Introduction
JUCC has been receiving enquiries on getting access to Internet through our HARNET from different sectors of community in Hong Kong as well as from elsewhere. We have allowed educational institutions to connect to HARNET as a node for an annual subscription, but have turned down other applications. Thus, it is important for us to have guidelines for handling requests to connect to our network consistently.
JUCC has been the leader in Hong Kong in establishing network connection to the outside world. While the Steering Committee has firmly indicated JUCC is not prepared to accommodate any commercial traffic through our network, it would be good community service that JUCC should be offering such network services to some non-commercial sectors of the community in Hong Kong, and to educational and research institutions in China and other neighbouring countries. It is the purpose of this paper to propose some guidelines in allowing access from outside organizations to our network.
User Categories
The enquiries that we have received, other than commercial, could be classified into the following categories:
I. Locally in Hong Kong
II. Elsewhere
Guidelines
The following guidelines is set up for the JUCC member institutions so that when they received enquiries from outside bodies, there would be some uniformity in handling those requests. While JUCC itself should be handling most of these requests, however, in view of the limited manpower that we have in JUCC, it would be advantageous that the member institutions could handle some of these requests on their own, since very often the requests arise because of personal contacts in the institutions themselves.
Since the Steering Committee has decided that JUCC is not ready to handle requests for the use of a commercial nature on our network, we should categorically refuse such applications and refer them to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whenever appropriate.
For those that we admit them into the use of HARNET, they would be asked to pay an annual fee and to strictly observe the HARNET Acceptable Use Policy in force.
(A) For application from users in Hong Kong
The institutions should be non-profit-making organizations, presumably of the education or research nature. They should provide their own connection to HARNET and be responsible for all the communication costs in connecting to our network (including line and communication equipment on the HARNET side). In addition, they will be asked to pay a fee to JUCC, on an annual basis to defray the cost of the HARNET operation.
Since these applications have to be created on host systems in JUCC institutions, they could determine the creation of accounts on their host systems for access to HARNET and Internet. It would be advisable to create accounts only for those users who can be identified in organizations that do not contravene the general acceptable guidelines, e.g. not of commercial nature, of our network, but is not ready to have their own nodes that can be attached to our network. The institution creating these user accounts should inform JUCC the account information on annual basis and could charge them according to the policy of individual institution.
(B) For application for connection from institutions in China
For requests from China, they should only be considered on an institutional basis. It would be ideal to handle them by JUCC in a fashion that could be applicable to all requests.
However, in order to help the institutions in China to connect to us and to the outside world, it is proposed that if they are willing to pay for the costs of connecting to us, that we could allow these institutions to get started with the network, at least for an initial period of, say, one year, after which we may have to decide whether we should charge them, or simply let their traffic route through us. It is also proposed that JUCC institutions should have a free hand to pursue connections of this kind, at least initially, since there would be more personal contacts with China in the institutions. As the network growth in China can be, and will be, enormous, the possible traffic problem will have to be addressed sometime later when we have gathered more experience on their usage pattern, the traffic demand etc.
(C) For institutions elsewhere
As for institutions in other countries, they should be treated on the same basis as the currently established procedure for the University of Macau. They would be asked to provide all the line and equipment cost for connecting to us and to contribute a fee on an annual basis determined by JUCC.
(D) For purposes hosted by departments
No matter what the category of such departmental arrangement will be, the HARNET services and bandwidth are non-resalable and non-transferable. Any departments/units in institutions should follow this same guideline as discussed in the above and inform JUCC via their Computer Centres of any external access to Internet through HARNET, which is established by the department in reference to (A)1, (A)2, B or C described above.
May 18, 1993
Revised : February 19, 1997