Jiri Orsag, Ing., CSc, COnet representative:1994:
Our major goals in the last year comprised extension of our access point network, automation of the registration procedure and improvement of security and reliability of our network.
We completed the construction of our access points in Most and Ceske Budejovice. At present, our network consists of five access points (PRAHA, BRNO, PLZEN, MOST, and CESKE BUDEJOVICE) interconnected by 64Kb/s data circuits. Internationally, we are connected to the Amsterdam Eunet node, again by a 64kb/s data circuit.
Owing to automated and centralized administration of user accounts, our customers are able to use most of our services from any access point.
We put an emphasis on improving security of our network. We implemented a protection of our customers against attacks from outer Internet based on certain weak points of the TCP/IP type protocols. We would like to extend this protection to individual access points this year.
Last year, we developed a set of programs for maintenance and control of Domain Name System (DNS), which is a world-wide distributed namespace administration system. The programs saved us a great amount of work. We use them for the administration of the CZ domain (Czech Republic) and reverse domains for delegated IP address blocks, and for maintenance of our customers' networks. The rule that all our customers have their own DNS records is another investment into Internet security.
We dedicated a great effort to the extension of information services last year. As a result, the outward data transfers to the outer Internet outweighs the inward data transfers for our customers. This situation pleases us as it is still rare in Europe, however, it represents substantial finances devoted by COnet to the publicity of our country.
An important change was the last year's integration of national Eunets into one pan-european internet service provider (or rather a world-wide provider, because Eunet covers North Africa and a great part of Asia as well). Besides organizational and economical changes, the integration is accompanied by an increased interest in joint technical projects and by unification of service quality. Personally, I am very glad that among 31 national Eunets, our network is usually rated 4th or 5th in the periodical evaluation of reliability and network services. The poor quality of switched lines, which forces us to keep a bigger number of lines per customer than it is usual for foreign providers, remains a weak point.
1995:
This year, we would like to add further access points to the existing five ones and to extend our inner infrastructure more substantially. An upgrade of our international line has been ordered, with the aim not to exceed its 60% utilization. In the first half of this year, we will set further information services into operation. These services will be provided in cooperation with our partners either on fully commercial basis or with substantial preference of our customers. During last year, we verified the possibility to operate in the educational sector. The first basic school in the Czech Republic on the Internet is connected via COnet. We would like to show that we can offer quality services at bargain prices even in education.
