Danny Amor's Online Library/Danny Amor's Online Library - Volume 1.iso/bbs/society/society.lha/PUB/isoc_news/1-3/n-1-3-015.35.1a

Text File | 1995-07-21 | 9KB | 171 lines

n-1-3-015.40.1
NETWORKING IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
by Franklin F. Kuo <[e-mail]>

At the invitation of the China Institute of Communications, the Citizen
Ambassador Program of People to People International arranged a
visit in May 1992 for a delegation of professionals in telecommunications
and networking technology to the People's Republic of China. I led 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 subjects relating to current research and
applications in computer networks.

The itinerary for our trip covered
Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.  In Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai
we found a great deal 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
one 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 (PS)
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.

Other private data networks are 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 in 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 or 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 also take a long
time to come up to western norms.

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 participating institutions has
campus networks like the TUnet of Tsinghua University.

These campus networks are connected by NCFC as a two-level system. Currently,
NCFC has a 10-Mbps backbone connecting the three campus networks, which will
increase to 100 Mbps in the next phase of the project. Communication protocols
will be ISO/OSI, but TCP/IP is being used as the initial 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
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:

It will be a universal, comprehensive campus network; its usage will
include instruction, research, administration, library, and
communications services.

It will be a multimedia integrated services network; messages transmitted
in the network will include not only data, but voice and video as well.

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.

It will be a heterogeneous network using a variety of advanced
networking technologies (LAN, PABX, PS, ISDN and FDDI, etc) to
interconnect computing facilities from various vendors.

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.

TUnet has three major networking facilities:

A circuit switched network based upon an integrated services PABX,

A packet switching network based upon X.25 switches and PADs,

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 include 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 must 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 that dealt with the 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.

Conclusions

Over the last 8 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 worldwide community.