Compendium 2002 Country Information

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BASIC INFORMATION

Full name of the organisation (in English:) Academic and Research
Network of Slovenia
Full name of the organisation in the national language(s): Akademska in raziskovalna mre√a Slovenije
Abbreviation in the national language(s): ARNES
Postal address: Jamova 39
City/postal code: 1000 LJUBLJANA

Slovenia
Year founded: 1992
Year operations started: 1992
Fax: + 386 1 4798 899
Phone: + 386 1 4798 800
Website: www.arnes.si/
General e-mail address: arnes@arnes.si
Convention used for e-mail addresses: firstname.lastname@arnes.si


ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION

Form of organisation: Separate legal entity /
Number of organisational members, shareholders and/or owners: 1
Brief description of the governing structure: The members of the Board of Directors are appointed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.
Involvement in cctld or domain names: ARNES is the registry for cctld .si (Slovenia)
Name(s) of Chief Executive Officer(s): Mr. Marko Bonac
Director
Mr. Avgust Jauk
Deputy Director
Head of the Technical Staff: Mr. Avgust Jauk Deputy Director
E-mail: jauk@arnes.si
Name of contact person for PR matters: Mr. Marko Bonac Director
E-mail: bonac@arnes.si


STAFFING

Total number of staff directly employed by the organisation: 18
Number of directly employed staff in Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): 18
Number of directly employed Technical Staff in FTE: 11
Average number of people (in FTE) working for the organisation as subcontractors or on outsourced basis: 10
Number of subcontracted/outsourced technical staff in FTE: 0
Number of administrative and financial staff in FTE: 3
Number of user support and training staff in FTE: 4
Total amount of effort in person/months per year: 336
Remarks: Outsourced staff are students working as user support for our users who have individual dial up accounts at ARNES. There are 50.000 such users.

What are activities "directly related to R&E networking". ARNES provides individual dial up accounts for students and children in schools (50.000 accounts). Large part of our staff is involved in this activity (especially for a user support). Is this related to R&E networking ? It is, but the comparison with other NRENs (most of them are not involved in this) could show that we have large staff for a relatively small network. And this would be an unfair comparison.



FINANCES, BUDGET

The budget year is equal to the calendar year.
Total budget of last financial year (in euro): 4.5 M
Total budget current financial year (in euro): Between 5 and 7 M EUR - not decided yet.
Source Percentage of income Restricted Free
Government/public bodies: 82 x
Users: 5 x
Other sources: 13 x


Method of client charging: We do not charge them directly
  Some clients are charged a traffic-based fee.
Expenditure category: Percentage:
Salaries and general office costs 13
Equipment and software costs 17
Transmission (data communications) 66
Maintenance 4
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)
Remarks: 13% of income through the EU 5th Framework Programme.

1. Again: What are activities "directly related to R&E networking". ARNES is doing two activites which are related to R&E networking, but not normally done by others:
- we provide individual dial up accounts for students and children
- we connect primary and secondary schools to our network
Cost of services to universities represent smaller part of our budget.

2. It is difficult to distinguish between restricted and free usage of funds.

3. We charge only small part of our users (research departments in private companies). These fees are traffic based. All other users get the service for free.

4. If an NREN has subcontractors then expenditure categories should be applied for them too. Only in such a way Terena could get relevant and comparable results.

5. In some countries not everything is financed through NRENs. Some services and/or equipment are financed directly. This should be taken into account to get comparable results.


USER BASE

Total number of students in tertiary education (x 1000): 53, year: 1996
Percentage of University students with internet access through the NREN: 90 - 100
Percentage of further education students with Internet access through the NREN: 80 - 99
Percentage of secondary education students with internet access through the NREN: 70 - 99
Percentage of primary education pupils with Internet access through the NREN: 53
External traffic per university student in 2001 (in GB/yr): 3.6
Congestion in the national network: rank from most (1) to least (5) congested; est. percentage of clients experiencing congestion
Campus LAN 4 10
Metropolitan or regional network 5
Access network 1-3 90
NREN backbone 1-3 50
External connections 1-3 Comment: as we have only one external connection all client institutions experience the same congestion.


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 the NREN: 5%
Number of institutions with a permanent connection: 301
Number of connected Universities: 5
Percentage of total number of Universities that is connected via the NREN: 100
Number of connected institutes of higher or further education: 10
Percentage of all institutes of higher or further education that is connected via the NREN: 100
Remarks: All universities and practically all schools at ISCED levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 are somehow connected to ARNES. At shools there are class rooms with computers and any child can use them. They can get also an individual dial up account from ARNES (for free) and access the ARNES network from home (if they have a computer at home). We can say that 99 % or 100 % of children at schools and students have a possibility of internet access through ARNES (second column).
On the other hand many connections (especially to primary schools) are slow, there are not enough computers in schools, not every family has a computer at home. So we estimate that only 30 % of children in primary education use internet regulary etc. (first column).

CAPACITY AND PLANS



Current core network capacity in Mbps: 100. Comment: The backbone is composed by links with different capacity (2 - 10 - 100 - 155).
Volume of outbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 108
Volume of inbound external traffic in 2001 (in TB): 84
Volume of outbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 18
Volume of inbound external traffic in January 2002 (in TB): 15
Core capacity in Mb/s x km: 40000
Typicial large-site access capacity (in Mbps): 100 Mbps
Expected access capacity in two years time: 10 times as much
Map of network topology: www.arnes.si/backbone.htm
Operational external connections in January 2002 (usable capacity in Mb/s:)
GEANT, 310 Mb/s (ARNES uses this connectivity also for access to global IP.)
Planned additions or upgrades to the external connections in 2002:
GEANT, 1200 Mb/s
Expected operational external connections in January 2004:
GEANT, 10 Gb/s


Technology used for the core network: SDH, ATM, LL, Gigabit Ethernet
Planned technical changes: Probably migration to Ethernet technology.
Expected core capacity in two years: 100 times as much
Involvement in Internet Exchange Point: ARNES runs the Slovenian Internet Exchange
 
Remarks: ARNES connects many schools and libraries. Typical access capacity of such an organisation is rather small (128 kb/s - 2 Mb/s). On the other hand there are only a few universities in Slovenia. Their access capacity is relatively large (100 Mb/s). It would be useful (to get a clearer picture) to ask for the number of connected institutions with different access capacities (e.g. how many organisations are connected with 128 kps, 2 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps)


SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENTS

Services provided:
- User support: Done by NREN
- NOC: Done by NREN
- Directory services: Done by NREN
- Security incident response: Done by NREN
Other services: Domain registration for cctld.si
Provision of dial up access for students and children.
Summary of or URL to Acceptable Use Policy: The use of the ARNES services is restricted to the research and educational institutions, libraries and national museums. Exceptionally it can be used by other institutions from the public sector. Such cases have to be approved by the ministry.
Current interests: Giga Ethernet /
SDH /
Wireless LAN /
Diffserv/Qos /
IPv6 Development /
User authentication /
Directory Services /
Caching, Indexing, Mirroring /
Multicast /
CERT incident coordination /
CERT services /
Video Conferencing /
Streaming Media /
Traffic Monitoring /
Charging / billing systems /
Web Server usage analysis /
Information Content indexing
Potential future interests: Lambda Service Deployment /
Lambda Testbed access /
Will follow other NRENs on: MPLS Service Deployment /
IPv6 Service Deployment /
Mobile Access (Persistence of presence) /
Web Server content management /
Not interested in: Teaching and learning methods /