------------------------------------------------------------------- APNIC Document identity Title: Asia Pacific Network Information Center Pilot Project Organizational Proposals and a Preliminary Budget Short title: pilot-project-budget Document ref: APNIC-005 Version: 001 Date of original publication: 10 December 1993 Date of this version: 10 December 1993 Review scheduled: n/a Obsoletes: n/a Status: Historical Comments: n/a -------------------------------------------------------------------- APNIC-005.0 D. Conrad Informational Document December 1993 Asia Pacific Network Information Center Pilot Project Organizational Proposals and a Preliminary Budget Issued: December 10, 1993 Expires: Not Applicable 1. Introduction In January 1993 at the Honolulu APCCIRN meeting, it was resolved that efforts should be undertaken to establish an Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC)[1]. Following the Inet '93 meeting in San Francisco in August, the third APCCIRN meeting was held and the APNIC was again a topic for discussion[2]. The original APNIC proposal[3] was expanded and the initiation of the public phase of the APNIC pilot pro- ject was slated for September 1, 1993. The goals of the APNIC pilot project are primarily to investigate issues involved in setting up a Network Information Center for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions[4,5]. Support for the APNIC pilot project has been generously donated by the Japanese national Network Information Center, JPNIC and the pilot project staff is composed of volunteers from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia, and the USA. This paper is some preliminary thoughts by the staff of the APNIC pilot project on the permanent APNIC organizational issues and a prelim- inary budget proposal. It is hoped that the information discussed in this document will provide food for thought to the APCCIRN during its deliberations regarding the permanent APNIC. 2. Organizational Issues The Asia Pacific Network Information Center is assumed to be a neu- tral, not-for-profit organization who's primary goal is to provide infrastructural support for internetworking in the Asia and Pacific Rim regions. As more fully described in "Various Proposals for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center"[3], this infrastructural support includes such functions as allocation of blocks of class C addresses, maintainence of informational stores and databases relating to network- ing in the Asia Pacific region, providing initial point of contact and referral services for individuals and organizations interested in Inter- networking, etc. It is further assumed that the APNIC will provide these functions to all appropriate members of the Asia Pacific networking community, be Conrad [Page 1] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 they research and education oriented or commercially oriented, as a pub- lic trust. With this being the case, it is clear that the APNIC will come under the jurisdiction of the Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for International Research Networking (APCCIRN) and the Asia Pacific Engineering and Planning Group (APEPG). In order to facilitate the evaluation of how APNIC is fulfilling its duty to the Asia Pacific networking community, the staff of the APNIC proposes to prepare a status report of the APNIC not less than twice a year to be presented to the APCCIRN and APEPG on or around Janu- ary 1 and July 1 of each year. These status reports will include a gen- eral recap of the services the APNIC provide to the AP region networking community over the previous six months. As the Asia Pacific region's portion of the Internet is expanding at a rapid rate, it is difficult to estimate the resource requirements of a regional Network Information Center over an extended period of time. It is therefore proposed that the APNIC will provide budgetary estimates to the APCCIRN for a three year operating period at a time. This three year operating period should be initiated at the beginning of the second year of the three year term of the chairmanship of the APCCIRN. In order to provide a resonable lead time prior to the termi- nation of a three year operating period, it is proposed that the APNIC staff prepare the next three year operating period budget within six months to one year of the termination of the then current operating period. Since the APNIC is operating as a public trust for the entire net- working community of the Asia and Pacific Rim regions as represented by the constituents of the APCCIRN and APEPG, it is proposed that, in the event of some dispute regarding operational matters, the APNIC will take all appropriate steps to resolve the dispute while keeping the APCCIRN and APEPG informed of the issues. In the event that those steps are ineffective, the staff of the APNIC will defer to the consensus opinion of the APCCIRN and/or the APEPG in order to resolve the issue. It is hoped that with these proposals as a start, the APCCIRN will be able to produce a framework in which the permanent APNIC can be con- structed. While these proposals do not attempt to be exhaustive, they should provide a useful beginning for deliberations on issues involved in creating a Network Information Center for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions. 3. Budgetary Estimates Given the previously stated proposal of a three year operating period for the APNIC, what follows is a proposal for the first three year budget. Conrad [Page 2] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 3.1. Assumptions This proposed budget is assumed to be effective from July 1, 1994 to July 1, 1997. It is also assumed, for the sake of some of the actual numbers below, that the APNIC will exist within Japan during this timeframe and while in Japan, the APNIC will utilize the facilities of the Fujisawa campus of Kieo University. If the APNIC does not reside within Japan for its first term, some of the monetary figures which fol- low will need to be modified. Furthermore, if the APNIC is located in Japan, it is assumed APNIC will utilize the facilities of the Fujisawa campus of Keio University. Finally, one last assumption: given these budgetary figures are estimates, some leeway will be assumed to account for exceptional situa- tions. 3.2. Personnel Since the APNICs functions can, for the most part, be delegated to national NICs, APNIC should not require a significant level of staffing. From the operation of the APNIC pilot project, the following "Full Time Equivalents" or FTEs are proposed to provide full staffing for the APNIC. 0.5 FTE Managerial Support 0.5 FTE Technical Support 1.0 FTE Administrative Support Note that these FTEs may not actually correspond to a single person for each FTE (e.g., some of the FTEs may be filled by a number of part- time employees). In terms of actual funding, a single FTE will be assumed to require 10,000,000 yen per annum. This figure includes all taxes, benefits such as health, social security, etc., and yearly salary. Thus, the two FTEs proposed above would require a total of 20,000,000 yen per annum. 3.3. Capital Equipment In the case of computer equipment, both hardware and software, there are two categories of funding. The first is startup costs which will occur one time during the three year operating period, the other is a recurring cost that will occur each year of APNIC's operation. The startup costs corresponds to buying the initial hardware and software. The recurring costs refer charges for such items as maintenance con- tracts, software upgrade fees, and machine upgrade and/or replacement. 3.3.1. Startup Budget Conrad [Page 3] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 Since APNIC will have need to provide several varieties of informa- tion and database services, APNIC will require service machines. It is envisioned that a service machine has a large quantity of disk and suf- ficient CPU power to handle a large number of perhaps compute intensive queries or retrievals simultaneously. For APNIC's purposes, two servers should be sufficient. In addition to the two servers mentioned previously, each FTE will require a single user workstation. The user workstations can be assumed to not require significant disk resources, since the user workstations will be assumed to be dataless (i.e., the user workstations will keep user files on one of the APNIC servers). Since the user workstations will be used on a daily basis, excellent graphics and usability features are assumed to be required. Thus, the CPU requirements of the user machines will be on par with that of the servers. Other assorted hardware which will be required for the operation of APNIC includes: Postscript printer (minimum 300 dpi resolution) Tape Drive (for backups) CD ROM (for software and informational distributions) Local Area Network hardware Additional hardware which may be considered optional but highly desirable would includes: Color printer (presentation quality) Duplex feature for Postscript printer Laptop computer with assorted options Scanner As for computer software, it is assumed that both the servers and user workstations will be running some variety of Unix. Additional software licenses will be necessary for such software products as: Multilingual Word Processor Software development tools Page layout software Statistical/Mathematical software The following table summarizes the hardware and software require- ments and provides a rough estimate for the costs of those requirements. In the cases of equipment which requires addtional supplies (e.g. toner cartidges for printers), the budgeted cost includes the cost for those supplies. Conrad [Page 4] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 Individual Total Qty Equipment Cost (in Yen) Cost (in Yen) 2 Servers 1,000,000 2,000,000 3 Workstations 750,000 2,250,000 1 PS Printer 550,000 550,000 1 Tape drive 325,000 325,000 1 CD ROM drive 100,000 100,000 * LAN hardware 210,000 210,000 * Software 500,000 500,000 * Miscellaneous 500,000 500,000 Total 6,435,000 Other than computer equipment mentioned previously, APNIC has the following additional capital equipment requirements: Individual Total Qty Equipment Cost (in Yen) Cost (in Yen) 1 Plain paper FAX 350,000 350,000 1 Answering machine 40,000 40,000 3 Telephones 15,000 45,000 * Office furniture 1,000,000 1,000,000 Total 1,435,000 Thus, combining the totals for the startup costs leads to an ini- tial one time cost of 7,870,000 yen to initiate the permanent APNIC 3.3.2. Recurring Costs In order to keep the machinery and software up to date and in good working order, it will be necessary to allocate a certain level of fund- ing to be used to purchase hardware and software maintenance contracts, upgrades, and replacements for hardware that is unable to meet APNIC requirements over time. It is assumed that 20% of the above total should suffice to fulfill these requirements. 3.4. Environment With the assumption that APNIC will be based at the Fujisawa campus of Kieo University in Japan mentioned previously, office space, utili- ties such as electricity, water, heating and cooling, etc, and network connectivity will be provided free of charge according to an agreement Conrad [Page 5] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 offered by the University. If APNIC is not based in Japan, then these factors will need to be included in the APNIC three year operating budget. 3.5. Miscellaneous In addition to the items mentioned above, additional funding will need to be supplied to provide for various aspects of APNIC operating expenses such as long distance telephone calls, travel for various meet- ings and conferences, etc. With respect to travel expenses, it is assumed that APNIC staff may be required to travel extensively as it has been noted that political relations in the Asia Pacific region are more attuned to personal contact than to other methods. With this being the case, an addtional 4,000,000 yen should be budgeted to handle these expenses per annum. 3.6. Summary Summing the figures for the recurring costs leads to a total yearly cost for the operation of APNIC of 25,574,000 yen. Including the one time charges necessary to begin the operation of APNIC leads to a grand total of 76,592,000 yen for the first three year operating term of APNIC. 4. Conclusions This paper has presented a proposals for a general outline for organization issues and a rough budget for consideration in the creation of a permanent Network Information Center for the Asia Pacific region. For organization issues, the key points noted were that the APNIC is a neutral, not-for-profit organization operating for the public trust under the auspices of the APCCIRN and APEPG and that the APNIC would operate and would be funding on a three year operating term and for a rough budget, some figures were presented leading to a proposal of a total of 72,592,000 yen spaced over three years. It is hoped that the APCCIRN can make use of the information pro- vided in this document in its deliberations on the creation of a per- manent Network Information Center for Asia and the Pacific Rim. 5. References [1] Chon, K., "Minutes of the January 1993 Honolulu APCCIRN Meeting", nic.nm.kr:/apccirn/021.minute.Jan93, January 1993. [2] Chon, K., "Minutes of the August 1993 San Francisco APCCIRN Meeting", nic.nm.kr:/apccirn/038.ccirn.min.Aug93, August 1993. Conrad [Page 6] APNIC-005.0 December 1993 [3] Murai, J., and Hirabaru, M., "A Proposal for APNIC Experiments", nic.nm.kr:/apccirn/020.apnic.proposal, January 1993. [4] Murai, J., and Conrad, D., "Asia Pacific Network Information Center Pilot Project Proposal", apnic.net:/apnic/docs/english/apnic-003.txt, August 1993. [5] APNIC Staff, "Various Proposals for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center", apnic.net:/apnic/docs/english/apnic-004.txt, December 1993. 6. Author's Address David R. Conrad Internet Initiative Japan, Inc. 2-11-2 Nagatacho, Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100 Japan Tel: +81-3-3580-3781 Fax: +81-3-3580-3782 Email: davidc@iij.ad.jp Conrad [Page 7]