DANTE Presentation : RIPE meeting
 	Friday 17th September 1993

Howard Davies, General Manager of DANTE, gave a presentation of the
company, its current activities, and future plans.  A summary of the
presentation is as follows:

1.Following extensive discussions within RARE, and with particular
relation to the need to provide continuity of services established by
the COSINE Project, the basic structure of a new organisation which
would take responsibility for the provision and management of
international network services for the academic and research community
was proposed in a document RTowards a Single European InfrastructureS,
the Final Report RARE Task Force on the Establishment of the Operational
Unit (commonly known as the Green Book) which was published in January
1992. 

2.Following widespread agreement in principle with the proposals
contained in the Green Book, a group of 12 European national research
networks signed a RHeads of AgreementS which defined in outline the
legal structure of a non-profit company in which all members of the
group would be shareholders.  A draft Shareholders Agreement has since
been produced which specifies the internal procedures of the company in
full detail. 

3.Because the Shareholders Agreement is necessarily complex and has to
be approved by many countries which have different legal systems, final
agreement on its contents necessarily takes a long time.  In order to
make progress more quickly, RARE agreed to purchase an off-the-shelf UK
company (which was named Operational Unit Limited) as an interim
measure.  The company name was subsequently changed to DANTE (Delivery
of Advanced Network Technology to Europe Limited).  DANTE is still
wholly owned by RARE but ownership will be transferred to the national
networks as soon as the Shareholders agreement has been finalised. 

4.DANTE was formally launched on 5 July 1993 in Cambridge, UK, where it
has established its offices. 

5.As of 15 September 1993, DANTE has 4 employees.  This number will
increase to 8 by 15 October 93.  The planned staff complement at the end
of the first year of operation, ie in July 1994, is 12. 

6.DANTEUs Mission Statement is exactly as proposed in the Green Book. 
The full statement is provided as a separate paper available with the
papers available for the RIPE meeting

DANTE has taken over a number of Application Level services from COSINE,
notably the MHS service and management of the PARADISE Project.  There
is also a software portfolio (EXPLODE, FORTRESS) which may be exploited.

7.The most important DANTE services are however the network level
services.  DANTE is taking responsibility for the EMPB service (operated
by Unisource Business Systems) which has been operational for some time;
the 2 Mbps native IP component of the service completed all aspects of
its acceptance test on 2 September 1993.  DANTE will combine
transatlantic connections and an interconnection with Ebone with EMPB as
the European backbone to provide a packaged EuropaNET service which
offers full connectivity with the global Internet.  Interconnection with
Ebone under an agreement valid until the end of 1993 provides
intercontinental access at present.  DANTE will have its own
transatlantic capacity from the beginning of 1994 and expects to use the
proposed distributed GIX as a means on interconnection with Ebone 2,
EUnet and other services from mid-1994. 

8.DANTE is examining a number of aspects of high speed service planning.
The extension of the EMPB service to 4/8 Mbps would provide a short term
increase in available capacity.  Many new applications however require
an order of magnitude increase in bandwidth and the possibility of
introducing a 34 Mbps service is being examined.  Several technologies
are in principle available to support such services - native IP, ATM
(with IP over ATM) and SMDS are all being considered - but the lack of
availability of lines or other PTO services inhibits progress. 
Developments within programmes such as tenibc and the HPCN initiative
will also be followed.