Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Information Technology and the Computer Network, held at Bonas, France, August 21 - September 2, 1983

1.1 Scope This paper deals with the following subjects: 1. Introduction 2. Feasibility study definition in IT 3. Forming a feasibility study team 4. The feasibility study work 5. The feasibility study report 6. Discussion 1.2 Information Technology (IT) Information was defined as anything sensed by at least one of the human senses and that may change the level of his knowledge. The information may be true or false, sent by premeditation or generated by coincidence, needed by the interceptor or intended to create new needs. The creation of the information may be very costly or free of charge. The information may be an essential need or just a luxury. Each information may be a one shot nature, eg., announcing a marriage, or a constant update need one, eg., news. Information technology as defined herein means all the types of systems needed to deal wi.th the information, transfer it to any place, store it, adapt it, etc. Information technology is usually bused on Telecommunications. Telecommunications means a large variety of possibilities. Usually, the IT's are based on the creation, updating, processing and transmission of information. The information itself is usually alphanumeric and graphic. Gradually, there is a tendency to step over to what is seen as more natural information, audio and visual. Front Matter....Pages I-VIII Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Information Technology — The Requirements....Pages 3-9 Feasibility Studies on New Information Technologies....Pages 11-19 Introduction to the Workshop Session on “The Merging of Defence and Civilian Interests in Computer Communications”....Pages 21-26 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 Open Systems Interconnection....Pages 29-41 Issues in Multimedia Computer-Based Message System Design and Standardization....Pages 43-52 Practical Benefits from Standardisation....Pages 53-62 Front Matter....Pages 63-63 The SERC Network — Its History and Development....Pages 65-74 SITA Advanced Telecommunications Services....Pages 75-90 Names, Addresses, and Directory Services for Computer Mail....Pages 91-102 The Demand and Supply of Telematic Services in Portugal....Pages 103-110 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 The UNIVERSE project....Pages 113-123 Performance Comparison of Local Area Network Architectures....Pages 125-135 Convergence of LAN and Digital Telephone Exchange Systems....Pages 137-152 Front Matter....Pages 153-153 Network Management in a Service Environment....Pages 155-159 The Transition towards Open Working....Pages 161-170 The Management of the SERC Network....Pages 171-178 Computational Techniques for Evaluation of Communication System Performance....Pages 179-190 Front Matter....Pages 191-191 Open Systems Interconnection Protocols....Pages 193-202 Services for Supporting Application Layer Protocols for Distributed Database Systems....Pages 203-218 An Overview of Data Encipherment in the Public Domain....Pages 219-226 Front Matter....Pages 191-191 Key Management for Data Encipherment....Pages 227-236 Authentication and Signature for Message Handling....Pages 237-242 Front Matter....Pages 243-243 The BIBNETT 2 project....Pages 245-248 Telplanner(TM): An Expert System for Planning Communications Services....Pages 249-254 On the Influence of the Interaction between Entities for Protocol Description....Pages 255-256 Communications Services and Distributed System Operations....Pages 257-260 Telecommunications-Related Information Services the User’s Point of View....Pages 261-268 Back Matter....Pages 269-274