- Created by Gyongyi Horvath, last modified on Oct 04, 2021
Thematic areas are formed and continuously evolving from the need of the GÉANT community.
A few outcomes and successes from the GÉANT Community Programme:
Existing Services
- eduroam – originated from TF-Mobility
- TCS – created by the TCC, the predecessor to the GCC from a community proposal.
- Filesender – originated from TF-Storage
- REFEDS, SCHAC, TACAR, eduPKI – originated from TF-EMC2
- InAcademia – initially discussed at REFEDS meetings then passed to GN4.
- TRANSITS & Trusted Introducer – originated from TF-CSIRT
- WISE – originated from SIG-ISM
- The Commons Conservancy – originated from SIG-Greenhouse
- CLAW – initially proposed by SIG-Marcomms then developed by Nicole, Sigita and Charlie.
- OpenCloudMesh / cs3mesh4eosc – originated from TF-Storage / SIG-CISS and CS3.
- Connect newsletter – originated from TF-PR (e.g. SIG-Marcomms).
- NPAPW – originated from the TCC interest in Internet2 and GARR workshops.
- Case for NRENs – report and then website (https://www.casefornrens.org/Pages/Home.aspx) originated from TF-MSP.
- Many of the SIGs and TFs have been instrumental in shaping workpackages within the various GN project iterations
Older Stuff:
- NRENum.net, GLIF, eduOER
Security
This is a broad area, concerned with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and information systems. GÉANT's activities include defining and implementing appropriate security requirements for various types of systems. One requirement common to many systems is incident response: detecting and investigating failures and restoring the system to its intended security state.
SIG-ISM: Information Security Management - Developing security expertise and excellence within the NREN community
Coordinator: TBC
TF-CSIRT: Computer Security Incident Response Teams - Coordinating training, services and knowledge-exchange for security teams worldwide
Secretary: Nicole Harris (GÉANT), Casper Dreef (GÉANT)
Outcomes: TRANSIT I / II, TCS, GN4-3 project WP8
WISE: a global trust community where security experts share information and work together, creating collaboration among different e-infrastructures.
Coordinator: TBC
Identity and Privacy
Middleware is a general term that in this context refers to the layer between the network and the applications running on it. Middleware provides an interface to, and between, the applications, easing their interoperability, simplifying access by users, and allowing better management. GÈANT's middleware activities focus on identity management federations, harmonisation and standardisation of interfaces, access control, service location and diagnostics, and involve liaison with other communities when relevant. This area also addresses user and application mobility in a networked environment.
TF-DLT: Distributed Ledger Technologies. The SIG brings together NRENs and other interested parties with the aim to explore the usage of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) as well as distributed identity and Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) in the context of the research and the education community. The SIG will also explore collaboration and interaction with relevant pan-European initiatives, such as those managed by the European Commission and others.
Coordinator: Licia Florio, Michelle Williams (GÉANT)
GeGC: the Global eduroam Governance Committee sets technical and organisational standards for the service and authorises compliant ROs (Roaming Operators) to provide eduroam around the world.
Coordinator: Casper Dreef
Outcomes: eduroam
REFEDS: the Research and Education FEDerations group - is to be the voice that articulates the mutual needs of research and education identity federations worldwide.
Coordinator: Nicole Harris (GÉANT)
Educational services and technologies
This activity focuses on collaboration across the education sector on commonly identified topic areas, providing coordinated approach to improve NREN educational services and activities.
TF-EDU: Educational activities and services
Coordinator: Gyöngyi Horváth (GÉANT), Dragana Kupres (CARNET)
Outcomes: openUp2U, NREN edu survey
SIG-TNE: Transnational Education - Addressing technological challenges in the delivery of international education (DORMANT)
NPAPWs: NPAPWs are a collaborative project of GÉANT, Internet2, New World Symphony, GARR (Italian NREN) and other European national research and education networks (NRENs), working together with cultural institutions around the world to organise the annual event.
Coordinator: Domenico Vicinanza (GÉANT)
Network Services and Technologies
This area is concerned with organisational aspects, coordination and exchange of best practice regarding the provisioning and delivering of network services. Work in this area supports research on network technology and innovative network services. Campus networking is included in this area.
SIG-NGN: Next Generation Networking - knowledge exchange and collaboration on developments in networking technologies.
Coordinator: Juraj Bilic (CARNET)
SIG-NOC: Network Operations Centres - Sharing and creating common best practices for the organisation and management of Network Operations Centres
Coordinator: Magda Haver (GÉANT)
SIG-PMV: Performance Monitoring and Verification - Identifying and establishing best practices for wired/wireless networks (DORMANT - merged into SIG-NOC and SIG-NGN)
GLIF: The Global Lambda Integrated Facility - is an international collaboration that promotes the paradigm of lambda networking (circuit-oriented networking), primarily in support of demanding scientific applications.
Coordinator: Kevin Meynell (ISOC)
Media Services
This area encompasses information exchange and best practice in traditional and web-based collaboration, webcasting and video-on-demand solutions, while at the same time providing a platform for activities supporting live media and videoconferencing. GÈANT’s activities in this field vary from the investigation of next generation real-time communication services to the establishment of rich media production and recording solutions, metadata and content repositories as well as distribution platforms.
SIG-Multimedia: Multimedia Applications - Facilitating technology and service interoperability and sharing knowledge about multimedia solutions
Coordinator: Casper Dreef (GÉANT)
NPAPWS: Network Performing Arts Production Workshop
Coordinator: Domenico Vicinanza (GÉANT)
Cloud Services
Virtualisation generally refers to abstraction of resources, usually creating a logical view of resources while hiding the underlying arrangement of various physical elements including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. This area also includes the investigation of in-house services using private clouds and of services outsourced to public clouds.
SIG-CISS: Cloudy Interoperable Software Stacks - Sharing and collaborating on cloud infrastructure software stacks, platforms and research workflows
Coordinator: Casper Dreef (GÉANT)
OSO/OCM: Open Cloud Mesh (OCM) is a joint international initiative built on the open Federated Cloud Sharing application programming interface (API) - first initiated and implemented by ownCloud Inc. - taking Universal File Access beyond the borders of individual clouds and into a globally interconnected mesh of research clouds without sacrificing any of the advantages in privacy, control and security an on-premises cloud provides. OCM defines a vendor-neutral, common file access layer across an organization and/or across globally interconnected organizations, regardless of the user data locations and choice of clouds.
Organisational services
Dealing with organisational, information gathering/exchange and delivery aspects of services provided to the community and by the community.
SIG-Marcomms: Marketing Communications - Sharing and collaborating on marketing, communications and public relations
Coordinator: Laura Durnford (GÉANT)
SIG-MSP: Management of Service Portfolios - Supporting management across the product life cycle and sharing service ideas
Coordinator: Magda Haver (GÉANT)
Support Services
Catered to supporting end users and the NREN community at large.
TF-RED: Research Engagement Development - Developing methods for NRENs to engage with research communities.
Coordinator: Chris Atherton (GÉANT), Juraj Bilic (CARNET)
Health Services
TF-eHealth: The eHealth TF aims primarily at enhancing coordination, exchange of best practices and sharing knowledge among the NRENs and the activities they are individually carrying out to support their eHealth User Communities. In accomplishing this primary task, aimed at building useful synergies, it will act - by mandate from the NRENs and with their consensus - implement specific work items addressing the needs of eHealth NREN users, including Research Collaborations on eHealth and emerging eHealth - related community initiatives and projects, the reference eHealth EOSC cluster EOSC - Life, focusing on the specific benefits and exploitable outcomes for NRENs in their end - user facing support role. The overarching TF objective will be enabling the required network, AAI, Cloud, Security services in the eHealth domain, boosting the potential exploitation of eHealth services by the GÉANT and NRENs community.
Current active Task Forces, Special Interest Groups and collaborative projects: