Dr. D.Garibashvili
E-mail: devi@presid.acnet.ge
Dr. L. Kiknadze
E-mail: kiknadze@acnet.ge
The Georgian Academy of Sciences, Tbilisi
Among the countries of the former USSR economical situation in the Republic of Georgia is one of the worst. In the same condition is our scientific community which has lost in the main the government support and therefore the researches in the fundamental fields are slowed down very sharply.
One of the most severe problems is the process of isolation of Georgian scientists from the outer world. In spite of the hard battle for survival great part of researchers doesn't reconcile with the loss of scientific contacts and collaborations. The more as that Georgian scientists have significant achievements in Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics, Chemistry, Biology, Ecology, Earth Sciences and the humanities which are elaborated in up to 100 scientific institutes and 21 state universities.
At present the whole community is cut off actually from western world though several months ago about 25 institutes used the e-mail service via the academic network. It's node is installed at the Institute of Computational Mathematics and is connected to RELCOM/EUnet (Moscow). But after the increase in dial-up price and as the Academy of Sciences continues to be insolvent this ventilation pane is almost closed.
Last year and then last spring we appealed to the ISF's Tele-communication Program with the proposals but they were not accepted because of the high cost and the other just arguments. Recently we presented radically updated proposal (thanks the advises of Dr. I.Mafter and Dr.A.Mendkovich) which envisage the connection to the Russian academic network - FREENet by the leased ground-link, and receiving one computer SUN-5. Thereby we hope to do a first step in providing with IP service and at last our scientific community would be integrated in global scientific networks.
As to our (Dr. D.Garibashvili and Dr. L. Kiknadze) presence at the "NATO Networking Workshop" we are very grateful to organizers of the seminar for invitation and intention to submit the application - long term and extended proposal foreseeing the involving of whole Georgian scientific, educational and medical systems. This proposal was discussed on the extended meeting of the Council of Informatics at the Presidium of the Georgian Academy of Sciences.
In the proposal we ask NATO to support promotion and growth of a domestic network infrastructures for the next four years. The most important point is the establishment of satellite link from Tbilisi to a suitable hub in western country. With regard to the constantly rising requirements of information exchange this version would be the most efficient and advanced solution of this problem. Besides, there arises the point about establishment of the second node on basis of the Institute of the High Energy Physics belonging to the Ministry of Education which takes care of the high schools and colleges service, and training process as well. Two high performance computers SUN-20 are required for two nodes and also we ask to update gradually the obsolete park of existing computers of the academic institutes at least partially.
If the proposal submitted to ISF's Telecommunication Program will be accepted (the consideration must be in October) we shall make the corresponding corrections in the NATO proposal.
At last about SOS. At the given moment it is essential to restore the sole means of contacts with outside world - the E-mail service (if only for three months). For this it will be enough $1000 per month (for RELCOM and for the domestic PTT department) furthermore one diesel-generator which is very necessary regarding our energy crisis especially in winter. The total sum of the emergency assistance is $4000.
It is well known that at present the countries of the former USSR are in a very complicated and difficult political and economic situation. The state of Republic of Georgia is one of the worst. Respective situation have arose in scientific community which have lost in the main the government support and therefore the research in the fundamental fields in Georgia have slowed down very sharply.
One of the most severe problem is the process of isolation of Georgian scientists from the outer world. So, present proposal concerns this phase of hard state, namely to render assistance in establishing of reliable, modern communication links to the international networks. All this, for sure, will serve to the majority of research institutes of the Academy of Sciences and other departments and will give an access to a wide variety of scientific information and advanced fundamental achievements.
The main divisions of Georgian Academy of Sciences are: Presidium and 56 research institutes. Each institute employs approximately 100-300 researchers.
Besides, there are several dozens of the research institutes, running by different state departments in the country. The Academy accomplishes coordination of scientific activities of these institutes. The whole scientific staff of Georgia comprises 127 members of the Academy, approximately 1500 doctors and much more candidates practically in all fields of sciences.
Georgian science has significant achievements. Many groups in Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics, Chemistry, Biology, Ecology, Earth Sciences, etc. have world standard of research quality. So, we are quite sure that the exchange of information will be useful in both directions and certainly will lead to mutual benefits.
At present each academic institute has several computers, mainly become obsolete, IBM PC XT/AT. At the moment UUCP network is functioning which transfer data over standard dial up phone lines. In this way a computer network serves institutes in the capital of Georgia - Tbilisi and also in different regions of the country. The host computer (IBM PC 386-UNIX system, E-mail: acnet.ge) is established in the Institute of Computational Mathematics - ICM which is most suitable institute from the point of view of experience of the staff, equipment and building. This computer is connected to RELCOM/EUnet organization in Moscow.
Because of the unaffordable charges of RELCOM's service only 25 institutes made use of e-mail for the foreign connections. All the others appeared to be insolvent. But today the situation is worse particularly after sharp rise in PTT service prices and the permanent financial difficulties of the academic institutes. So, unfortunately our network is used mainly for the domestic needs - for the providing the institutes with different information and for the establishment of contacts between them.
Our disappointed scientists are in a very heavy conditions and can't reconcile with it. The earned and very effective contacts began to collapse. On the other hand their salaries are so small that they could not pay even a few pennies.
The only thing left is to hope for a help from the outer world. If this hope will be carry out the authors (compilers) of this proposal should take into account the sudden increase in the traffic of the scientific information and the existence of this network will provide the quickly process of connectivity with outer world just after receiving the necessary telecommunication facilities.
Naturally besides the e-mail service the Georgian scientific community must be involved in most advanced ways of getting the desirable information from the resources distributed among Internet, BITNET/EARN/RARE, etc. (by the way, last year the ICM was accepted in international network organizations but because of lack of the corresponding equipment and finances we almost can't use the different offered services).
We must consider also the necessity to assimilate the experience of connections with the whole Internet resources by the TCP/IP (SMTP, FTP, TELNET) and pay special attention to developing of modern information service (Gopher, WAIS, WWW).
Increasing in operations of our academy node would be expected as we are planning to serve also Georgian educational organizations (universities and colleges) until they will make own network. Moreover Ministry of Health of our republic appealed several times to Academy for aid to let the medical organizations to access to western professional data bases. We are ready to help him in case of realization of submitted project.
Proceeded from the above supposition the power of the node's computer would be satisfactory in the near future and that is why we believe to anticipate the needs and to raise a question about getting SUN-20 which is "with higher performance (new Model 50 and Model 61), and at significantly lower system prices."
The supposed rapid increasing of the number of AcNet users would stimulate us to install dedicated routers and hosts providing network service (DNS servers and information servers).
It is becoming the necessity to provide the educational system of Republic of Georgia. Almost all Georgian high schools and partly the secondary schools more or less are equipped with the computers but telecommunication connectivity is very rare case in spite of 20 state universities and up to 100 commercial institutes.
The Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Tbilisi State University has most suitable conditions to become the base for this newly established node. It has close contacts and collaborates with most scientific and educational centers of USA, Russia and other European countries. IHEP is well known for its distinguishable scientific developments and for high skilled staff.Having experience in development of various software-hardware products, IHEP is ready to undertake the establishment of the new node for educational system and organize the training process on a broad scale.
Taking into account the great amount of the serving objects we suppose to install the same high performance computer SUN-20. It will give us the advantage of the most efficient using of facilities, because the maintenance groups could help each other in cases of emergencies.
MEANS of COMMUNICATIONS are the main lack in our situation. With regard to the constantly rising requirements of information exchange international land-based connections Tbilisi - Moscow (even the leased lines) are unreliable and small bandwidth of channel does not permit the transmission of large data array or support interactive sessions. The most efficient and advanced solution of this problem is to secure a satellite link on grant terms from Tbilisi to a suitable hub in western country, which provides the connections to Internet and other networks. The satellite channel will be used for the following services:
The satellite link will consist of a leased, dedicated 64 kbits/sec digital line, with satellite disks in Tbilisi and one of European city, for example in Hamburg. It is confirmed that there will be no particular technical problems, despite the geographical location of Tbilisi at the eastern fringe of Europe. However, a fairly large antenna ( 2.4 metres ) will be needed to ensure a sufficiently low error rate, viz.<10**(-6). In the view of the relative remoteness, it may also be desirable to install an additional satellite receiver/emitter.
Preliminary quotations for the establishment, operation and servicing of a 64 kbit link between Tbilisi and Amsterdam have been received from ANT Nachrichtentechnik GmbH (Backnang, Germany) and from Infoware Gesselschaft fur Informationstechnik mbH (Koln, Germany).
Up to the present the situation is very complicated. Because of increasing in the cost of the communication services and intensifying the financial difficulties in our country (and accordingly in Academy of Sciences) the node of the Academy actually are stopped to the huge regrets of the users. In the course of the last spring months the traffic of our nodes reached 10 megabytes per month. The cost of this (taking into account the expenses for the dial up connections and our debt) is approximately $1500. This sum is needed for the emergency assistance for the restoration the former (though very limited) e-mail traffic. If it's possible to take into account the moderate increase in the amount of users in near future (up to end of the current year) Academy of Sciences appeal to NATO about the doubling of the mentioned grant and providing the total emergency assistance of $6000 for the three last months of this year.
After the extensive studies of hardware and software offered as the node's servers and following the advise of colleagues from EARN and FREENet the mentioned Institutes (ICM and IHEP) have decided to acquire the same 2 computers: SUN SPARC station 20 with associated peripherals. The software to be installed will include a powerful multi-user, multi-purpose OS with networking packages, ARPA services (TCP/IP, FTP, TELNET) and the necessary programming languages. Advantages of such decision are: a) the maintenance staffs could exchange with useful information for more efficiently using of hardware-software, b) recently one institute in Tbilisi has installed SUN type computer where the mentioned specialists would get the primary knowledge.
Besides the SUN computers the managers of the nodes believes that it is necessary to have in addition IBM PC AT-586 (HD-600Mb) computers for the function of the News-servers and Mail-servers for the educational and scientific institutes situated inside of every local network. For the connections to the dial up or leased lines there is need the following devices:
Because of permanent crisis of electric power in our country, there are frequent cases of long time blackouts(especially in winter). So we believe in the necessity of diesel power ministation's installation at our nodes.
Telecommunication facilities.
As to satellite channel the 64 kbit/sec link will be most long-term and prospective. Such a link will consist a leased dedicated 64 kbit/sec digital line with satellite disk in Tbilisi with a lending point in the West. The satellite station will provide 8 ports: 6 for data transmission and 2 for voice or fax connections.
Maintenance of the Staff
Staff and Management Structure.
Based on the extensive expertise, already available at the ICM, it is now feasible to support the working Tbilisi nodes, so that they will be able to continue to function as the highly reliable electronic gateways to the world for the academic community in Georgia. Therefore it is necessary to support the staffs of the ICM and IHEP who despite experiencing severe problems in their daily lives must be provide uninterrupted 24 hour per day service to the scientific and educational communities of the country.
It is proposed to establish a small, but efficient two teams of experts within the ICM and IHEP staffed with 9 + 6 Georgian specialists. Here are too low salaries and increase of them even several times by the Georgian side doesn't achieve the living wage. There is a real chance to lose our experts because of attractive salaries at commercial companies.
Participation in international networking service conferences and UNIX training visits and seminars
For the proper functioning and development of the Internet nodes it is absolutely necessary for its management to attend the International Network Service Conferences at least ones a year to keep in touch with colleagues. Besides that we must envisage the training visits for receiving instructions for the installation, start-up and use of the system.(including the foreign experts visits).
Updating of computing facilities at the Academical institutes.
The computers at Academy is very old-fashioned and old-looking. Among the 360 computers disposed in the 56 institutes of Academy 340 are IBM-286 or XT. The renewal of this facilities is very obligatory condition for the improving R&D activity which allow the performances of heavy computational tasks associated with advanced image processing and exhaustive scientific evaluation of large scale experimental data and make possible advanced theoretical modeling of a grate variety of natural phenomena, for instance in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences, etc. for expanding the joint elaborations with western countries.
Many different types of advanced computation are envisaged. These are only some of the most obvious:
It should be noticed that the Institutes are attempting to develop effective information systems but the poor equipment and available software do not permit the creation of national scientific data bases in history, archaeology, rare museum artifacts, ecology, seismology, traditional medicine etc. We are planning to develop these databases basing on international standards, which will be accessible for American Universities and other Internet users.
With the renovation of the working nodes the cooperation with the academic and research community in Georgia would become more attractive to their Western colleagues because of the improved exchange of scientific data, which are absolutely necessary for the development of cooperation in the fields of science and high education.