutions and universities. The SANET network still keeps its academic statute and is under the roof of the Ministry of Education and Science. Our commercial users also contribute to the network, however they pay symbolic fees, when we compare connection fees of other networks in Slovakia. For your notion I mention the price for UUCP connectivity for 20 e-mail readers. For commercial firm it's 800 Sk per month (26.5 $ per month). Over the time of existence the SANET organizational structure was built, which is quite good functional and will be in its current form also in the future. 2 The SANET structure We will consider the organizational structure firstly and topological afterwards. As I have said, SANET is the association of data network users in Slovakia. It has two management groups. The SANET Commitee is a group of approximately 10 people with the association's chairman. The commitee makes decisions which are the most serious for the association's functionality. The next management group is the Technical Team, which solves all the technical problems connected with the network's functionality and presents suggestions and recommendations for serious technical interferences to the Commitee for approvement. In the Technical Team is at least 1 person from every SANET node. To secure maximum impartiality and democracy of technical team appointments, each meeting is held at a different node. Technical team meetings are held at least once a month. The top level management group of SANET includes all users. This is an annual summit of all network users, which are all the organizations connected to the network. The main task of the summit is to elect the SANET commitee members. The network topological structure was designed to cover all the important academic regions of Slovakia, however SANET's financial support is limited and very low. These regions are such towns in which have gathered universities and R&D institutions. The next reason was apparently the backbone, and its present shape suits the described condition. Topologically SANET is a combination of classical backbone and stars. Three of the most important towns lie on the backbone and the other localities are connected to them in the given region with a star topology. Picture 1 : SANET topology 3 Brief description of connected regions Banska Bystrica - The node works as SANET's Monitoring Centre, Network Operational Centre and Network Information Centre. The node is situated at the Institute of Communication at the University of Matej Bel. The node is considered the hearth of the network. In the town are connected all the university faculties, the Computing Centre of Secondary Schools, Slovak Agency of Environment, Slovak Academy of Science - branch office, network of the Ministry of Interior. Bratislava - The node is situated at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems at the Slovak Technical University. In the region are connected other faculties, faculties of the Comenius University and the Slovak Academy of Science. Kosice - The node is situated at the Computing Centre of the Technical University. In the town are connected faculties of the Technical University, faculties of the University of Pavel J. Safarik, some institutions of the Slovak Academy of Science. Zvolen - The node lies at the Computing Centre of the Technical University of Zvolen. In the region are connected both faculties and the Forestry Research Institute. Zilina - The node is situated at the Computing Centre of the University of Transportation and Communication. In the region are connected some faculties of the university. Liptovsky Mikulas - The node is situated at the Military Academy. Tatranska Lomnica - The node lies at the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Science in the Vysoke Tatry mountains. It's the SANET's node with the highest evaluation above see level. Martin - The node is situated at the Matica Slovenska. It's national cultural organization for supporting slovaks. In the town are next connected the Hospital of the Medical faculty and some secondary schools. Nitra - The node lies at the Computing Centre of the University of Agriculture. Presov - The node is situated at the Pedagogical faculty of the University of Pavel J. Safarik. Trnava - The node is situated at the faculty of the Slovak Technical University in Trnava. 4 Used technology The SANET network is built on leased lines from Slovakia PTT. The link Banska Bystrica - Prague is leased from IBM Slovakia, however transition to PTT is considered in the future. Selection of our systems was influenced in most cases by somebody else, not SANET's technicians. Most devices were donated, or were bought through EC projects. Because of this, the network is made up from various and distinguished devices and marks, which is not very suitable. The next fact which had a big influenceon the network arising was that plenty of computers had been operating at the universities and institutions previously. These computers have also been used for the network. The Cisco routers have been chosen as the main networking technology in SANET, apparently from their usage in other networks worldwide. All the backbone nodes are equipped with these routers. For some nodes 3com Netbuilders are also used. The nodes which haven't a professional router, for lack of financial resources, are connected by PCs with public domain software - pcroute. For node computers Sun Microsystems are used with SunOS, DEC with Ultrix or VMS, Bull or IBM with AIX, PC with SCO UNIX, etc. On the leased lines, ZyXEL or Motorola modems are used. Nokia modems were provided by PTT and IBM for their links with speeds of 64 kbps and 128 kbps. Dialup users are connected by dialin terminal servers - Cisco or Annex. All main nodes are equipped with such terminal servers. 5 SANET services SANET provides services in two levels. Services for its users, and services provided through Internet connectivity. As I have said, SANET's main service is to provide Internet connectivity to the general academic public and also to other users who have interest (commercial firms, nonprofit organizations, government, etc.). This connectivity is realized by dialup service. An user with his own computer with a modem has the possibility to connect into an account at the node computer which has direct connectivity to Internet. Dialup is the most commonly used service of SANET. We also provide UUCP connectivity to large organizations for sending/receiving e-mail. Connecting big organizations' LAN networks we start to provide dialup - IP connectivity. However we should be very careful because this service overloads our dialin modems and other users have no possibility to connect to their account. This problem will be solved with an increase of dialin modems at the main nodes in the near future. Various charges are paid for the services. Charges are distinguished by the type of service used and the type of user (commercial, noncommercial). The first two months are free for both to try the connectivity and services for their needs. An important condition for commercial users is that they are allowed to use the network only for noncommercial purposes. SANET as a part of Internet provides all Internet's services. Of course most new users are interested in e-mail firstly. The second most requested service (in the order of interests) is file transfer - FTP. For this purpose some FTP servers act as mirroring FTP servers in SANET to prevent overloading our international links. In the last time, interest in gopher service increased greatly. Apparently it's for its very easy control. Almost every SANET node has its own gopher server to provide information about itself. Most node computers have a public account for gopher usage. In the same way the www service is getting more and more users. Both client types are used in the SANET network. Dialup users use character oriented clients (i.e. lynx) and users from directly connected nodes use Mosaic or Netscape. The www service is also provided by almost every node. The directory service X.500 has been provided since May 1992. This type of service has been chosen for managing an information database about SANET users. Every connected organization will have an entry in the X.500 database. Today we have five X.500 servers in Slovakia and some of them also provide public access (they have "de" account). Also two netfind servers and three whois servers operate in SANET. The next very popular service SANET provides is USENET news. The main NNTP server is situated at the UAKOM and it's fed by complete news distribution. It redistributes news groups to other SANET nodes afterwards. 6 NOC Management The SANET has the main network management centre situated at the Institute of Communication at the University of Matej Bel in Banska Bystrica. This node acts as Network Operating Centre and Network Information Centre and is responsible for monitoring and managing network traffic. Network management systems are using the SNMP protocol (SunNet Manager with CiscoWorks) running on the Sun workstation. These are examples of the statistics from the NOC. Used abbreviations of nodes have such meanings : BB - Banska Bystrica, PG - Prague (Czech Republic), BA - Bratislava, KE - Kosice, ZI - Zilina, ZV - Zvolen, MT - Martin, TL - Tatranska Lomnica, LM - Liptovsky Mikulas, VI - Vienna (Austria), NI - Nitra, PO - Presov. Table 1 : Traffic statistics from March 1995 - kilobytes transfered to/from given node Node - Line Input Output BB - PG 25 511 800 16 130 800 BB - BA 3 360 810 8 162 920 BB - KE 4 097 500 14 047 900 BB - ZI 707 011 2 944 420 BB - ZV 6 490 120 6 046 110 BB - MT 674 766 774 244 BB - TL 369 327 770 258 BB - LM 1 086 755 899 638 BA - VI 14 523 100 10 236 300 BA - NI 747 691 1 490 565 KE - PO 233 531 796 505 Table 2 : Traffic statistics from March 1995 - line utilization in % Line Totally Peak Hours BB - PG 62 73 BB - BA 39 68 BB - KE 68 88 BB - ZI 47 70 BB - ZV 31 32 BB - MT 12 18 BB - TL 12 10 BB - LM 17 18 BA - VI 70 90 BA - NI 24 43 KE - PO 13 24 Note : Lines are of different bandwidth. 7 Future plans Because the SANET is primarily supported with finance by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Slovak Republic, its standard reflects the economical situation of Slovakia. Currently SANET struggles with a lack of financial resources. A good example is comparing its technical level to the Czech CESNET. Both the networks were at the same technical level in 1992 approximately, because they were formed from one federal network, after the split. Their technical levels have become very different today. SANET needs more financial resources to provide better and more complex services for its users, and to prevent academic networking in Slovakia from declining. Concreetly we need to upgrade links to higher speeds, especially international links, spread the network to uncovered regions of Slovakia and install advanced technology at the nodes. References [1] K. Fabian, L. Elias, D. Hruby "SANET Network: Evolution and Services," Proc. of INET'93, San Francisco, CA, pp. GBD-1 - GBD-4, August 17-20, 1993. [2] J. Bobovsky "The Way of Atracting New Users to Computer Network Services (Experiences of the SANET Network)," Proc. of 4th Joint European Networking Conference - European Research Networking in a Global Context, Trondheim, Norway, pp. 210 - 213, May 10-13, 1993. [3] M. Smolenova "The Reasons and Goals of Using Directory Services at the Slovak Academic Network,"Booklet of abstracts from Network Services Conference'94, London, England, pp. 18, November 28-30, 1994. Author Information Peter Gajdos has been employed at the Institute of Communication (UAKOM) at the University of Matej Bel in Banska Bystrica as a research assistant, WAN network manager and UNIX network programmer. He studied at the Electrical Faculty of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and the University of Transportation and Communication in Zilina. Finally he received an Ing. degree from the University in Zilina in 1993. He is interested in networking technology, high speed networking, multimedia and modern operating systems. He is a member of the SANET technical team.