Today the TERENA Technical Committee approved the Terms of Reference of four task forces. TF-Mobility and TF-EMC2 (Task Force on European Middleware Coordination and Collaboration) will carry on with their work under a new two-year mandate. Two new task forces, TF-VSS (Task Force on Videoconference Service Studies) and TF-ECS (Task Force on Enhanced Communications Services) will continue the work begun in Task Force for Voice, Video and Collaboration, which recently completed its mandate.
Lica Florio, TERENA’s Project Development Officer supporting TF-Mobility explained that the original objectives for TF-Mobility have been reached. They have identified suitable and effective technology for an educational roaming service known as eduroam® and have tested the technology by establishing a pilot service in Europe and beyond. The pilot has grown over the years. The enhancement of the infrastructure and the transition of eduroam to a full service for Europe is now part of the EC funded GN2 project.
For the next two years, TF-Mobility will concentrate on interoperability between upcoming eduroam federations that are being created in different regions, such as Asia-Pacific where new countries continue to be connected. TF-Mobility will also provide an open forum for all parties interested in mobility related topics, and in particular, eduroam. The task force, still led by Klaas Wierenga (SURFnet) and David Simonsen (UNI•C), will also keep providing operational support for institutions that wish to connect to eduroam.
Diego López (RedIRIS) continues to lead TF-EMC2 as it takes on a more structured programme, concentrating on completing the work of specific activities that have been initiated over the last two years, such as TACAR (TERENA Academic CA Repository), SCHAC (Directory Schema), REFEDS (Federation Coordination) and AA-RR (Authentication/Authorisation Requester Responder). The individual activities will now be led by an activity leader. Both TF-EMC2 and TF-Mobility will liaise closely with the work of Joint Research Activity 5 in the GN2 project as well as with organisations from other regions and other disciplines.
Given the high degree of synergy in the activities of TF-EMC2 and TF-Mobility, a common steering committee has been formed , composed of the task force chairs and activity leaders from both task forces. ECAM (European Committee for Academic Middleware) will guide both groups to promote innovative and open middleware technologies and infrastructures and will represent the interests of the two task forces to other disciplines and in other geographic areas.
The new TF-VSS will explore the feasibility and suitability of developing a Europe-wide videoconferencing service for the higher education and research communities. In a one-year study, task force members will explore the need for such a service as well as the equipment and technology that would be required for its technical realisation. Development of a detailed architecture would be the follow-on result of the study. The task force will be led by András Kovács (NIIF/HUNGARNET).
The other new task force, TF-ECS, will explore collaboration tools and technologies that go beyond simple voice and video conferencing. They will coordinate current national activities and assist the rollout of enhanced communication services. The task force will investigate the impact of future developments in real-time communications and will define an architecture and trust model for peering such deployments in national research and education networks.
More information and the Terms of Reference for the newly mandated task forces can be found on the task force web pages:
http://www.terena.nl/activities/tf-mobility/
http://www.terena.nl/activities/tf-emc2/
For more information about the new task forces, TF-VSS and TF-ECS, please contact Cătălin Meiroşu <catalin.meirosu@terena.nl>