EUNIS97, Grenoble (France) 9-11 September 1997

Ref: 022805

TUM-Net: an Internet/Intranet Project

Veacheslav Sidorenco

Abstract

The background, main objectives, topological particularities, troubles and problems of TUM-Net Project as the University Area Network at Technical University of Moldova are presented.

Technical University of Moldova.

Technical University of Moldova (TUM) is a single technical high education unit of the New Independent State (NIS): Republic of Moldova. During all the period of its history Moldova, been geographically placed between Romania and Ukraine, continue to exists as a basic agriculture-oriented country, having significantly old and traditional wine-making infrastructure and foods industry. During last years of its development Moldovan national economy has been redirected toward modern electronic devices and apparatus industry, microelectronics, industrial and civil building, energetic. In order to cover the needs of various branches of growing national economy in specialists of engineering-oriented profiles TUM is preparing a wide range of scientific and technically skilled people having the technological, energetical, mechanical, radioelectronical, electrotechnical, civil and industrial building, architectural and other knowledge. Great attention is paid now to prepare specialists ready to work in the conditions of free market relations. This is because a number of new specialities include new subjects related to economical aspects of engineering: management, marketing, business etc.

TUM is placed in Chisinau, the green and picturesque capital city of Moldova Republic. Before 1993 TUM has the name and the state of Polytechnic Institute of Chisinau. The campus of TUM is divided into next four regions, displaced in different parts of Chisinau:

• Northern - placed at the northern periphery of Chisinau and formed from relatively new modern buildings. This part is planned to become main TUM place.
• Western - placed in the old building in western part of Chisinau's centre and been main administrative establishment of TUM.
• Central - placed also in an old building in the centre of Chisinau.
• Southern - placed in a new microregion of south part of Chishinau.

The development of integrated information service for all regions of TUM becomes an acute problem and real up to date necessity.

Current state of information services

Computer and information systems (CIS) used at TUM must be studied from both historical and economical points of view. Polytechnic Institute of Chisinau was formed, mainly developed and equipped during historical period of Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic as part of former USSR (1944-1990). During last period of Moldovan independence governmental support of TUM's technical infrastructure development significantly decreased in amount and now is practically stopped. The current state of CIS at TUM can be characterised by:

• old and very old computers used, great part of which been produced in exUSSR as copies of IBM/XT's clones: ISKRA-1030, NEIRON I9-66, ES-1840/41; or DEC's LSI-11 clones: ELECTRONICA-60, 85. Another part has been built by second PC/XT/AT producers from Asian states (China, Taiwan and other). Such kind of computers cannot be used for modern Windows-oriented software packages.
• the absence of mainframes and powerful servers/workstations platforms. The biggest machine is SM-1420 (very old Soviet copy of DEC's PDP-11 mini-machine);
• very insufficient quantity of computers used: every PC is extracharged by collective form of personal computers using with strong time scheduling and queuing. A very hard task consists in providing of individual students work;
• mostly stand alone using of computers without any kind of networking;
• significantly far distance displacement of faculties: Northern, Central and Southern TUM's regions resides at the distances of 2 to 6 km one from another without any kind of electronic data communications;
• lack of sufficient Internet connectivity for mass teaching, learning and individual using by students and staff. The first Internet connection was made by "utm.md " domain via Moldavian/Romanian branch of European Academic and Research Network (MD/ROEARN - "mdearn.cri.md") based on the very slow coaxial cable connection between Moldova and Romania at only 9.6 Kbps. This branch is used only for dial-up e-mail service and cannot serve for serious web online browsing [1].

The main impacts of computer and information systems used at TUM are caused by next external factors:

• difficult economic situation of Moldova's transition period as a tiny independent state;
• extremely small state budget allocations invested year-by-year in all education's branches;
• practical impossibility to allocate budget for technical information service improvement and modern reequipment of higher education;
• impossibility to get help from the Moldovan state industry, which is also in serious economic troubles.
• practical absence of new private industry, interested in making investigations in and/or support of technical higher education in Moldova;
• near-to-zero presence of powerful Western Europe and USA industry collaboration with Moldova's economical infrastructure due to inconvenient conditions for foreign investors;
• very small support from higher education units of developed countries due to consequence of political insulation of Moldova as part of exUSSR in past and informational and economical insulation of Moldovan education from the rest of the educational world at present;
• main activity of foreign foundations in Moldova capable to support education needs are not oriented toward helping technical education development. Their programs include support only for language, art, culture, and journalistic projects, which are also important but not directly for TUM.

Networking: TUM-Net Project

Partial solving of the above mentioned problems is planned to be made by a series of consequential CIS improvement projects and, first of all, by the TUM-Net project, which has next main architecture, hardware and functionality subjects of tasks:

• increasing of the number and the diversity of computers used. The equipment of every faculty becomes to be on the responsibility of faculty's deans, their adjunct staff and chiefs of education departments.
• local integration of computing resources via building of local area computer subnetworks for teaching, library and administrative purposes. Local area networks must be preferably made on the base of Intranet conceptions in order to be easily and natur ally connected to Internet resources when the conditions of their availability will become reality. From this point of view, all local servers are planned to be equipped by computers, capable to run Microsoft Windows NT (Open NT for UNIX applications) operating system as most appropriate and fast growing modern Intranet/Internet platform, supporting TCP/IP protocols.
• integration of local area distributed information system's resources of TUM into University Area / Metropolitan Area Network (UAN/MAN). In order to implement this task a number of information transport channels is need to be built/leased. On the first stage of project conventional copper telephone lines are planned to be mounted. On the next stages is planned to improve connectivity by using radiochannels or optical channels. The problem of in-regional and between-regional routing is also planned to be solved on the open architecture platform. On the first stage of TUM-Net project a star-topology of UAN Intranet will be realised.
• connection of regional Intranets to Internet accesses points in Moldova. On the star topological schema all links will be concentrated to the MoldNET access point's router placed at the Faculty of Computers, Informatics and Microelectronics.
• introduction of new Internet-related and Internet technologies based curricula.

The local integration will be made by faculty-level subprojects, implemented on the independent base by computer science specialists from every faculty. The interfaculty integration is expected to be constructed by the team of university-level specialists, using the Moldovan Telecom's leased lines under special agreement.

The most important part of the project: relatively fast Internet connection - is based on the new educational branch of Internet in Moldova: MoldNET - Academic and Research Network of Moldova. This network covers the next IP addresses range: 193.219.21 5.0 - 193.219.215.127. The upper layer of Internet access to MoldNET is ready to be used now and the other parts are under construction. MoldNET creation and maintenance was proposed and supported by Moldovan department of International Soros Foundation ( ISF) (having next domains: "moldnet.md", "soros.moldova.su").

The main MoldNET server now is connected via 64 Kbps cosmic satellite line provided by "taide.net" branch with Stockholm's Internet access node. A local switch makes star-distribution of the main satellite line via 128 Kbps radiomodem-based equipment and lines between next end-points in Chisinau city:

• Soros Foundation , Moldova, Open World Society ("moldnet.md" - 193.219.215.18);
• Academy of Sciences of Moldova ("acad.moldnet.md" - 193.219.215.75);
• State University of Moldova ("univ.moldnet.md" - 193.219.215.83);
• Technical University of Moldova ("poli.moldnet.md" - 193.219.215.91);
• Academy of Economical Studies ("econ.moldnet.md" - 193.219.215.99);

On the above figure the general topology of TUM-Net together with the main Internet access nodes are presented. The figure shows that TUM-Net can be characterised by significant territorial distribution of information service resources and clients. It must be viewed and treated as a metropolitan area network (MAN).

Numerical marks, placed near projections of TUM's buildings have next significance:

1. Faculty of Computers, Informatics and Microelectronics
2. Faculty of Industrial Construction
3. Faculty of Energetic
4. Faculty of Light Industry
5. Faculty of Engineering and Management in Machine-Building
6. Faculty of Engineering and Management in Mechanics
7. Faculty of Radioelectronics
8. Faculty of Technology and Management in Food Industry
9. Faculty of Urbanistics and Architecture

A - is main Administrative building of TUM, having the residency of rector and staff service.

Lib - is main TUM's library.

Two of nine faculties support the main responsibility for TUM-Net implementation, management and providing. The first is the Faculty of Computers, Informatics and Microelectronics together with the University Computer Centre, equipped with radiomodem connection node to MoldNET and cable connection node to ROEARN, having powerful HP-UX - based server and star - distribution equipment for TUM-Net connectivity support. The second is the Faculty of Radioelectronics, which is placed in two central regions of TUM, which is responsible for connectivity maintaining tasks and for making practical and laboratory networking students training work.

For today only one ray of TUM-Net star is practically realised and is working: the link between Northern and Western regions is implemented via leased cooper underground line and a pair of external modems. This link is dedicated only for the administrative using by TUM's Rectory Computer Centre LAN and the respective infrastructure. Students and teaching stuff don't have access to above resources. The rest of TUM-Net is under construction now and encounter significant troubles in searching support for leased lines, servers, modems, routing and switching equipment and for financial support of the implementation of this part of project.

Great support can be obtained from IBM Corporation for the Faculty of Radioelectronics, which promised to offer AS/400 machine together with the 15 users places classroom equipment for free in order to make the faculty-level Internet server. Unfortunately, for the long time the sponsorisation for this part of project, concerning the software license purchasing from IBM Corporation cannot be found.

Unit Hengelo Centrum Techniek from ROC Oost-Nederland has supported the Faculty of Radioelectronics by a pair of 28.8 Kbps internal "Bullet" modems, which can be used at the first steps of connectivity establishing between Northern and Central regions of TUM. This throughput is very far from to be enough for the purposes of 2 to 3 LANs Internet providing but is much more than nothing.

Nevertheless TUM-Net project continue to be realised. Now Internet-related subjects has been introduced in the curricula of modern telecommunications studies for the specialities of the Faculty of Radioelectronics and are teached off-line in the frame of LAN:

• Internet structure, management and services;
• HTML language basics and WWW services programming;
• JAVA programming course (under projection).

In order to improve the efficiency of the TUM-Net management, maintenance and monitoring a Geoinformation System (GIS) based Telecommunication Management Network System is under projection now. The network topology is reflected onto the database of the electronic maps used as background and provided by MapInfo Professional v.4.01 package. Network structure, current states of lines and network elements will be continuously monitored by active distributed network agents (sniffers) [2]. MapInfo Package is also planned to be used for exceptional events signalling and for statistics of network events displaying on the network topology base. It can be notified, that figures of current report was made by means of MapInfo package.

Conclusion

The success of implementation of TUM-Net project as an open window into the infinite world of information is based on the efforts and enthusiasm of future users and is highly conditioned by the possibility to get real international help and assistance. And the role of EUNIS as experience exchange and international collaboration organisation is expected to be very fruitful on this road.

References

1. Staicut E., Macri G., Toia A. RNC Project -Bridging European and International Research Networks Access to Romanian Users. Proceedings of JENC7 Networking Conference "Networking in the Information Society". Budapest, Hungary, May 13-16, 1996. TERENA. Amsterdam, 1996. P. 176-1 - 176-10.

2. Sidorenco V. Intellectual Distributed Agents in the Management of National Telecommunications. Proceedings of the Scientific and Technic Conference on the Radioelectronics. Technical University of Moldova, Chisinau, November 21-22, 1996. P. 108.

Technical University of Moldova, Stefan cel Mare 168, 2004 Chisinau, Moldova
e-mail: svv@cinf.usm.md
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7656/