Indonesia Academic Information Infrastructure

Onno W. Purbo & Intan Achmad
Institute of Technology Bandung, Bandung 40132
onno@itb.ac.id & intan@itb.ac.id

Bobby Nazief
Computer Sciences, University of Indonesia
Nazief@cs.ui.ac.id
Abstract
In this report, we will provide a short background report on our Academic Information Infrastructure (AII) in Indonesia which has been built for the last three years involving many dedicated people behind it (cnrg@itb.ac.id & sysop-l@itb.ac.id) who spend many sleepless nights in front of the computers. Experience in building such infrastructure would lead to the strategies in having the Academic Information Infrastructure (AII). The proposed strategies in building the network can be devided into three major strategies:

•	Strategies in AII application layer development.
•	Strategies in legal framework to support AII.
•	Strategies in IT & Telecommunication infrastructure.

Among all strategies, human resource development to support the network would be the key to enable & sustain the development of the network. Current Internet infrastructure could be used to initiate the AII immediately without having to wait for deployment of any further equipment. Supporting documents can be downloaded from:

http://www.lp.itb.ac.id/~yc1dav/ 

Our experience is currently being adopted by the steering committee of Indonesian National Information Infrastructure (NII) called NUSANTARA-21 http://n21.ac-id.net .

Need IT-literate Human Resource
The summary of Indonesian human resource condition as reported by KOMPAS in March 1997 can be summarized that only , as follows 2.868.140 (3.5%) has D1, D3 & S1 degree. Most of them are working in financial business & other private businesses from the total 80.110.060 (100%) work force. Only 60.000 (0.1%) are the estimated number of Internet users in Indonesia who are mostly S1 degree.

A simple thought would lead to a conclusion that the Indonesian mass who are capable to use information technology & Internet needed for upcoming global competition is only 0.1% of the total work force and very limited in number. Thus, to enable Indonesia to compete in the upcoming business competition there is a strong need to have a substantial Indonesia mass capable in performing Information Technology based businesses.

An electronics distance learning as well as Internet based education system would be required to sustain / to support the development of the needed human resources.

Introduction: Indonesia Case

Educational & Research Network has been a major trust behind the development of computer network in Indonesia and can be traced back to early 1980. UUCP Network among Indonesian universities has been a pioneering work of University of Indonesia (http://www.ui.ac.id). Their UUCP system is still in operation - although, currently, they provide the service mostly for commercial & NGOs entities. Internet development in Indonesia is quite rapid (if not exponentially grow) with approximately 20 Mbps of total speed to Internet from Indonesia as of early 1997 as shown in the figure. However, current Indonesia Internet speed is approximately only 5 Mbps due to current economic crisis. Thus, to sustain such rapid growth, there is a strong need for human resources in Information Technology & Internet as well as other Engineering aspects to backup the rapid growth. The rough topology of the current Academic Information Infrastructure is shown in the figure below which is drawn in early 1996. Current situation is generally not much different with increasing number of higher educational institutions connected to Internet.

There is basically three (3) major gateways for Internet access for Indonesian universities, namely,

•	Institute of Technology Bandung (3.55 Mbps aggregate speed).
•	IPTEK-NET at Ministry of Research & Technology (512 Kbps).
•	University of Indonesia (64 Kbps?).

Currently the majority of Indonesian universities are connected to ITB with a total number 25+ educational institutions & keep on increasing. The rest of Indonesian universities are connected to two major commercial ISP, namely, IndoInternet & RadNet. Key factors to be able to sustain such development are:

•	Involving as many people as possible during the process & to create an ownership towards the network. Many of the students will help in maintaining & expanding the network if we allow them to do that.
•	The users should be the owner of the network.
•	Let expert users to be involved in the technicalities in building a network.

This approach in building the network has shown successful way in  building the network particularly the one connected to ITB as we provide not only the physical connection but also access to more than  130 mailing lists at ITB with 15.000+ subscribers. Thus, an informal distance learning processes has been done for sometime at ITB.

All of the Internet activities of ITB is not at all possible if we are not involve in the major movement in building a Asia-Pacific Education & Research Network part of Asia Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) (http://shika.aist-nara.ac.jp/research/ai3)  activities to test a Asia Pacific Information Infrastructure (APII) (http://hite.etri.re.kr/~apii/apii.html)  at a speed of 2 Mbps. Ku-Band ground station is installed at ITB in September 1996 to catch the JCSat-3 to reach Wide Network in Japan. The topology of most Indonesian university connected to Internet is shown in the figure below.

Topology to Integrate all Indonesian Universities to Internet

Note the 2 Mbps CDMA connection to regional VSAT station, using wireless 2 Mbps CDMA - we are proposing the building of low cost 2 Mbps MAN to share the cost of regional VSAT network. The activities are part of Asia Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) network http://www.ai3.net/ . Detailed AI3 Indonesia network is shown to Internet communities at http://netmon.itb.ac.id/ developed by Ir. Ismail Fahmi (ismail@itb.ac.id) .

The AI3 Indonesia is currently linking 25+ educational institutions to Internet with discussion place at ai3@itb.ac.id . A larger association for educational institutions are located at Indonesia Peer Academic Network and Education Link (PANEL) at indonesia-panel@itb.ac.id.

Concept of National Information Infrastructure (NII)

To give some ideas on the contribution of the Academic Information Infrastructure (AII) could be made. It would be better to make a short overview of the brief architecture of a National Information Infrastructure (NII). It can be shown clearly the area where AII could contribute. Further, we can then define / propose the strategies that could be used to perform the AII.

An NII conceptually can be divided into several layers, namely,

•	Telecommunication Infrastructure which we can guess related to the services provided by telecommunication operators. We as educational institutions should rent these facilities from the existing telecommunication operators. The operators will professionally perform the services.
•	Technical Core / Expertise is related to various core technologies, standard in IT that is being used in NII. Research in this area would be needed for distance learning to set standards / efficient way in delivering the materials to the students. Technical core / expertise would be of interest for those institutions which involve in the process to collaborate among each other & build a common expertise / standard.
•	Regulatory Framework is the most difficult part of all. There are many regulations / concensus to be changed if we need to perform full fledge distance learning program. However, to start with mutual collaboration like exchange of expert etc. would be feasible while retaining the current regulatory framework as it is. Funding Agencies, such as, JICA, World Bank & CIDA, would be of interest to get strong involvement in the regulatory framework.
•	Computer Network is something that Internet Technology being heavily used. Collaboration among many Internet experts as well as operators has been done for a long time since the beginning of its operation. The key to it is to enable the students at the education centers to be involve in the operation of the network to produce more people with technical knowledge of Internet technology needed to sustain the rapid expansion of Internet in many countries including Indonesia. Thus the decisions / involvement in the computer network / Internet activities is entirely up to the particular universities / institutions.
•	IT Application is the application layer of the NII which interact directly with the end users. In our case, higher engineering education network is one of the main objective to be supported by the application layer. It would be of interest of funding agencies, such as, JICA, CIDA, World Bank, to get strong involvement in this area.
•	
Major Internet Applications
To set the strategic planning in higher engineering education network, we would need to know slightly on various Internet applications that can be used to facilitate the processes. A brief look at Internet application we can identify at least several major applications, namely,

•	Web  - to store various databases, to create list of indexes of various activities, to disseminate information on various research results / activities. Partial list of major Indonesian web sites in education & research can be found at Appendix III. Web is distributed in nature, mutual link list among various Web sites is needed to start the collaboration among Academic / Educational institutions.
•	Mailing list - would be needed to have two way interactions among all Indonesain academic information society via E-mail. A total of more than 150+ mailing list at majordomo@itb.ac.id with 15.000+ subscribers are in operation. One should be aware that once we are integrated into Internet it will open our network into International community - for the benefit of the network, it would be preferable to have many open mailing lists for various academic / educational topics - only for management & liaison activities, we might need closed mailing lists.
•	FTP Server - to store archive of various reports, information, large files to public.

Strategic Planning of Various NII Layers to Support Academic Informtion Infrastructure
We should have a clear objective prior to the development of the strategic plan. Having the objectives, we would then proposed the strategies could be used to initiate the Academic Information Infrastructure (AII). In education environment the strategies  could be divided into three (3) major strategies derived from the NII Architecture. In this paper, we will not attempt to describe the detailed tactical planning of implementation of the network. The strategies can be categorized as follows:

•	Strategies in AII application layer.
•	Strategies in legal Framework to support AII.
•	Strategies in the telecommunication infrastructure, core IT & Internet technology.

Many of the objectives of AII can be fitted nicely in the strategies in the application layers (1) as well as legal framework (2). Collaboration in research & development activities can be fitted in the telecommunication infrastructure, core IT & Internet technology. It would be expected that the AII partners as well as funding agencies could focus their effort in the above two major strategies without leaving behind the 3rd strategies - the application layer would heavily depend on the underlying layers.
Strategies in AII application layer.
A process of collaboration among various universities can be divided into several stages, namely,

In the first stage, one has to have some knowledge on the resources & expertise of the other parties, to know the procedures to get these resources / expertise, etc. - Web application would be the perfect fit to this. Our experience in Indonesia, many of the university administrators are still using printed media to distribute such information (and most of the time difficult to ask for it) and, thus, creates some difficulties to setup the Web. This occurs mainly due to the person in charge of the Internet is normally different than the one in charge of public relations.
In the second stage, leading universities should be actively involved in doing “link & match” activities among each member universities. Physical contact through seminars, workshops, conferences should be followed up by virtual contact through E-mail discussions through various mailing lists. It would be easy to install mailing lists. One needs only several servers to host the list & some bandwidth to Internet. It will require sometime (might be 1-2 years) to get the results of such activities.
With the increase of Internet bandwidth, we could increase the type of activities via multimedia technology. For example, we can do live broadcast of regular seminars through Multicast Backbone (MBONE) facilities in Internet. It has been done between Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) and Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) over our AI3 link. There should be easy to do remote seminars / conferences as there is no regulation prevent us to do it.
Having known each other for sometime & know exactly the strength & weakness of each parties, mutual collaboration could be initiated by keeping a win-win situation among parties. Mutual collaboration could be instantly done in many cases - sometime, regulation would be the barrier of it.

Strategies in legal Framework to support AII.
The current regulation in Indonesia would prevent some activities to be performed, such as, transfer of credits - and some difficulties to get some activities going, such as, multimedia class over the network. However, current regulation is still allow us to do most of the activities going and very helpful to get the AII run.

It would be a strong AII contribution to reduce the barrier in legal framework to enable all of the activities to run smoothly. Being not a university administrator as well as not a legal experts has prevent me to write thoroughly on this matter. Several major issues that might arise from the activities are:

•	Transfer of  Credit.
•	Taking courses from universities from outside Indonesia.
•	Licensed for invited Prof. / guest lecturer.
•	University acting as Internet Service Provider for the students & its surrounding educational institutions. There should be no special permit / licensed required.
•	Free licensed to use frequency for building low cost Internet access for educational institutions. Thus, allocation of educational purposed frequencies would be necessary.
•	Special telecommunication rate for educational institutions.

Those are some of the major issues related to legal framework that has to be solved.
Strategies in the telecommunication infrastructure, core IT & Internet technology.
Since universities / educational institutions are normally not a telecommunication operators, it is customary to use the services provided by local telecommunication operators as our highway to Internet. Unfortunately, in many cases (especially in Indonesia), the telco operators lack the knowledge in computer networking as the technology is developed mostly within the universities. Thus, the scenario in most cases, educational institutions will rely on telco services for its telecommunication infrastructure but run its own Internet operation on top of telco highway.

Major issues in telecommunication infrastructure are:

•	It should be low cost.
•	It should be robust.
•	It would be beneficial if we could use the existing technology in Indonesia.

Our experience in building the Indonesian education network, we find two major wireless technology that can be used to build the Indonesian education network in a positif way, namely,

•	Low cost packet radio network.
•	2 Mbps CDMA Metropolitan Area Network.

It should be noted that our 2 Mbps Wireless Metropolitan Area Network in Bandung for linking several universities is operated & owned by the universities themselves. This model is currently being adopted by other universities as Indonesian PT. Telkom is currently unable to provide 2 Mbps MAN in most Indonesian cities. Thus, it shows clearly that research & development and various innovation done at universities most often creates low cost alternatives but sometimes higher in performance.

Another alternative that being pursue in linking Indonesian high schools to Internet is using the network topology in the figure. Low cost & locally made packet radio technology is used for sending / transferring E_mail traffics while ordinary phone dial-on-demand technology is used for supporting the need for Web browsing. This technology will significantly reduce the need for telecommunication costs while supporting Indonesia local industries. However, frequency allocation would be the major issue as, currently,

there is no frequency allocation for educational purposes.

Information Technology & various aspects related to the use of it to support educational  activities are still an open research topics. Thus, the aim of activities in IT / Telecommunication sector would be:

Mutual research & development collaboration in IT / telecommunication through various existing media would be a strong contribution that could be made by any regional network.
Common IT infrastructure to enable any applications to run within the region.

Some of the issues / research topics could be:

•	Caching of the Web traffic.
•	Mirroring of many Web / FTP servers to reduce traffic.
•	The use of IP v.6.
•	Relays of mailing lists.
•	MBONE interconnection.
•	Video Conference “standards” & reflector interconnection.
•	RT Bone if anyone interested.
•	Web authoring & course presentation in Internet.
•	Knowledge & Course management.
•	Network Monitoring & Management.
•	Wireless High Speed Network as alternatives media.

We should be noted that among all proposed strategies the fact that:

•	Internet is only a tool.
•	Qualified Human Resource behind it is the key to enable all of this.
Test Bed to Support an Academic Information Infrastructure
In this section, I am focusing the activities being done at ITB in particular. Some of the activities are:

•	Internet Library: a test to give an alternative approach to a conventional library with merging of Public Internet facilities & Web / Database server (CDS/ISIS). Thus, a library will become an information center rather than a book case / archive.
•	Video Conference: CU-SeeMe reflector and Connetix & Intel Video Capture facilities has been tested. We need to expand our services towards video on demand. This facilities would be needed for interactive seminars.
•	Mailing lists: ITB is currently hosting more than 150+ mailing lists on various topics.
•	MBONE Infrastructure: Most of Our Routers at ITB are MBONE activited. Thus, it prepared for multimedia traffic.
•	MPEG-3: one of our most favourite service currently running at ITB. An MPEG-3 server full of music is currently in operation on our network. An audio on demand service is currently in operation. It shows clearly that a 10Mbps Ethernet network is not adequate to support such traffic.
•	Network Security Test Bed: A network security test bed is currently being installed to test various aspect of it.
•	Network Management & Network Monitoring Test Bed.
Summary
This paper is aimed to propose several strategies to initiate an Academic Information Infrastructure (AII). While we should be aware that Internet / IT is only a tool for us to do the work, we have to rely heavily on the human resource within each & every institutions to be able to sustain the network for many years to come. Thus, human resource development would be the key to success.

Several strategies in building the network has been proposed to focus on:

•	The network application layer.
•	Legal Framework.
•	IT / Internet Technology.

However, the current Internet infrastructure could be used to initiate the network immediately without having to wait for any deployment for additional equipment.
Acknowledgments:
Major support from AI3 / WIDE of Japan & ITB is appreciated. The author would like to thank many of his colleagues at sysop-l@itb.ac.id , cnrg@itb.ac.id , ai3@wide.ad.jp - who spent many sleepless nights to run our network. Thank you guys. Direction & help from Prof. Dr. Widiadnyana Merati, Dr. Priyono Sutikno, Dr. Soegiardjo Soegijoko, Dr. Intan Achmad, Prof. Dr. Wiranto Arismunandar and all ITB’s staffs are appreciated. My International colleagues, Prof. Jun Murray, Prof. Suguru Yamaguchi, Prof. Baba, Prof. Kanchana and all WIDE & AI3 members are appreciated. You are the most wonderful team, I have ever met (both physically & virtually).