The survey for the 2010 TERENA Compendium of NRENs in Europe is now ready: national research and education networking organisations are kindly requested to provide their information by 30 September.
The Compendium is at http://www.terena.org/activities/compendium. This also includes information on how to complete the survey.
TACAR (TERENA Academic CA Repository) has been a trusted store of verified Certification Authority (CA) root certificates since its launch in 2003. Now TACAR has been upgraded, allowing much faster access to the root certificates and other documents it contains.
TACAR solves a major problem in the use of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI): the ability to cost-effectively obtain CA root certificates needed by browsers in situations where the root certificates are not pre-installed in the browsers, applications and operating systems. TACAR verifies, stores and distributes root certificates that are managed by institutions and/or organisations that support non-profit research projects in the academic community, such as research and education networking organisations, universities, and research centres.
Dedicated funding from organisations participating in REFEDs (Research and Education FEDerations) will allow more assertive pursuit and completion of deliverables than ever before. Ultimately, it is envisioned that REFEDs will become a stronger voice for e-identity federations in the Research & Education community.
Previously, as one of the activities of the TERENA Task Force on European Middleware Coordination and Collaboration, REFEDs was restricted by limited funding and manpower within the TERENA Secretariat. The new, additional funding means that REFEDs can progress work items more reliably, collaboratively and structurally and raise its visibility to related, external communities.
With the growing number and broadening deployment of identity federations in Europe and beyond, REFEDs has become a truly global forum since its establishment in 2005, with regular participation from five continents. REFEDs addresses mostly policy-related topics about federation e-identity, but also includes technical and outreach topics about privacy, assurance, relationships with partner communities and support for emerging federations. Collaboration is critical to facilitating inter-federation work.
The European Grid Initiative (EGI) Technical Forum 2010 will set the stage for the 9th TERENA NRENs and Grids workshop, on 15 September 2010 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The workshop will take place on the second day of the Technical Forum (14-17 September) and will focus on the progress made in Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Grid federations, policy issues and Virtual Organisations (VOs) for authentication and authorisation infrastructures (AAI).
The EGI Technical Forum will bring together distributed computing projects and their collaborators in academia and business, from around Europe and around the world. This presents the national research and education networking (NREN) community an ideal opportunity to highlight its federation activities to the Grid community, and to encourage collaboration and cooperation in user and group management systems.
Advanced research and education networks and the newest multimedia technologies offer exciting possibilities to people who produce performing arts events and are involved in artistic higher education. Those involved in this area are invited to join an upcoming workshop on using advanced research and education networks to enable interactive performing arts education, multi-site performance events and high quality netcasting.
Hosted by IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique) in Paris, France on 22-24 November 2010, the core goal of the European workshop is to create a wider community that can benefit from exchanging experiences in this pioneering field, and to start building tighter collaboration in Europe.
Members of the TERENA community took the opportunity at the recent EUNIS 2010 event to highlight TERENA's middleware-related activities: TF-EMC2, TF-Mobility and Network Middleware and EuroCAMP. EUNIS 2010 was the 16th in a series of conferences within the framework of the European University Information Systems organisation (EUNIS), and took place at the University of Warsaw on 23-25 June 2010.
EUNIS Congresses are international events that attract a large audience from Higher Education Institutions (HEI), who share their experiences regarding Information Technology in HEIs. Since the goals of the attendees are similar to those of TERENA’s middleware-related groups, David Simonsen (WAYF), Victoriano Giralt (University of Málaga) and Brook Schofield (TERENA Secretariat) encouraged the campus and university community to get involved in TERENA’s middleware activities.
Five prominent members of the computer and network security community in Europe will present a two-day TRANSITS training course for staff members of new or established Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) on 7-8 September 2010 in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Co-organised by TERENA and ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency) and hosted by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the course will focus on the operational, organisational and legal aspects of incident response. It is designed for professionals who are current or future members of existing computer security teams, or who will be involved in building such a team within their own organisation.
A 'liason statement' was recently agreed between the Opencast community and the TERENA Task Force on Media, TF-Media. Discussions about federated identities, tools, formats, licences and metadata in media management systems are taking place in different communities. However, the goals of these groups are often similar - to improve existing media platforms and solutions. TF-Media, is reaching out to some of these communities to foster the exchange of knowledge and experience, to enable synergies where possible and to avoid duplication of work.
The liason statement is an example of how TF-Media intends to formalise its intention to build mutually beneficial relationships. While both the Opencast and TF-Media communities have similar objectives, their composition is different. TF-Media is European-focused and is driven by participants from National Research and Education Networking (NREN) organisations, yet is open to universities. The worldwide Opencast community, while being open to individuals and commercial shareholders, is driven mainly by universities and academic institutions. The groups have different foci and technical approaches, as well as diverse business issues and provider models.
In its 33rd meeting, held in Vilnius, Lithuania on 3-4 June 2010, the TERENA General Assembly discussed European Union initiatives in Future Internet research, admitted two new member organisations and elected members of the TERENA Executive Committee.
According to the European Commission (EC), the large-scale integration of multiple technologies – such as distributed computing platforms, Web 2.0, peer-to-peer services, diverse broadband access networks, mobile devices and sensors – calls for a rethink of the Internet architecture, which was conceived more than thirty years ago. In 2009 and 2010 the EC made a number of important announcements regarding this ‘Future Internet’ research. In his presentation to the General Assembly, Jean-Luc Dorel of the EC explained the Public-Private Partnership initiative for Future Internet research, which will be financially supported by 300 million euro from the budget of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme.
Participants at this year’s TERENA Networking Conference really ‘lived the network life’, in keeping with the event’s theme. Social networking was discussed in many presentations and, for the first time at TNC, TERENA provided participants with a webspace where they commented via blogs and tweets, clocking up around 800 tweets and more than 30 blog entries and attracting around 600 visitors per day to the TNC2010 ‘Coverage’ web page: http://tnc2010.terena.org/coverage/.
Tweeters agreed that TNC 2010 had been “fun-filled and productive” (rhys_s), “an excellent conference” with everyone “very inclusive and open to a newcomer”(tuttoo), with “good sessions and great networking” (chriscb). (garethesn): “Roll on #tnc2011 :)”