The UK National Computing Centre, in Manchester, and the Networking Centre are to join together for the future development of Open Systems Interconnection, conformance testing equipment. Sources at the NCC and the Networking Centre say that the link up, to be announced in the next few weeks, will be beneficial as a way of pooling resources given that much of the work carried out at both establishments is complementary. The NCC has signed three contracts with the non-profit Corporation for Open Systems co-op of McLean, Virginia to develop OSI conformance testing tools, including an OSI transport layer testing system, a protocol tester for File Transfer and Access Management, and the Message Handling package. The last contract was due to be completed by the end of 1987 but the product, under development at the Corporation’s facilities in the US, has not yet emerged. The Networking Centre, based in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, recently received accreditation for the first of its OSI conformance testing services from Namas, the National Measurement Accreditation Service, a part of the European Cen-Cenelec standardisation body.
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