N-1-3-012.20, United Kingdom - JNT/JANET, by Phil Jones*,
<p.jones@jnt.ac.uk>
     
     
The Joint Network Team (JNT) is the national organisation in the
United Kingdom providing operational and coordination/consultancy
services for research and higher education.  The service is expanding
into the industrial research sector.  The JNT's "lead role" funding
body is the Information Systems Committee of the (Government)
Department for Education's (DfE's) University's Funding Council, with
other funding contributions being made by other bodies including the
Research Councils and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council.
     
The main JNT services are the JANET X.25 service and the JANET IP
service (JIPS) which is encapsulated within the X.25 service.  All the
institutions in the funded community are connected to the X.25
service.  Almost all the Universities and most of the Research Council
sites are connected by 2Mbps links, and most of these are connected to
JIPS as well as to the X.25 service.  The JIPS includes a
comprehensive routeing service; the connected institutions do not need
to maintain routeing mechanisms other than for routes within the
institution itself.
     
The JNT services are offered to the institutions in the community
through the IT service of the institution itself.  Most operational
management functions are contracted out.  Other operational services
include:

      - email, file transfer, and terminal connection gateway/relay
        services between the OSI, TCP/IP, UK Coloured Book and 
        NJE worlds;

      - hostname and address translation services through 
        responsibility for the .uk domain of the domain name 
        system (DNS) and by management of the UK Name Registration 
        Scheme (NRS) in support of UK-Coloured-Books and OSI; 

      - and an X.500 directory pilot service (which represents a
        substantial chunk of the (world-wide) X.500 directory).
        Both the operational and the coordination/consultancy services
        are supported by the JANET community in various ways over 
        and above the work done under contract, and includes 
        particularly the work of several technical advisory groups run
        by the JNT.

The JNT is strongly focussed on international cooperation:

      - in collaboration with DARPA, NASA and the NSF in the USA and
        DRA/MoD in the UK, and led by a steering group chaired by 
        Professor Peter Kirstein of University College, London (UCL), 
        the UK-US 768kbps fatpipe link across the Atlantic connects 
        to JANET/JIPS in the UK, REDIris in Spain and to networks in 
        Greece and Portugal.  In Europe, this is a third of the CEC 
        whether one is counting countries or population;

      - the JNT was one of the very first to sign the Ebone Memorandum
        of Understanding, and we are very active in the management, 
        technical and operational (indeed all) aspects.  One of the 
        five Ebone backbone routers (EBS) is located in London, at the
        University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) which is one of 
        the JNT's main contractors.  (The DFN's WIN IP service is one 
        of the networks which connects to the Ebone at the London EBS.
        Germany and the UK also represent more than a third of the 
        CEC if you just count heads :-);

      - the JNT and members of the JANET community are actively 
        involved in RARE and COSINE.  JANET has twice the connectivity
        to the current IXI service compared to any other network, and 
        we expect to be connected to the new IXI service at 2Mbps as 
        soon as it is available.  There is very significant
        involvement in all the activities and working groups, not of 
        course forgetting RIPE.
     
Current development activities include:

      - the SuperJANET programme to provide 100+Mbps WAN services, 
        supporting for example multi-media applications as well as 
        lots more and faster variants of the traditional styles of 
        working.  The programme will include an ATM initiative;

      - a high speed LAN initiative, encouraging the provision of 
        100+Mbps local area networks within institutions that do not
        already have them;

      - a managed and user-transparent transition of UK-Coloured-Book
        applications services to OSI (X.400(88), FTAM and JTM) 
        services, including provision of operational conversion 
        services and components;

      - the introduction of multi-body-part X.400(88) message handling
        (email :-) services, including changing the "base carrier" for
        email over JANET from coloured books to X.400(88);

      - connecting the London Ebone EBS to Renater's EBS in France, 
        this establishment of resilience on the Ebone backbone being 
        scheduled for September 1992;

      - connecting to the new IXI Production Service at 2Mbps;

      - establishment of a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) 
        for the UK.
     
There are many organisational changes in the pipeline; indeed the
alert reader will have noticed the reference to the DfE above rather
than the former government department, the DES.  The DfE itself is in
the process of reorganising the funding council structure for higher
education to take effect in 1993 to give a separate body for each of
the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom.  In addition, the
JNT itself will become a separate networking association, the UK
Education and Research Networking Association (UKERNA).  Furthermore,
there is yet another change taking place, because UK Polytechnics have
been given permission to acquire University status if they wish.
Indeed, some have already done so.  (Watch out for Borchester
Polytechnic changing its name to the Verters Football Pools University
of Central Borsetshire.)  With help from our international colleagues,
we trust that normal service will be maintained across these changes.

For further information, please contact the JANET Liaison Desk,
janet-liaison@jnt.ac.uk or c=gb,a= ,p=uk.ac,o=jnt,s=janet-liaison


*Joint Network Team (JNT), United Kingdom