Compendium 2002 Country Information

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BASIC INFORMATION

Full name of the organisation (in English:) HEAnet Limited
Visiting address: Brooklawn House,
Crampton Avenue
Shelbourne Road 4
City/postal code: BALLSBRIDGE - DUBLIN 4

Ireland
Year founded: 1997
Year operations started: 1984
Short description of the history of the NREN: www.heanet.ie/Heanet/history.html
Fax: +353 1 660 3666
Phone: +353 1 660 9040
Website: www.heanet.ie
General e-mail address: info@heanet.ie
Convention used for e-mail addresses: firtsname.lastname@heanet.ie


ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION

Form of organisation: Separate legal entity /
Number of organisational members, shareholders and/or owners: 40
Brief description of the governing structure: Governed by Board representing the Universities, Institutes of Technology, the HEA (Higher Education Authority), the government and the Chief Executive. Managed by the Chief Executive.
Involvement in cctld or domain names: We are not directly involved with the national cctld (IEDR), except as a customer and the fact that the primary nameserver for .ie is located on the campus of one of our university members. We take part in RIPE meetings and working groups, especially the LIR WG, Netnews, Anti-spam, EOF, Ipv6, Routing and Test Traffic. Dave Wilson of our staff is chairman of the Netnews WG.
Name(s) of Chief Executive Officer(s): Mr. John Boland
Chief Executive
Head of the Technical Staff: Mr. Mike Norris Senior Technical Officer
E-mail: mike.norris@heanet.ie
Name of contact person for PR matters: Ms. Patricia Soria de Miguel Information Officer
E-mail: patricia.soria@heanet.ie


STAFFING

Total number of staff directly employed by the organisation: 18
Number of directly employed staff in Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): 17
Number of directly employed Technical Staff in FTE: 13.5
Average number of people (in FTE) working for the organisation as subcontractors or on outsourced basis: 1
Number of subcontracted/outsourced technical staff in FTE: 1
Number of administrative and financial staff in FTE: 3.5
Number of user support and training staff in FTE: 2
Total amount of effort in person/months per year: 206


FINANCES, BUDGET

The budget year is equal to the calendar year.
Total budget of last financial year (in euro): 10.6 M
Total budget current financial year (in euro): 12.9 M
Source Percentage of income Restricted Free
Government/public bodies: 81 75% 6%
Users: 19


Method of client charging: We charge a flat fee, based on bandwidth
 
Expenditure category: Percentage:
Salaries and general office costs 26
Equipment and software costs 12
Transmission (data communications) 62
Method of obtaining national data communications capacity: We have contracts with several providers
Method of obtaining international data communications capacity: Through contract(s) with (a) provider(s)


USER BASE

Total number of students in tertiary education (x 1000): 151, year: 1999
Percentage of University students with internet access through the NREN: 100
Percentage of further education students with Internet access through the NREN: 95
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): 1
Congestion in the national network: rank from most (1) to least (5) congested; est. percentage of clients experiencing congestion
Campus LAN 2 10
Access network 1 35
NREN backbone 3 0
External connections 4 0


Manner in which institutions are connected to the network:
Directly connected to a POP on the NREN: 26
Connected via a regional or metropolitan network managed by a third party: 14
Number of institutions with a permanent connection: 40
Number of connected Universities: 7
Percentage of total number of Universities that is connected via the NREN: 100
Number of connected institutes of higher or further education: 20
Percentage of all institutes of higher or further education that is connected via the NREN: 96
Remarks: There is probably only one public-funded HE/FE institution not connected to HEAnet and we are in discussion with them at the present.

CAPACITY AND PLANS



Current core network capacity in Mbps: 310
Total volume of traffic through the network in 2001 (in TB): 185
Volume of outbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 57
Volume of inbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 99
Total traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 19.4
Volume of outbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 6.7
Volume of inbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 11.5
Core capacity in Mb/s x km: 148650
Typicial large-site access capacity (in Mbps): 50
Expected access capacity in two years time: 5 to 10 times as much
Map of network topology: www.hea.net
Recent network traffic statistics: www.hea.net/mrtg
Operational external connections in January 2002 (usable capacity in Mb/s:)
GÉANT, 155
UKERNA, 155
INEX, 30 / UUNET, 45
Teleglobe (general Internet), 155
Abilene, 155 / StarTAP/CA*net, 155
Planned additions or upgrades to the external connections in 2002:
GÉANT, 310 +
LINX, 155
General Internet, 622 + 155
INEX, 100
Expected operational external connections in January 2004:
GÉANT, 1000
Internet 2, 1000
General Internet, 2500
INEX, 1000
UKERNA, 620


Technology used for the core network: Backbone consists of resilient SDH rings in the form of a quadrilateral, with inter-PoP distances of 240km, 100km, 130km and 190km.
Planned technical changes: We will deploy a fibre network to reach all our clients and provide gigabit IP service over an optically switched network.
Expected core capacity in two years: 100 times as much
Involvement in Internet Exchange Point: Founder member of INEX, the Irish Neutral EXchange Association, connected to the INEX exchange point, and peerings in effect with all other members. Mike Norris is currently chairman of INEX.
  www.inex.ie
Remarks: In January 2002, also had StarTAP, Ca*net, Abilene backup of 155 Mb/s and Uunet (general Internet), 45 Mb/s.
In January, 2004 we also hope to have 310 Mb/s connections to others.


SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Services provided:
- Basic IP provision: Done by NREN
- User support: Done by NREN
- NOC: Done by NREN
- Directory services: Not done
- Security incident response: Outsourced
- PKI/CA: Done by NREN
- Annual Conferences: Done by NREN
Summary of or URL to Acceptable Use Policy: www.heanet.ie/heanet/aup.html
Current interests: SDH /
Giga Ethernet /
IPv6 Service Deployment /
User authentication /
Caching, Indexing, Mirroring /
Multicast /
Video Conferencing /
Traffic Monitoring /
Web Server content management /
Web Server usage analysis /
Essential future interests: Lambda Testbed access /
Lambda Service Deployment /
Wireless LAN /
Directory Services /
Teaching and learning methods /
Streaming Media /
Potential future interests: MPLS Service Deployment /
In house Certification Authority /
Mobile Access (Persistence of presence) /
CERT services /
CERT incident coordination /
Charging / billing systems /
Information Content indexing
Will follow other NRENs on: Diffserv/Qos /
IPv6 Development /
In house PKI development/deployment /
Joint projects with/on: HEAnet is leading two activities within TF-NGN: optical networking and QoS monitoring and SLS auditing. More information on the activity plans and deliverables can be found at: www.dante.net/tf-ngn/

HEAnet is also involved in the FLAG testbed on testing advance virtual path provisioning in Europe:
www.terena.nl/tech/lambdainit/index.html

HEAnet is an international MoU partner of Internet2 organisation and also taking part in several of its working groups: www.internet2.org/
Expectations from TERENA in any of these areas: Coordination of collaborative research, information on relevant projects, development of Internet 2 in Europe.