Subject: Computer Networking in China (AEIC News Release 1032)

From: AEIC <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1992 18:14:45 -0400

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3. Computer Networking in China..........................................167
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From:   David K. Kahaner via Bin Wang <[email-masked]>
By:     Franklin F. Kuo, SRI International
Source: CHINANET

At the invitation of the China Institute of Communications, the Citizen
Ambassador Program of People to People International arranged a visit
for a delegation of professionals in telecommunications and networking
technology to the People's Republic of China.The exchange focussed on
topics dealing with China's telecommunications infrastructure, especially
on subjects relating to current research and applications in computer
networks. This group, known as the Networking Technology Delegation,
consisted of 24 members, with 18 professionals, and 6 accompanying spouses.
Of the 24 there were 17 people from the US, 5 from Japan (2 US citizens
residing in Tokyo) one from Germany, and one from Hong Kong, so it was truly
an international group. Six members of the delegation were native Chinese
speakers, which made it very convenient in our travels.

Our professional visits concentrated on telecommunications and on
computer networking. We visited a number of the major research
institutes and universities in Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai. In all three
cities there was a lot of interest in computer networking, especially in
the Internet, and how to connect to it. Another question that frequently
came up was the future of OSI vs that of TCP/IP. There are a lot of
local area networks in operation in China, connecting many PC-clones,
mostly Chinese produced, to some older-generation mainframes such as
Honeywells. What we did not see were operational wide-area networks,
with the exception of a metropolitan demonstration network in Beijing.

Current Wide Area Networks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At present, the major wide area network (WAN) in China is the China
National Public Data Network, CNPAC, which is currently being developed
and implemented. CNPAC, an X-25 packet switched network is designed to
carry data at speeds varying between 1.2 and 9.6 Kbps. The hub is in
Beijing, where the network management center is located, with packet
switches sited in the major cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou, and PS
concentrators found in other major cities. The packet switches,
concentrators, and PADs (packet assembly/disassembly devices) are all
manufactured in China. At the Beijing hub, there is an international
access line to CNPAC. Since we did not see a CNPAC demonstration, it is
not clear how much of it is operational and how much is still under
development.

In China, there is an X.25 link to the Internet using a store and
forward system via the CNPAC international access line in Beijing
connecting to the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.  To the outside
world, this link is being called "the China Academic Network (CANET)".
In addition to CNPAC connectivity, there is dial-up access to CANET from
inside China. David Kahaner of ONR Tokyo reports that he frequently
communicates with Chinese scientists via CANET. However, many of the
Chinese networking specialists we talked to have never heard of the name
"CANET", so we suspect that CANET means more to the outside world than
in China.

The major problem confronting the development of WANs in China is the
poor telecommunications infrastructure. Since the penetration of basic
plain old telephone service (POTS) is less than 1% among Chinese
businesses and households, and since local and long distance telephone
switching and transmission facilities are inadequate and antiquated, it
is difficult to build a modern computer network upon the current
telecommunications infrastructure.  It will take decades to bring the
basic telecommuncations system up to modern standards, so Chinese
networking will take a long time to come up to western norms also.

Metropolitan and Campus Networks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Beijing, we witnessed a very impressive metropolitan networking
project called NCFC (National Computing and Networking Facility of
China). NCFC is a demonstration network in Beijing linking the two major
universities, Tsinghua and Beijing Universities to a number of research
institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Each of the
pariticipating institutions have campus networks like the TUnet of
Tsinghua University.  These campus networks are connected by NCFC as a
two level system. Currently NCFC has a 10Mbps backbone connecting the
three campus networks, which will increase to 100Mbps in the next phase
of the project. Communication protocols will be ISO/OSI, but TCP/IP is
the first phase protocol. The top level of NCFC consists of the backbone
and the network control center.  The second level is composed of campus
networks at the two universities and CAS. NCFC is the largest and most
ambitious networking project we saw in China. It is partially funded by
the World Bank and the State Planning Commission, and is in limited
operation now, with full operation expected by 1994. We visited two of
the three groups who are participating in the development of NCFC. The
first was the Computer Network Center (CNC) of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, with its own campus network, the CASnet.  The CNC seems to
have the major responsibility for the development of NCFC, and is
staffed by 40 professionals. The second group, in Tsinghua University,
is described next.

The Tsinghua University Network (TUnet)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The most impressive university networking group we visited was at
Tsinghua University, the premier technical university in China. Under
the direction of Professor Hu Daoyuan, the Tsinghua University network,
TUnet is being developed under a well laid-out strategy based upon the
following goals:

1. It will be a universal, comprehensive campus network; its usage will
include instruction, research, administration, library, and
communications services.

2. It will be a multimedia integrated services network; messages
transmitted in the network will include not only data, but voice and
video as well.

3. It will operate under accepted international standards for
interfacing devices to the network. Emerging standards are important in
the fast changing technology of networking. Initially TUnet will operate
under TCP/IP, but migration strategies have been adopted to migrate to
ISO/OSI.

4. It will be a heterogeneous network using a variety of advanced
networking technologies (LAN, PABX, PS, ISDN and FDDI, etc) to
interconnect multivendor computing facilities.

5. It will be developed in phases, with the first phase (1987 to 1991)
concentrating on interconnection of facilties, and the second phase
(1992 to 1995) emphasizing network services.

In TUnet there are three major networking facilities:

a. A circuit switched network based upon an integrated services PABX,

b. A packet switching network based upon X.25 switches and PADs,

c. Ethernet LANs interconnected through a 100 Mbps FDDI optical fiber
backbone.

A key function of TUnet is electronic mail. Tsinghua University's
message handling system (MHS) functions includes mail, telegraph,
teletext, fax, videotex, voice, images, etc. The MHS is based upon the
EAN system developed by the University of British Columbia conforming to
the CCITT X.400 recommendation series of 1984. Tsinghua's work on its
e-mail system includes migration, Chinese localization, menu adaptation
and the implementation of remote user agents.

The work at Tsinghua on TUnet and NCFC underlines one of the basic
constraints that Chinese networking technologists must live with. Unless
you have foreign (hard) currencies to purchase networking equipment,
you've got to design and build everything from scratch, including
hardware and software. So TUnet represents in many ways a bootstrap
operation. The people in TUnet are all very well trained and dedicated.
It is unfortunate that they could not make use of technology that is
readily available in the Western world.

Local Area Networks (LANs)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In China today there are many LANs in use. Two common LAN products
widely available throughout China are Ethernets from 3COM, and Netware,
a LAN operating system developed by the Novell company. These products
are available in China because of joint venture arrangements that the
cited companies have made with Chinese counterparts. Most of the LAN
products are manufactured in China under license from US companies such
as 3COM and Novell.  At the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Professor
Yang Chuan-hou, the Director of the Computer Network Research Laboratory
presented to us some work which dealt with an architectural design of a
gateway interconncting LANs to an X.25 packet switched network.  The
work again was developmental in nature, in that both hardware and
software designs were implemented in the laboratory.

Work like that of Professor Yang and his colleagues illustrate the
practical nature of the networking development going on in China today.
I visited China in 1984, when I was a World Bank consultant to Shanghai
Jiao Tong University.  In the intervening years, there has been an
explosive growth in both computing and networking technology in China,
which will only accelerate with the further penetration of the Internet
into China. Since the Internet is capable of bringing network
specialists and users throughout the world into a larger cooperating
community, I believe that China's networking community will soon become
full partners in this world-wide community.