http://www.EU.net/pr/Connexions.Nov93.html (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)
Profile: EUnet
Profile: EUnet
European networking priorities
Discussions within the European Internetworking community are
often led by the government-sponsored national and international
research networks. Those discussions often focus on the quest
for "big bandwidth" and the massive governmental support, funding, and
intervention that it demands. However, well before these discussions
became prominent, a different model of infrastructure building was
at play, steadily creating a large fraction of the greater European
internet.
The most extensive and longest-operating European champion of this
different model is EUnet.
This article
This article overviews EUnet and its demonstration of an alternate
and highly successful route toward the development of the Internet
and, most importantly, in how it serves real customers (not just the
perennially invoked, yet somehow never-present "users"). It traces the
history of EUnet, and our philosophies of service provision and
network economics.
It is not intended to be an indictment of the desire or hard work done by
many in the quest for big-bandwidth academic networking before the
marketplace will support it. Rather, it points to an approach which
has produced significant end-user service and will certainly bring us to
substantially greater bandwidth levels in the near future (if American
experience is any guide, it will not be more than a few years away).
EUnet snapshot
EUnet began in 1982 as a UUCP based network concentrating on electronic mail.
EUnet has since grown to become perhaps Europe's most extensive
Internet-related service organizations, serving
10,000 sites and networks via 50 points of presence.
With service centers in 27 countries providing coverage from Iceland
to Vladivostok and from the Arctic Circle to Northern Africa, EUnet
has one of the widest geographical spans of any Internet provider in
the world.
Traffic is carried nationally, internationally, and intercontinentally
over EUnet's own infrastructure. All of this has been accomplished
without direct major governmental sponsorship or funding.
EUnet core services include E-mail (RFC-822 and X.400), File Transfer
(FTP), Remote Login (TELNET), Network News, and Archive Access.
Connectivity is available via leased, X.25, ISDN, and analog dial-up
connections, using IP and UUCP protocols.
EUnet National Service Providers include:
Austria Belgium
Bulgaria Czech Republic
Denmark Finland
France Germany
Great Britain Greece
Iceland Ireland
Italy Luxembourg
Netherlands Norway
Portugal Slovakia
Slovenia Spain
Switzerland former Soviet Union
Tunisia
EUnet Providers being set up
Algeria Egypt
Poland Romania
Early history
EUnet was announced by members of the European computer industry and
researchers from institutes and universities at the April 1982 meeting
of the European Unix Users Group (in 1990 the EUUG was renamed
"EurOpen"). At that time, there were no generally-available means for
researchers or anyone else to exchange electronic mail either
internationally within Europe or across the Atlantic to the United States.
In most European countries, there were no national research networking
organizations (notable exceptions were JANET in the Great Britain, and
HEPnet), and most institute to institute communications were provided
in an ad hoc fashion, if at all.
The UUCP and USENET developments in the United States had by
1982 already shown that a rather anarchistic, low-overhead, yet
effective system of networking was possible without major
government or institutional support. However, the differences
among the countries of Europe meant that the simple "find a willing
host and exchange traffic" model of the USENET could not be
transported wholesale to Europe; the much higher European
telephone tariffs, the frequent telecoms border crossings, and
differences in national languages, technical development, and
regulations required a different solution.
The approach chosen revolved around the designation of a single point of
concentration for E-mail exchange within each participating country.
Each national concentration point would then forward all
international mail to a single European concentration point. This
two layer hub-and-spoke arrangement proved to be the perfect European
interpretation of the original USENET approach.
Groups participating in the early days of EUnet included the Institut
National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA) in
Paris, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), the
University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Copenhagen, and
the University of Genoa.
The Center for Mathematics and Informatics (CWI) in Amsterdam
acted as the European hub and network operations center, providing
connectivity within Europe and to the United States.
EUnet transport was originally based upon UUCP, and services were
primarily RFC-822 E-mail and Network News.
Within a few years, nearly all of the European Community region was
covered, which provided enough income and traffic so that by 1986 our
connection to the US was upgraded with to leased line running SLIP.
In early 1987, leased lines were in use between the European and
national NOCs; later that year leased line IP services were provided
directly to subscribers (today marketed under the name InterEUnet).
Access to EUnet services was originally restricted to members of the
research and development community, again following the American model
(this time unfortunately). This was mandated by monopolistic
telecoms regulations in the European countries, and reinforced by
the general pre-commercial practices of the day. This constraint
no longer applies, as we will see below.
Each national EUnet networking team worked in conjunction with
a national EUUG group. The EUUG overall provided support,
cohesiveness, and a common forum for EUnet development.
National EUnet evolution
Nearly all National EUnets were begun by networking enthusiasts at
universities or national research institutes. Starting with a few
workstations and modems, most began by providing simple E-mail
and Network News services to academic institutions, and later
to research groups in industry. Each subscriber was required to
pay for the networking services they used.
As the number of subscribers grew, it eventually became possible
to obtain a leased line to the Amsterdam NOC,
thus enabling national distribution of the full set of Internet services.
Steady evolution permitted EUnet staff to develop an
in-depth understanding of the economics and technology of service
provision. It also continues to be a very effective start-up model for use
in countries which, now just beginning to join into the integrated economy
of Europe, have serious national telecoms infrastructure problems to
overcome. And, the "pay actual costs of use" approach imposed
economic discipline, still sorely lacking in many government-sponsored
nets, from the subscriber through the entire EUnet organization.
EUnet subscribers have over ten years of experience in understanding
how networking fits into their overall cost picture; there are no
mysteries about actual cost and its relationship to the value of
network use.
EUnet has proven that end-use of networks is economically viable and
desirable, even given the artificially high European telecom prices
and the difficult technical circumstances in Eastern Europe.
As other nets arrived
As other networks began to arrive (such as EARN and NORDUnet),
and the research networking community developed, EUnet joined
a variety of cooperative efforts, including participating in the
initial discussions which led to the establishment of the CERN-
Amsterdam link consortium, which included EARN, IBM/EASInet,
CERN and NORDUnet. EUnet was also involved in backup and other
service agreements with other international networks such as NORDUnet
(from whom we obtained our Nordic connectivity for several years)
which resulted in what was known as the Stockholm-Amsterdam link.
EUnet was present in the initial discussions which led to the
formation of the Ebone, which stood in large part on the bandwidth
and membership of the CERN-Amsterdam link consortium and the
Stockholm-Amsterdam link.
EUnet's Daniel Karrenberg (now leading the RIPE NCC) made the
original proposal to form RIPE, which provides a forum
for cooperation between European IP providers.
Early availability and impact
EUnet has been either the first or among the first Internet-related
service providers in nearly every country in which it operates. In
particular, EUnet is proud to provide to have provided early access to
Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union (so
early that most of those countries no longer exist).
During the failed Soviet coup of 1991, EUnet, through it's local
provider RELCOM, was a key source of public information within the
Soviet Union and to the outside world.
This was due to the fact that many western news agencies used EUnet
to transfer information between the Soviet Union and the rest of the
world.
The commercialization of EUnet
By 1990, EUnet recognized the need for major change. The growing
success of the Internet in general and EUnet in particular meant that
the EUnet NOCs were outgrowing their home institutes, and that a new
organizational approach to running the network was required.
The growing requirement for equipment and leased lines resulted in
a level of risk and need for capital which could not be supported under
academic or user group umbrellas.
A European-level manager was hired in the beginning of 1991, and
analysis and planning were undertaken to determine the shape of EUnet
in the 1990s.
In 1992 it was agreed that EUnet would be formally constituted as a
commercial company, which has now been accomplished at two levels:
the national EUnet service providers moved from their institutional homes
and reorganized themselves as commercial companies and, in December 1992,
EUnet Limited of Ireland, a for-profit company, was formed. All
European-level activities within EUnet are performed under EUnet Limited,
which is owned by the national EUnets and EurOpen (formerly EUUG) which
holds a minority position.
Business management structure
The earlier informal decision-making process has been replaced by
a more regular business structure. There is a board of Directors,
elected by the shareholders. An informal, thrice-annual "backbone meeting"
has been replaced by separate technical and business meetings.
The technical meeting is attended by European and national level
technical leaders from the national EUnets, who address issues such as
architecture, operations, security, and new service development.
As required, working groups are spun off to execute well-defined,
fixed-duration tasks.
The business meeting is attended by European and national EUnet managers
and marketing staff, who address issues such as internal cost recovery,
strategy, and business relations with suppliers and other providers.
Day-to-day business management is performed by a chief executive with
the support of an executive committee and staff.
Infrastructure independence
In planning for the commercialization of EUnet, three alternatives
were investigated for our long-haul traffic requirements: using the
proposed Operational Unit services (now using the name EuropaNET),
the Ebone, or to significantly expand upon our own router network.
Use of EuropaNet was rejected when we discovered that the funding
organization for EuropaNet would not allow any but the
government-sponsored national research networks
to take an equity position in that network. Use of Ebone was rejected
for two reasons: first, Ebone's uncertain status made it inappropriate
for use as the basis of a commercial service; second, it
became apparent during 1992 that the Ebone, being largely made up of
government-sponsored research networks, could not possibly share
the interests of EUnet in the long run, and hence could
not be expected to respond effectively to the requirements of our
growing non-research subscriber base. As a result of this analysis,
EUnet decided in 1992 to complete the process of developing its own
infrastructure.
EUnet infrastructure now extends across nearly the entire EUnet system,
including a fractional T1 from the Amsterdam NOC to UUnet in the United
states (and on from there to the Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX), and
NSFnet), the cost of which is partially supported by UUnet Technologies.
EUnet maintains its own internal leased lines from Amsterdam to nearly
all European EUnets, and this summer installed the first commercial
Internet terrestrial link to Moscow (via EUnet NOCs in Copenhagen, Helsinki,
and Tallinn).
The majority of EUnet internal links are today either 64 or 128 kb.
Traffic and bandwidth on most edges is doubling roughly every 6-8 months.
The EUnet core, consisting of lines and router equipment at the EUnet NOCs,
is made up almost exclusively of cisco routers primarily running the
BGP3 routing protocol.
EUnet's decision to develop its own infrastructure enables us to
obtain an appropriate degree of control to ensure the level of service
quality demanded by our subscribers.
Wholesale-retail structure
EUnet today envisions itself as a commercial wholesale-retail network.
That is, EUnet provides three vital components of Internet-related
service provision for its subscribers: local customer service, extensive
infrastructure, and managed access to the world-wide Internet.
EUnet has fully-manned network service bureaus in each country in which
it operates, and at the European level in Amsterdam. Each of
our service teams is "home grown" and has years of experience; they are
familiar with their national networking environment including regulations,
the other providers, PTTs, and suppliers.
EUnet operates its own infrastructure both intra-EUnet and to other key
service providers and interconnection points.
Finally, EUnet manages internetworking relationships with the other
players in the Internet and in the network services marketplace through
a variety of bi-lateral and group agreements.
Availability
EUnet services are available to any organizations or entities within
the EUnet operating region.
We view any restrictions on use and users besides those regarding "good
network citizenship" (for example, correct technical operation of equipment)
or within the scope of local law, to have done real harm to the
development of the Internet. Any constraint which reduces the
potential customer base of the internet holds back the involvement
of communities which could greatly benefit from networking, as well
as to keep providers more dependent upon non-market sources of income.
Funding, economics and cost recovery
Each EUnet layer must pay for itself (national and international), each
service must pay for itself, and each subscribing user (or user
organization) must pay for the services they use. At first blush, this
may appear so obvious as to not require stating, but in the European
Internet it is not entirely common.
EUnet has generally avoided the European networking obsession with
scale-before-demand and government funding. Most government-sponsored
networks seek the holy grail of high-bandwidth "pipes" (from 1990 to 1992
this mythically-important bandwidth was 2 Mbits/sec, it has recently
been 34 Mbits/sec) and for the government funding required to support
it.
The EUnet view has instead been to build infrastructure
by accretion: to find ever-increasing numbers of subscribers, each of
which will pay for the infrastructure that they actually use.
Factors such as EUnet's progress along the learning curve, the
slowly-declining costs of telecom bandwidth in Europe, and the
economies of scale inherent in networking, allow EUnet to increase
bandwidth capabilities ahead of the aggregate requirements of our
subscriber base.
With our transition to commercial status, this process has been
significantly accelerated due to our greater ability to obtain
and use capital.
EUnet has generally not pursued significant grant-hunting in the past:
major grants can be a dangerous diversion from the business of
networking and, if awarded, can have dangerous side effects; they
tend to make providers lose track of the critical linkage
between internal costs and the prices actually charged subscribers,
and tempt the provider to drift away from a lean internal cost
structure. This is reinforced by the typical experience of
grant recipients turning into report generators.
Internally, EUnet has a cost replacement structure which provides
modest temporary discounts to starting EUnets. This follows from our
agenda to extend the internet to new regions and is distinct from the
regressive charging model of the Ebone and many other networking
organizations.
Development of the periphery
Besides our core networks, EUnet is currently bringing on board new
service teams in Algeria, Poland, Egypt, and Romania. These groups are
beginning with dial-up connections and are expected to advance to
leased-line connectivity in the near future. When bringing on board
new nets such as these, EUnet frequently loans equipment in order to
increase the pace of connectivity and service development. We are
also happy to advance networking by other means: EUnet today donates
free trans-Atlantic E-mail transit to FIDOnet.
What catches mice?
The European networking community of the 1980s (and perhaps
even today) has been dominated by the industrial policy notions
embodied in the push for the ISO OSI networking model. EUnet has
fortunately never suffered from this variety of religion. We like to
take a position similar to that taken by Chinese Premier Deng Xiao Peng,
who revolutionized that economy under the slogan (we paraphrase):
"Who cares if the packets are black (OSI?) or white (IP?), as long as
they deliver data?".
We select technology as a function of subscriber demand, usability,
economy, and interoperability. Our choice of IP technology was
not so much rare wisdom as it was a consequence of the discipline
imposed by our self-funding approach.
A view of the future of networking economics
Now that the Internet has grown to be of significant size, it has
attracted the attention of professional economists, a few of whom
argue that theory shows that the Internet cannot possibly be a market.
This is a terribly sad conclusion, again reinforcing Economics'
reputation as the dismal science. If the Internet cannot be a
market, a wonderful opportunity for wide-open competition and the innovation,
quality, availability, economy, and transforming power that it promises
will be lost.
There is of course no way to predict how this will finally play out, but
the Roman Rule comes to mind: "One who argues that something cannot
be done should take care to stay out of the way of the one who is doing it."
In the long run, the choice for the Internet is simple: the same
high-cost, bad-service model enjoyed by monopoly service subscribers, or
the chance for a reshaping of economic life around a fundamentally new
relationships between distance, observation, and action.
Closing
EUnet demonstrates that an effectively large organization may be
constructed by like-minded technologists and business people
without the supposedly requisite "big science" approach of government.
Modern size- and price-reduced computer and communications equipment which
have so dramatically popularized computing, have created new freedoms in
exceptionally wide area networking. EUnet and other similarly structured
commercial networks are an important vehicle for uncovering the full
potential of modern networking technology and the promise it holds for
improving relations between people, and to their work.
-----
Glenn Kowack is Chief Executive of EUnet Limited, and has been with
EUnet since early 1991. He holds degrees in Mathematics and Psychology
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
During the 1980s he was a Senior Director at Gould Electronics'
Computer Systems Division, where he directed UNIX operating system
and related software development. He has also been a producer and
presenter of radio programs and was the Chairman of Prairie Air,
Inc., which operates FM station WEFT.
He can be reached as: glenn@EU.net.
http://www.EU.net/pr/Connexions.Nov93.html (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)