Academic networking in the Adriatic region

Development of communication and information systems within the academic community has played an indispensable role in the introduction of new technologies in education and research. New forms of distance and collaborative work have been introduced, including research workgroups, teleeducation and tele-training. At the start of the third millennium, with the advent of new technologies, academic networking is gaining new impetus and becoming even more attractive as a subject of research and development. Bearing in mind the importance of this subject, the program committee of the Eighth IEEE Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM’2000), held aboard the cruise ship Marko Polo on route from Split (Croatia), via Rijeka (Croatia), Trieste (Italy) and to Venice (Italy) on October 10, 2000, organized an invited session dedicated to the Academic Networking in Alps-Adriatic Countries. This session attracted authors and participants from government institutions dealing with academic networking as service/infrastructure providers, and teachers from universities and researchers from institutes as users. Papers were presented by authors from Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland and Croatia. Interesting topics in academic networking covered included national strategies and network architectures, the role of academic networks in education and collaboration with industry, technological aspects, particularly applications of broadband and satellite systems, and user aspects, including services for impaired people. A selection of 10 papers representing topics covered has been chosen for publication in this special issue of Computer Communications. They are grouped in three thematic parts: building academic networks, including strategies, infrastructures and case studies; educational issues; and examples of research projects related to academic networking. The strategic aspects of academic networking have been considered in ‘The Role and Strategy of an ARNet in a Developing Country’ by Bekic et al. As stated, an Academic and Research Network (ARNet) should provide not only a communication and information infrastructure for an academic community, but it should also be a research testbed and even a pilot for other nationwide networks, thus taking a role of organizer and motivator of the community. To accomplish this, ARNet’s strategy should be to ensure connectivity and to provide content through reference information, referral information, common databases, centralized databases and information services. The international collaboration aspects of academic networking have been considered in ‘Academic and Research Network of Slovenia’ by Jauk et al. The Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES) is described as a part of the TEN-155 EU project for high-speed, panEuropean interconnection between national research networks. ARNES participates in a number of international projects dealing with advanced networking. It is a Full National member of the Trans-European Research and Educational Networking Association (TERENA). Collaboration between academia and industry in the area of information and communication technology results not only in qualified scientific results which companies can exploit, but also in an improvement in undergraduate and graduate studies. An example of very fruitful collaboration has been presented in ‘Collaboration between Academia and Industry: Telecommunications and Informatics at the University of Zagreb’ by Lovrek et al. The principal industrial partner is Ericsson Nikola Tesla from Zagreb, with the participation of Croatian Telecom, the Croatian Power Utility and several small enterprises. University and industry recognise the importance of the research environment for collaboration, problem solving, competence development and the educational process. Another example of the development of a communication/information infrastructure in an academic institution is presented in ‘Development of the Communication/Information infrastructure at an Academic Institution’ by Begusic et al. Support from the Ministry of Science and Technology and CARNet has been the main driving force in developing the basic communication/information infrastructure. However, intensive collaboration with well known ICT companies on joint R&D projects in the area of ICT technology and services has generated new potential for development of the communication/information infrastructure at FESB. The development of an academic networking infrastructure has been considered in two papers. ‘The Italian Academic Network GARR: evolution in the Gigabit Era’ by Allocchio et al. present the Italian academic network Gruppo Armonizzazione Reti di Computer Communications 26 (2003) 421–422