THE AmIUG BULLETIN local electronic publication of the Armenian Internet Users Group June 13, 1996 * * * * * * * * * Vol. 1, No. 2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE AmIUG BULLETIN is a bimonthly newsletter of the Armenian Internet Users Group composed of timely information about Internet-related events and services in Armenia, Armenian Internet Users Group updates, summaries of Internet news from Armenia, the international press, and announcements of relevant conferences, seminars, and workshops. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IN THIS ISSUE... Internet in Armenia by Igor Mkrtoumian, email imkrtoum@aua.am 1. Beginning Internet services started in Armenia by and several computing centers and private enterprizes. They were running UUCP hosts and providing email services to armenian users. Later they started providing on-line Internet services. In 1993 there was a demand to create the national TLD and receive the rights of its management. That was not an easy task and we were able to do that with the help of ISOC. The role of ISOC in Internet development in Armenia can not be overestimated. The ISOC invited the representative of Armenia to INET'93 and INET'95 Workshop and Conference and paid all expenses. Methodical help and consultations of L. Landweber, J. Postel, L. Press, D. Karrenberg, Geert Jan De Groot and others permitted to organise armenian internet users and receive the rights of domain management. I also want to emphasise the outstanding role of the Workshop for developing countries and its organisers, George Sadowsky and Jo Ann Scott. In 1994 armenian internet users have met in order to found an armenian internet users group, start AM TLD and receive the rights of domain management on behalf of that group. The initiative group called the AmIUG foundation conference with the presence of existing service providers, academic and research institutes and universities as well as commercial organisations. AmIUG was registered by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia as a public non-profit organisation with the following aims: - performing functions of the national NIC, - development of recommendations for national communication infrastructure, - coordination of ISP and users, - presentation of armenian internet users in international organisations. One of the most important and urgent need of Armenia was to create a scientific network providing an access of scientific and research community to the Internet. It would help armenian scientists and researchers to communicate with colleagues and information data bases in all the world. Bad state of local communication infrastructure and PTT lines didn't permit to rely on them and forced to seek another solution. During discussion of possible ways of connection to Internet it was recommended to choose wireless modem connection within the Yerevan city and surrounding districts. It will bring immediate results without much investments. Two problems should have been solved in Armenia: - Improvement of Armenia connectivity to Internet by a 64 Kbps satellite link - Connection of Armenian academic and research institutions to that channel The first task was solved due to the funds of HAYASTAN foundation who provided the necessary financial support for purchasing and installation of the antenna. The antenna was installed at the Yerevan Physics institute. The second task was solved due to funds given by Ministry of Economy for purchasing CYLINK wireless modems and connecting National Academy of Sciences (NAS) research institutes to YERPHI's antenna. 2. Routine The functions of national NIC are performed by the AmIUG. They include: - Domain name registration - Maintaining a consistent AM TLD - Updating zone information - Service providers coordination Regular procedure for opening a new second level domain is an application according to RIPE templates, which is considered at the AmIUG council meeting. The names are confirmed or changed according to the adopted rules. Requests for IP addresses are sent by users to a chosen ISP. After receiving addresses and filling the zone changes they are sent to the AM TLD zone holder, which is RADIO-MSU.NET in Moscow, who changes the zone information. The AmIUG plans to transfer AM TLD zone to one of the armenian name servers. The only obstacle is the absence of the national backbone and good communication links between armenian ISPs. The AM TLD NIC (nic.am) is run by E. Ter-Danieliantz on aic.net.The NIC is run on the voluntary basis without funding though in the nearest future the models described in [1, 2] will be considered for reimbursement. 3. Major ISPs in Armenia Usual services provided by ISPs: - UUCP - connection for email - Terminal On-line connection of dial-up users for Internet connection - IP connection of end user computers through dedicated lines, as well as LANs with a provision of corresponding IP addresses. There are four ISP's in Armenia: * Yerevan Physics Institute running YERPHI.AM second level domain with WWW server www.yerhi.am. The main host is Sun Sparc 5 with SunOS 4.2.4. YERPHI possess an earth station KEDR-M and a satellite antenna with a 4.8 m dish. Operating frequencies are: transmitting - 6200 Mhz, receiving - 3875 MHz. The operation rate is 64 Kbps, upgradable to 4096 Kbps. The external routing is performed by CISCO 2501 router which routes data to DESY (Hamburg, Germany) and Moscow State University. Internal routing of low and middle rate communication lines is done by Telebit Netblazer. Data from YERPHI to DESY is transferred through a russian retransmitting satellite RADUGA. The antenna and its installation were paid by the "Hayastan" foundation. The monthly fee for renting the channel, is paid by DESY and from NATO grants. It was planned that the antenna will serve armenian scientific and research networks. It can be said that YERPHI is a national scientific data carrier. At present it is not serving commercial data. YERPHI has strong ties with European physics, namely Moscow Kurchatov's institute, CERN and DESY(Germany) and benefits from their scientific and financial aids. YerPhI's equipment and satellite antenna permits to upgrade to 4Mbps channel. It will permit in future the connection to European Backbone. Recently YerPhI had installed a new scientific network backbone based on ARLAN-640 wireless bridges. Several universities and institutions will be connected to the Internet through that backbone. * National Academy of Science running SCI.AM second level with www.sci.am web server. NAS is running a scientific network connecting 42 research institutes of the NAS. The traffic is routed by CYLINK wireless modems to Internet through YERPHI's antenna. The main host is 486 PC with Lynux. There are three clusters of research institutes. The institutes within clusters are connected in a LAN. The clusters are connected by CYLINK wireless modems to a central router which is connected to YERPHI's satellite antenna. Burakan astrophysical observatory within the SCI domain which is 30 km away from Yerevan is linked to the NAS LAN by CYLINKs and operates very reliable. * Armenian Information Company (ARMINCO) running four second level domains: ARMINCO.COM ARMINCO.AM AIC.NET AIC.AM ARMINCO has many profiles of business, including Internet service providing, financial services, software development, PC marketing, etc. Its network is called AICNET (Armenian Internet Company Network). ARMINCO/AICNET now holds primaries for 10 domains,namely: aic.net, arminco.com, aaip.org, ipg.am, arminco.am, aic.am nk.am, matenadaran.am, mil.am, nic.am and secondaries for: am and aua.am. ARMINCO is a commercial service provider. They are renting a 19.2 Kbps channel from IASNET, member of ROSPAC(Russia) and 38.4 Kbps from INFOCOM. In addition, they are connected to STNET and are exclusive dealers of Global TeleSystems Group and Sovam Teleport. They have the following services on their machines: Arminco Online and Arminco UUCP on ARMINCO.COM, Pentium running Solaris 2.5, Sun SPARCstation 5/110 running Solaris 2.5: network control, Pentium running FreeBSD: Web Services, Pentium running FreeBSD: FTP services, Pentium running REX400: X.400 services. Few months ago ARMINCO extended its presense to the central Yerevan area by installing network equipment at the Arminco Office near the Eritasardakan subway station. It is linked to the Zeytoon NOC via 2 57kbps links, with effective speed up to 128kbps. There is also large LAN in the ARMENPRESS building (about 30 computers), designed and maintained by ARMINCO. ARMINCO is one of two commercial Internet services in Armenia and has many years of practice in providing Internet services. They work hard and are user oriented. They manage to work with profit in a very difficult business situation in Armenia. They are serving more than 400 users, most of them organisations. Their service provider is (SOVAM Teleport). Connection to ARMINCO can be by dedicated telephone line rented from local PTT or by ARMINCO owned cables. ARMINCO is also laying its own cables providing up to 57.6 Kbps transfer rate. CYLINK connection can provide maximum rate limited by the capability of external channel. ARMINCO is connected to the "Orbita" earth station is situated in the outskirts of Yerevan. The main building of Arminco is connected to the earth station by a high-speed cable. * INFOCOM running AMILINK.NET is another commercial service provider, previously known in Armenia as X.25 service provider with X.25 link to SPRINT. INFOCOM is chosen by the Ministry of Communications as national commercial data carrier and is given exclusive rights for that. National data carrier can grant sublicenses to other commercial ISP on proposed conditions. INFOCOM rents a 64 Kbps channel from Teleglobe (Canada) and 20 Kbps channel to GlasNet from Russia. INFOCOM's main building with 5ESS station is connected to "Orbita" earth station by CYLINK wireless modems working at frequency 902-928 Mhz. 4. Other domains Besides ISP's there are following domains in Armenia: * AUA.AM of the American University of Armenia with www.aua.am web server. The main host is AT486 with FreeBSD The AUA is connected by a leased line and 9.6 Kbps Zyxel modems to ARMINCO. The university is seeking the possibility to improve its connectivity to Internet by wireless radibridges to YERPHI's satellite antenna and 64 Kbps channel. * NK.AM of Nagorno-Karabakh with www.nic.nk.am web server. * SEUA.AM of the State Engineering University of Armenia. Several new domains will start operations soon. Among them: * MATENADARAN.AM of the National Library of Manuscripts * MIL.AM of the Ministry of Defence * IPG.AM of the International Programmers Guild * MEDLIB.AM of the National Medical and State University Libraries 5. Prices Commercial ISP are usually providing their services under following conditions: email - 5-10 cents per 1 Kbytes of data on-line Internet - $6 per hour. Usual prices in Armenia for renting an IP port on an ISP terminal server are: $350-500 for 9600 bps channel $500-700 for 19200 bps channel $950-1200 for 64000 bps channel Unfortunately user should also pay 20% of added value (a state tax). 9600 bps rate is achieved on regular leased lines, 19200 bps - on special leased lines, 64000 bps by CYLINK wireless modems or ARLAN radiobridges. (CYLINK's Airlink256 wireless modems provide the speed up to 640 Kbps in half-duplex mode. ARLAN-640 radiobridges provide speed up to 2Mbps. Speed limits are because of the external link). 6. Problems The problems of Internet in Armenia are so common for developing countries that can be rewritten from other sources[3]: - Poor quality of telephone lines and poor communication links within the country - Irregular electric power supply - Potential users are poorly resourced. Another problem is absence of national backbone. The hopchecks between AM subdomains reach 25-30. There is a strong necessity to create a Yerevan MAN, the prototype of the future national backbone. It will permit to improve the effectiveness and reliability of information interchange and use local sites and their connectivity for common benefits. It will sharply increase the number of organisations, connected to the MAN and correspondingly to the Internet, because the main problem in Armenia is a communication link to an ISP. Obtaining licensing and permissions, especially for wireless modems is complicated, time-consuming, and without guarantee. The difference from other developing countries is that Armenia is a country with high scientific and engineering potential so there is no problem in installing and maintaining communication links and networks. But we need to train our specialist for modern communication technologies. 7. Perspective ARMENTEL, the national voice carrier, which is realising a project for improving local PTT lines, promised to provide a fiber optic ring within Yerevan by the end of 1996 and start commercial services. They are installing fiber optic cable connecting all exchange stations. Whether it will become a prototype of a national backbone depends on the prices. 8. Summary Internet connectivity ISPs in Armenia 64 Kbps satellite link to YERPHI - DESY(Germany) root@amsun.yerphi.am 64 Kbps satellite link to SCI - root@pnas.sci.am Teleglobe(Canada) ARMINCO - 19.2 Kbps satellite link to root@arminco.com Sovam(Russia) INFOCOM - 20.0 Kbps satellite link to root@amilink.net Glasnet(Russia) Internet domains in Armenia WWW servers in Armenia yerphi.am www.yerphi.am sci.am www.sci.am aua.am www.aua.am arminco.am www.aic.net aic.am www.nic.am seua.am www.nic.nk.am nk.am ------------ arminco.com aic.net amilink.net AmIUG members: National Academy of Science Yerevan Physics Institute State University of Armenia State Engineering University of Armenia American University of Armenia Medical Institute Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics ARMINCO INFOCOM HYLINK UNDP Armenian Office NOYAN TAPAN Press Agency National Service of Seismic Protection Matenadaran Ministry of Defence International Programmer's Guild Nagorno-Karabakh Arm.Assembley of America NGO Center Reference [1] A. Schachtner, "Financing common infrastructure", INET'95 Conference Proceedings, v. 1, pp587-594 [2] M. Hirabaru, H. Takada, M. Nakayama and J. Murai, "JPNIC: A Country NIC for Administering Common Network Resources and Providing Network Information in Japan", INET'95 Conference Proceedings, v. 1, pp595-604 [3] H. P. Cogle, S. C. Almada, "Eye on Developing Nations. Angola", OnTheInterent, July/August 1995.