============================================================================== ISOC Document Title: China workshop proposal Author: A.M.Rutkowski Date: 20 June 1995 Body: Board of Trustees Document: 95-013 Revision: basic Supersedes: - Status: Final Maintainer: A.M.Rutkowski Access: unrestricted ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _VISIA PROPOSAL_ Frank Kuo, Jeff Smith - Bridge To Asia _Foreword_ The purpose of the VISIA project ('Volunteers of the Internet Society In Asia') is to assist developing countries in Asia (beginning with China) to access the educational and scientific resources available on the Internet. VISIA will be a cooperative program sponsored by the Internet Society and the Bridge to Asia Foundation, and will send volunteers to China to train new users of the Interet. ISOC will recruit, screen and orient the volunteers, and BTA will arrange placement and in-country support for them. The volunteers will be drawn from university campuses that have large amounts of Internet traffic, in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. They will be veteran navigators of the Internet and expert users of Gopher, WAIS, WWW and other tools. They will be posted in teams of two (one graduate and one undergraduate per team), for a period of six to ten months at the host institutions of Tsinghua University in Beijing, Fudan University in Shanghai, and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. Dr. Franklin Kuo will be VISIA program director. _Background_ The Internet is a global network of computer networks linked by means of common protocol standards. It currently consists of over 30,000 connected networks worldwide, nearly 2.2 million host computers, and connects 146 countries. These numbers increase almost daily. The Internet is a powerful research and communication medium for scholars and professionals in developed countries, and is indispensable in many cases because of the speed and radius of information-exchange which it provides. Scholars and researchers in less developed countries need equal access to it, and while many have facilities for physical connectivity, few have Internet expertise, that is, few know the command languages, search-and-retrieval and other tools needed to exploit the Internet's uses and advantages--these languages and tools, like the numbers of Internet users, also change almost daily. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a global international organization of Internet users and service providers. ISOC provides a worldwide forum for the exchange of information about the evolution and use of Internet technology, and acts as a standards body for the creation and evaluation of new Internet protocols. It also facilitates global cooperation among many organizations in the development, access, and use of the Internet. Bridge to Asia (BTA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides donated educational materials and services to universities and schools in developing countries in Asia. Since its inception in 1987, BTA has shipped more than one million hardcopy materials to China, and has developed numerous relationships with higher-education agencies, institutions and professionals. BTA is shifting away from book donations toward electronic transfer of information and use of the Internet. In China today, academic computer networks consist mainly of campus networks. There are plans to interconnect many of these, beginning this year. Initially, only the National Computing and Networking Facility of China (NCFC) will have Internet connectivity (NCFC is a major demonstration project funded by the World Bank and the PRC State Planning Commission; it links three major institutions: Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences). However, by 1995, most of the major universities in China may be connected via CHINAPAC to NCFC, and thus have the requisite linkage to the Internet. Once a China Internet link is operational, network users will have access to the wealth of educational and scientific information available on the global Internet. Practical connectivity will lag behind physical connectivity until Chinese users master the tools that are needed to access the information. _Internet Information Tools_ As the Internet grows at an exponential rate, so do the information resources and services on the network. In order to keep pace with this extraordinary growth, a number of tools have been developed to facilitate the tasks of locating and retrieving networked information resources. These tools make it possible to explore public domain software repositories, to consult mailing list archives and databases, to retrieve directory information and among many other capacities to participate in global group discussions on the Internet. These tools include Gopher and World Wide Web (WWW), which provide a means for moving through a wide range of network resources uniformly and intuitively. Other tools for searching databases located throughout the Internet are WAIS and ASTRA. Still others for finding network resources are Archie, WHOIS and NETSERV. An example of the use of these tools for disseminating scientific information via the Internet is the CICNet project for distribution of electronic journals to users. CICNet, a midwestern regional network of NSFNET, is engaged in a project to archive journals electronically, and to provide access to them via Gopher and WWW. Many other organizations, such as the American Mathematical Society, also are providing electronic information via the network. With such diverse and numerous information services and sources available on the Internet, the problems for novice users are how to locate the information that is desired, and how to retrieve it. _Criteria for Selecting Volunteers_ 1. Ideally, the volunteer will be a graduate student with experience in teaching and familiarity with a field. Focused and mature undergraduates also will be considered, especially those with previous overseas experience. 2. He/she should be very familiar with the full range of Internet tools, including Gopher, WWW, Mosaic, archie, Wais, ftp, telnet, and e-mail, among others. 3. He/she should be prepared to spend six to ten months in China. _Criteria for Host Institutions_ Bridge to Asia will coordinate the placement of volunteers with host institutions. Based upon current understanding of the China internet situation, a reasonable strategy for placing volunteers is to locate them within China's largest cities with multiple universities and research institutes linked to the Internet. The leading candidates aare Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. A university in each would host a team of two volunteers. In Beijing possible hosts are Tsinghua University and NCFC. In Shanghai, possible hosts are Fudan and Shanghai Jiaotong, both with excellent campuswide networking facilities. In Guangzhou, the host will be Zhongshan University. It is assumed that host institutions will have computer facilities and staff experienced with basic networking technologies, so that the project will not need to provide software or hardware support for the basic networking infrastructures. _Program Director_ The program director will be Dr. Franklin F. Kuo, a veteran in computer networking. Dr. Kuo is currently Executive Director of Asian Programs at SRI International, and Consulting Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. In July, 1994, he will retire from SRI and will have the necessary time to devote to this program, without pay. Dr. Kuo is also on the Board of Advisors of the Bridge to Asia Foundation, and a pioneer member of the Internet Society. His biographical summary is given below: Dr. Franklin F. Kuo is currently Deputy Division Director, Computing and Engineering Sciences Division of SRI International. Dr. Kuo, who also holds the title of Executive Director, Asian Programs, is a well-known pioneer in computer networking. He has worked at Bell Laboratories for over six years, and in 1966-82, was Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii, where he led the development of the ALOHA System Project, a pioneering radio network for computer communications. During a leave of absence from the University, he served as the Director of Information Systems in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. At SRI he has led many projects in network information systems. In 1983 he was the project leader for an NSF project which led to the architectural definition of NSFNET, the US academic network developed for remote supercomputer access. During 1983-85 he was a member of an NSF advisory committee on supercomputer networking. In 1988-90 he served as a special consultant to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on the HPCC Initiative. Dr. Kuo, who was born in China, and speaks fluent Chinese, was a member of the ACM Delegation to China in 1982. He was a World Bank consultant to Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1984. In May 1992, he led a delegation of communications and networking specialists on a professional exchange to China. Dr. Kuo has many contacts in the Chinese networking community, and helped arrange for the satellite link connecting NCFC to the Internet in 1994. Dr. Kuo is a Fellow of the IEEE, and is listed in Who's Who in America. _Funding_ The cost per year to place one VISIA volunteer in China will be $20,000, including recruitment, orientation, round-trip air-fare from the U.S. to China, living allowance, health insurance, and support services. Costs for a total of six volunteers will be $120,000. Funds will be raised from U.S. sources, including private foundations, corporations and individuals. Co-sponsors of the project, ISOC and BTA, will solicit contributions. Costs of in-country accommodations will be contributed by sources in China including the host institutions. Except for travel, Dr. Kuo will contribute his time to managing the VISIA effort. The project can begin six months after funds are received, allowing for recruitment in the U.S. and arrangement of placements in China. __VISIA Budget : U.S. Contributions (US$)__ _Honoraria_ 3 graduates x 1,250/month x 10 months = 37,500 3 undergraduates x 750/month x 10 months = 22,500 _International travel_ 6 volunteers x 1,750 = 10,500 program director x 1,500 x 2 = 3,000 _In-country travel_ program director x 1,500 x 2 = 2,000 _Health and accident insurance_ 6 persons x 75/month x 10 months = 4,500 _Bridge to Asia overhead_ staff support, communications = 17,500 _ISOC overhead_ staff support, communications = 17,500 _Miscellaneous_ U.S. and in-country expenses = 5,000 __Total: 120,000__ ==============================================================================