Minutes of the 5th TERENA General Assembly

16 May 1996 14:00 - 17:30 Hungarian Academy of Sciences

17 May 1996 09:00 - 12:30 Hotel Atrium Hyatt, Budapest, Hungary

1. Welcome and Apologies

The list of participants is available. The following apologies had been received: Austria, Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, ECMWF, EUnet, EC.

The number of votes represented of the 134 possible was 86 during most of the meeting on 16 May and 79 on 17 May.

2. Approval of Agenda

The order of the proposed agenda was changed; the following agenda was approved:

3.Approval appointment Secretary General (Statutes art.12.3): TERENA staffing report
4.Minutes and Action List of Previous Meeting: a)Minutes of the 4th TERENA General Assembly meeting, October 1995, Rome; b) GA Action list update
5. Membership matters
6. EARN 1995 liquidation report, audited.
7. TERENA Finances: a) TERENA 1995 audit report (required by Statutes Article 14.3)
: Report of TERENA GA overseer of the audit process
: b) Procedure for collecting membership fees - GA(96)002
: c) Appointment TERENA auditor for TERENA accounts 1996 and 1997
8. TERENA Technical Programme: a) Completed Technical Projects
: b) Current Technical Projects
: c) Planned Technical Projects
: d) TERENA Task Forces
: e) Report from TTC/WG meetings Budapest
9. TERENA Services: a) RIPE NCC
: b) GUM-NCC
: Proposal for winding down the GUM NCC service, GA(96)009.
10. TERENA Conferences and Workshops: a) Results JENC6
: b) First impressions JENC7
: c) Training workshops
: d) NSC 1996
: e) JENC8 Edinburgh
11. TERENA Executive Committee: a) Review of the Executive Committee
: b) Election VP Conferences
: c) Election Treasurer
12. TERENA Annual report 1995, including the Secretariat report (required by Statutes Article 14.3)
13. Executive and Secretariat matters: Secretariat report
14. TERENA in 1997: Forecast Budget and activities 1997
15. TERENA liaisons: a) CCIRN
: b) ISOC
: c) EU
16. Next Meetings: GA 6 Bled; 24/25 October 1996
: GA 7 Edinburgh; 15/16 May 1997
17. Any Other Business

3. Approval appointment Secretary General

: As stated in the TERENA Statutes art. 12.3, the appointment of the TERENA Secretary General requires the approval of the General Assembly.

The Executive Committee, as announced earlier, found a very suitable candidate for the TERENA Secretary General position, in the person of Dr. Karel Vietsch and has appointed Karel as interim Secretary General from 1 March 1996 onwards, after a discussion of this procedure on the GA mailing list.

D05-01 The General Assembly unanimously approved, by acclamation, the appointment of Dr. Karel Vietsch as TERENA Secretary General.

TERENA staffing report
Since the listing of the staff in the meeting documents two more
members of staff were hired:

The long sought STO was found in the person of John Dyer, who will start work for TERENA within a few weeks. He will be based partly in Amsterdam, partly in the UK. The General Assembly welcomed the appointment by acclamation. The TERENA technical team will be at full strength from then on.

Since May 1, Fay Howard has joined the Secretariat, as interim
Executive Officer. The other new member of staff is Tanja
Christensen, from Denmark, whose contract will start mid July. She
will be the general office assistant for one year.

This leaves the TERENA Secretariat with one vacancy to fill: the Secretary General position, which will be vacant on 1 March 1997. The General Assembly is called upon to assist identifying suitable candidates for this position.

The RIPE NCC has three vacancies, two of which are expected to be filled in the very near future: the Junior Hostmaster and the Network Engineer. It has proven difficult to find a good candidate for the position of Manager Systems and Software, who will be in charge of the network engineers. The General Assembly is asked to assist locating candidates.

A05-01 GA members to help identifying candidates for the TERENA Secretary General function

A05-02 GA members to help identifying candidates for the Manager Systems and Software position at the RIPE NCC.

4. Minutes and Action List of Previous Meeting

: 4a) Minutes of the 4th TERENA General Assembly meeting, 19/20 October 1995, Rome

D05-02 The General Assembly approved the final draft minutes of the 4th TERENA General Assembly meeting, 19/20 October 1995, Rome GA(95)040, without change.

4b) GA Action list update

The General Assembly noted the update of the GA action list,
GA(96)043.

5. Membership matters

: * Russian Federation
The Executive Committee has written to B. Saltykov, the Minister of Science and Technical Policy of Russia, as agreed in the Rome GA meeting, on which no answer was received as yet.
* Greece
The Secretary General for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development has formally announced that GR-NET takes over the Greek representation in TERENA from ARIADnet. The previous Greek TERENA member ARIADNet, in the person of its representative Alexis Arvillias, agrees with this change. The new representative in TERENA on behalf of GR-NET is Professor Lazaros Merakos and his deputy is Mrs. Xanthi Psiakki.
The General Assembly accepted the change in Greek representation in TERENA.
* Romania

The first representative from Romania, Mr. Adrian Toia, has resigned as representative in TERENA, having changed jobs. No new first representative had been appointed at the time of the meeting.

* Resignations
The General Assembly noted that CREN, HEPnet and ESONE had resigned from TERENA membership.

* Potential new TERENA members
The Executive Committee has contacts with several potential members of TERENA, in particular in the Mediterranean area. Lebanon has been in touch with the secretariat, and also an Association of Arab networks has shown interested in joining.

6. EARN 1995 liquidation report

: The EARN liquidation report is attached for information. The financial results of the EARN liquidation have been accounted for in the TERENA 1995 accounts. During the liquidation process it was decided to write off the debtors with a debt less than 10 k ECU.

The General Assembly noted the liquidation report.

7. TERENA Finances

: 7a) TERENA 1995 audit report (required by Statutes Article 14.3)

Due to a lay-out error pages 20 and 21 were difficult to understand and revised pages were distributed to the meeting.

The overall expenditure in 1995 has remained within budget. The deficit incurred can be attributed to the unbudgeted writing off of old EARN and RARE debts. The debts of Turkey to RARE were written off as the original applicant had not handled all paperwork correctly, and the Executive Committee has realized that there is no chance of collecting these debts. TUVAKA has paid its membership fees to TERENA.

Part of the old French debt to EARN was written of on the basis of the fact that the number of nodes originally invoiced for had been overestimated.

Two old EARN debts remain in the books: the debt from Germany, about which DFN and TERENA are in correspondence, and the debt from Russia, as Russia had requested TERENA to provide a new invoice for this amount.

The TERENA GA overseer of the audit process, Mr. Antoine Barthel, of Luxembourg, stated he attended a meeting with the auditor, the TERENA treasurer and staff members, where the draft audit report was scrutinized. Some suggestions were made to make the report more readable. The management report was updated according to suggestions made. Therefore he recommended the General Assembly to accept the 1995 TERENA Accounts as it stands.

D05-03 The General Assembly accepted the TERENA 1995 accounts.

7b) Procedure for collecting membership fees - GA(96)002

The Executive had drafted a formal procedure for collecting the TERENA Membership fees.

D05-04 The General Assembly acceptd the procedure with one change, that the membership fees need to be paid within the first 4 months of the year invoiced.

D05-05 The General Assembly accepted that the procedure will be used starting with the 1997 membership fee invoicing procedure.

The General Assembly cautioned, however, that in the case of significant changes of the membership fees, these need to be made known during the May meeting of the General Assembly, rather than in the Autumn meeting.

The final and approved version of the payment procedure document is annexed to these minutes.

7c) Appointment TERENA auditor for TERENA accounts 1996 and 1997

The Executive had found the firm of Horlings, Brouwer & Horlings, a large Amsterdam based auditing and accountancy firm, which also provides fiscal advice, prepared to take over the auditing of the TERENA accounts. The firm also operates internationally. Horlings, Brouwer & Horlings has offered to perform the audit for a slightly lower fee than the current auditor.

D05-06 The General Assembly appointed Horlings, Brouwer & Horlings as auditor for the TERENA accounts 1996 and 1997.

8. TERENA Technical Programme

: The TERENA Technical Programme achieved much during the past year. But funding is needed from the TERENA members and other organizations to execute the projects.

Most Working Groups met prior to the JENC7, in Budapest. One WG, NOI, has no convener, and was closed down by the TTC. Its function to assist in the termination of NJE traffic continued as a Task Force, led by Ulrich Giese, under the WG-QMN umbrella.

The WGs have become much more active recently and with the new STO in place, another boost in activities may be expected. All TERENA members are encouraged to have their staff participating in the WGs, thereby creating a network of technical experts.

8a) Completed Technical Projects * PGP CD ROM

The TERENA CD-ROM, containing software and documentation to promote and encourage the use of secure communication by electronic mail is available since early April. The project was supported by UKERNA and SURFnet. The CD-ROM contains software and tools based on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) which can provide privacy, authentication and integrity for messages sent by electronic mail as well as other applications. Help files in 12 languages are also present. The CD ROM is distributed at three conferences, including the JENC7, and the remainder will be sold from 20 May onwards.

Having gained experience with the production of one CD-ROM will make production of other CD-ROMs much simpler.

8b) Current Technical Projects * SCIMITAR SCIMITAR is an EU funded project. It is a concertation project, to help synergy between the projects executed under the Telematics for Research programme. TERENA is main contractor and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles is co-contractor. ULB will provide technology watch activities and TERENA will provide concertation and dissemination activities. All deliverables of projects under the Telematics for Research Programme will need to be peer- reviewed, and the experts assembled in the TERENA Wgs may offer their service for this. SCIMITAR is a 30 months project, at 700 k ECU.

* DEVICE The "DEsktop VIdeo ConfErencing" project will produce a comprehensive survey on desktop video conferencing products and interoperability testing on these products. The 12 month project is executed by 20 volunteers of 15 different organizations under leadership of John Kwan. The project has completed the first few milestones and the interoperability testing phase has now started. Funding is kindly provided by UKERNA, SURFnet and DFN, but more funding is needed.

A05 03 TERENA members are encouraged to commit additional funding to the DEVICE project

* CERT Coordination Centre A proposal for the setting up of a European CERT Coordination Centre was recently issued, with disappointing results. The Centre is foreseen to coordinate the various national CERTs, in order to minimize duplication of effort. The Centre's main activity would be Event Handling, analysis and coordination.

The Executive has consulted with the CERT Task Force and WG-SEC and has come up with an implementation plan for the Centre: First a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) will be set up, consisting basically of those TF members or whose organizations are not interested in providing the foreseen pilot. The TAG wil kick off a 2-year pilot, which is planned to start 4 months after the establishment of the TAG. During these first 4 months CERTs will be asked to assist the pilot and commit funding for it. At the start, one FTE will be dedicated to the pilot, whilst more human resource will be added in time. After 2 years a permanent EuroCERT will be set up, as result of a call for proposals to be issued after 18 months of the pilot start. The first phase of the project will remain within TERENA membership, but widening its base in time.

Education and assistance activities, needed by smaller or less advanced organizations setting up a CERT activity, may be done separately and EU funding might be available for this activity.

* TWICE The TERENA Wide Interworking Certification Authority Infrastructure for Europe will add a roll out of the ICE-TEL project, which aims at creating a European Certification infrastructure, as well as secure communications mechanisms between CERTs. The first ICE-TEL deliverables are expected in one month, after which TWICE will start the expanding over Europe, bringing in the national networks.

* PANTOMIME is a project Proposal for an Advanced Multimedia Electronic Mail Service in Europe

Its objectives are:
- the establishment of a fully operational multimedia messaging service for the Academic and Research community in Europe, based on the existing text-based messaging infrastructure, that enables end users to communicate from their desk top (various different platforms) with one or more people in different locations.

- the creation of an expertise centre for multimedia messaging and the preparation of a set of the relevant documentation in order to enable an easy start-up for organizations currently unable to set up the service themselves.

Most of the costs consist of human resource, which is already committed. TERENA members from Sweden, Norway, UK and the Netherlands have committed to the project, but a bigger response to the invitation to commit funding to the project is needed.

A05-04 The GA is encouraged to fund the PANTOMIME training activities, to help using multimedia mail agents.

8c) Planned Technical Projects

One Technical Project is planned to start shortly: * an Upgrade of the Guide to Network Resource tools

The Guide to Network Resource tools (GNRT) contains short descriptions of major Internet tools, with information on how to access them, what hardware platforms they can be used from, where to obtain software, and examples of how to use them. Tens of thousands of copies of the A5 printed booklet have been distributed, and in its electronic form it is the most heavily accessed document on the TERENA server.

The latest edition of the GNRT was released in 1994 and it now requires updating and in addition, a new high-level introduction will be added to the GNRT for the benefit of the many new and inexperienced users coming onto the Internet every day. The initial phase, assessing new methods of searching the Web will be funded internally by TERENA and the result will be a Web document.

The second phase might result in a printed version and a proposal for funding will be prepared to be submitted to the GA meeting.

One Technical Project is in the design phase: * a traffic analysis of specifically the Trans-Atlantic links.Many TERENA member already collect this information, and the project will make an inventory of what is being collected and provide correlations if possible. Guidelines on what and how to collect this information might also be a result of this project.

Other possible projects:

* an update of RTR1 - A status report on User Support and Information Services in Europe.

* Survey of Document Formats and Viewers

* Cache Servers

* Network Training Pilots using the network

* a Hierarchy of Index Servers

8d) TERENA Task Forces

* TF-TEN is organized under the umbrella of the TERENA working group on Lower Layers Technology (WG-LLT) and can be considered the successor of the TERENA ATM Task Force. Its goals are to organize and carry out testing of advanced ATM technology over the JAMES ATM network in the framework of the TEN-34 Project. The TF had its second meeting on 3 May to decide on the experiments to carry out. The TF is led by Michael Behringer of DANTE.

8e) Report from TTC/WG meetings

The TTC met on 11 May, after previous meetings in January and April. The following TERENA Working Groups met during Budapest: WG SEC (21 attendees), ISUS (20+), NMA (15), I18N (small attendance), QMN (idem), LLT (~20).

The TERENA Technical Programme is now up and running. However, support is needed, from industry, which should be made aware of the relevance of research networking, but above all from the TERENA members. Support from the GA is required to make the overall programme a success. Participation from industry should be sought more actively, and the Secretariat was asked to distribute the TERENA Annual Report to relevant industries and ask for support for the Technical programme. The Secretariat was also asked to investigate putting relevant slides on the TERENA Web Server.

A05-05 The GA members are encouraged to actively support the technical programme, by providing support in resources, both monetary and human.
A05-06 The GA is encouraged to help expand WG membership, with more GA members' staff and users participating, as well as experts from industry.
A05-07 The Secretariat to distribute the TERENA Annual Report '95 to relevant industries and ask for support for the Technical programme.
A05-08 The Secretariat to investigate putting TERENA slides on the TERENA Web Server. Part 2/2

9. TERENA Services

: 9a) RIPE NCC

The load on the RIPE NCC continues to rise - and so on the Secretariat, dealing with the financial administration and personnel affairs for the RIPE NCC. Necessitated by the increase in staff, a hierarchical structure has been implemented in the RIPE NCC. Significant activities during the quarter were the beta release of an improved RIPE database software package, implementation and initial deployment of the new request tracking system for part of the manually handled messages, continuing work on the a new WWW site as well as analysis and reduction of redundant routing information originated by European autonomous systems.

The financial situation is very healthy with 60% of this year's planned expenditure already received in revenue. The reserves, as planned to diminish TERENA's risks, are at a level of a half year of commitments (rent, staff contracts).

9b) GUM-NCC

The Executive drafted a proposal for winding down the GUM NCC service, GA(96)009. Its main points are that the GUM NCC service will be wound down gradually and in an orderly manner, that no part of the service will continue after 31 December 1997, but that in the period until then the GUM NCC office at UCI in Nijmegen will be available to provide advice and assistance on converting to other transmission protocols. There will be no traffic reporting in 1997. The reserves are sufficient for maintaining the service in 1997, and assisting the users to migrate to other systems. Currently about 28 countries are still using NJE. Institutions are urged to start preparations for converting to other transmission protocols immediately.

D05-07 The General Assembly approved the proposal for winding down of the GUM NCC and decided that TERENA will no longer provide NJE service per 1 January 1998.

10. TERENA Conferences and Workshops

: 10a) Results JENC6

The final result of the JENC6 is not exactly known yet.

10b) First impressions JENC7

JENC7 seems to have been successful, with a good number of participants. The book of abstracts and the proceedings were well received. The tutorial preceding the conference was reasonably well attended. Plenary sessions were broadcasted over Mbone, via the Budapest-Berlin link sponsored by Deutsche Telekom. Other sponsors were: MATAV (another 2 Mbps link), DEC, CISCO, Siemens, NIIF.

10c) Training workshops

TERENA organized - with the indispensable funding of NATO, EU/PHARE programme, CISCO, Bay Networks, SUN Microsystems, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and possibly the EU's INCO Programme - a training Workshop "Providing and Managing a National Network Service", which took place during the week before JENC7, in Budapest.

The training programme was designed to provide hands-on training and provided both theoretical and practical know-how. 34 participants from 16 countries were selected out of over 50 applications. The 6 lecturers came from 5 different countries. The workshop was judged to be very successful.

The General Assembly wholeheartedly supports the organization of Training workshops. The GA accepts that when another organization funds the activity, some rules may have to be applied regarding the target group of the workshop. The GA would like to see the activity expanded to include also other nationalities as target group.

10d) NSC 1996

As announced earlier, the Executive, concerned about the time frame, the foreseen number of participants and the overall cost of the conference had, though with regret, to decide to cancel the conference.

10e) JENC8 Edinburgh

The JENC8 preparations have already started. The title for the Conference is "Diversity and Integration: The New European Networking Landscape".

The organization of the conference will be slightly different, in addition to the Conference Committee (led by Dave Probert of Digital), the Programme Committee, the Organization Committee (led by Brian Gilmore on behalf of UKERNA), there will also be an Advisory Committee, consisting of well-known networking people from industry. This committee is expected to assist in increasing participation from industry and commerce. The Programme Chair, Hannes Lubich, has established the Programme Committee, and the Call for Papers is planned to be distributed before the INET conference at the end of June. The programme will allow for more interactivity, and more visible participation of the TERENA Working Groups.

The conference announcement was distributed during JENC7.

11. TERENA Executive Committee

: 11a) Review of the Executive Committee

Executive Committee circulated a mid-term review of its activities and initiatives during its first year in office.

Basically the achievements are visible from the Annual Report, and include a stabilization of the Secretariat, expansion of TERENA's Internet registry service, the RIPE NCC, continuation (for a short term) of the GUM NCC, revitalization of the Technical Programme and Working Groups, continuation of the JENCs, organization of workshops for technology transfer and continued liaison activities and a strengthened relationship with the EU. In this context, stronger cooperation with DANTE will also be pursued. The building of better relations with industry is another topic for the Executive, which has already started in the context of the JENC.

D05-08 The General Assembly accepted unanimously the mid term review of the Executive and expressed its contentment with the progress made.

11b) Election VP Conferences As was announced during the Tel Aviv General Assembly meeting, Bernie Plattner, resigned from his function of TERENA Vice President for Conferences, during the Executive Committee meeting of 30 January, in order to start his sabbatical.

CNUCE (Italy) and SURFnet (the Netherlands) nominated Wulf Bauerfeld (DeTeBerkom), who has accepted this nomination. As announced previously, Wulf was meanwhile co-opted into the Executive Committee to handle the tasks of VP Conferences, until the election for the position during the May General Assembly.

D05-09 The General Assembly unanimously appointed, by acclamation, Wulf Bauerfeld as TERENA Vice President Conferences.

11c) Election Treasurer

The TERENA Treasurer, Marco Sommani, resigned from his function after the acceptance by the GA of the TERENA 1995 audited accounts.

Two nominations were received during the GA meeting: UKERNA (UK) and ILAN (Israel) nominated Agathoclis Stylianou of CYnet, Cyprus, who accepted the nomination, and ARNES (Slovenia), SURFnet (Netherlands), SANET (Slovakia) and DFN (Germany) nominated Lajos Balint of HUNGARNET, Hungary, who accepted the nomination.

With the nomination of two candidates, a secret ballot was taken. Brian Gilmore and Kalman Pusztai (observer in the meeting) volunteered to count the votes. Agathoclis Stylianou received 32 votes and Lajos Balint 45 (of the 77 votes represented at the time of election).

D05-10 The General Assembly appointed Lajos Balint as TERENA Treasurer.

12. TERENA Annual report 1995, including the Secretariat report (required by Statutes Article 14.3)

: The TERENA Annual report of the Executive Committee was enclosed in the mailing. The report includes a report on the Secretariat. It was suggested that when other organizations are mentioned in the report, the text is submitted for information to the organizations involved.

D05-11 The GA accepted the TERENA Annual report.

13. Executive and Secretariat matters Secretariat report

: The activities of the Secretariat during 1995 are covered extensively in the Annual report. Since the end of 1995, the Secretariat had been working on several issues that can be found in detail in the documents for the GA meeting. Some of these (in random order):

the growing number of Technical projects and project proposals;
the compilation and editing of the Annual report;
the auditing of the 1995 accounts;
the hand-over from Secretary General to Secretary General;
the organization and preparation of the pre-JENC workshop;
the organization of the JENC7 and establishing of the programme;
the start-up of the SCIMITAR project;
the recruitment of several Secretariat and RIPE NCC staff members;
the start-up of the organization of the JENC8;
the revamping of the TERENA information services .

14. TERENA in 1997 Forecast Budget and activities 1997

: The Executive will submit the final draft budget 1997, accompanied by a proposal for the 1997 membership fees, for approval to the General Assembly in the October meeting. The TERENA reserves are sufficient to cover its liabilities.

The Executive foresees an activity plan for 1997 which will cover more activities, but does not require an increase in the membership fees. The planned membership fee unit would therefore again be 4000 ECU. The membership income for TERENA will be somewhat higher than in 1996, as the phase-in on the membership fee related to the merger is completed. An income of about 800 - 900 k ECU from the membership fees is considered necessary for the stability of the organization.

This sound financial basis together with the adequate filling of the various technical and administrative positions in the TERENA Secretariat that has now been achieved, will enable an effective implementation of a more complete programme of activities, amongst other things a higher level of efficiency in the secretariat, a boost in the technical area (thanks to the new STO), an affirmation of the identity of TERENA, also via the newly updated WEB server, which was installed on 16 May. Further a more obvious function as spokesman for the research networking community in Europe, in contacts with government, the EU, industry, etc. In addition a more effective interfacing with industry is on the agenda. The issue of organizing a TERENA conference in Autumn 1998, the usual time of NSC's, will be discussed in the Bled GA meeting, in particular if the name of NSC is still appropriate, or should be changed. TERENA, having agreed to incorporate the JENC in the INET conference in Europe in 1998, expects to be actively involved in the INET '98 organization and programme design.

Another important activity for TERENA is to bring the voice of its members to policy discussions, by outlining the developments in research and education networking and the needs of the research and education networking community to policy makers. It would fit the umbrella function of TERENA to take policy positions for the community, and enhance cohesion within the community. To this end the Executive will set up a small strategy group to assist the Executive in drafting policy statements.

A05-09 The Executive will set up a small strategy group, to assist the Executive with the drafting of policy statements A05-10 The GA is encouraged to submit new and additional ideas for TERENA to incorporate in the TERENA activity plan for 1997.

15. TERENA liaisons

: 15a) CCIRN

The focus of the CCIRN (Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking) meetings is intercontinental information exchange on research and education networking.

The next CCIRN meeting is hosted by the North American colleagues and will take place in Montreal on 29 June. (Saturday after INET'96) The focus of the meeting will be on the FNC activities in relation to research networking. The CCIRN used to deal with operational issues, but these are dealt with by the operators these days. However, there is still the issue of balanced funding of TransAtlantic lines, which needs to be kept on the agenda. A trend can be spotted in the US to set up dedicated networks for research. Should this trend continue and solidify there might be a more relevant role for the CCIRN in the near future.

The delegation from Europe to the Montreal meeting includes: Stefano Trumpy, Karel Vietsch, Brian Gilmore, Kees Neggers, Frode Greisen and possibly Dennis Jennings.

15b) ISOC

ISOC has requested the three Charter Members (TERENA, Educom and CNRI) to relinquish their Charter members' rights as stated in the Bylaws of ISOC, which Educom and TERENA have subsequently done. Negotiations with CNRI are still ongoing. Educom has meanwhile withdrawn its privileges effective now, not effective by the end of the upcoming Board meeting as previously announced, to establish that they are no longer part of this discussion. TERENA is asked to do the same. This would imply that TERENA no longer has a Trustee in the BoT of ISOC. The TERENA Executive Committee will relinquish the rights effective immediately too.

ISOC has changed the management structure with a newly appointed President and CEO of the Internet Society, Donald M. Heath, while Larry Landweber will remain Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

During the last elections for BoT members, no European was elected. ISOC is considering changing the voting structure to achieve better geographical distribution also within the BoT. Europe might consider to use some elections tactics as well.

15c) European Union/G7

Stefano Trumpy and Karel Vietsch visited the EC in April to improve relations between the EC and TERENA further. With TEN34 almost starting, the EC plans to ask TERENA to investigate which TERENA members are ready for 155 Mbps.

The Vth Framework initial policy papers will be ready in June, with the first official documents planned to be released in October. Terena is asked to provide input for the October papers, making a case for research networking in the Vth FW programme. This should be distributed not only to the EC but also to other relevant officials and industry.

The current MEDA programme, a collaboration effort of 4.6 B ECU, aims mostly at economic stabilization efforts in the Mediterranean area. However, it might be possible to include research networking activities in the Vth FW programme. A recent conference at Sophia focused focused on research in the Mediterranean area and established some workshops in relation to Information Society proposals, aiming at the provision of technology transfer to these countries. There might be a role for TERENA here.

The Executive thinks that further developments in Central and Eastern Europe might be a fruitful area for further cooperation between DANTE and TERENA. Recently added countries that qualify for assistance in the PHARE programme are Croatia and FyROM.

The EC is coordinator for the non-G7 EU member states for the G7 projects on information technology that were launched in February 1995. Within the GIBN project two infrastructure pilots have started: * a global inventory on multimedia activities; * testing of high bandwidth multimedia services . Cooperation between research networks and the G7 projects might be useful and Stefano Trumpy will assist identifying interesting possibilities as they arise.

A05-11 The Executive will draft, with the assistance of the strategy group, a position paper on the inclusion of research networking as an item in the Vth Frame Work Programme of the EU.

16. Next Meetings

GA 6 Bled - 24/25 October 1996

GA 7 Edinburgh - 15/16 May 1997

The TERENA General Assembly has grown so large that there is a risk of losing the quorum when several members cannot attend the meeting.

A05-12 The Executive will assess if it is possible to have only one GA meeting per year, and also if attendance can be made more attractive by organizing interesting seminars back to back with the meetings.

17. Any Other Business

: No other business.

Annexes:

Annex I: List of Participants
Annex II: List of Decisions and Actions resulting from the 5th TERENA General Assembly meeting
Annex III: Final and approved procedure for collection of TERENA membership fees.