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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 18:39:37 -0700
From: CINET Editor <cinet-editor@CND.ORG>
Subject: CINET-L Newsletter, Issue No. 29, Monday, October 17, 1994

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Issue No. 29, Monday, October 17, 1994

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Table of Contents # of Lines
===========================================================
================ 1. News/Info Brief (8 Items) ............................................ 96 2.
Chinese Government Vows Support for Information Sector ............... 42 3.
Secrecy, Jealousy Blocking China's Entry to Info Superhighway ........ 47 4.
Introduction to China Education and Research Network ................ 158 5. Some
Points of Interest on the Web .................................. 107
===========================================================
================ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. News/Info Brief (8 Items) ............................................ 96 --------------------------------
-------------------------------------------- [AsiaInfo, 10/06/94] BEIJING --
Representatives of 24 cities and provinces signed an agreement recently in
Beijing, unanimously starting "Golden Bridge Engineering". In the last ten years,
more than 20 various economic, scientific, and technological information
systems, over 10 large computer applied systems, 100 various information
networks, over 800 data bases, and 1.5 million sets of computer capacities are
completely built. "Golden Bridge Engineering" is the basic facilities of the
National Economic Information Industry, which occupies an important place
within " Three Gold Engineering". At present, "Golden Bridge Engineering"
desires to build a "Middle-speed information highway" (144 MB/sec.) within the
country, and in the future, it will be developed to become the "high speed
information highway" (1000 MB/sec.).
___ ___ ___

[AsiaInfo, 10/07/94] BEIJING -- Following the Xian-Urumqi section of the Asia-
Europe fibre-optic cable network, construction of another section of Urumqi-Yili
was started recently. The section of fibre-optic cable will stretch over 6
prefectures and 11 countries with a total length of 831Kms. It will link with trunk
telecommunications cables from the Republic of Kazakhstan outside port of
Horgus.
___ ___ ___

[HPCwire, 10/11/94] BellSouth Corp. and China United Telecommunications
Corp. Ltd. have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop telephone
networks in some of China's areas where the demand for telephone services is
greatest. BellSouth will provide China Unicom with assistance and consultation
in the development of network plans for cellular, wireless and long distance
networks. BellSouth will also assist China Unicom in the planning and project
engineering for GSM digital cellular telephone networks for two large cities.
China Unicom (also known as Lian Tong) was formed in July by private
investors, state industries, municipal governments and three national ministries
to compete against the monopoly carrier, the Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications.
___ ___ ___

[HPCwire, 10/13/94] Mountain View, Calif. -- The company formed by the
developers of the Internet's popular Mosaic software released at no charge its
own version, Mosaic Netscape 0.9. Marc Andreessen, who started Mosaic
Communications Corp. with Silicon Graphics Inc. founder James Clark, told the
Wall Street Journal, "We want as many people to use the software as possible."
The software provides an easy way to navigate a portion of the Internet known
as the World Wide Web, an information-retrieval system that can present
graphics and sound. Andreessen estimated that Mosaic Netscape is about 10
times faster than any current version of Mosaic, adding that the software was
completely rewritten from scratch and is not simply a version of NCSA Mosaic.
An up-to-date listing of sites where Mosaic Netscape 0.9 Beta can be obtained is
available by sending an email message to <release@mcom.com>.
___ ___ ___

[AsiaInfo, 10/14/94] BEIJING -- NTT Data Communications Systems
Corporation, Japan's largest computer information system integrator, opened a
representative office in Beijing yesterday. An NTT Data official said the opening
indicates the company's commitment to the development of China's information
systems. It is now co-operating with Beijing to develop computer networks for
the post and telecommunications and financial sectors.
___ ___ ___

[HPCwire, 10/10/94] San Jose, Calif. -- Cisco Systems has introduced a high-
performance interface processor that provides direct connection at Asynchronous
Transfer Mode (ATM) speeds between IBM mainframe computers and routed
internetworks, eliminating the need for controller equipment that creates data-
path bottlenecks. The Channel Interface Processor (CIP) is the first phase of a
strategic multi-product channel-attachment program Cisco will implement over
the next several years. In early 1995 the company will deliver TCP/IP Offload, a
software capability which allows the TCP/IP protocols to run on the CIP, greatly
reducing mainframe overhead. This will be followed later in 1995 by support for
SNA mainframe applications and for Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking
(APPN).
___ ___ ___

[HPCwire, 10/11/94] Redwood City, Calif. -- A new software release for
Network Equipment Technologies' (N.E.T.) IDNX Communications Resource
Manager (CRM) increases the potential size of IDNX wide area networks from
250 nodes (or separate systems) to well beyond 10,000 nodes. A special feature
called SuperWAN allows enterprise network managers and global carriers to
build extremely large, flexible and cost-effective multi-service networks. This
new feature allows network managers to scale networks to virtually any size
while segments of the network can be partitioned for manageability, billing or
security purposes. N.E.T.'s IDNX family of CRMs offers efficient multiplexing,
intelligent call-routing, LAN internetworking, frame relay switching, ISDN
signaling, network management and a migration path to asynchronous transfer
mode (ATM) capabilities.
___ ___ ___

[TIA-INFO, 9/15/94] The Internet Adapter (TIA) is a new Internet access utility
that lets you use popular graphical software such as Mosaic, Cello, and Eudora
with a standard UNIX shell account. In essence it converts a shell account into a
"pseudo-SLIP" account the same way an electrical adapter converts a two-prong
outlet into a three-prong outlet. TIA was created by Cyberspace Development,
Inc. (CSD) to solve the problem of SLIP access for users. The company is offering
free evaluation of 14 days for single user and 21 days for multi-user host. To get
evaluation codes, send a blank message to tia-single@marketplace.com (Single
User Version) or tia-host@marketplace.com (Host Version). For more
information, send an email to tia-info@marketplace.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Chinese Government
Vows Support for Information Sector ............... 42 ------------------------------------------
---------------------------------- Forwarded by: Daluo Jia
Source: Agence France Presse English Wire, 10/07/94

BEIJING -- Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing has pledged hefty government
support for foreign cooperation in developing the country's fast growing but
backward information sector, a report said Friday.

"In view of the strategic position the information industry holds in the national
economy, the Chinese government will take more active steps towards
supporting cooperation in this field," the China Daily quoted Li as saying.

China's information service sector is averaging 30 percent annual turnover
growth and boasts more than 60,000 businesses employing more than one million
people with an annual sales volume that tops eight billion yuan (900 million
dollars).

However, a chronic lack of communication among government agencies and
different industries, coupled with general mismanagement has blocked the
sector's advance onto the information superhighway.

Addressing a symposium on international cooperation and the information
market, Li said Beijing viewed development of the industry as a prerequisite for
pushing ahead with its economic reform programme.

"Poor information will directly affect economic growth," the vice premier said,
adding that government guidelines for the sector's development included calls
for overall planning, joint construction, unified standards and, most importantly,
the coupling of public and special information networks.

Only 300 of 800 existing databanks in China are currently in operation, of which
only 60 can be said to really serve the public as the others are exclusively aimed
at providing specialised information to the government for policy making
purposes.

The symposium also heard a speech by the vice governor of the central People's
Bank of China, Chen Yuan, who outlined the strategy for the computerisation of
the country's financial sector. The computerisation process is essential to
allowing China's financial industry to compete internationally, Chen said.

He identified the major tasks facing the industry this year as the completion of
the bidding process for the China National Automated Payment System,
expansion of a financial satellite network and the creation of the central bank's
financial management information system.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Secrecy, Jealousy
Blocking China's Entry to Info Superhighway ........ 47 ------------------------------------
---------------------------------------- Source: Agence France Presse English Wire,
10/02/94 Forwarded by: Daluo Jia

China's information service sector may be one of the country's fastest growing
industries, but government secrecy and inter-ministerial jealousy are proving
difficult obstacles to surmount, a report said Sunday.

Turnover growth is now averaging 30 percent annually in the information sector,
which boasts more than 60,000 businesses employing more than one million
people and an annual sales volume of more than eight billion yuan (900 million
dollars).

The main threat to sustained growth comes not, however, from a backward
information infrastructure, but from a chronic lack of communication among
government agencies and different industries which continue to idle on the slip
roads to the information superhighway.

According to the China Daily Business Weekly, each of the central government's
55 ministries has an information centre -- each divorced from the other and
exclusively serving their respective ministries.

These centres store up to 70 percent of all official information available in China,
but 90 percent of the collections are kept secret, the newspaper said.

Only six percent of the total is free to circulate, while the rest either gathers dust
or loses its way in the bureacratic paper mountain.

Although China has the facilities to start up a genuine national database
network, a lack of cooperation and imports of incompatible computers has
hampered the sector's ability to match the growing public demand for
information.

Only 300 of 800 existing databanks are in operation, of which only 60 can be said
to really serve the public as the others are exclusively aimed at providing
information to the government for policy making.

The vast majority of electronic information exchange equipment China has
introduced from abroad in recent years is "useless," the newspaper said, pointing
to the fact that 90 percent of 100,000 electronic mail boxes have been idle since
they were imported from the United states in 1992.

Similarly, China has such equipment as electronic data interchanges (EDIs) and
bulletin board services (BBSs), but they are largely rendered obsolete by the fact
that different networks are delinked from each other.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Introduction to
China Education and Research Network ................ 158 ------------------------------------
---------------------------------------- Forwarded by: Cindy Zheng
Source: CERNET, Beijing, October 1994

1. An Overview

China Education and Research Network (CERNET) is the first nation-wide
education and research computer network in China, which is presently under
construction. The CERNET project is funded by the Chinese government and
directly managed by the Chinese State Education Commission. It will connect all
the universities and institutes in China in the near future and will connect high
schools, middle schools, primary schools and other education and research
entities by the end of this century. Furthermore, it will link to the global Internet
and will become a major part of the China Internetcommunity. The CERNET
project will greatly improve the education and research infrastructure in China
and train network experts as well as experienced network end users. In a word, it
will help to boost China's education, research and economic developments.

2. The Objectives of the CERNET Project

The main objective of the CERNET project is to establish a nation-wide education
and research network infrastructure to support education and research in and
among universities, institutes and schools in China using the up-to-date
telecommunication and computer techniques. Its specific aims are as follows:
* Establish a nationwide backbone which connects eight regional networks. *
Establish connections to the global Internet. * Set up a national network center
and several regional network centers. * Adopt TCP/IP as the major network
protocol and provide Internet
applications.
* Develop China's information resources and applications.

3. The Organization of the CERNET Project

The CERNET organization structure is as follows:
* The CERNET Administration Board
This is the highest level of the CERNET organization, which, composed of
government officials, is in charge of policy making. * The CERNET Technical
Board
This is the technical administration board for the planning, designing,
implementation and updating of the network. * The National Network Center
This is the entity responsible for the backbone construction, execution,
maintenance, management and operation. It is also in charge of CERNET
information resources.
* The Regional Network Nodes
These are the regional network service centers, which undertake the role of
providing the necessary connections and services for linking the campus network
of each university/institution to the interface of the CERNET backbone.

4. The Strategies of CERNET Planning

* Centralized planning and decentralized implementation. * Based on the
open/standard principle, adopting TCP/IP as the major
network protocol.
* Strategically supporting the promotion of the regional network nodes and
the construction of campus networks.
* Centralized management and operational control of the backbone and
decentralized management and control of regional networks.

5. The CERNET Structure

CERNET has a three-layer hierarchy (the nation-wide backbone, regional
networks and campus networks).
* The network center is located at Tsinghua University, Beijing. * The backbone
nodes are set in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing,
Xi'an, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenyang.
* The network implementation uses a multiple ring topology, which provides
redundant paths between any two backbone nodes. The backbone nodes are
interconnected by intelligent routers.
* The digital data network (DDN) provided by the Ministry of the Post and
Communication and/or some telecommunication corporations will be used as
the basic communication carrier. The data transmission rate starts at 64 Kbps to
2.048 Mbps (E1) in the first implementation phase. The public data network will
be used as the backup channel. * There will be one to three links to the global
Internet, each with a data
transmission rate greater than or equal to 64 Kbps. The planned remote nodes
will be located in north America, Asia and Europe.

6. The Major Applications of CERNET

CERNET is a TCP/IP based network and will support all the Internet
applications, which include:
* Communication between people - email, usenet news, talk, mbone, etc. *
Obtaining information - anonymous ftp, archie, gopher, WWW, etc. * Using
computers - telnet, client/server systems, etc.

The application research and development will focus on the Chinese
environment and the establishment of the local information resources, as well as
on multimedia communication and computer collaboration.

7. The Scale of CERNET

In mainland China, there are 1,090 universities, 390,000 professors and staff
members, 94,200 graduate students and 2,184,000 undergraduate students. More
than 100 campus networks will be connected to CERNET in two years, each of
which will, on average, consist of more than 1,000 computers. The rest of the
universities and institutes will be connected to CERNET in five years.

Following that, more than 39,412 middle schools with 55,120,000 students and
160,000 primary schools with 122,000,000 pupils will also be linked to CERNET.

Since China has the largest population, CERNET will be the largest education
and research network in the world.

8. The CERNET Implementation Phases

In the first phase (1994-1996), the national network center, ten regional network
nodes, the nation-wide backbone and the global Internet connection will be
established. There will be more than 100 universities and institutes connected to
CERNET in this implementation phase.

In the second phase (1997-2000), CERNET will connect all the universities,
institutes, thousands of middle schools, primary schools and other education and
research entities in China. The data transmission rate of the CERNET backbone
will be increased, new technology will be adopted and new applications will be
available to most of the people in the education and research community.

9. Summary

The global Internet has now become an ever so powerful information carrier in a
lot of countries. However, at present, only very few campus networks in China
are connected to the global Internet. The CERNET project, as the first
government-supported and nation-wide education and research network, will
change this situation in the next few years. Due to the huge population in China,
CERNET will dramatically increase the number of users in the Internet
community.

China's economy has been growing very fast in recent years and China is
becoming more and more open to the outside world. This has made the CERNET
project possible and absolutely necessary. This nation-wide project can serve as
the communication and resource infrastructure for education and research in
China and link Chinese professors, researchers and students to the global
Internet. It will train China's future telecommunication, network and computer
professionals and other kinds of experts in all areas. It can also function as a
showcase of the leading edge technology. We sincerely welcome universities,
organizations and enterprises from China and abroad to cooperate with CERNET
to build this largest education and research network on earth.

For further information, please contact:

Wu Jian Ping
Head of the CERNET Technical Board
Professor of the Computer Engineering Department Tsinghua University, Beijing
100084, China Tel. 86-1-2595931
Fax: 86-1-2595933
jianping@cernet.edu.cn

Li Xing
Member of the CERNET Technical Board
Professor of the Electronic Engineering Department Tsinghua University, Beijing
100084, China Tel. 86-1-2595931
Fax: 86-1-2595933
xing@cernet.edu.cn.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Some Points of
Interest on the Web .................................. 107 --------------------------------------------------
-------------------------- Source: HPCwire, Sept. 14, 1994
Forwarded by: Cindy Zheng

ACADEME THIS WEEK
<http://chronicle.merit.edu:HTTPPORT/.index.html>

This home-page, updated every week, showcases the information available in
Academe This Week. Posted are three- to four-line summaries of all of the articles
in the publication's current hard-copy issue (full text is not available); a current
list of meetings and conferences; a list of deadlines for grant applications, papers
and exchange programs; current facts and figures on public and private
education; classified job listings and information on subscribing to the hard-copy
publication.
___ ___ ___

MARICOPA CENTER FOR LEARNING
<http://hakatai.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/homePage>

This page is a must-see for educators as well as those seeking an education. The
page is created by the Maricopa Center for Learning, a national model for
motivating, infusing and promoting innovation and change in community
college environments. Visitors to the page will find links to other education-
driven sites, tips and tricks for using Mosaic and suggestions on incorporating
computer technology into various curricula. A special bonus is a Mosaic page
building tutorial that guides you step by step through home page creation. The
tutorial is available for Macintosh and Windows. Other helpful Mosaic-related
items include NCSA's Mosaic Macintosh User Guide and NCSA's Mosaic
Microsoft Windows Frequently Asked Question file.
___ ___ ___

NASA ON-LINE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE
<http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/nasa_online_education.html>

Educators looking for science- and space-related materials and programs to use
when firing up thirsty young minds can start at the NASA On-Line Educational
Resource page. Information on programs such as the Shuttle Amateur Radio
Experiment, studying ocean color from space and High Performance Computing
Center K-12 Program -- a pilot program to enhance science and math curricula --
can be found here. Other mind-bending links include Exploration in Education --
electronic picture books -- and the Center For Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics
Outreach.
___ ___ ___

FEDWORLD INFORMATION NETWORK
<http://www.fedworld.gov/>

A find-all point for government information and resources in both the United
States and abroad, this is the home page for the popular FedWorld Bulletin
Board Service. Operated by the U.S. Department of Commerce National
Technical Information Service, this page leads visitors to more than 100 U.S.
information servers, World Wide Web and Gopher clients. The information is
sorted by category.
___ ___ ___

INFORMATION FROM THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE
<http://www.kantei.go.jp/>

Read the latest policy speeches from the Japanese Prime Minister. The speeches
are available in English and Japanese. But even though the server is named
"Information from the Prime Minister's Official Residence," disclaimers posted
throughout warn visitors that the server is "experimental, not official."
___ ___ ___

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES RESOURCE LOCATOR
<http://www.os.dhhs.gov>

This server is the place to go for United States Department of Health and Human
Resources program. Accessible through this site are poverty guidelines, AIDS-
related information; cancer information; contracts and grants from the National
Institute of Health; mortality statistics and information; the Catalog of Federal
Domestic Assistance Programs and searchable abstracts of DHHS program
evaluations and related studies.
___ ___ ___

THE SOLAR SYSTEM
<http://white.nosc.mil/planets.html>

This home page is loaded with solar system images including the sun, moon and
nine planets. It also has links to images of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision
with Jupiter and links to solar system tours. But there's more to this page than
just pretty pictures for the amusement of arm-chair astronauts. Page creator
Richard Bocker, a San Diego physicist has included space weather updates, a file
of eclipse predictions, links to "hot topics" such as the black hole in galaxy M87
and radar images of Earth.
___ ___ ___

THE MICROELECTRONICS RESEARCH CENTER
<http://www.mrc.uidaho.edu/home/home.html>

The Microelectronics Research Center page provides visitors with links into
related areas. There is VLSI information, FPGA information and links to NASA.
Also outlined are specific MRC projects, personnel information and more. MRC
is a NASA space engineering research center and University of Idaho affiliate.
___ ___ ___

BIOLOGY SERVERS
<http://info.er.usgs.gov/network/science/biology/index/html>

If you are looking for the center of the biological universe, this is it. This single
page connects visitors to 114 biological resources in the form of 39 Web servers
and 75 Gopher and library resources. Find anything from the Australian National
Botanic Gardens to the Zimmer Faust Lab at the University of South Carolina.
Stops in between include the School of Biological Sciences at the University of
Cambridge, The Center for Biological and Computational Learning at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Agricultural Library at
United States Department of Agriculture and the Institute of Molecular Virology
at University of Wisconsin.

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