Compendium 2002 Country Information

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BASIC INFORMATION

Full name of the organisation (in English:) BELNET, The Belgian National Research Network
Full name of the organisation in the national language(s): (NL): Het Belgische telematicaonderzoeksnetwerk, BELNET
(FR): BELNET, Réseau télématique belge de la recherche
Abbreviation in the national language(s): BELNET
Postal address: Wetenschapsstraat 4 /
Rue de la Science 4
City/postal code: 1000 BRUSSELS

Belgium
Year founded: 1989
Year operations started: 1993
Fax: +32 2790 33 34
Phone: +32 2 790 33 33
Website: www.belnet.be
General e-mail address: info@belnet.be
Convention used for e-mail addresses: firstname.lastname@belnet.be


ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION

Form of organisation: Separate legal entity /
Governmental organisation (govt. dept., agency or organisation under govt. umbrella, etc.) /
Involvement in cctld or domain names: BELNET is a (Board) member of ISPA Belgium. ISPA Belgium has 3 (out of 10) seats in the Board of DNS Belgium, the organisation governing the ".be" ccTLD.

BELNET runs 2 authoritative nameservers for ".be"
Name(s) of Chief Executive Officer(s): Ir. Pierre Bruyère
Director
Head of the Technical Staff: Mr. Jan Torreele Technical Director
E-mail: Jan.Torreele@belnet.be
Name of contact person for PR matters: Ms. Céline Morris External Communications
E-mail: Celine.Morris@belnet.be
Remarks: Other contact person: Jan Torreele.


STAFFING

Total number of staff directly employed by the organisation: 24
Number of directly employed staff in Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): 24
Number of directly employed Technical Staff in FTE: 15
Average number of people (in FTE) working for the organisation as subcontractors or on outsourced basis: 3
Number of subcontracted/outsourced technical staff in FTE: 3
Number of administrative and financial staff in FTE: 9
Number of user support and training staff in FTE: 0
Total amount of effort in person/months per year: 288


FINANCES, BUDGET

The budget year is equal to the calendar year.
Total budget of last financial year (in euro): 11.5 M
Total budget current financial year (in euro): 12.5 M
Source Percentage of income Restricted Free
Government/public bodies: 75 x
Users: 20 x x
Other sources: 3 x


Method of client charging: Other:
  We charge a flat fee, based on bandwidth, for access to commodity Internet only. R&E (internal to BELNET, Géant, Internet2, etc.) traffic is free
Expenditure category: Percentage:
Salaries and general office costs 15
Equipment and software costs 40
Transmission (data communications) 45
Method of obtaining national data communications capacity: We have contracts with several providers
Method of obtaining international data communications capacity: Through the GÉANT project
Remarks: For international connections we also have contracts with providers.


USER BASE

Total number of students in tertiary education (x 1000): 352, year: 1999
Percentage of University students with internet access through the NREN: 100
Percentage of further education students with Internet access through the NREN: 30
Percentage of secondary education students with internet access through the NREN: 0
Percentage of primary education pupils with Internet access through the NREN: 0
External traffic per university student in 2001 (in GB/yr): 4
Congestion in the national network: rank from most (1) to least (5) congested; est. percentage of clients experiencing congestion
Campus LAN 1 50
Metropolitan or regional network 5
Access network 5


Manner in which institutions are connected to the network:
Directly connected to a POP on the NREN: 95%
Connected via a regional or metropolitan network managed by a third party: 5%
Number of institutions with a permanent connection: 130
Number of connected Universities: 13
Percentage of total number of Universities that is connected via the NREN: 100
Number of connected institutes of higher or further education: 30
Percentage of all institutes of higher or further education that is connected via the NREN: 30
Remarks: During the course of 2002, ALL institutes of higher education in Flanders (25 institutes) will be connected via BELNET.
50% of students in higher/further education will have Internet access through BELNET.

CAPACITY AND PLANS



Current core network capacity in Mbps: 155/622/1000
Total volume of traffic through the network in 2001 (in TB): 1600
Volume of outbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 900
Volume of inbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 500
Total traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 220
Volume of outbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 112
Volume of inbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 62
Core capacity in Mb/s x km: 70,000
Typicial large-site access capacity (in Mbps): 200 Mbps
Expected access capacity in two years time: 10 times as much
Map of network topology: check www.belnet.be
Recent network traffic statistics: Growth by about 2.5 times per year
Operational external connections in January 2002 (usable capacity in Mb/s:)
Global transit, Brussels, 777 Mb/s
Global transit, New York, 155 Mb/s
GEANT, 2500 Mb/s
Abilene ITN, New York, 155 Mb/s
BNIX (peering), 2000 Mb/s; AMS-IX (peering), 155 Mb/s
Planned additions or upgrades to the external connections in 2002:
Global transit I, Brussels, 2000 Mb/s
LINK (peering), 155 Mb/s
Global transit II, Brussels, 1622 Mb/s
SFINX (peering), 155 Mb/s
Expected operational external connections in January 2004:
Global transit, 2 x 5 Gb/s
BNIX, 10 Gb/s
Other peering, 3 x 1 Gb/s
GEANT + Internet2, 2.5 Gb/s


Technology used for the core network: IP over ATM (during 2002: POS & GE).
Planned technical changes: IP over optical
Expected core capacity in two years: 20 times as much
Involvement in Internet Exchange Point: BELNET owns and runs the BNIX.
  www.bnix.net/
Remarks:


SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Services provided:
- Basic IP provision: Done by NREN
- User support: Done by others
- NOC: Done by NREN
- Directory services: Not done
- Security incident response: Done by NREN
- PKI/CA: Not done
- Annual Conferences: Not done
Other services: BELNET also does the provision of the standard services (news, ftp, DNS, mail relay, ntp, WWW, etc.) in house.
Summary of or URL to Acceptable Use Policy: www.belnet.be/about/pages/aup_uk.html
Current interests: SDH /
Giga Ethernet /
IPv6 Service Deployment /
Multicast /
CERT incident coordination /
Video Conferencing /
Traffic Monitoring /
Charging / billing systems /
Essential future interests: SDH /
Giga Ethernet /
Lambda Service Deployment /
Wireless LAN /
Diffserv/Qos /
MPLS Service Deployment /
IPv6 Service Deployment /
Multicast /
Potential future interests: In house Certification Authority /
Mobile Access (Persistence of presence) /
Not interested in: IPv6 Development /
User authentication /
In house PKI development/deployment /
Caching, Indexing, Mirroring /
CERT services /
Teaching and learning methods /
Web Server content management /
Web Server usage analysis /
Information Content indexing
Joint projects with/on: MoU partner of Internet2
Géant participant
Euro-IX member

Expectations from TERENA in any of these areas: Information and communication.