John - Thanks for the constructive reply I Respond to some of your points below.
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Ewan Davis
AAH Meditel - Voice +44 (1) 527 579414 Fax +44(1)527 837287
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ED: The simple question is why aren't NHSNet tariffs competitive vs other
ISPs many of whom provide the sort of additional services the NHS requires
as part of their offering to the corporate Intranet market. Either NHSNet is
over engineered, overpriced or both.
J: Because it is faster, more reliable will still be here in 10 years
never mind 10 months. See the Economist article of a couple of months ago
about the survival rate of ISPs.
ED: I am not seeking to compare NHSNet with the Internet but with services provided by ISP to corporate user who want an Intranet with Internet conectivity.
My organisation (GEHE AG) has a pan European Intranet and Extranet provided by UUNet Pipex. They provide a fast reliable service and are at least as likely as NHSNet to be around in 10 years time. I know what we pay for this service and in comparison NHSNet seems to be very expensive.
ED You comments about attachments are technically correct but in practical
terms are rubbish. I routinely send attachments of 100's of k to a few meg
and long ago gave up splitting them in to smaller segments because nearly
all ISPs handle them as a single item without problems.
JC: Well you asked, it is all about Body Part 14 and 15 of the X.400
message. X.400 does not handle proprietary attachments that well, it
will do, it does things like guaranteed delivery and read receipt that smtp
does not do. These are the features that make X.400 what it is. However,
there is an ongoing "flamewar"! about SMTP and X.400 No need to add to it
here. Smtp is good for some things and X.400 is good for others. I
prefer to think of X.400 as the Registered Post of Email.
ED: I know all about body parts 14 and 15 and don't much care. Seamless handling of attachments is important and the implementation of X.400 on NHS net does not deliver.
ED: I accept that X.400 delivery and read receipts provide an advantage over raw SMTP. However it is relatively simple to build such facilities in at a level above SMTP as we have done with PharMed.
ED: The attraction of Internet protocols (SMTP POP3) over X.400 isn't about technical capability but about the fact than there are large numbers of cheap (if not free) components that use these standards which allow suppliers to build affordable solutions. The use of X.400 on NHSNet needlessly pushes up the cost.
ED: It seems inevitable to me that Internet standards will prevail and their deficiencies will be rectified such is the momentum and investment behind them. Sticking with X.400 is like sticking with Betamax or OS2 it gives you a possible technically superior solution but is simply pissing in the wind.
ED: There a lots of simple firewalls. Have a look at www.davecentral.com for
a long list.
JC: I will have a look.
ED: Firewalls become complex when you need to apply complex policies with
large numbers of users such as firewall between a corporate Intranet and the
Internet which will provide differential access through the firewall for
different users or classes of user and allow access to services from the
outside with complex IP filtering. Such firewalls are expensive and need
highly skilled personnel to maintain them.
JC: I agree, will a PCG be complex organisation? 200 plus employees
100,000 patients?
I see firewalls at practice level not Primary Care Group level.
Your selective in your quote I went on to say:
The sort of firewall need between a GP practices is simple (This does not mean less secure). It is probably adequate not to allow connections to any services on the local network except from local non-routable IP address. You can still browse through such a set up and send and receive mail to a POP3 mail server. You might want to open up a few services with appropriate authentication and access control behind them but that's all.
Ewan
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