Future directions in Community Network Technology By Michael Silvestrini Realtime Online (With notes by Alison Ball, and Andrew Patrick) Ottawa, 1700 hr, Aug. 16, 1994. Andrew Patrick convened a focussed working group to discuss possible future directions in community network technology during the final hours of the Canadian Community Networks Conference. Goals for this session were to share information in order to reduce duplication of effort, to identify important issues, to organize needs and information, and to make recommendation to Telecommunities Canada Sharing is done through a mailing list for electronic communications: the Freenet-Tech list which provides a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of operating a Freenet, such as software and system administration. To subscribe, send a message to listprocessor@cunews.carleton.ca with the following line in the body of the message. Subscribe Freenet-Tech Your Name Postings to the list should be addressed to Freenet-Tech@cunews.carleton.ca David Jones has offered to provide space to archive material, but still needed is an inventory of the software being used, including what's good and not good about each option, and John Stewart offerred to a list of systems (like TIN for news and PINE for mail) being used in Canada, plus projects that people are now working on. A list for the U.S. has also been started, prepared by NPTN. Important Issues raised by the workshop discussion included the needs of small vs. large systems, PC-based vs. other platforms, UNIX vs. non-UNIX environments. David Jones will start making a list of requirements for community network software. Other matters under discussion were the need for a "wish list", of making short and long-term goals, tool sharing, document sharing, support sharing, and how to share information between very busy people? Other matters discussed were security, universal and dumb terminal access, support for multimedia, delivery methods other than phone lines, Cable TV trials and ISDN. They discussed limitations imposed by CRTC: regulations and rates, the CANARIE project, and software development. Ian Duncan will delve further into costs of bandwidth, cable TV regulations and future technical briefings. On the topic of organizing, it was mentioned that Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) might be good model. Ian Duncan will provide more information on this. The workshop considered the possibility of creating a Telecommunities Canada Engineering Task Force to review and house documents and software, set standards, share software. Certain members were appointed tasks. David Jones will prepare a list of requirements and seek approval for and install an archive location, Dennis Hoops will forward the NPTN system survey to John Stewart for distribution in Canada and John will ensure that the freenet-tech listserv is archived and document how to access the archives. Ian Duncan will get the group thinking about lobbying issues and get more information about IETF and Andrew Patrick bring recommendation for TCETF to TC Directors. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Realtime Online - Professional Conference Reporting Team Rosaleen Dickson, Ottawa ac174@freenet.carleton.ca. Pierre Bourque, Michel Careau, Shady Kanfi, Charles King, Andrea Kujala, Jules Lafrance, Bruce MacDonald, Robt Rattey, Natalie Roth, Michael Silvestrini, Stephen Toy.