APNG-062

APNG-062

1994.12.12

D. Narayan

REPORT on the APNG-DEVELOP Working Group Meeting

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| Mailing List : APNG-Develop@caren.net |

| |

| If you wish to join this working group, send mail to |

| the APNG-Develop Working Group chairperson : |

| Devendra Narayan narayan@caren.net |

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The last meeting of this working group was held at

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China on 28th. November 1994 in

conjunction with the Asia Pacific Networking Group ( APNG )

meeting, also held at the same venue.

This meeting was attended by more than 20 delegates.

First a brief report on the last meeting ( at Prague ) and the

group's activities during the intervening period were presented

by Narayan :

1. Action Items from the Prague Meeting

(a) Narayan will form a mailing list for providing technical

assistance.

** The 'experts@apnic.net ' mailing list has been created and

a few help requests have been answered. Hopefully, more

people will 'shoot' questions to this list.

(b) Suchit Nanda will prepare a document "Low-cost Networking

Solutions".

(c) Ramakrishnan will prepare a document "Satellite Techniques for

Networking".

** Unfortunately, we didn't receive both the above reports in

time for the meeting. Hopefully, some useful information will

be forthcoming soon.

(d) Narayan will create a centralized information server for supporting

developing countries at his site.

** An announcement will be made soon ;-(

2. Discussions at the Beijing Meeting

An Internet Training Workshop was also held immediately prior

to the Beijing APNG meeting at the same venue. This workshop proved

to be a tremendous success but most of the attendees were from China

( the host country ). This and the design for future such workshops

was an issue discussed at some length. As far as the 'Developing

Countries Workshop' held with the annual INET conference is concerned,

the organization and funding issues etc. should best be tackled by

ISOC ( Internet Society ). Narayan ( that's me :-) ) will collaborate

with George Sadowsky as far as the activities in the AP region are

concerned. Prof. Ishida, who is co-ordinating both the INET workshop

and the APNG workshop, will be the overall leader for this effort.

As far as the 'Developing Countries workshop' held alongwith

the APNG meeting in Asia is concerned, the experience in Beijing showed

that it might be difficult for people ( from developing countries )

to travel abroad to attend such meetings. Consequently, at such workshops

most attendees will be from the host country. APNG should consider

holding these workshops in different countries of the region. Another

idea presented was that local people should be trained to be

'Internet teachers' so that they can hold more local workshops at

diverse sites within each country. It would be important to locate

enthusiastic and reasonably experienced local trainers ( Network

Evangelists ! ) in each country and then assist them in arranging

workshops in their own country. Possible ways in which APNG could

assist them are 1. by providing access to relevant training materials

( books, videos, software etc. ) and 2. some experienced APNG members

could volunteer to visit that particular country and assist in the

actual organization / teaching at such workshops.

If anyone in the APNG community is willing to volunteer

his/her time and resources to create such a collection of training

materials, it would be very welcome.

Jeff smith of the 'Bridge to Asia' project introduced his

project in detail. This project is a voluntary effort to assist

Asian scholars in searching for information over the network ( and

beyond ). They have already established local contacts in China

and Hong Kong and have very ambitious plans for other Asian countries.

APNG would collaborate with this group and assist them in expanding

such useful services to other countries in the region. If you are

interested in collaborating with them or for further information on the

project, please contact Jeff Smith ( jasmith@well.sf.ca.us ).

Qiming Li of IHEP/CAS ( liqm@bepc2.ihep.ac.cn ) Beijing explained

about China's plan to establish 2000 satellite earth stations in each

of it's districts to enable network access in the whole of China. He also

expressed Chinese interest in contacting people who have experience

in 'Internet Operations' using satellites. Glenn Mansfield ( glenn@aic.co.jp )

offered to collect some relevant information and provide it to the list.

The next meeting of this working group will be held in

Honolulu, Hawaii just after the INET'95. However, this mailing list

has, in recent times, been very quiet ;-( . Please contribute more

actively, not only to the discussions but also actual efforts in

assisting networks in the developing countries of this region.

Thanks and regards,

Devendra Narayan

Dec. 12th. 1994

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. Devendra Narayan ____ _ _ _____ .

. Information Processing Center, //___ // // // .

. Science University of Tokyo, ____// //__// // .

. .

. E-mail : narayan@sut.ac.jp .

. : narayan@caren.net .

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