The news service by and for the Research and Education Networking Community in Europe
The Irish Government is targeting delivery of 100 Mbit/s broadband to all Irish post-primary schools by the end of 2012. HEAnet is supporting the Irish Government in this endeavor by acting as network managers of the new high-speed schools network.
HEAnet is pleased to announce that the initial phase of this programme is complete with the first 78 post-primary schools (of a total of approx. 730 post-primary schools) connecting to the HEAnet backbone at 100 Mbit/s.
The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. Computer artists of all ages from Estonia are asked to draw pictures about biological diversity. Deadline to submit the drawings is November 15, 2010.
Computer mouse or graphics pad should be used instead of a brush. Artists are invited to draw bacteria, animal and plant species; evolution, climate change, loss and safeguard of the variety of life.
The authors of the best pictures will get prizes and thematic special awards.
Detailed information in Estonian and exhibition of all pictures: http://joonistaja.eenet.ee/
International Year of Biodiversity: http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/
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.
Within the framework of a project to create an ultra-stable fiber link between LNE-SYRTE (National Laboratory of Metrology and Testing, France) and LPL (Laser Physics Laboratory - affiliated with both the National Center for Scientific Research and University Paris 13), ultra-stable clock signals and digital data were transferred simultaneously for testing purposes on RENATER's production network.
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.
In response to numerous requests, the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) will hold its first workshop in Europe on Monday, October 11, 2010 at the University of London, Macmillan Hall, London.
The IIW is a working group of the Identity Commons and has been convened in California bi-annually since 2005. The 10th IIW was held this past May and had the largest attendance thus far. The emerging interfederation in Europe creates a good opportunity to hold this event in Europe, themed "Identity Across Borders and Sectors".
Early Bird registration is now open at http://iiweurope.eventbrite.com/.
SURFnet has now officially started construction of an OpenSocial environment within the Collaboration Infrastructure project (COIN).
The team consists of representatives of Ibuildings, Q42, Everett and Zilverline, and a large number of employees of SURFnet. Ibuilidings will develop the middleware, Q42 will create the OpenSocial GUI, and Everett is participating because of its experience with the Proof of Concept that SURFnet carried out last year. The construction work will be carried out according to the SCRUM method. Development work will take the form of a number of different iterations. A demonstration will be given at the end of each iteration of what has been developed so far.
SURFnet has launched a new “Project COIN” blog to keep interested parties abreast of developments within the project.
National LambdaRail (NLR), the coast-to-coast, high-performance network owned by the U.S. research and education community, has completed another deployment as part of its strategic network partnership with the Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI), a virtual laboratory for exploring future internets at scale, a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation. GENI uses NLR’s advanced network infrastructure and services as the platform for experiments on a broad range of research disciplines, including communications, network sciences, engineering, distributed systems, cyber-security, and applications.
In the Collaboration Infrastructure (COIN) project, SURFnet, in co-operation with higher education and research, is developing an infrastructure based on open standards. This will enable online applications and systems to exchange information.
What exactly does this imply? How will this enable flexible, tailor made online collaboration? In a short animaton, we explain what this will mean in the near future for researchers, teachers and students.
Watch the animation on the homepage of SURFnet www.surfnet.nl/en