To first order each European country runs its own national network and are in turn members of RARE (which coordinates technical developments). Members of RARE qualify to be shareholders in DANTE (Delivering Advanced Network Technology to Europe Ltd). DANTE runs the operational side of the EMPB (European Multi Protocol Backhone) setting up and operating international connections, plus providing intercontinental links and network applications such as directory services and X-400 mail.
Separate & competing with DANTE/EMPB IS THE EBONE which links the French, Scandinavian and Austrian national networks. The interchanges between EBONE & EMPB are not fully clear at the moment. There is a gateway agreement which runs until 30 Jun 94; what happens after that is undefined. EBONE appears to be less formally organized (eg. it is not a legal entity, national nets pay for inter country links individually). EMPB has more in the way of performance guarantees. There appear to be culture conflicts between DANTE and EBONE. Before Xmas NORDUnet decided in priciple to take an EMPB connection and have cancelled their EBONE connection from 7/1/94; Austria with some reluctance, hace also submitted a formal cancellation and are talking to DANTE which just leaves France.
Partly due to this competition there are many transatlantic links including: the ULCC fat pipe (1.5 Mbps) which is funded by NSF, DARPA & NASA; ESnet has a 1.5 Mbps Dusseldorf - PPNL link and the Bolonga - FNAL links; the EBONE Stockholm/Paris to U.S. link at 1.5 Mbps funded 40% by the NSF; the CERN - GIX (Washington DC) link which will be taken over by DANTE on Jan 1, 94; plus a new link from Amsterdam to GIX to be installed Jan 15 94. There is also a 64Kbps line from Canada thru the London Canadian Embassy to ULCC. Besides the transaltantic links there is a 64 Kbps link direct from London to Korea which is about to be ordered, and a link to Japan via the U.S. at 512 Kbps.
The future funding for these transatlantic links is in some cases unclear. CERN has decided to contract for 1 Mbps of EuropaNet (th marketing name for EMPB/DANTE) access and will collect money to support this from the HEP community. CERN also will approach the U.S. HEP community to collect money to pay for the transaltantic link.
EMPB is also being extended into Eastern Europe. Links to Hungary, Prague, and Bulgaria are already in place and a link to Roumania is being worked on. DANTE has requested the European Commission to change these links from X.25 to IP and expect this to happen soon. Slovenia is already connected to the EMPB and will bought into the EC funding program in 1994. Next year they also hope to extend connections to the Baltic Republics, and Albania.
DESY is in the process of pulling in an experimental link to Moscow via a 256 Kbps channel satellite link that comes down at Moscow State University and is distributed by microwave to ITEP, the Lebedev Institute and Troitsk. ESnet is interested in sharing this link and already have the OK to carry Russian traffic. NASA is trying to get fiber links from the west to get to Petersberg & then to Moscow via microwave.
All German Universities are on a common network run by the German PTT. It is an X.25 network with 9.6 Kbps, 64 Kbps, & 2 Mbps links. The 300 km 2 Mbps. DESY - Hamburg to DESY - Zeuthen (Berlin) costs about $250K/year. The majority of the traffic on the Germsn academic network is IP encapsulated in X.25. Unfortunately the performance of the routers in this mode is not good (since it is only a niche market). We observed this via the recommended path to Dusseldorf when trying to telnet to SLAC from DESY, the response time was very poor at best (> 500msec) and very variable. We eventually gave up on this and used the CERN link instead logging (using the CERN-DESY 768 kbps IP link) on to CERN, & telnetting to SLAC from there via the CERN-GIX X link. This avoids the X-25 links & provided a much more usable link.
In the U.K. the academic network is being upgraded to ATM at 34 Mbps. This is discussed in "Super JANET, Special Edition" Nov 1993 published by the Joint Network Team. It is called Super JANET and includes an 18 M pound sterling 4 year contract awarded to BT. It will include 16 sites with SDH connectivity and 50 sites with SMDS connectivity.