Connectivity Providers Database

From: H.Wang@BRADFORD.AC.UK To: Multiple recipients of list CHINANET <CHINANET@TAMVM1.BITNET> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 15:53:47 GMT Frequently Asked Questions on Networking in Mainland China ( FAQ-NMC ) (based on a posting by Qiang Alex Zhao <azhao@cs.arizona.edu> Dept of Computer Science, Univ of Arizona, Tucson) 1. Why I Must NOT E-mail to China? 2. What Is the Present Status of Networking in Mainland China? 3. Is There Any Information in the Public Domain? 4. Did Anyone Ever Receive Any E-mail from Mainland China? 1. Why I Must NOT E-mail to China? While reading this FAQ, always keep in mind that e-mail messages are not welcome in China, with good reasons: a. The person in China cannot afford the cost for sending and receiving your e-mail. b. Therefore you won't get any response at all, and it is possible that your message will not reach the person you want to contact. From GEAND@educ.umass.edu (G. Ernest Anderson): Chinanet is very small, and VERY EXPENSIVE. Costs are 8000 Yuan to join, 2000 Yuan per month maintenance, and 10 Yuan per KILObyte of information sent OR RECEIVED. For comparison, the average Professor's salary in PRC is 150 Yuan per month. This explains why some Internet information Qian Tian Bai wanted is being sent by regular mail rather than E-Mail. Those of us who view Internet as a big, free resource need to realize that casual communications elsewhere, and especially to China, may NOT be welcome by the recipient because of the cost. From: "Herman J. Woltring" <UGDIST@nici.kun.nl> : As an editor of campus magazine with a special report on network connection to mainland China, I tried very hard to find out any possibly way for sending e-mails to there. I got help from kind netters, from whois database, knowing that CANET(Chinese Academic Network) users actually have e-mail access with Internetter. So I contacted Mr. Qian, the administative contact of CANET via e-mail and personal letter. Finally, I got response after Mr. Qian got my personal letter. (Now, people in Taiwan can mail letters to mainland China indirectly, via Hong Kong.) Mr. Qian gave me some introduction of CANET, and eventually mentioned the main problem is lack of funds, so people on CANET have to pay fees for both receiving and sending e-mail abroad. In this case, after you reading this message, PLEASE DON'T TRY TO SEND E-MAILS TO MR. QIAN ASKING ABOUT FURTHER DETAIL, SINCE I CAN NOT MAKE SURE MR. QIAN ALSO HAVE TO PAY FEE FOR HIS E-MAIL OR NOT. I am afraid the mail flood will cause another big problem to him. Thank you. From mte152s@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au: China is connected to internet via University of Karlsruhe in Germany. However, one has to pay to send and RECEIVE e-mail in China (small by Western standdard but expensive for Chinese), therefore, except you know someone there and willing to pay the fee. The users there will generally not respond. E-mail is commonplace in the affluent West, but a previlege in China. IMPORTANT YOUR MAIL TO CHINA MAY COST THE RECEIVER THERE MORE ooooooooo THAN HE/SHE COULD AFFORD AND RESULT IN DIFFICULTIES IN HIS/HER PERSONAL LIFE, AS IT IS VERY LIKELY THAT THE CHINESE HAS TO PAY THE COST FOR SENDING AND RECEIVING THEM 2. What Is the Present Status of Networking in Mainland China? Several introductory papers are available, the best one is that written by F.F. Kuo. ----First -------------------- NETWORKING IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC) by Franklin F. Kuo, SRI International At the invitation of the China Institute of Communications, the Citizen Ambassador Program of People to People International arranged a visit for a delegation of professionals in telecommunications and networking technology to the People's Republic of China. I was the leader of the delegation, whose purpose was to exchange information and solidify contacts with Chinese professionals within the computer and communications industry. The exchange focussed on topics dealing with China's telecommunications infrastructure, especially on subjects relating to current research and applications in computer networks. This group, known as the Networking Technology Delegation, consisted of 24 members, with 18 professionals, and 6 accompanying spouses. Of the 24 there were 17 people from the US, 5 from Japan (2 US citizens residing in Tokyo) one from Germany, and one from Hong Kong, so it was truly an international group. Six members of the delegation were native Chinese speakers, which made it very convenient in our travels. The itinerary for our trip was as follows: May 11-15, 1992 Beijing May 15-19, Xi'an May 19-22, Shanghai May 22-24, Hong Kong Our professional visits concentrated on telecommunications and on computer networking. We visited a number of the major research institutes and universities in Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai. In all three cities there was a lot of interest in computer networking, especially in the Internet, and how to connect to it. Another question that frequently came up was the future of OSI vs that of TCP/IP. There are a lot of local area networks in operation in China, connecting many PC-clones, mostly Chinese produced, to some older-generation mainframes such as Honeywells. What we did not see were operational wide-area networks, with the exception of a metropolitan demonstration network in Beijing. Current Wide Area Networks At present, the major wide area network (WAN) in China is the China National Public Data Network, CNPAC, which is currently being developed and implemented. CNPAC, an X-25 packet switched network is designed to carry data at speeds varying between 1.2 and 9.6 Kbps. The hub is in Beijing, where the network management center is located, with packet switches sited in the major cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou, and PS concentrators found in other major cities. The packet switches, concentrators, and PADs (packet assembly/disassembly devices) are all manufactured in China. At the Beijing hub, there is an international access line to CNPAC. Since we did not see a CNPAC demonstration, it is not clear how much of it is operational and how much is still under development. There are other private data networks in use in China in applications in the railway system, banking system, civil aeronautics, etc. In China, there is an X.25 link to the Internet using a store and forward system via the CNPAC international access line in Beijing connecting to the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. To the outside world, this link is being called "the China Academic Network (CANET)". In addition to CNPAC connectivity, there is dial-up access to CANET from inside China. David Kahaner of ONR Tokyo reports that he frequently communicates with Chinese scientists via CANET. However, many of the Chinese networking specialists we talked to have never heard of the name "CANET", so we suspect that CANET means more to the outside world than in China. The major problem confronting the development of WANs in China is the poor telecommunications infrastructure. Since the penetration of basic plain old telephone service (POTS) is less than 1% among Chinese businesses and households, and since local and long distance telephone switching and transmission facilities are inadequate and antiquated, it is difficult to build a modern computer network upon the current telecommunications infrastructure. It will take decades to bring the basic telecommuncations system up to modern standards, so Chinese networking will take a long time to come up to western norms also. Metropolitan and Campus Networks In Beijing, we witnessed a very impressive metropolitan networking project called NCFC (National Computing and Networking Facility of China). NCFC is a demonstration network in Beijing linking the two major universities, Tsinghua and Beijing Universities to a number of research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Each of the pariticipating institutions have campus networks like the TUnet of Tsinghua University. These campus networks are connected by NCFC as a two level system. Currently NCFC has a 10Mbps backbone connecting the three campus networks, which will increase to 100Mbps in the next phase of the project. Communication protocols will be ISO/OSI, but TCP/IP is the first phase protocol. The top level of NCFC consists of the backbone and the network control center. The second level is composed of campus networks at the two universities and CAS. NCFC is the largest and most ambitious networking project we saw in China. It is partially funded by the World Bank and the State Planning Commission, and is in limited operation now, with full operation expected by 1994. We visited two of the three groups who are participating in the development of NCFC. The first was the Computer Network Center (CNC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with its own campus network, the CASnet. The CNC seems to have the major responsibility for the development of NCFC, and is staffed by 40 professionals. The second group, in Tsinghua University, is described next. The Tsinghua University Network (TUnet) The most impressive university networking group we visited was at Tsinghua University, the premier technical university in China. Under the direction of Professor Hu Daoyuan, the Tsinghua University network, TUnet is being developed under a well laid-out strategy based upon the following goals: 1. It will be a universal, comprehensive campus network; its usage will include instruction, research, administration, library, and communications services. 2. It will be a multimedia integrated services network; messages transmitted in the network will include not only data, but voice and video as well. 3. It will operate under accepted international standards for interfacing devices to the network. Emerging standards are important in the fast changing technology of networking. Initially TUnet will operate under TCP/IP, but migration strategies have been adopted to migrate to ISO/OSI. 4. It will be a heterogeneous network using a variety of advanced networking technologies (LAN, PABX, PS, ISDN and FDDI, etc) to interconnect multivendor computing facilities. 5. It will be developed in phases, with the first phase (1987 to 1991) concentrating on interconnection of facilties, and the second phase (1992 to 1995) emphasizing network services. In TUnet there are three major networking facilities: a. A circuit switched network based upon an integrated services PABX, b. A packet switching network based upon X.25 switches and PADs, c. Ethernet LANs interconnected through a 100 Mbps FDDI optical fiber backbone. A key function of TUnet is electronic mail. Tsinghua University's message handling system (MHS) functions includes mail, telegraph, teletext, fax, videotex, voice, images, etc. The MHS is based upon the EAN system developed by the University of British Columbia conforming to the CCITT X.400 recommendation series of 1984. Tsinghua's work on its e-mail system includes migration, Chinese localization, menu adaptation and the implementation of remote user agents. The work at Tsinghua on TUnet and NCFC underlines one of the basic constraints that Chinese networking technologists must live with. Unless you have foreign (hard) currencies to purchase networking equipment, you've got to design and build everything from scratch, including hardware and software. So TUnet represents in many ways a bootstrap operation. The people in TUnet are all very well trained and dedicated. It is unfortunate that they could not make use of technology that is readily available in the Western world. Local Area Networks (LANs) In China today there are many LANs in use. Two common LAN products widely available throughout China are Ethernets from 3COM, and Netware, a LAN operating system developed by the Novell company. These products are available in China because of joint venture arrangements that the cited companies have made with Chinese counterparts. Most of the LAN products are manufactured in China under license from US companies such as 3COM and Novell. At the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Professor Yang Chuan-hou, the Director of the Computer Network Research Laboratory presented to us some work which dealt with an architectural design of a gateway interconncting LANs to an X.25 packet switched network. The work again was developmental in nature, in that both hardware and software designs were implemented in the laboratory. Work like that of Professor Yang and his colleagues illustrate the practical nature of the networking development going on in China today. I visited China in 1984, when I was a World Bank consultant to Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In the intervening years, there has been an explosive growth in both computing and networking technology in China, which will only accelerate with the further penetration of the Internet into China. Since the Internet is capable of bringing network specialists and users throughout the world into a larger cooperating community, I believe that China's networking community will soon become full partners in this world-wide community. Appendix: Original disclaimer of the above report from Bin Wang <NUS40%TTACS.bitnet@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu> From: David K. Kahaner US Office of Naval Research Asia (From outside US): 23-17, 7-chome, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106 Japan (From within US): Unit 45002, APO AP 96337-0007 Tel: +81 3 3401-8924, Fax: +81 3 3403-9670 Email: kahaner@cs.titech.ac.jp [Dr. David Kahaner is a numerical analyst on sabbatical to the Office of Naval Research-Asia (ONR Asia) in Tokyo from NIST. The following is the professional opinion of David Kahaner and in no way has the blessing of the US Government or any agency of it. All information is dated and of limited life time. This disclaimer should be noted on ANY attribution.] [Copies of previous reports written by Kahaner can be obtained using anonymous FTP from host cs.arizona.edu, directory japan/kahaner.reports.] ABSTRACT. A description of networking activities in PRC (China). (F.F.Kuo, SRI) My report on the Internetworking conference [inet.92, 26 June 1992] was read by Dr. Franklin F. Kuo Executive Director, Asian Programs SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (415) 859-4116; Fax: (415) 859-6171 Email: KUO@NISC.SRI.COM Dr Kuo was particularly interested in the sections on China, as he has recently completed a visit to look at the networking situation there, and has prepared the report below detailing his trip. It provides material supplemental to that in my report and should be of value to those interested in the developments of international networking. (end of Appendix) ----------------End of first one --------------- ----------------Second ----------------- China network observations from October, 1991, visit 1/12/92 by G. Ernest Anderson University of Massachusetts GEAND@EDUC.UMass.EDU The Institute of Computer Applications (ICA) at 10 Che Dao Gou, Haidian District, Beijing, was created to provide data processing and computer services to small and medium organizations that could not afford their own computer installations. The ICA office is extremely difficult to find; it is "hidden" at the rear of a complex whose main mission appears to be quasi-military, and whose neighbors "don't know anything about it." ICA is under the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry. Contact was established by E-Mail to SYSTEM@ICA.Beijing.Canet.CN Qian Tian Bai, Vice-Chief Engineer, P.O.Box 2418-26, Beijing, China 100081, phone 841-3654, is the contact person. Chinanet is very small, and VERY EXPENSIVE. Costs are 8000 Yuan to join, 2000 Yuan per month maintenance, and 10 Yuan per KILObyte of information sent OR RECEIVED. For comparison, the average Professor's salary in PRC is 150 Yuan per month. This explains why some Internet information Qian Tian Bai wanted is being sent by regular mail rather than E-Mail. Those of us who view Internet as a big, free resource need to realize that casual communications elsewhere, and especially to China, may NOT be welcome by the recipient because of the cost. FAX is much more prevalent than E-mail throughout Asia, partly because the character set in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. is not amenable to western style keyboarding, nor is the use of English (Roman characters) that widespread. As a side note, a major data base research problem in Beijing is how to produce a telephone directory! To get a home telephone number, even if I knew the full name and address and could pronounce it correctly in Chinese, I had to go through the place where the person worked; most work places have an agreed upon Pinyin or English name that CAN be sorted on, listed, and retrieved electronically. Chinanet nodes exist in Beijing, Harbin, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, with dial-up connections other places. Most users are businesses or Chinese Academy of Sciences; practically none are Universities. University computing centers (Computer Science Departments) seem to be in some sort of communication with each other using something called CNPAC, which is entirely graphic due to the nature of the natural character set of China. This might explain why gateway(s) to Chinanet or Internet don't seem to exist. Chinanet's connections to the outside world are via a 2400 bps link (sattelite) to University of Karlsruhe, using PMDF protocol. Call-ins are done twice a day for exchange of international mail. ICA hardware includes VAX 8700, Siemens 7760, and MVAXII cluster. The University of International Business and Economics in Beijing has a massive computer-based communication facility, installed for the Asian Games last year, and maintained (but not used) in support of Beijing's bid for the Olympics. Connections go throughout China, Asia, and much of the rest of the world. My guess is that this machine could host an extensive and inexpensive E-mail network with practically no additional capital investment! I said this to everyone who would listen in other agencies I visited; perhaps that may have some effect. Unfortunately, I visited ICA before I visited UIBE and could not get ICA's reaction to the idea. Without knowing it when travel plans were made, a major conference on telecommunications was to be held in Beijing about Nov. 1. ICA suggested they could get me in if I were in Beijing at the time, but I had already accepted a "Soviet" Academy of Science invitation for November. I have not been able to find out what transpired at that conference, although I have been promised a copy of the proceedings. Perhaps someone who was there could enlighten me (and any others on the network) about serious interest in moving China forward with global networking. As an interesting aside, one of the major U.S. planners of the Nov. conference also created a large share of international use of Chinanet in the previous month, and was pointed out to me as someone insensitive to what their costs were. My personal reaction was that action was needed to drive down costs (or get them subsidized) because what I saw represented to me exactly the kinds of interchanges the networks were designed to facilitate. Addtitions, corrections, interpretations, and comments welcome. -------------------End of second one------------ -------------------Third ----------- List CHINANET: Networking in China From: kuang@rdsparc2.CSELT.STET.IT (Kuang Jiaxing) Some sites in China have registered IP network number, unfortunately, due to finance, they have not connected to InterNet directly. The two major E-Mail network in China are CANET and CRN. CANET was setup about 1987 and registered in 1990, it is a subscriber e-mail network about 10 Yuan per kilobyte plus phone fee, user loging via PSDN or other, it seems there are no subdomain users, as far I know there are lots of Universities and Institutes have account on CANET. It cost a huge amount of money to CANET users :-) 10 Yuan per kilobyte whatever incoming or outgoing email. CRN is a OSI multi-protocol experiment network, e-mail system of CRN is based X.400(84 version), it has some universities and institues connected via China CNPAC(X.25), each site pay its X.25 fee (quite expensive) for outgoing mail, it is mere experiment network, due to political and financial reason, it seems impossible to become a real research network, ... For CRN sites, they pay their X.25 fee, usual they pay their outgoing emails, Darmstadt.gmd.de acts as InterNet <--> X.400 gateway for CRN, it pays most emails to China, and its administrator protest high charge, the policy may be changed in future. X.25 is a quite expensive service, it charge you per segment you send/receive and per minute you use, Usual each site pays about 2000 yuan per month if no high volume data transfer. Some Universities are planning to build Campus network, Tsinghua University, ZheJian University, Fudan University, ..., I am sorry I don't know details except Fudan. I heard that China PTT is planing to build China E-Mail network, and Shanghai PTT is just beginning to provide such service, it sounds to be the official e-mail network in future, but I don't know more about it. For details about CANET, contact Qian@ica.beijing.canet.cn, who is Administrative Contact of CANET. ------------------------ 3. Is There Any Information in the Public Domain? WHOIS Database at NIC of DDN CANET Chinese Academic Network (CN-DOM) c/o ICA P.O. Box 2418-26 Che-Dao-Gou Street Beijing PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Domain Name: CN Administrative Contact: Qian, Tian Bai (TBQ) QIAN@ICA.BEIJING.CANET.CN +86 841-3654 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Rotert, Michael (MR78) Rotert@IRA.UKA.DE +49 721 608 4221 Record last updated on 05-Mar-91. Domain servers in listed order: IRAUN1.IRA.UKA.DE 129.13.10.90 NS.EU.NET 192.16.202.11 NS.UU.NET 137.39.1.3 Top Level domain for the People's Republic of China 4. Did Anyone Ever Receive Any E-mail from Mainland China? Yes, lots. But most of them sound like personal messages between close friends. -----------start here----------------- From: QIAN@ica.beijing.canet.cn Date: Tue, 20 Aug 91 15:06 CHINA TIME +100 Subject: CANET 91.08.20 Message-id: <29780B1EE25F00002B@ICA.BEIJING.CANET.CN> Mr.Huang, Thank you for your letter of Aug.5. Some time ago I received an email from you, and I'm sorry I have been unable to answer it sooner. Thank you for your paying great attention to the CANET project. Herewith I'm encluding the brief introduction to CANET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CANET , co-initiated by ICA ( Beijing Instutute for Computer Applications ) and the University of Karlsruhe ( Germany ) began in 1986. Its purpose is to integrate chinese academic communities with the worldwide computer network, and to promote information exchange and technical cooperation with the rest of the world. The initial service provided by CANET is international E-mail delivery. The first connection with CSNET was actually set up in Sep.1987. The central machine located in ICA , Siemens 7,760/ BS2000 running PMDF/BS2000 software, was successfully connected with the E-mail systems all over the world by means of a relay machine at the Uni- versity of Karlsruhe. Since then , CANET has been operational and has provided the worldwide E-mail service for some academic communities within China. In 1990 Oct. , the top level domain ---" CN " for China was registered with DDN SRI--NIC by ICA . This is a very important step for the development of CANET. CANET is a store and forward electronic mail network . Recently,the central machine in CANET is a Micro VAXII--cluster system under VMS 4.7 running PMDF 3.1/VMS,which acts as an interna- tional gateway linking the main domain server located at Uni. Karl- sruhe by x.25 through the CHINAPAC (Chinese Packed Switching Network). For remote sites, CANET is accessible for any academic communi- ty of China through the CHINAPAC ( national x.25 PDN ) or the dial up telephone links, at 1200 bps and 2400 bps or 4800 bps (depending on the cost factor ). End--user's PC or workstations can access to local node machine by terminal emulation . CANET adopts RFC--822 formats. CHINAPAC , the first national PDN in China , was operational in the end of 1989 , it is authorized by the goverment and run by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommications of China. This network is based on x.25. At persent, it is still on the first stage and has 3 node-machines ( Package Switching Node ) and 8 package multiplexers which are located at 11 major cities in China. It has international link through the satellites. All amchines of CANET implement Internet DNS ( domain naming system ) syntax. The top level domain --- " CN " for China has been operational since Jan.1991 . Currently, the international mail delivery usually takes half a day . At present , 16 sites have been connected within CANET. It is true , many institutions and universities have estab- lished their private local network in the compus, most of them are interested in joning CANET.But, there are the financial boundaries- ---lack of the funds. If the funding is available, CANET will be growing rapidly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frankly speaking,the CANET has not been a part of the Internet yet, because it does't implement the TCP/IP protocol suite to link with the Internet via the leased line directly.that is why CANET is unable to do FTP and R-Login recently.Also,this is the reason that CANET's user has to pay the international communication fees not only for sending mail but also for receiving mail. ---------------------end ----------------- Another one: ---------------------start here---------------- >From xiaofan.zhao@cnlab.nci.crn.cn Sun Apr 12 17:19:05 1992 Date: 13 Apr 92 8:11 +0800 From: Xiaofan ZHAO <xiaofan.zhao@cnlab.nci.crn.cn> To: Qiang Alex ZHAO <azhao@cs.arizona.edu> In-Reply-To: <9204100052.AA03920(a)acacia.cs.arizona.> Message-Id: <788:xiaofan.zhao@cnlab.nci.crn.cn> Subject: Reply: Hello from Arizona (USA) Return-Receipt-To: Xiaofan ZHAO <xiaofan.zhao@cnlab.nci.crn.cn> Dear Alex, Following is some information about CRN for your reference. Regards, Xiaofan Zhao, NCI, Beijing, China ========================== The Chinese Research Network (CRN), founded in 1987, aims at * Providing electronic communication means, based on the PSDN and any available communication networks, to the Chineses scientsts, engineers, professors and other reaserchers to facilitate them in exchanging information and coordinating cooperation with their partners in China and abroad. * Supporting and coordinating the development and promotion of OSI conformable applications ammong Chinese scientific and research community. * Organizing the cooperation among CRN members and their foreign partners. Eight members of CRN have been interconnected at present, including research institutes, universities and academic organizations in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Shijiazhuang. More institutions will join CRN in the future. MHS (email), VT (PAD), FTAM, X.11 have been installed at the member institutions on VAX/VMS, VAX/ULTRIX, SUN/UNIX and APOLLO/UNIX. CRN has established more than ten direct MHS connections with the member countries of European Research Networks (RARE), including Germany, Norway and Switchland, and could exchange e-mails with almost all the research networks, eg Internet, in the world via RARE gateways. Chinese MHS (CMHS), dased on DFN-EAN and enhanced by CRN, with Chenese character and encryption capability has been also installed at some CRN's member institutions on VAX/VMS and SUN/UNIX systems. The CRN Board consists of the representatives from her member organizations, which is responsible for * Developing CRN's plans and rules * Helping academic and research institutions to join CRN * Maintaining the services provided by CRN * Helping CRN's members to solve technical problems * Organizig and coordinating the development projects * Contacting and coopreating, on behalf of CRN, with the peers in China and abroad Help desk addresses are: Beijing: CRN's Help Desk <helpdesk@cnlab.nci.crn.cn> North China Institute of Computer Tech. <postmaster@cnlab.nci.crn.cn> China Academy of Electr. & Info. Tech. <postmaster@cc.caeit.crn.cn> Computer System Engineering Institute <postmaster@dep9.cse.crn.cn> Shanghai: Fudan University <postmaster@cnl.fudan.crn.cn> Shanghai JiaoTong University <postmaster@ee.sjtu.crn.cn> Shijiazhuang: Shijiazhuang Communication Lab <postmaster@tcl.scl.crn.cn> Chengdu: Southwest Communication Institute <postmaster@tulip.sci.crn.cn> -----------------end ---------------- [Note: This FAQ can be distributed freely on the condition that the first part (i.e., Why I Must NOT E-mail to China?) must be included. Date: 10 Novermber 1992 ]