WAN MEETING
held at IP Luxembourg 21,22 and 23 May 1997

SUMMARY of MEETING


Participants :
Jean-Paul SchmitIP Luxembourg
Xavier BoschianIP Luxembourg
Jean-Louis PerrinIP Luxembourg
Ianis TreijsIP Riga
Ralf HerrmannIPA+
Didier MartinIP Belgium
Emmanuel RenquinIP Belgium
Mario TorresIntervoz
Eric SanchesIntervoz
Rafael MadrigalAccion IP
Eric DauteloupAccion IP
Mihaela RadulescuIP Roumania
Robert SlezakIP Bratislava
Rudolf KukacIP Praha
Tomek MisiakIP Poland
Attila CzerhatiIP Budapest
Willem SchijfIP Netherland
Robert DoubAdways
Marc FeslerAdways
Philippe HaudecoeurIP France
Bruno SonzogniIP France
Duc Van BuiSP
Michael VoynerHavas Intermediation
Robert BretonHavas Intermediation
Jean-Alain JachietHavas Intermediation
Jean-Michel Beaujour Havas Intermediation


S U M M A R Y


TELECOM

As discussed during the Wan, we will directly contact you concerning the document we would like to dispatch to our actual Telecom providers and two new ones.

Without going into detail, you will find below some general points that we would like to take into consideration, now that we have more than 2 years experience.

For this new offer, we would like to take into account your needs with local connections you may have with IP regional sites (e.g. France, Germany) or customers. We would like to give you the possibility to integrate non-IP companies in this telecom network.

As you can imagine, as soon as we have a lot of sites, the better the discount is. But, it does not mean that you will be obliged to choose our(s) new telecom provider(s) for some local connections.

You all know the advantages of our present network providers:

- supervision of our network 24h/24h
- automatic upgrades
- hardware & software maintenance
- support by Robert & Jean-Alain on your site.. especially when you are away :-)))
but such services are costly. We do understand that you could rather prefer having a specific
supplier for your regional connection(s).

All this long text to let you think about your local needs, and if you would like to integrate new sites in the Telecom bid.


Here is what we are going to do:

- ask Eunetcom to give us a new offer of its actual network + the Equant network
- ask Equant to give us the same offer of its actual X25 network + the Eunetcom network
- contact two other telecom providers for this bid

Concerning services, we would like:

- Supervision stations with point to point control (and not only Pad to Pad)
- Direct PSDN line for maintenance of local equipment
- IDSN (or PSDN) backup line
- Asking for a line availability rate for each site, and automatic penalties when availability
rate is not reached
- A guaranteed response time (ping)
- Customer support in local language
- Fixed prices when moving a site, upgrading / downgrading a line, or closing a site
- Getting any national (and not only international) prices decreases
- Locking all prices increases that some countries may face
- Invoice in Euro
- Statistics documents
- An escalation procedure

We have not forgotten how painful the first telecom installation was and that is why Jean-Michel, Robert, Jean-Alain and Pierre will contact you directly (and your financial department), to make sure that we do cover all needs.

Thanks in advance for your co-operation on the matter and any suggestions are really welcome !


NETWORK POLICY

Vines versions

A global upgrade to Vines version 6.40 should be finished. Seven sites are not yet running it. As mentioned during the Wan, version 7.10 which is on the market since 3 months, seems to be pretty stable and gives us new functionalities such as:

- partition of 16 Go maximum
- long files names with Windows 95
- possibility to limit access on specific servers (Z: drive, routing server)

We will help you to move step-by-step to this version in 1997 and 1998. Product and manual can also be shipped directly to you.

NT

As showed during the Wan, Banyan has two offers (Files & Print Sharing and StreetTalk for NT). For those who have to integrate NT servers (without any Windows NT knowledge), such solutions can be set-up. From performance point of view you have no change compared to a classical Vines.


UNIX

HP9000

Concerning the Disaster Recovery Plan (see hereafter in this document), Jean-Michel Beaujour would like to install when visiting you, a utility software allowing you server performance analysis. Do not hesitate to contact him directly if you would like to test it before his coming.

Linux

For countries which are not running any HP9000, Jean-Michel would like to introduce some Linux machines. Purposes would be:

- to manage DNS locally
- to allow news mirroring from Paris, giving to your users better response time.
- to give a minimum of Unix knowledge, especially if, in the future, you are going to introduce
some HP9000.

For DNS, the minimum configuration is: 486, 33Mhz, 16 Mo Ram, with HD 200 Mo.
For News, memory and disk sizes highly depend on your volume, 32 Mo Ram is recommended, including large disks.

The calendar the visit can be fixed with Jean-Michel directly.


WINDOWS 95

Deadline for Windows 95 installation on all PCs is still January 1998. In priority users having Traffic, Phileas, Peaktime or Adways applications must run W95. Migration to Office 97 is not yet possible. Too many countries are still using 16 bits applications or did not yet migrate to Office 7. Let’s be patient.

Windows 95 OSR2. This version supplied by HP and Toshiba does not seem stable at all (PCs are rebooting during sessions, or loosing configuration). We are still investigating. IP France team solved this trouble by reformatting these PCs, and reinstalling a ‘classical’ Windows 95 version.


Windows NT Station

Officially only 4 PCs inside IP are using this OS at the moment. IP Belgium introduced it as technical solution to run simultaneously Phileas and Watson. Drivers for Vines are available on Corporate-Shared-Files, directory \software\w95. According to Emmanuel Renquin experience, your LAN must have at least one Vines server running version 7 for performance reason, especially with Printers.


BeyondMail

The official version of BeyondMail is: 2.2f. This version is the only one compatible with Vines 7. All needed patches to migrate from BeyondMail 2.2A to 2.2F are available on Corporate-Shared-Files, \Software\mail\beyond2-2\patches. Please contact Robert or Jean-Alain if you need any assistance.

Banyan announced a new version of BeyondMail (3.0). No emergency for 1997. Let’s continue with the actual version, and we will see next year if we need to migrate to such version.


INTERNET / INTRANET KIPLINK

Internet WEB

WANners have some local demand concerning WEB for their customers. The following countries (Portugal, Romania, Spain, Slovak Republic, and later Hungary and Czech Republic) would like:

- for costs reason, having some HTML pages (between 5 and 10) on the future Internet
Havas Intermediation WEB. No transactions are needed.
- a FTP server so that files exchange would be available with external people.
- a generic mail address so that people will be able to receive Internet mails directly into
BeyondMail.
- a root password by domain name could be implemented so that each country would be able to modify
its own environment (and only that one). This technical point has to be verified depending on
the OS version.

Pierre Wagner and Group Communication Department are negotiating the possibility of this ‘external’ WEB.

For those who would like to have and manage their own WEB servers, please contact directly local suppliers. From performance point of view, it may be interesting to have your WEB located in your country by a supplier, some specific users having access to change HTML pages. With this solution we do not open our network to a second point of access to the Internet. One access is complex enough to protect :-))))))

Netscape

Migration to Netscape 3.01 is now possible. For those having licences, software is available on Corporate-Shared-Files@Mis@IPG01, directory \internet\www\netscape\netscape.3_0.


Mail

We still are waiting the new SMTP gateway allowing us 7 and 8 bits messages. You will be notified as soon as Incognito (our supplier) ships it.


Yoda

We will keep you inform concerning this software allowing Vines login via Netscape for files transfer or mail. Software is not yet available on the market, but we will keep you informed.


Firewall

For all needs concerning port access to the firewall, please send a mail directly to Blaise Thauvin, Robert or Jean-Alain. As we told you, we cannot guarantee that your request will be accepted. If the port number you ask for, is not normalised over the Internet, our global security may be in danger.
For each request, we will ask for the ‘green’ light of our external Internet consultant (Hervé Schauer Consultants).


Disaster recovery plan

Jean-Michel Beaujour will contact you directly to set-up DRP with all data he already collected, and will help you on the matter.


Poledit
(Bruno Sonzogni@Informatique@IP France or bsonzogni@email.ip-france.fr)

As you know this W95 software is really powerful to protect PCs configuration, create multiple users environment in the same PC. Software is available on Corporate-Shared-Files, \software\admin\poledit (US version). The manual prepared by Bruno Sonzogni concerning the installation of Poledit iwill be included in the next @ip_help.


Wininstall
(Philippe Haudecoeur@Informatique@IP France or phaudecoeur@email.ip-france.fr)

Software to dispatch application over our network and modify PC configuration automatically. It is running with PC W311 or W95 and Network OS NT, Novell or Vines.

We will keep you informed concerning deployment of this software by IP France (400 licences). Philippe is going to update as test, Netscape from 2.02 to 3.01.

If you would like to have a copy of this software, supplier is ready to give you an evaluation copy.


Company Name: Netdirect
Commercial contact: Mr Dero
Tel: + 32 2 376 52 64
Fax: + 32 2 376 09 85
http://www.netdirect.be
Official prices are:
For 50 users: 3.725 FF
For 100 users : 6.625 FF
For 250 users: 15.550 FF
Annual support: 1.500 FF

We will have a specific discount if we reach 1000 licences. Due to the fact we are using Vines, we already negotiated that we do not pay a licence per server in addition to users licences. None can ‘really’ know where users can be logged if you have multiple Vines servers on your LAN and they have accepted this :-)))


Traffic Analysis with ECOSCOPE

Ecoscope allows us to analyse traffic application by application, performance, etc. via software probes running on Windows 95. This software will largely be used in the coming weeks for access control or to generate statistics. Robert and Jean-Alain will provide you a manual for the software installation.

Willem was the first one to ask this software to control Internet access. So, if you do not mind, dear Wanners :-)))), we will start with the Netherlands. And as soon as Willem has finished his analysis, we will be able to give you access to it. If you have already in mind some dates, please send us a mail.
Thank you for your comprehension !

Software compression utility for HP3000, HP9000, Sybase, Oracle, etc ....

Robert will keep you fully informed concerning different tests he is performing with this software. We could gain quite a lot in response time with our client/server or text applications over LAN or WAN connections.


Fax Mailing
(Rafael Madrigal@Accion IP@IP Spain, Eric Dauteloup@Accion IP@IP Spain
or rmadrigal@email.accion-ip.es or edauteloup@email.accion-ip.se)


Solution integrating PrismaFax software and an external provider (ViaFax). Decrease bill (you pay only completed fax transmission), allows to split the bill by cost centre, and you have a discount with international faxes.

Rafa gave you contact names and phones numbers in some countries. If you need some information do not hesitate to contact ‘the 1996’ Karting Champion team (IP Spain)’ or ourselves.

ViaFax France : Bernard Barbieri : + 33 1 42 21 74 61
ViaFax Belgium / Luxembourg: Isabelle Lambeau : + 02 727 13 71

Robert / Jean-Alain
June 1997