1. Name of principal investigator.
    Dmitry V. Latukhin

2. Title of proposal.
    Chelyabinsk Civic Network

3. Report period (time period covered by report).

          May 1998 � May 1999 (The first stage)

• Southern Ural State University (former Technical University of Chelyabinsk), SUSU
• Division of WAN Technologies / Ural Regional Center of FREEnet
• The Chelyabinsk Scientific Center, Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences
• Administration of Chelyabinsk oblast

6. Accomplishments during report period :

a. meetings and communications pertaining to output (with full address):

1. Contacts with local authorities:
� with head of Information System and Technology Department of Administration of Chelyabinsk oblast Oleg Loginovski (Revolution Sq., 2)

� with deputy head of the City of Chelyabinsk on social questions Tatyana Kharisova. An agreement has been achieved that SUSU and CCN will be basic organizations for Internet training of employees of libraries, hospitals, schools, etc.;

� working meeting with Boris Ushakov, chief of Division of Information Systems, Employment Department of Administration of Chelyabinsk oblast (54, ul. Omskaya, Chelyabinsk);

� with Larisa Novoselova, head of a division of Chelyabinsk Center of Professional Orientation of Unemployed and Disable Persons (17, ul. Pervoy Patiletki, Chelyabinsk).

2. Meetings with ISP representatives:

on the first stage:
� with director of Network Information Center of Chelyabinsksvyazinform (CSI) joint stock company Raul Faizullin. The result is an agreement of peering between CCN/FREEnet and commercial Southern Ural Regional network (SURnet) and collaboration in the future;

� with chief of CSI Public Relation Division Olga Raznopolova. She is in charge of creation of daughter�s charitable organization. The charity could be for transferring means on development of regional networking infrastructure: equipment supply, payments of communication for schools, libraries, and hospitals.

on the second stage:
� with leaders of Astra ST company for discussing possibility of connection of SUSU and respectively CCN and FREEnet to RBnet (Russian Backbone Network) through fiber optical cable. The participants were general director Igor Tumanov, technical director Konstantin Kubantsev and main specialist Dar�ya Korotkevich.

3. Contacts with non-profit and non-government organizations:

on the first stage:
� with chairman of Information Center "Sodeystvie" and member of board of Chelyabinsk Social Chamber "Our City" Natalia Baskova (room #15, 61b, Lenin prospekt, Chelyabinsk). The main result is intention of close collaboration;

� with board chairman of Chelyabinsk regional youth social movement "Unity and Law" Pavel Balakin (room #1, 78a, Lenin prospekt, Chelyabinsk).

� with Natalia Tsvetkova, the chairman of Chelyabinsk-Fribourg Society.

on the second stage:
� with representatives of Project Harmony Olga Gornovya, network coordinator, and Vasili Fokin, technical coordinator of IATP. We were talking about supporting of the center �Internet for everyone�;

� with Lous Clark, executive director of National Office of Government Accountability Project (1612 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006) and Thomas Carpenter, director of the West Coast Office of the same organization (1402 Third Avenue, Suite 1215, Seattle, WA 98101). They were informed about capabilities of the Chelyabinsk Civic Network (CCN) project;

� with Robert Cronin, Aaron LaMar, Marina Muhina and Anna Solovyova from IREX during conference in Moscow which was held by this board;

� Peter Wedemeyer, team leader, and Eugene Gaidyshev, local expert, from TACIS Technical Office (Lenin prospekt, 85 , office 338, 339, Ekaterinburg, Russia) visited our network center and were also inform about the project;

� with Ir.W.J.Oudolf, expert of EU Fifth Framework Program of Information Society Technologies, who made presentation in Southern Ural State University (SUSU) (TNO Industrie, De Wielen 6, Postbus 6235, 5600 HE Eindhoven, the Netherlands);

� we had meeting with David Sparling, M.D. from Mary Bridge-Chelyabinsk Affiliation (56 Leschi Drive, Steilacoom, WA 98388) and Alex Klementiev from Health Department of Tacoma-Pierce County (3629 South D Street, MS 096, Tacoma WA 98408-6897). We discussed possibilities for access to the Internet for some medical institutions in Chelyabinsk;

� with Tatyana Popova, leader of organization "Volunteers of hospis";

� with Ayrat Badriev, coordinator of project on creating Center of Tatar Culture in Chelyabinsk.
The discussed questions concerned the launching web sites of these organizations and Internet skill training for their staff.

� Marina Moiseeva, a research worker of Distance Education Laboratory, (Moscow Institute of General Secondary Education) has visited networking center in SUSU. We discussed the creation on-line version of a course for educators � developers of new learning materials in Internet and about the Internet;

� with consultant of Center of Social Associations volunteer from Canada Lori Shortreed and one from the Center staff Alexander Schur. We discussed aspects of collaboration with law NGO of Chelyabinsk and Snezhinsk and preparation of joint projects.

� with representatives of leading ISP in Saratov as well as with Igor Krivulin (Center of business development). There was exchange by opinion and experience in providing free and/or cheap access to Internet. We discussed also prospects of possible collaboration.

4. Many working contacts with reporters of leading newspapers issued in Chelyabinsk (Chelyabinskiy Rabochiy, Vecherniy Chelyabinsk, Delovoy Ural) and TV channels, especially in March 1999 when CCN project was presented.

on the second stage:
TV channel "Eastern express" has taken Victor Krivoschokov's interview who is one of leading persons of the networking center.

5. Meetings with scientists:

on the first stage:
� with deputy scientific director of Russian Federal Nuclear Center Vadim Simonenko (Snezhinsk, Chelyabinsk oblast) for launching workshop in 1999. The supposed name of this event is �Scientific, educational, civic and municipal networks on Southern Ural�. It will gather representatives of all sides with interests at stake, including local and national commercial ISP;

� with deputy director of Ural Research Center for Radiation Medicine Vladimir Gritsenko.

on the second stage:
� with staff of networking center of Institute of Mineralogy (Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Science, Miass, Chelyabinsk oblast) Oleg Telenkov and Eugeny Bazhenov. The talk concerned CCN expansion over Miass and its area for connection of non-commercial organizations and institutions.

b. activities in Chelyabinsk or other locations pertaining to output (description, diagrams for technical issues) :

on the first stage:

1. CCN connectivity has been significantly improved. Free of charge peering between CCN and
CSI company, the largest commercial ISP in the area, exists since September 1998 (capability of
10 MBps). There was also peering with Intersvyaz, other ISP in the city.

As before foreign traffic goes through Chelyabinsk-Yekaterinburg line extended up to 256kbps and FREEnet Center in Moscow as well as through new 38kbps link leased at CSI.

We have switched CCN to direct digital link Chelyabinsk-Moscow, using radio Ethernet technology.

2. In July 1998 we have received equipment supplied by Friends and Partners Foundation which consists of Sun Ultra 5 server, two PCs, scanner, Cisco access server and 8 US Robotics modems. All equipment was set in July-August.

PCs and scanners were installed in public center "Internet for everyone", Cisco servers and modems � on local telephone station 65 (SUSU) where the center communication equipment is located.

3. Four new telephone numbers were opened for PPP and UUCP (email accounts) access for the grant means. The total number of CCN modem entries: 12.

4. The point for free access to the Internet / center "Internet for everyone" has been significantly improved:

� two PCs and scanner received from Friends and Partners Foundation, four PCs disposed by SUSU have been added. Now 12 workstations and Unix server work in the center;

� all computers are connected via 100 Mbps Ethernet for speeding up X-Window applications. Switch hub was purchased due to FREEnet center, cables and their assembly � this grant and networking cards � IREX;

� the server has been upgraded: new SCSI controller, memory and hard disk were installed for means of Friends and Partners Foundation and FREEnet center;

� three PC have been fixed by ourselves: floppy drives, hard disks and CD�ROM were changed.

We have also modernized software set for workstations. Now it includes:

� FreeBSD-2.2.7-STABLE operating system with Xfree86 graphic environment;

� Netscape Communicator 4.5, lynx, pine and so forth;

� graphic editors and viewers: Xv, GhostView, Gimp, Xpaint, Spaint of StarOffice package;

� text editors: joe, pico, Swriter (from StarOffice), etc.

5. Sun Ultra 5 server delivered in July 1998 has been upgraded from Solaris 2.5 to Solaris 2.6 operating system. It will provide better administration and security of two our Sun servers working together.

6. Chelyabinsk Pedagogic University having an Internet class for training networkers was connected to CCN with 10 Mbps wireless Ethernet system "Infranet".

on the second stage:

7. Two personal computer, gave by the Friend and Partners foundation in 1998, has been upgraded due to means of CCN center, - added memory, replaced hard disks.

8. The major result of with leaders of Astra ST company was agreement about creation of �last mile� � fiber optical line between CCN/FREEnet center and Rostelekom interconnection point. The sides have coordinated a scheme of laying the cable and have determinated their cooperation conditions.

So far CCN used communications of regional center FREEnet, in particular radio and infrared Ethernet systems, dedicated telephone links. Going to the optical link will simplify access to Chelyabinsk-Moscow main line and will increase reliability. Besides, so we will receive a technical possibility of participation in such projects as NaukaNet.

Some other interesting questions were discussed at the meeting, including the issues on service commercial organizations by power the specialists CCN/FREEnet center, which are located in the territory of campus. We suppose that this helps us to get an additional financing for current projects.

To launch �last mile� the center ordered equipment (optical modems, cable and other) of the total near $6500.

9. Due to CCN means ProtectNet units have been purchased for protect dial-up modem pool against surges.

10. Scheme of connection of a middle school in Timiryazevsky settlement was developed which is located as far as 50 km from Chelyabinsk.
 

c. progress towards achieving purpose and objectives :

During work on the project since May 1998 Chelyabinsk Civic Network has been built and is developed successfully in several directions:

1. Organizing activity

� CCN Coordination Committee has been created. Its staff is:

• Boris Gelchinski, Depute Chairman of The Chelyabinsk Scientific Center
• Natalia Baskova, Chairman of Chelyabinsk social organization "Sodeystvie"
• Dmitry Latukhin, Coordinator of CCN project, SUSU
• Tatyana Kharisova, Deputy head of the City of Chelyabinsk on social questions
• Victor Krivoschekov,Director of FREEnet Regional Center, SUSU
• Oleg Loginovski, Head of Information System and Technology Department Administration of Chelyabinsk oblast

� there were several meetings with administrations of the City of Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk oblast. The participants discussed possibilities on collaboration.

2. Network resources:

on the first stage:
� CCN Web site on Russian has been launched. The URL is http://www.ccn.org.ru/
The site contains description of the project, detailed information about point of free access to the Internet, local and Russian networking service guide, links to similar projects.

� domain �ccn.org.ru� (accordingly to name of Chelyabinsk Civic Network project) was registered in January. At present it contains two Web servers:
http://www.ccn.org,ru � common information on CCN project, etc.
http://openweb.ccn.org.ru � center "Internet for everyone", personal pages of its users

� for providing remote creation and editing of HTML documents on openweb.ccn.org.ru site the following software has been installed: two modules for PUT access implementation and for user authorization by special server, SSL module.

This technical solution makes much simpler maintenance of Web site directories by volunteers. They will able to edit and upload Web pages directly from Netscape Communicator and its Composer. At the same time all necessary security requirements are kept during remote access to resources of Web server. Two-language version of guide on using this technology has been developed:

� two electronic journals were published, which are connected with some important aspects of community life. These are "Southern Ural Juridical Bulletin" (information on legislative documents, discussion of local law projects during their development by interested persons) and "Chelyabinsk Globe" (culture news, most of materials are published exclusively).

� three volunteers already work on stuff for the Web sites. They were trained in CCN center "Internet for everyone". Their materials are: ecology of Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk oblast, home page of society "Unity and Law" and others. We plan to open free discussion board soon. At the moment Discus is under testing. CCN sites are registered in search engines in Russia.

on the second stage:

� new materials about several events were added to CCN web site. They were international chats, seminars that were in August-September and involved people from NGO Sodeystvie, Ural Women Network, local administrations, and journalists.

Web pages "Useful links", "News" on www.ccn.org.ru were refreshed.

Home page of center "Childhood" (its leader is Ludmila Kuznetsova) was put on www.ccn.org.ru web .

This center has collaborated with CCN already for year. One of the common projects in that organization "Our children" participated was a summer school (1999) for the children with breaking a movement system. Next steps were opening Internet-club and realizing the project �Count It!�. Information on the last one was used for illustrations of RCNP activity on a recent conference.

� Information system for local community has been continued to develop. Two new mailing lists were opened:

• CCN (Chelyabinsk Civic Network) Mailing List

For NGO in Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk region the subscription is realized through: [email protected].

During the work with this list there were refreshed the contacts with many organizations and initiative groups of people. At present moment the list has 25 subscribers, such organizations as "Pravosoznanie", "Unity and Law", "Memorial", "Women of the 90-th", "Movement for Nuclear Safety", "Agency of Information Cooperation", "Techa", "Association of Social Societies", "Woman Network in Ural Region", Center of Social Partnership", etc.

Many dozens of messages about fund raising, actions and events were sent for eight months of work of the list. There was held also on-line conversation about training individuals who wants to maintain web pages of the NGO.

• Grant List

Subscription is realized from the page http://www.susu.ac.ru/misc/lists.html and through [email protected], administrator � Eugenia Lebed <[email protected]>.

The list serves sharing information about projects and grants concerning to education and scientific research. It has 150 subscribers.
  � Specialists of center have finished a development chat server. Its LE-a version has been compiled on CCN site for on-line debates
http://openweb.ccn.org.ru/chat/

� Virtual bulletin board (forum) has been opened on the site: http://www.ccn.org.ru/discus/

� Development of email gateway for work with HTTP, FTP and USENET news groups has been finished. mailto:[email protected]