The Network Services Conference, Pisa, Italy, 3-5 Nov. 1992.

By Daniel Pimienta,
[email protected]

This event was organized by EARN Europe, in conjunction with EUnet/EurOpen, NORDUnet, RARE & RIPE. It is fully dedicated to services and user oriented matters.

The event reflects a profound and historical evolution: facing the slowing of growth and the emergence of national and regional backbones, EARN has to face the challenge of a drastic switch, from a network resource manager, into a user group association.

Participants felt the premises of the global library birth; thanks to presentation and demos on World-Wide-Web, WAIS, Gopher, Archie, Alex or Prospero; and on the Hyper-G, Soft Pages and PegUn projects (freewares aiming, in different fashions and perspectives, to hide the network complexity, while giving a unique interface access to various sources of data spread within the Matrix).

Heavy-weight software or LAN makers (MicroSoft, Lotus, Novell) demonstrated they start taking seriously the e-mail mass market by investing in multi-platforms interfaces and by trying to standardize application interfaces.

PC based network interfaces freeware are coming into the picture, trying to open an easy network access for casual users, home users, travelling users, and dispersed teams. MULBRI from Union Latina, Trilla from Hungary, the GUI mail from Israel, were presented and demonstrated; other proposals were discussed during the demos.

Pisa conference gave an idea of what may happen next in networking:
-Relieved of the OSI compliance main focus, RARE is able to show its abilities in user group and electronic library management.
-The new global library tools will provide for large increase in bandwidth consumption, thus justifying the fat pipes.

Will the research and academic networks be able to maintain there specificities (and tariff advantages) while the e-mail commercial market is expanding? Will they get blurred into the global commercial offerings?

The answer is no more exclusive to data communication specialists: the time is coming for information specialists (librarians) to take the lead and preserve the research networks advance.

Meanwhile, the third world countries are still in the previous phase, trying to generalize e-mail usage and looking for solutions to face telecommunication costs. The new global information tools, even though required, could become a headache for their network managers who are still struggling to dispose of enough bandwidth to satisfy national e-mail requirements. Furthermore, the possible evolution into toll research networks represents an unacceptable menace for the researchers from the South who would feel an unjustice to pay for what their industrial countries colleagues had free for more than 10 years...