Subject: N-1-4-040.90 News from the RARE Technical Committee Kees Neggers The third meeting of the RARE Technical Committee (RTC) took place on 1 November 1992 in Pisa, Italy. This was the first meeting of the RTC since the decision to formally separate the RARE and RIPE organizations, and one of the most significant items of discussion was the need to continue the technical co-operation between these bodies. RIPE and the RTC were happy to agree on an arrangement by which a RIPE representative (currently Rob Blokzijl, RIPE chairman) will have a place on the RTC to facilitate technical interchange. The RTC acts as a technical and financial clearing house for projects which benefit from a certain amount of funding. The RTC was pleased to note that funding for 1992/1993 has been derived not only from member's contributions, but also grants from other organizations (including SURFnet and the CEC) to support specific activities. Amongst the projects finalized at the meeting were: a CEC-sponsored project to promote the establishment of Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) within Europe, which has been awarded to the University of Essex, UK; an activity sponsored by SURFnet to produce define a set of criteria for measuring the quality of IP service provision; the production of proposals to continue and develop the OSI CLNS pilot service within Europe; an activity to promote and co-ordinate European discussion on IP version 7. The RTC continues to provide support for European participation in other technical networking groups in the world, including the IEPG and IETF. The RTC particularly looks forward to the IETF meeting to take place in Amsterdam in July, 1993 as an opportunity for more Europeans to experience and participate in this forum. 4th JENC in Trondheim, Norway In 1993 RARE organizes its 4th Joint European Networking Conference in cooperation with ACM Sigcomm, EARN, EUnet/EurOpen, IFIP TC6, IAB, Internet Society, NORDUnet and UNINETT. The event will take place in Trondheim, Norway, from 10-13 May 1993. This year the conference will focus on the position of Europe in a global networking context. Cooperation between members of different networking communities will again receive ample attention. Besides paper presentations, a poster session and demonstrations, next years conference will feature tutorials as well. Tutorials will be held at the end of the conference, on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. Operational Unit in Cambridge Preparations for the establishment of an "Operational Unit" for the provision of pan-European Networking Services to the research community are progressing. On 17 November 1992, shareholders of the Operational Unit decided that the OU will be located in Cambridge in the UK. The next step will be to finalize which services will be provided in the first phase of the OU's operations. New publications RARE Technical Reports 2, 3, and 4 have been published in October 1992. RTR2, "Mapping between X.400 (1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822", describes a set of mappings which will enable interworking between systems operating the X.400 mail protocol and systems using the RFC 822 mail protocol. RTR3, "X.400 1988 to 1984 downgrading", considers downgrading issues in an environment containing both X.400 (1988) and X.400 (1984) components. RTR2 and RTR3 are hard copies of RFC 1327 and 1328. RTR4, "State of the Union", introduces the members of RARE, their current activities and future plans. The second edition of RTR1 "User Support and Information Services in Europe, A Status Report" is available electronically from the RARE document server. Information from 10 more network organizations has been included in this edition. A printed version will be produced in Spring 1993. Furthermore, Proceedings of the 3rd Joint European Networking Conference, which took place in Innsbruck, Austria, in May 1992, appeared in a special issue of Computer Networks and ISDN Systems . All publications are available from the RARE Secretariat. RTRs are available from the RARE Document Server as well. Via anonymous ftp: raredoc.rare.nl (RTRs can be found in directory /rare/rtr). Via e-mail: send mail to: mailserv@file.nic.surfnet.nl, type in body mail to receive instructions. For specific information on RTRs send electronic mail to: rtr-info@rare.nl.