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TERENA compendium of national research and education networks in europe/services5 ServicesMany NRENs are involved in providing a number of important services totheir customers, in addition to providing connectivity. This section providesinformation about NREN work in eight service areas: Network OperationsCentres (5.2), Performance Monitoring and Management (5.3), Authorisationand Authentication Infrastructure (5.4), Security Incident Response (5.5),Bandwidth on Demand (5.6), Grid Services (5.7), IP Telephony (5.8) andVideoconferencing (5.9). The Compendium website provides more detailedinformation in a number of cases and also provides information on usersupport, public relations and communications, NREN involvement in otherInternet-related activities and NREN interests in research and development.• There is renewed and increasing interest in the Public Key Infrastructure(PKI) area;• Many NRENs are now introducing or have introduced eduroam, a facilitythat provides roaming access for users to wireless networks.The current uptake of AAI in the EU/EFTA countries can be summarised asfollows:Graph 5.1.1 AAI in the EU/EFTA Countries5.1 OverviewServices are receiving more and more attention from NRENs. There are afew trends that can be noted from the data:• More users have come to expect reliable, high-capacity Internetconnections. NRENs are doing more to provide such connections and toprovide assistance in case of problems. One way of doing this is throughthe ‘PERTs’. These now exist in roughly half of the NRENs. In cases wherea PERT does not exist, an NREN is able to call upon the central GÉANTPERT;90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%NRENS connected to eduroamNRENs with a federationNRENs that operate a CA• There is an increased need for an authorisation and authenticationinfrastructure (AAI) in the NREN environment and many NRENs aretaking steps to develop such an infrastructure. However, the work isby no means finished. Currently deployed AAI’s have very differentcapabilities, ranging from simple username/password-basedauthentication systems to sophisticated middleware for granting ordenying access to resources;• A related area is that of security incident response. The figures indicatethat in this area, there is still a large gap between the EU/EFTA countriesand the other countries in the region;• Approximately 25% of the NRENs are currently offering a Bandwidthon Demand service; approximately the same percentage is planning tointroduce it in the next two years, with a significant percentage of NRENsstill in doubt;59