This article gives a description of the development of wide-area university and science network in North-West region of Russia. This network has been organized in 1994 as RUSnet -- Regional University and Science network. Connection to the NORDUnet that was established by the end of 1994 was a significant step forward and provides close cooperation between Russian and Nordic country academic communities.
This paper summarizes two years of experience in building wide-area information space -- infosphere for academic community
At the beginning of 1990's RELARN (Russian ELectronic Academic Research Network) association has been established as a result of an initiative of the number of universities and research institutes. The association was funded by State Committee for High Education of Russia (SCHE) and has a goal to support Russian academic community's interests in modern network services.
At the first steps RELCOM company has been chosen as Internet provider for the members of RELARN. So it was not purely academic network and RELARN community could not get the full advantages of cooperation with European academic networks and associations.
That is why Russian Ministry of Science and Technical policy jointly with the State Committee for High Education of Russia have started several pilot projects with the common aim to establish a basis of whole-Russian IP backbone. Simultaneously, several projects were started at a regional level independently. One of such projects is RUSnet -- Regional University and Science network in North-West part of Russia. One of the main features of this project is close cooperation with national telecommunication operators and RELARN association and Nordic academic network (NORDUnet) as a foreign partner. The geographical position of North-West region determines RUSnet role as a gateway to Internet through Nordic countries for whole Russia.
The concept of RUSnet, based on intelligent information infrastructure (III), has been offered by Analytic Research Group of the State Technical University of St.Petersburg (STUSP) and approved at a number of international conferences (INET`94/JENC5 in Prague, NSC`94 in London, JENC6 in Tel-Aviv and INET`95 in Honolulu). According to this concept, RUSnet had to become Internet provider for regional academic community instead of commercial networks. Advanced telecommunication basis of RUSnet had to make RUSnet a sophisticated testbed for experiments on multimedia communications and information technologies.
In October 1994 the first phase of RUSnet project has been launched by STUSP, State Scientific Center of Russia/Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics (RTC Institute) in collaboration with LENENERGO Inc. According to General Action Plan it is supposed to have several stages in network creation.
First stage includes creation of FDDI MAN and equipment and software testing, as well as network specialists training. For this stage NORDUnet is chosen as Internet provider for RUSnet and general funding of the project is being made by State Committee for High Education of Russia. According to existing agreement NORDUnet provides traffic transit via 64/256 Kbps channel free of charge. Taking in account the economical crisis in Russia such support is very important allowing to concentrate governmental funds in purchasing telecommunication equipment and software, training of staff and development of network infrastructure [1].
Second stage will include creation of St.Petersburg Internet Exchange (PIX) and migration toward the network that was defined as a "broadband ISDN backbone, based on ATM and SDH transmission systems, capable to provide broadband and narrowband services." From the economical point of view that network will be oriented on self-funding. It is planned to provide services not only for academic community but for business and commercial organizations too.
The distinctive feature of network created is hierarchical structure of its nodes. All nodes are divided into three classes -- central, main and user -- in accordance with such criteria:
New phase is aimed at creating regional St.Petersburg Internet Exchange (PIX), extending services and achieving new technological possibilities for on-line processing of any kind of traffic: voice, data and video.
To make these technological possibilities real in an efficient and economic way an ATM backbone as a transmission basis should be implemented. This backbone is a set of elements that interact between each other to supply a "Superhighway" to carry any kind of information between any number of network points. [2].
On the basis of system approach we can understand the nature of backbone elements and their complex relation and interaction [3]. To provide QoS all requests that allocate resources should receive a permanent feedback, related to request and change or update of requirements. There is a logical model of such network below (see Fig.3).
First level of III model consists of modern transmission fabrics which provide reliable and high performance transport service for upper levels. These resources are based on fiber optic channels, SDH multiplexers and ATM switches.
Second level, based on common transmission infrastructure, provides integration of different types of logical network connections.
Distributed routing services for virtual LAN, dedicated connections and conventional networks are performed on the third level. This level also provides wide range of facilities for network security and configuration management.
The forth level is responsible for network resource allocation according to user application requirements and provides complete solution for access control and security issues.
The highest, fifth level, provides automated network management and planning tools for best network performance utilization, foreseeing and troubleshooting of failures and its costs minimization.
Theoretical and practical issues of III constructing are investigated in RTC institute in the frame of governmental program "National computer network for science and high education". This work has become a start point for new field of research activity -- TELENETICS - TELEcommunication NETwork and Intelligent Computer Systems. This work is funded by Ministry of Science and Technical Policy. RTC institute is charged to create pilot ATM segment of RUSnet backbone.
It is not a simple task to create the ATM network. Right choice of equipment is one of the most difficult and paramount problem. Just getting the goods on ATM switching engines means asking -- and answering a lot of questions. How quickly and consistently can these switches move ATM traffic? What sorts of latency and jitter are inherent in their architectures? How well can this gear stand up to barrage of traffic that is going to be common on backbones?
ATM switching means more than shunting cells at a top speed. The ability to cope with different types of traffic, at different data rates and under different loads, is what separates the leading switches from the also-runs.
ATM Forum specifications allow switches from different vendors to interoperate with each other but many vendors do not implement these specifications in full. Until they do, their ATM switches are limited to single-vendor, ATM-only networks and ATM-specific applications.
It is supposed to have two steps in ATM pilot-project:
The technical goals of this network are simple: find out if these ATM boxes have gotten what it really takes to deliver delay sensitive multimedia traffic while being buffered by bursty data. After all, that's what ATM is all about.
Now one of these ATM boxes is equipped with E3 ATM interface. It is supposed to use this equipment to provide high speed connections to Internet Rail Road in the frame of Internet 1996 World Exposition.
At the second step we intend to install ATM equipment in 3 more nodes and connect them by STM-1 (155 Mbps) and STM-4 (622 Mbps) channels. We suppose to use equipment from different vendors in order to perform a competitive analysis and make the most suitable and advanced choice.
The whole system should provide:
For some reasons there are several IP network providers in St.Petersburg region, having their own connection channels to Internet.
In this way users have a very tricky situation. For example, some neighboring organizations have E-mail exchange via Finland or even Germany.
To fix this situation, RUSnet together with RELARN association are going to create an Internet exchange point in St.Petersburg (PIX).
It is proposed to locate PIX at the central node of RUSnet at LENENERGO site. All major telecom service providers as well as regional IP providers have a good connection to this site.
The goal of PIX is to allow any network provider interconnect with others. There are no restrictions on what traffic could be exchanged between network providers over the PIX except that every provider sets for its customers. Network providers are able to manage their own routers and establish peering sessions with other participants they choose to exchange traffic with.
It is supposed to establish connection between PIX and first Russian Internet Exchange at Moscow (M9X). Realization of this idea will really start the creation of Russian national IP backbone.
As this paper intends to point out, the telecommunication network in North-West of Russia is experiencing a process of technological evolution and infrastructure development. Among many proposals the creation of Intelligent Information Infrastructure gives strong emphasis to solve the problem of expanding the access and providing high quality of telecommunication services for academic, business and industrial users. Important role in this process belongs to RUSnet that is viewed both as a testbed for newest telecommunication technologies and services and as a part of Russian national backbone.
The authors wish to acknowledge the number of colleagues -- especially Kurt Bertone from Bay Networks for helpful comments on early draft of RUSnet project and Yuha Heinanen from Telecom Finland, with whom we discussed the prototype of ATM segment in St.Petersburg. Also we would like to thank network specialists from Russian division of Newbridge System Integration for their contributions to equipment installation.
[1]Mosotto: "Pathways for Telecommunications: a European Outlook", IEEE
Communications Magazine, , pp 52-58, Aug. 1993.
[2]Malik, "Network management and control systems and strategic issues",
IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 26-29, Mar. 1990.
[3]Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, June 27-29,
1995.
[4]Proceedings of JENC6 - 6th Joint European Networking
[5]Conference Tel Aviv, Israel, 1995.
[6]Vladimir Zaborovski, Vitaliy Lopota, et al. "Bringing Internet to North-West
of Russia - RUSnet N/W project." Proceedings of INET'95 Honolulu, USA, 1995.
Yuri Shemanin is Senior Specialist of RUSnet project. For the last year he has been heavily involved in R&D tasks related to architectures and protocols for open systems interconnection and distributed applications. Current fields of interest include network management protocols and software and distributed applications.
Vladimir Zaborovski is Associate Professor at STUSP and head of the department in SSC RTC. His area of interests is in high-performance network architectures and protocol design. He is head of RUSnet Analytic Research Group that launched the basic idea of the pilot ATM project and telenetics concept.
Andrey Vasiliev is currently the head of laboratory at STUSP Telematics Center and a network specialist of RUSnet project. Hi is interested in high-speed network architectures and technologies, particularly in ATM.
Stanislav Tarasov is Director of Telecom division of LENENERGO Inc. His field of interests includes fiber optic technologies and broadband telecommunication services.