~
December 1991
INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS
------------------------
The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research
Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by
the participating organizations.
This report is for Internet information purposes only, and is not
to be quoted in other publications without permission from the
submitter.
Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first
business day of the month describing the previous month's activities.
These reports should be submitted via network mail to:
Ann Westine Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU)
NSF Regional reports - Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@NNSC.NSF.NET)
Directory Services reports - Tom Tignor (TPT2@ISI.EDU)
Requests to be added or deleted from the Internet Monthly report list
should be sent to "cooper@isi.edu".
Back issues of the Internet Monthly Report can be copied via FTP:
FTP> nis.nsf.net
Login: anonymous guest
ftp> cd imr
ls
get IMRYY-MM.TXT
For example, JUNE 1991 is in the file IMR91-06.TXT.
Cooper [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
RESOURCE DISCOVERY AND DIRECTORY SERVICE. . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
CIX (COMMERCIAL INTERNET EXCHANGE). . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
CONCERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9
CSUNET (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK). . . . . . . page 9
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10
JVNCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
NEARNET (NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK) . . . page 15
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 16
NSFNET/ANSNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING. . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
NSFNET/INFORMATION SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SAIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SDSC (SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER) . . . . . . . . . . page 25
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES
DIRECTORY SERVICES MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
FOX - FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . page 29
ISI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
PSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30
SRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
SG-D MHS-MD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32
CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35
Cooper [Page 2]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
IAB MESSAGE
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
Several members of the ANRG are participating in the discussions
of routing and addressing for the internet; organized at the
request of Vint Cerf and chaired by Peter Ford.
We hope to bring some research issues to the ANRG in the spring.
If you are interested in research issues related to scaling and
interconnection of autonomous networks, contact estrin@usc.edu
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
No internet-related progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
RESOURCE DISCOVERY AND DIRECTORY SERVICE
----------------------------------------
No progress this month.
Mike Schwartz (schwartz@cs.colorado.edu)
Cooper [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
1. Let me remind everyone that the next IETF meeting will be held
March 16, 1992 through March 20, 1992, at the Hyatt Islandia
in San Diego, Calfornia. The Sunday night registration-
reception will be held March 15th.
Please make your hotel reservations immediately, space is
limited and San Diego will be hosting the Challenger Cup Races
which serve as the trials for the America's Cup (i.e. hotel
space will be tight).
2. Due to time constraints, Ross Callon will be stepping down as
Director of the OSI Integration Area of the IESG in March
1992. I am pleased to announce that Erik Huizer and Dave
Piscitello have accepted the invitation to serve as co-chairs
of the OSI Integration Area. Ross will work with both Erik and
Dave to facilitate the transition.
3. Two of the twenty-nine Internet Draft actions this month
originated with the Internet Activities Board. The first, the
Internet Standards Process, presents the official procedures
for creating and documenting Internet Standards. These
procedures have been established by the Internet Activities
Board in consultation with the Internet Engineering Steering
Group.
The second, Introduction to the STD Notes, describes a new
sub-series of RFCs, called STDs (Standards). The intent is to
identify clearly for the Internet community those RFCs which
document Internet standards.
4. 29 Internet Draft Actions between December 1 and December 31,
1991.
(Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) )
WG I-D Title <Filename>
------ -----------------------------------------------------
(snmp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the SIP Interface
Type
<draft-ietf-snmp-smdssipmib-06.txt>
(snmpsec) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Administration of
SNMP Parties
<draft-ietf-snmpsec-mib-01.txt>
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Internet Monthly Report December 1991
(snmpsec) o SNMP Administrative Model
<draft-ietf-snmpsec-admin-01.txt, .ps>
(snmpsec) o SNMP Security Protocols
<draft-ietf-snmpsec-protocols-01.txt, .ps>
(iplpdn) o Management Information Base for Frame Relay DTEs
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-frmib-03.txt>
(822ext) o Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format
of Internet Message Bodies
<draft-ietf-822ext-messagebodies-02.txt, .ps>
(none) o A User Agent Configuration Mechanism For Multimedia
Mail Format Information
<draft-ietf-borenstein-configmech-02.txt, .ps>
(netdata) o Network Database Protocol
<draft-ietf-netdata-netdata-01.txt>
(pppext) o The Point-to-Point Protocol for the Transmission of
Multi-Protocol Datagrams Over Point-to-Point Links
<draft-ietf-pppext-lcp-02.txt>
(pppext) o The PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-ipcp-03.txt>
(822ext) o Character Mnemonics and Character Sets
<draft-ietf-822ext-charsets-01.txt>
(smtpext) o SMTP Extensions for Transport of Enhanced
Text-Based Messages
<draft-ietf-smtpext-8bittransport-02.txt>
(pppext) o The PPP Authentication Protocols
<draft-ietf-pppext-authentication-02.txt>
(netfax) o A File Format for the Exchange of Images in the
Internet
<draft-ietf-netfax-netimage-01.txt>
(iab) o The Internet Standards Process
<draft-iab-standardsprocess-01.txt>
(bgp) o BGP OSPF Interaction
<draft-ietf-bgp-ospfinteract-01.txt>
(appleip) o Tunnelling AppleTalk through IP
<draft-ietf-appleip-aurp-02.txt, .ps>
(tcplw) o TCP Extensions for High Performance
<draft-ietf-tcplw-tcpext-01.txt>
(822ext) o Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet
Message Headers
<draft-ietf-822ext-msghead-01.txt>
(cipso) + Commercial IP Security Option
<draft-ietf-cipso-ipsecurity-00.txt>
(osids) + Representing Public Archives in the Directory
<draft-ietf-osids-archdirectory-00.txt>
(none) + Mutual Encapsulation Considered Dangerous
<draft-tsuchiya-encap-00.txt>
(smds) + The Transmission of IP Datagrams over SMDS
<rfc1209.txt>
Cooper [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
(iab) + Introduction to the STD Notes
<draft-ietf-iab-introstandard-00.txt>
(bgp) + A Unified Approach to Inter-Domain Routing
<draft-ietf-bgp-unirouting-00.txt>
(netdata) + Network Database Implementation Information
<draft-ietf-netdata-implement-00.txt>
(disi) + An Executive Introduction to Directory Services
<draft-ietf-disi-execdir-00.txt>
(appleip) + SNMP over AppleTalk
<draft-ietf-appleip-snmp-appletalk-00.txt>
(pppext) + PPP Link Quality Monitoring
<draft-ietf-pppext-lqm-00.txt>
5. Four RFC's Produced between December 1 and December 31, 1991
(Standard (S), Proposed Standard (PS), Draft Standard (DS),
Experimental (E), Informational (I) )
RFC St WG Title
------- -- -------- -----------------------------------------------
RFC1283 E (snmp) SNMP over OSI
RFC1284 PS (snmp) Definitions of Managed Objects for the
Ethernet-like Interface Types
RFC1286 PS (bridge) Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges
RFC1289 PS (decnetiv) DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Cooper [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
BARRNet connected four new sites at 56kbps in December, bringing
the total connected membership to 109. One of the connected sites
was Lowell High School in San Francisco, the first high school to
be a full BARRNet member (Davis High School has been connected as a
subnet of U.C. Davis for more than 2 years).
In December BARRNet completed an agreement with Alternet for backup
connectivity to the NSFNET backbone, and also voted to join the
CIX. Both are expected to be implemented in January.
by Paul Baer <baer@jessica.stanford.edu>
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
Inter-Domain Policy Routing
During the month of December, we continued to work with SAIC toward
completion of the gated implementation of IDPR. We have completed
the design of the software for the IDPR configuration database. At
this point, we have implemented approximately half of the
configuration database software and are in the midst of testing
this portion.
ST Conferencing
During December, a total of 22 video conferences, 1 demonstration,
and 5 scheduled test conferences were conducted. The TWB also
supported 4 two-site SIMNET exercises. All conferences except one
were 2-way conferences. The comparatively large number of
conferences was mainly due to daily connections between BBN and WPC
to support demonstrations and installations. Sponsored events
included a SOSC demo, a DISA briefing, and continuing LANL AWSIMS
work.
Cooper [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
Ft. Leavenworth is slated for installation as a T/20-based
conferencing site in January. We also plan to install T/20s to
replace butterfly gateways at several existing conferencing sites
during January and February. The RIACS conferencing site has been
moved to storage, and we are awaiting word from DARPA on its new
location. The DARPA conferencing center was successfully moved to
a different room at the same address.
Jil Westcott <westcott@BBN.COM>
CIX (COMMERCIAL INTERNET EXCHANGE)
----------------------------------
The following report outlines CIX-WEST usage for the month of
December, 1991.
-----
CIX In Out
Member Octets Packets Errors Octets Packets Errors
-------- ---------------------------- ----------------------------
AlterNet 33838634910 118832283 25391 13442667814 77791070 0
CERFNet 9831706762 44551190 39 19960613940 53702728 0
PSINet 19139399039 90820956 3 32878437704 129071564 0
Starting: Nov 30 1991 at 23:51
Ending: Dec 31 1991 at 23:51
SNMP Polling Intervals: 2960
SNMP Polling Frequency: 15 minutes
In - traffic entering the CIX from the CIX member network
Out - traffic exiting the CIX into the CIX member network
-----
At the present time, approximately 450 networks within AlterNet,
CERFNet, and PSINet are using the CIX-WEST.
A complete list of networks accessible via the CIX is available via
anonymous FTP from cix.org in the file cix.nets. The current
revision of this list is: 21-NOV-1991.
U.S. Sprint will soon be joining the CIX. Details regarding their
interconnection to CIX-WEST are now being planned.
Send mail to info@cix.org for information regarding the CIX.
Mark Fedor (fedor@uu.psi.com)
Cooper [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
CONCERT
-------
CONCERT is now using the T3 backbone as its primary connection to
the Internet,and we are now using BGP as our routing exchange
protocol with the T3 backbone router. Prior to this month, we had
been using our T1 connection as our only active connection, in
order to avoid the problems that have been associated with the T3
network. We had been using EGP between our local cisco routers and
the T1 EPSP backbone router. During December, changes were made at
CONCERT to reactivate our T3 connection, and at the same time, we
initiated using BGP as the routing exchange protocol for this
connection. Our current setup then is toBGP peer with the T3 ENSS
to pick up all routes, and to EGP peer with the T1 EPSP to pick up
a backup default network route. This configuration has been running
for several weeks, and has been quite reliable.
CONCERT helped sponsor the Packet Video Workshop that was held at
MCNC on December 10th and 11th. The workshop covered many of the
issues and problems associated with running video over packet
networks, and there were discussions concerning the potential role
of packet video in a variety of applications, from multi-media to
wide area conferencing and collaboration.
by Tom Sandoski <tom@concert.net>
CSUNET
------
Dec 2-5, CSUNET provided the Internet connection to the CAUSE '91
show at Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA.
Using computers and a T-1 provided by Apple Computer, Inc. and
Ethernet StarControllers provided by Farallon, Inc., CSUNET
installed a T-1 Frame-Relay connection from its Fullerton CSUNET
router to the Disneyland Hotel. At the show, CSUNET provided a
StrataCom IPX multiplexer with four Cisco routers and six Farallon
Ethernet Star Controllers. The network spanned across the Hotel
complex to provide access to the Internet, local CAUSE messaging
system, and the CAUSE information system.
Mark Marcinkevicz <mdm@CSU.NET>
Cooper [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
ISI
---
GIGABIT NETWORKING
Jon Postel, Bob Braden, Steve Casner, and Danny Cohen participated
in the DARTNET Planning Meeting & Review Workshop. This was hosted
by Paul Mockapetris of DARPA, and held at ISI, December 16-17th.
Steve Casner attended a "Packet Video Videoconferencing Workshop"
in Durham, North Carolina December 9-11, 1991.
Nine RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1282: Kantor, B., "BSD Rlogin", Univ. of Calif San Diego,
December 1991.
RFC 1283: Rose, M., "SNMP over OSI", Dover Beach Consulting,
Inc., December 1991.
RFC 1984: Cook, J., "Definitions of Managed Objects for the
Ethernet-like Interface Types", Chipcom Corporation,
December 1991.
RFC 1286: Decker, E., (CISCO), P. Langille, (DIGITAL),
A. Rijsinghani, DIGITAL), K. McCloghrie (HUGHES),
"Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges",
December 1991.
RFC 1287: Clark, D., (MIT), L. Chapin, (BBN), V. Cerf (CNRI),
R. Braden (ISI), R. Hobby (UC Davis), "Towards the
Future Internet Architecture", December 1991.
RFC 1288: Zimmerman, D., "The Finger User Information Protocol",
Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical
Computer Science, December 1991.
RFC 1289: Saperia, J., "DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions",
Digital Equipment Corporation, December 1991.
RFC 1990: Martin, J., "There's Gold in them thar Networks!
or Searching for Treasure in all the Wrong Places",
Ohio State University, December 1991.
Cooper [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
RFC 1991: Aggarwal, V., "Mid-Level Networks Potential
Technical Services", JvNCnet Computer Network,
December 1991.
Ann Westine Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING
The document, "The Connection Control Protocol: Specification", was
completed this month. CCP orchestrates multiple-user, multiple-
media sessions in a distributed manner. As such, it provides a
flexible group transaction service, robustness mechanisms for WAN
operation, negotiation for heterogeneous site configurations,
conference pre-arrangement, remote control capabilities and an
interface across which synchronization information may be passed.
Implementation of CCP is underway in the MMCC program, the user
interface for the ISI/BBN teleconferencing system. The companion
document, "The Connection Control Protocol: Architecture" is in
preparation.
The S-Bus serial interface card used in DARTnet to connect T1 links
can now be used to connect video codecs directly to the
SPARCstation as well. We augmented Van Jacobson's driver to add a
raw-byte-synchronous mode to read the proprietary synchronous line
protocols used by several video codec manufacturers. This will
allow DARTnet researchers to use the SPARCstation as a platform for
packet audio and video sources in resource management experiments.
Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET
-------
I. General information
A. How to reach us:
1-800-35-TIGER (from anywhere in the United States)
by e-mail
NOC: noc@jvnc.net
Service desk: service@jvnc.net
by mail: U.S. mail address:
Princeton University
B6 von Neumann Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
(Director: Sergio Heker)
Cooper [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
B. Hours
NOC: 24 hours/day, seven days a week
Service desk: 9:00 to 5:00 pm, M - F (except holidays)
C. Other info available on-line from NICOL
Telnet to nicol.jvnc.netS.
Login ID is nicol and no password.
II. New Information
A. RFCs on-line
To obtain RFCs from the official JvNCnet repository (two methods)
ftp nicol.jvnc.net; username: nicol; password: <your email
address>
RFC automailer
Send email to sendrfc@jvnc.net. Subject line is RFCxxxx.
xxxx represents the RFC number. RFCs with three digits only
need three digits in the request.
B. Operational information
JvNCnet availability for November is 99.93%
C. New on-line members (fully operational Nov. 1991)
Hahnemann University, Phila., PA
Atlantic County Community College, Mays Landing, NJ
Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ
Drew University, Madison, NJ
D. JvNCnet Members Meeting
The next members meeting is Friday, January 17, 1992 at Lewis
Thomas Laboratory Auditorium 003 (Washington Road, Princeton, NJ).
Parallel sessions consist of X.500 directory service, part II,
engineering enhancements for gateway and host services, member
requests for additional information services, and JvNCnet Phase
III. Switched Multi-Megabit Data Service and Frame Relay overviews
form part of the morning presentations along with an operational
status of JvNCnet. For additional information, please send email to
hammer@jvnc.net.
E. JvNCnet Symposium Series
New Internet users and individuals thinking of acquiring a network
connection will be introduced to resources and services via JvNCnet
and the global Internet, of which it is a part, by participating in
the JvNCnet Network Applications Symposium at Princeton University.
The meeting takes place at Lewis Thomas Laboratory Auditorium 003,
Washington Road, Princeton, NJ. Our talented panel will address:
Cooper [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
-The value of network connectivity
-Overview of Internet applications, functions, and tools
to obtain expertise and information
-K-12 Telecomputing; partnering with higher education
-Supercomputing (national program, proposal submittal and
supercomputing problemsolving.
-Lexis and Nexis on line databases
-Dow Jones on-line resources
Registration: registration@jvnc.net,
1-800-35-TIGER; 609-258-2400
by Rochelle Hammer <hammer@jvnc.net>
LOS NETTOS
----------
A report describing the method used for monitoring Los Nettos has
been drafted and will be available soon.
An order to upgrade Los Nettos from AGS/2's to AGS+'s has been
initiated.
A cronic route thrashing problem was eliminated by removing
secondary addresses from our configurations.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MITRE
-----
Allison Mankin, Chris Perry, and Maryann Perez produced a
videotaped visualization of packet activity generated by ten video
codecs. The visualization was produced using Ohio State
University's apE2.1 software running on a SPARC workstation.
The Internet Engineering Research Network (IERN) and the MITRE
Washington Networking Center moved from McLean to Reston, Virginia.
The effort involved 6 LANs and routers, 120+ workstations, a dozen
printers, miscellaneous PCs and two labs. 45 staff offices were
moved in addition. The wiring at the new location was installed
and tested beforehand to minimize surprises.
The routers and servers were brought up the day they moved and
staff workstations were brought up as the staff arrived. No damage
to equipment occured and downtime was mitigated by having a few
systems prepositioned to provide access upon arrival. The pre-
planning involved lots of cooperation among several groups
Cooper [Page 13]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
(facilities, computer center, networking center) and was handled
very professionally.
(Walt Lazear, lazear@gateway.mitre.org)
MRNET
-----
Since we haven't contributed to the monthly reports in quite a
while, this will be more of a brief "annual" report to bring
everyone up to date on things here on the northern plains.
Since its initial formation in late 1987, and its connection to the
NSFNET in early 1988, MRNet has been operating as a loose
unincorporated association with an elected four person Executive
Committee. On March 1 of this year however, the Minnesota Regional
Network Corporation was formed. This was the culmination of about
six months of work and discussion among the Executive Committee and
membership. A five person Board of Directors was elected from among
the member organizations in April, and an additional director from
outside the membership was appointed bringing the total to six. An
interim executive director was appointed for most of the spring and
summer and in September was made an official employed staff member.
A short-term strategic plan was put in place to begin to grow MRNet
into a more organized and strengthened mid-level network. With the
help of Sun Microsystems, we were able to upgrade our Sun 2/170 to
a more capable SparcStation 2 in May to provide our NIC services.
In September, with help from Computer Cable Connection and several
volunteers from the membership we rebuilt our hub, redoing the
power distribution and network connections on our hub equipment of
a dozen or so routers and bridges with associated CSUs and
multiport tranceivers.
In November and December we executed an arrangement with CICNet and
the University of Minnesota to obtain our NSFNET connection via
CICNet's double T1 path. This was accomplished by building a border
network which we call the MIXNet (Minnesota Internet eXchange
Network) to simplify the connections among MRNet, the University of
Minnesota, the Minnesota Supercomputer Center and the CICNet point
of presence. This MIXNet contains only the four routers, one from
each organization communicating via EGP, that serve as gateways for
each organization's network(s).
In the midst of all this, four more members came on board during
the late summer and fall: Pillsbury, Burlington Northern Railroad,
West Services, and Ramsey County, our first governmental member,
bringing total connected membership to 31, all on 56KB or T1
Cooper [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
dedicated lines. Our profile by membership now consists of 50%
commercial companies, 40% private educational institutions,6%
public educational institutions and 6% others (private research and
government). We expect to add a few more private colleges, some
corporations, and more government members next year.
MRNet's mission is to enhance the academic, research and business
environment in the state through the use of computer networks. It
is still very much a member organization with the members actively
participating in its evolution and that of the Internet. We are now
graduating out of the startup phase and entering into the early
buildup phases for the corporation. Though our technical and NOC
services are still not yet as we would like, we aspire to make
significant progress in 1992 to expand capabilities and services.
We alsohope to be able to become a more active participant and
contributor to the greater Internet community this coming year.
by Dennis Fazio <dfazio@MR.Net>
NEARNET (NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK)
---------------------------------------------------
On December 12, more than 200 people attended the fifth NEARnet
Technical and User Seminar, which was held at the Brandeis
University Events Center in Waltham, Massachusetts.
During the morning session, Mitch Kapor, President of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, was the keynote speaker. In his
talk,"Building the Open Road: Policies for a National Public
Network", Kapor discussed the future of networking. Mark Knopper
of the MERIT Internet Engineering Group, presented a status report
on the NSFNET backbone network
There were two simultaneous break out sessions in the afternoon.
The technical session covered network security issues. The guest
speakers in this session were: Edward DeHart, of the Computer
Emergency Response Team (CERT), and Jeffrey Schiller of MIT. Scott
Bradner of Harvard University's Office for Information Technology
discussed how to use a Macintosh as a router to connect to
NEARnet's dial-up service.
The afternoon user session included a presentation on the potential
of WAIS (the Wide Area Information Server) by Franklin Davis of
Thinking Machines Corporation. A demonstration of Internet
Connectivity for Macintosh Users included an overview of various
public domain shareware programs, and demonstrations of user
interfaces and MacIntosh News Software by David Escalante, of Bolt
Beranek and Newman Inc.
Cooper [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
Beth Lowd, Chair of the Massachusetts Educational Technology
Advisory Council, wrapped up the user session with a discussion of
K-12 networking efforts in Massachusetts.
The NEARnet Staff established a mailing list for discussing K-12
networking. If you would like to have your name added to the
nearnet-k12 mailing list, please send your request to Diane
Yerardi, dyerardi@nic.near.net.
The eleventh issue of the electronic bulletin "NEARnet This Month"
has been distributed. Past issues of the bulletin are available
via anonymous FTP at nic.near.net, in the directory
/newsletters/nearnet_this_month.
by John Rugo <jrugo@nic.near.net>
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Joining the NNSC Staff as the Project Manager is Cyndi Mills.
Cyndi left another division of Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. to
bring to NNSC her 14 years of experience in architecture,
development, and standardization of heterogeneous network protocols
and applications in both national and international arenas.
The NNSC staff prepared to upgrade NNSC.NSF.NET with a faster CPU
for more storage space. We anticipate that this change will be
accomplished by mid January. John Curran is also proceeding with
the preliminary work of bringing the WAIS (the Wide Area
Information Server) system up on the new NNSC.NSF.NET machine.
Corinne Carroll <ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net>
NSFNET/ANSNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING
----------------------------------
ANSNET/NSFNET Backbone Engineering Report
December 31, 1991
Jordan Becker Mark Knopper
becker@ans.net mak@merit.edu
Advanced Network & Services Inc. Merit Network Inc.
Summary
The T3 network continued to perform reliably during the month of
December. A change freeze and stability test period was observed
on the T3 network during December 13-20 in preparation for the
Cooper [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
cutover of additional traffic from the T1 network which is
scheduled to begin in mid-January. During the stability test
period, two test outages during off-peak hours were scheduled.
Some final software changes are being deployed following the
stability period, and a routing migration plan has been developed
to support the continued traffic migration from T1->T3.
Changes were deployed on the T1 backbone during December to improve
the reliability. A new routing daemon was deployed to fix the
chronic EGP peer loss problem that had been exhibited most notably
on NSS10 in addition to some other nodes. The T1 network continues
to experience a low level of congestion, primarily at the ethernet
interfaces on some nodes.
The December 1991 T1 and T3 traffic statistics are in available for
FTP in pub/stats on merit.edu. The total inbound packet count for
the T1 network was 9,683,414,659, down 4.4% from November.
529,316,363 of these packets entered from the T3 network. The
total inbound packet count for the T3 network was 2,201,976,944, up
38.7% from November. 489,233,191 of these packets entered from the
T1 network. The combined total inbound packet count for the T1 and
T3 networks (less cross network traffic) was 10,866,842,049, down
3.3% from November.
Finally, the plan to deploy the RS/960 technology for Phase III of
the T3 backbone is taking shape. Testing on the T3 Research
Network will begin in January with the possibility for deployment
in late February.
T1 Backbone Update
==================
NSS Software Problems and Changes
We had been experiencing an EGP session loss problem on several T1
backbone NSS systems. This was occuring most frequently on NSS10
at Ithaca. This problem has been fixed by a change to the
rcp_routed program running on the RCP nodes in the backbone NSS's.
The problem was due to the timing between the creation of routing
packets, and the transmission of those packets during transient
conditions. This new software prevents the simultaneous loss of
EGP sessions across multiple PSPs in an NSS that had been observed
at some nodes.
Since this problem was corrected, we have experienced a few
isolated disconnects with an EGP/BGP peer on NSS10 at Ithaca, which
are believed to be unrelated to the earlier problem. This symptom
happens less frequently, and involves only one PSP at a time. The
Cooper [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
latest occurences have been traced to an isolation of the PSP from
the RCP. This is due to CPU looping on the PSP during a flood of
traffic sourced from the local ethernet interface. We are working
to attach a sniffer to the local ethernet to determine the source
of these traffic floods on the PSP ethernet interface.
Another problem that we have seen roughly three times a month is a
crash of a T1 RCP node due to a known virtual memory bug in the RT
kernel. We are working on both of these problems now and hope to
have them corrected soon.
We continue to experience congestion on the T1 backbone. We are
collecting 15 minute peak and average traffic measures via SNMP on
all interfaces, and we also sample some interfaces at shorter
intervals to look at burst traffic. We have occasionally measured
sustained T1 backbone link utilization around 50% average, and
peaks above 70% on several T1 lines. We also have experienced high
burst data streaming on the local EPSP ethernet interface (3500PPS
bursts at an average 200 bytes/packet). We have already taken a
number of actions to reduce the congestion including the addition
of split-EPSP routers and T1 links, and installation of dual-
ethernet EPSP systems where we split the routes across each
ethernet interface. These have been deployed at Ithaca, College
Park, and Champaign. There are a number of things we can still do
to improve this, however the greatest reduction in congestion has,
and will continue to come from migration of traffic from the T1 to
the T3 network.
ICMP Network Unreachable Messages
The T1 network has exhibited some problematic behavior that was
previously addressed on the T3 network where ICMP network
unreachable messages are generated and transmitted external to the
backbone by core backbone nodes during routing transients. This
was addressed in the T3 network by implementing an option to limit
the generation of these unreachable messages only to nodes equipped
with an external LAN interface rather than allowing the core
backbone nodes to generate them. An equivalent implementation of
this option is now being tested for deployment on the T1 network.
This manifests itself as a problem for host software
implementations when routing transients occur in the backbone due
to circuit problems or other reasons.
T1 Backbone Circuit Problems
On the T1 backbone nodes, CSU circuit error reporting data is not
made available to the RT router software via SNMP as is the case on
the T3 backbone. This makes it more difficult to generate NOC
Cooper [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
alerts that correspond to circuit performance problems recorded by
the CSU equipment. However the PSP nodes are able to detect DCD
transitions (known as "DCD waffles") and record them in the router
log files.
An increase in circuit performance problems on the T1 backbone has
been observed on several links lately as evidenced by DCD waffles,
and some actions have been taken to resolve the problems. These
include work in progress to provide more timely reports on all DCD
waffle events, as well as direct integration of carrier monitored
T1 ESF data with our SNMP based network monitoring tools.
Procedures have been improved for the diagnosis and troubleshooting
for T1 backbone circuit problems in cooperation with MCI and the
local exchange carriers. We have also worked to improve the
procedures and communications between our operators & engineers,
and our peer network counterparts.
T3 Backbone Update
==================
Summary
During the week of December 13-20, a change freeze was conducted
and stability measurements were performed. No software or hardware
changes were administered to the backbone nodes, with the exception
of the normal Tuesday and Friday morning routing configuration
updates. Prior to the change freeze and stability week, several
changes and software enhancements were introduced on the T3 system
to address known problems. During stability week, two problems
were identified. One problem involves the loss of connectivity to
an adjacent IS-IS neighbor. Following stability week, a new
rcp_routed program has been installed on the network which has
instrumentation developed in order to identify the problem.
Unfortunately this problem has not been observed again since the
new code has been installed.
A new plan for T1-T3 routing and traffic exchanges has been
developed. This will support the continued migration of traffic
from the T1 to the T3 system which is expected to commence in
January 1992.
Pre-Stability Period Changes
--Safety Net
The remaining two links for "Safety Net" were installed and
configured. Safety Net is a collection of 12 T1 links connecting
the CNSS nodes in a redundant fashion within the core of the T3
Cooper [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
network. Safety Net has proven to be useful backup path on a
couple of occasions for several minutes in duration where all T3
paths out of a core node become unusable due to a T3 interface or
CNSS failure. Safety Net will remain in place until the existing
T3 interface hardware is replaced with the newer RS/960 interface
hardware, and this is no longer necessary.
--Routing Software Changes
Three changes were made to the rcp_routed daemon software. A
digital signature from MD4 was implemented in the rcp_routed
software to ensure the integrity of IBGP messages between systems.
An enhancement to increase the level of route aggregation was made
in the BGP software that reduces the size of external routing
updates to peer routers. This provided a workaround to a problem
in some of the regional routers that are supporting external BGP
where the peer router would freeze after receiving a BGP update
message. The "route loss" problem mentioned in the November 1991
report was identified and fixed prior to the commencement of the
stability period. This was identified as a bug involving the
exchange of information between the external and internal routing
software.
--AIX Build 3.0.62 Kernel Installed
A new system software build was deployed on all RS/6000 nodes in
the T3 backbone to fix several problems. One of these was the T960
"sticky T1" problem, which would cause a delay on packet forwarding
across a T1 interface. Another problem that was fixed involved a
delay in the download of routes from the RS/6000 system and T960
ethernet and T1 "smart" interface cards.
Change Freeze and Stability Week 12/13-12/20
During this period, no hardware configuration or software changes
were administered and several reliability and stability tests were
performed. Some of these tests included scheduled test outages of
selected nodes during off-peak hours.
A test outage of the T1/T3 interconnect gateway was performed. The
external BGP sessions on the Ann Arbor interconnect gateway were
disconnected, forcing the Houston backup interconnect gateway to
become operational. This transition occurred automatically over a
15 minute time period. After the switchover, the Ann Arbor primary
gateway was put back into production.
Another test that was performed was a node outage of the Denver T3
backbone CNSS. This node was chosen since it does not yet support
Cooper [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
any production ENSS nodes. The routing daemon on this node was
taken down and brought back up again. This had no unexpected
results, and did not have any noticeable impact on other network
traffic during the IS-IS routing convergence which was measured to
be on the order of 25 seconds across the T3 network.
As a result of these tests and the measurement of improved T3
backbone stability, the change freeze week was concluded
successfully on 12/20. Plans are described below to migrate
additional traffic from the T1 to the T3 network in January.
Post-Stability Week Actions and Plans
--New Routing Software
The new rcp_routed with instrumentation to debug the IS-IS
adjacency loss problem was installed. This problem has not occured
since 12/22.
--AIX Kernel Build 3.0.63 Targeted for Installation
A new software build is being tested at this time to address the
T960 ethernet freeze problem, and to support a full CRC-32 link
layer error check computed in software. This new software build
will be deployed in two phases. Build 63 also includes a version
of the NNstat feature which allows the net-to-net traffic
statistics matrix to be collected. This is a necessary change
targeted for deployment prior to migrating a major portion of the
T1 backbone traffic over to T3.
--Routing Architecture Plan
With the traffic migration from T1 to T3, it will be necessary to
split the announcements of routes from the T3 network to the T1
network (for networks that are connected to both T1 and T3) across
multiple T1/T3 interconnect gateways in order to load balance, and
ensure that the size of the IS-IS packets contained in the
announcement does not get excessively large. Routing announcements
from the T1 to the T3 networks will be made on all primary
interconnect gateways, as will routing announcements for networks
which are only connected to the T3 network. The routing
configuration database modifications and configuration updates are
already underway to support this design.
In order to provide improved redundancy for traffic between the T1
and T3 networks, additional T1/T3 interconnect gateways will be
established. A fourth T1/T3 gateway is being installed at the
Princeton site to act as backup to the Ann Arbor primary gateway.
Cooper [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
A fifth and sixth gateway are planned for future expansion with the
expectation that the IS-IS packet size will increase with
additional growth in the total number of networks announced to the
T3 and T1 backbones.
--T1->T3 Traffic Migration Plan
A plan has been drafted that addresses the T1->T3 traffic migration
in support of peer networks that are not already using the T3
network. Regional networks maintain a co-located peer router with
both a T1 NSS and T3 ENSS are requested to maintain EGP/BGP peer
sessions with both the T1 and T3 networks. This will allow them to
announce their networks to both the T1 and T3 systems. It is
advised that regionals have their peer routers learn default routes
from the T1 NSS, and explicit routes for all destinations from the
T3 ENSS. This will result in all traffic destined for a site
primarily reachable on T3 to take the T3 path, and likewise for T1.
The goal here is to minimize traffic on the interconnect gateways.
Primary reachability via T3 or T1 will be managed through the
adjustment of routing metrics on the T1 and T3 systems.
An analysis of the traffic associated with each Autonomous System
has been conducted. Migration of traffic will be implemented by
choosing AS pairs that account for the largest inter-AS traffic
flows. These will be moved over together in a pairwise fashion as
part of a scheduled routing configuration update. We are working
with some regionals now to schedule this.
We will proceede slowly with this migration where no more than one
pair of AS's will be moved over in a single week at first. We are
working to coordinate this with the regionals and we hope to have a
signficant portion of the T1 traffic cut over to T3 by the end of
February. Some traffic will likely remain on T1 backbone for
several reasons. Since the T3 nodes do not yet support the OSI
CLNP protocol, that traffic will remain on the T1 backbone. There
are also some other international networks that do not directly
peer with the T3 network which will announce themselves only to the
T1 backbone.
Phase III T3 Network RS/960 T3 Adapter Upgrade
==============================================
A phased implementation plan for the new RS/960 T3 adapters is
being developed, and testing will begin on the T3 Research Network
in mid-January. The testing phase will take over a month and
exercize many features and test cases. Redundant backup facilities
to be used during the phased upgrade will be supported and tested
on the research network. Performance and stress testing will also
Cooper [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
be conducted. Test outages and adapter swaps will take place to
simulate expected maintainance scenarios.
The RS/960 T3 adapters do not interoperate across a DS3 serial link
with the existing T3 adapters, and so the phased upgrade must be
administered on a link-by-link rather than node-by-node basis.
Deployment will be coordinated with the peer networks to ensure
that adequate advanced notice and backup planning is afforded. The
deployment could begin in late-February depending upon the test
results from the T3 Research network.
Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu)
NSFNET/INFORMATION SERVICES
---------------------------
Combined traffic for the T1 and T3 networks totaled 10,866,842,049
inbound packets during the month of December, a 4.4% decrease from
November. This drop parallels year-end traffic declines in other
years related to low usage during the holiday season.
Traffic on the T1 NSFNET backbone totaled 9,683,414,659 inbound
packets, with 529,316,363 packets of this traffic count entering
from the T3. A total of 4305 networks are now configured for
announcement to the T1 network, with 1450 networks of this total
from international sites.
T3 traffic totaled 2,201,976,944 inbound packets, with 489,233,191
packets entering from the T1 infrastructure. As of the end of
December, 948 networks are configured for announcement on the T3
infrastructure.
New informational files are available for anonymous ftp and
electronic mail query from the host NIS.NSF.NET:
NRENBILL.TXT -- The House-Senate compromise version of S. 272, the
High-Performance Computing Act, as signed into law by President
Bush on December 9, 1991, is available in the directory NSFNET.
DEVPLAN.TXT -- The Project Development Plan for the Continuation
and Enhancement of NSFNET Backbone Services is also available in
the NSFNET directory.
RESTRICT.NETS -- A list of restricted networks for which route
filtering policies are in place in the backbone configuration may
be found in the ANONYMOUS and NSFNET directories. Dialogue, a
commercial customer of ANS, is currently the only network with
backbone announcement restrictions.
Cooper [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
HISTORY.NETCOUNT -- A listing by month of the number of total
networks, foreign networks and T3 networks configured for
announcement on the NSFNET during the term of the project.
Guests at the Merit Network Operations Center in Ann Arbor, MI
included Stefan Fassbender of EASInet. Fassbender met with Merit
staff, discussing engineering and information services issues.
Susan Calari of Merit/NSFNET Information Services, gave a
preconference seminar at CAUSE, "Exploring NSFNET Resources," which
included a demonstration of online examples. Elise Gerich and
Jessica Yu of Internet Engineering attended the Routing and
Addressing Working Group sponsored by CNRI in Reston, VA. Eric
Aupperle, president of Merit Network, Inc., and Mark Knopper,
Manager of Internet Engineering, traveled to Waltham, MA to speak
to NEARnet.
An Advanced Topics Seminar will be hosted by Merit Internet
Engineering in Ann Arbor on January 23 and 24. The agenda includes
discussion of gigabit testbeds, SMDS and SMDS Network Management,
SMDS WAN implementation for ESnet, BGP3, OSI, and NREN Engineering,
as well as the current status and future performance enhancements
of T3. Las Vegas, NV is the site of the Merit Networking Seminar
scheduled for April 13-14. Seminar information is available from
1-800-66-MERIT or electronic mail to seminar@merit.edu.
Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu)
PREPNET
-------
PREPnet had one new member during December. Messiah College will
be connected to the Harrisburg hub via a 56Kbps link.
PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu)
SAIC
----
During the month of December, the gated parser was partially
completed. There are still minor issues surrounding the
configuration document that must be resolved and we are still
waiting for BBN to complete the database portion of the code.
Chi Chu has completed his analysis of results from NVLAP
conformance test for accredidation of a new test facility.
Cooper [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
Planned Activities:
Completion of the new parser for gated and continuation of the
kernel work that was interrupted.
Robert "Woody" Woodburn (woody@sparta.com)
SDSC (SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER)
-------------------------------------
Network analysis project
Research efforts are continuing in the development of systematic
methodologies for network analysis and performance testing. We are
continuing to discuss investigation of initial network statistics
data sets with several people, including other researchers and
network service providers. We have received some initial data from
collaborators and are beginning to analyze it. The technology
available today for collecting network statistics should allow for
substantially greater insight into network behavior than has been
previously possible. More systematic procedures for traffic
analysis could be of significant help to network planning and
design activities.
NREN Engineering project
As part of the NREN engineering activities we discussed networking
objectives with DOE and NASA networking staff.
CASA gigabit project
We have discussed initial results and findings of our work with the
HIPPI network simulator staff at LANL, who would like to use the
information to refine the design of their HIPPI innterfaces.
On 19 December 1991, SDSC hosted a Casa Gigabit Workshop for
participants in the project. During this meeting, the NSC HIPPI
switch was exercised with the LANL developed tester which the LANL
attendees brought.
A workshop for all five of the gigabit testbeds will be held in San
Diego, 13-15 January 1992.
Local changes
We attempted to reconfigure our tcp/ip routing on the 14th. This
was in preparation for the T-3 NSFnet's improved quality and our
then shifting the bulk of our traffic off the T-1 net. We had
Cooper [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
several problems caused by both local events and by those at Merit.
After the perturbations damped out, we ended up running with a
blend of our old and new schemes. The net result has been a slight
increase in our usage of the T-3 network. We will be making
additional changes either late in Jan or during the first part of
Feb. One major one will be to more isolate CERFnet from our
internal changes.
Miscellaneous
Paul Love attended at Sequoia 2000 network committee meeting at UC
Berkeley. Hans-Werner Braun and Paul attended a campus planning
session for Sequoia's local network connectivity.
by Paul Love <loveep@sdsc.edu>
SRI
----
SRI's Network Information System Center (NISC) updated the RFC
Index in response to each RFC issued in December. There were nine
RFCs issued in December 1991.
The RFC Index contains citations of all RFCs issued to date in
reverse numeric order. It's also a quick reference to determine if
any RFC has been obsoleted and gives a pointer to the replacement
RFC.
The RFC Index also supplies the equivalent FYI number, if the RFC
was also issued as an FYI document.
Paper copies of all RFCs are available from SRI, either
individually or on a subscription basis (for more information
contact nisc@nisc.sri.com or call 1-415-859-6387). Online copies
are available via FTP from ftp.nisc.sri.com as rfc/rfc####.txt or
rfc/rfc####.ps (#### is the RFC number without leading zeroes).
Additionally, RFCs may be requested through electronic mail from
SRI's automated mail server by sending a message to mail-
server@nisc.sri.com. In the body of the message, indicate the RFC
to be sent, e.g. "send rfcNNNN" where NNNN is the number of the
RFC. For PostScript RFCs, specify the extension, e.g. "send
rfcNNNN.ps". Multiple requests can be sent in a single message by
specifying each request on a separate line. The RFC Index can be
requested by typing "send rfc-index".
Sue Kirkpatrick (sue@nisc.sri.com)
Cooper [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
SURANET
-------
SURAnet will hold a User Services Meeting at Georgia Tech on March
9th and 10th, 1992. Topics covered will be:
X.500 Services
K-12 Support
Information Server software (WAIS, Gopher, etc.)
Campus Information Systems
The fee will be $50.00 for SURAnet members and $75.00 for non-
members. The fee includes lunch on the 9th and refreshments on
both days. The meeting will open at 8:00 am on Monday, March 9th
and close at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, March 10th. There will be
speakers for each of the topics but plenty of time will be allowed
for questions and discussion. For more information send mail to:
info@sura.net.
by Peter Liebscher <plieb@sura.net>
UCL
----
Discussions are underway on how to link the Ulster University
Digital Video Conferencing Network with the London University
LIVENet Video network, and thus onto the US.
John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Work continues on checkout of the NTP Version-3 time daemon
implementation for Unix. Code to automatically adjust the
polling rates between clients and servers and to detect and
discard faulty peers was improved. A preliminary (alpha)
distribution is available in pub/ntp/xntp3.tar.Z on
louie.udel.edu. This distribution is intended for experimental
use only and should not be used for production service.
2. For some strange reason, possible propagation anomalies, all
three of our WWVB campus timecode receivers lost signal on
several occasions for periods extending to days. Since our GPS
receiver is on repair, this resulted in all UDel time service
reverting to a flaky link to our Backroom test facility and
rattletrap collection of WWV and CHU timecode receivers. In
Cooper [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
addition, one of our LSI-11 fuzzball time servers (dcn2)
self-destructed and has been retired from service.
3. Experiments on precision timekeeping continue as reported last
month. We continue to document an uncomfortable incidence of
radio- related disturbances up to 100 milliseconds. While some
of these disturbances are due to the nature and variability of
the propagation medium, there is considerable room for
improvement in the detection and decoding algorithms and
oscillator disciplines used by the receivers themselves. The
use of digital signal processing, together with a subset of
the NTP algorithms, is being explored with the receiver
manufacturers.
4. Three Sun SPARCstations have been installed on our experiment
net for use in DARTNET experiments and related research. Dave
Mills attended the DARTNET planning meeting at ISI.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
Cooper [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
DIRECTORY SERVICES
------------------
This section of the Internet Monthly is devoted to efforts working to
develop directory services that are for, or effect, the Internet. We
would like to encourage any organization with news about directory
service activities to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news
items. The current reporters list includes:
o IETF OSIDS Working Group [no]
o IETF DISI Working Group [no]
o Field Operational X.500 Project [included]
- ISI [included]
- Merit [no]
- PSI [included]
- SRI [included]
o National Institute of Standards and Technology [no]
o North American Directory Forum [no]
o OSI Implementor's Workshop [no]
o PARADISE Project [no]
o PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project [included]
o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT [included]
o Registration Authority Committee (ANSI USA RAC) [no]
o U.S. Department of State, Study Group D, [included]
MHS Management Domain subcommittee (SG-D MHS-MD)
Tom Tignor (tpt2@isi.edu)
DS Report Coordinator
FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT
--------------------------------------
The FOX project is a DARPA and NSF sponsored effort to provide a
basis for operational X.500 deployment in the NREN/Internet. This
work is being carried out at Merit, NSYERNet/PSI, SRI and ISI. ISI
is the main contractor and responsible for project oversight.
ISI
---
ISI's new DSA is up. It is named after its predecessor, "Incan
Speckled Iguana," and runs over ISODE 7.0. The new "Incan
Speckled Iguana" conforms to the NADF naming scheme; as a
result, ISI is now represented by
"@c=US@st=California@o=Information Sciences Institute" in the
DIT.
Tom Tignor (tpt2@ISI.EDU)
Cooper [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
PSI
---
PSI has completed its work under this contract, and as such, no
work was performed as part of the FOX project this month.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
SRI
----
SRI pursued obtaining copies of WHOIS data from the current DDN
NIC contractor (GSI/Network Solutions) in order to keep the
X.500 WHOIS data up to date. Email messages containing a
description of the proposed ASCII data transfer format and a
WHOIS source subroutine that produces that format were sent to
Scott Williamson of Network Solutions.
SRI received and installed additional memory purchased for the
Sun 4/390 that supports the WHOIS QUIPU DSA. The additional
memory has enabled a 50% decrease in the time it takes the WHOIS
DSA to load the 150,000 entries offered by this DSA.
SRI has performed both DAP and DSP interoperability tests
between Custos and QUIPU. These tests were performed using
Custos 0.1.1 and QUIPU 7.0, both compiled with ISODE 7.0.
Specific DUAs used to perform DAP interoperability were widget
(Custos) and dish (QUIPU). Because the Custos implementation is
incomplete, i.e., does not support such operations as search and
modify, interoperability testing in these areas was limited. In
general, it was found both DAP and DSP interoperability was
possible between these implementations. Processes core dumping
(primarily Custos DSA, but also Widget and Dish) prohibited us
from determining interoperability success or failure in several
tests. Incorrect behavior, e.g., reporting incorrect error
codes, appeared to not be an interoperability problem but rather
a DSA problem (Custos) as the results were consistent when
tested with like-implementation DUA.
SRI interfaced the Custos DSA implementation with the Sybase
commercial RDBMS. Several information representation problems,
attributable to NIST design assumptions, were addressed to
accomplish this interface. They representation problems were:
OIDs, OID lists, RDNs, DNs, and entry attributes. In addition,
SRI made code changes to the start-up/boot code (outside of the
NIST DBMS library) to enable effective use of the relational
database. The SRI-modified version of Custos that utilizes
Sybase was tested and successfully performs read and list
Cooper [Page 30]
Internet Monthly Report December 1991
operations on local entries. Test data supplied by NIST with
Custos 0.1.1, was used for Sybase interface testing. Although
no formal comparative tests were performed, it can be noted that
the time required for initialization (loading of entries) using
the SRI/Sybase version was approximately one forth of the time
required by the file-based version. Tests using larger sets of
data would reveal boot, initialization, and run-time advantages
of the SRI/Sybase version.
Ruth Lang (SRI) and Russ Wright (LBL) published "A Catalog of
Available X.500 Implementations", as RFC1292, FYI-11. We
received and responded to 4 queries regarding the availability
of this document.
Ruth Lang (rlang@nisc.sri.com)
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project
---------------------------
In preparation for participation in the NADF Experimental Pilot,
the NADF KAN software was modified to coexist with the existing
White Pages Pilot Project environment, and installed.
Work was begun on software to make some of the information from the
White Pages Pilot Project available in the NADF Experimental Pilot.
Due to increasing load on the Fruit Bat DSA, a new DSA,
c=US@cn=Horned Frog was installed on the WPP service machine
wp1.psi.net to relieve the Fruit Bat DSA of its duties as a White
Pages service DSA. The Fruit Bat DSA will now function solely as a
backup for Alpaca, the c=US MASTER.
In anticipation of future work involving the DNS and X.500, two new
DSAs, c=US@cn=Swamp Fish and c=US@cn=Hatchet Fish were created.
Authority for the toplevel domainComponents for .us, .org, .net,
.mil, with the Hatchet Fish DSA serving as a backup.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT PROJECT
-----------------------------
New organizations added to the pilot this month are:
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
University of Mississippi
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
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SG-D MHS-MD
-----------
There is some progress to report on the c=US ADMD/PRMD name
registration work, but no progress has yet been made on development
of "behavioral rules" for ADMD participation in the c=US MTS. We
did however reorganize our efforts to hopefully make better
progress in the future.
A new chair was elected to serve for the next two years: Ella
Gardener of The MITRE Corporation is the new Chair.
A major portion of the meeting was devoted to preparing for and
then joinly meeting with the ANSI USA RAC (Registration Authority
Committee). At issue is the question of how to meld the
requirements for X.400 MHSMD Name Values with the requirement for
X.500 RDN Values so as to share the joint-iso-ccitt { 2 16 840 }
name-space arc for c=US. ISO and CCITT have recently decided to
establish a new arc under { 2 16 ) for all countries to use for RDN
name registrations. The c=US arc in this tree is { 2 16 840 }.
The current ANSI rules work well enough to fill the needs for
registration of "national standing" names in c=US, while the bulk
of the RDN values needed for X.500 are supplied by the existing
civil naming authorities in c=US. (See RFC1255 for the NADF Naming
Scheme.)
ANSI is now registering Organizational Names, along with a related
OID Numberform value for a total fee of $2500 per pair ($1000 for
the OID value and $1500 for the Alphaform Value).
An OID Numberform Value can be obtained separately, but an
Alphaform Value must be accompanied by a Numberform Value. A
Numberform Value may be obtained first (for $1000), and an
Alphaform Value can then be associated with it at some later date
(for $1500 additional).
It turns out that X.400 MHS MD name registration has a different
semantic than X.500 RDN registration, in that an ADMD name
registration might carry with it the registration of a commitment
to operate according to the ADMD MTS "behavior rules" (which are
yet to be written and voluntarily agreed to by the c=US MTS
community). No such commitment is implied by the current
application for an ANSI Organizational Name Registration. This
difference must be accommodated in some way.
A suggested way to deal with this situation is to ask ANSI to offer
a second MHSMD registration service which "leases" names (without
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Internet Monthly Report December 1991
any associated OID) with a periodic renewal fee which embodies the
"MHSMD commitment" semantic mentioned above.
This would serve to meet two needs of the MHSMD community, which
the current ANSI service does not meet. The first is the
"commitment issue" and the second is the "entry fee" issue. Many
people feel that $2500 is much too much to pay for a PRMD name
registration. It is also reconized that PRMD names may be much
more transient and volatile than are c=US Organizational names, so
that perpetual registration does not entirely make sense for PRMD
names. Of course, it is possible that with an annual fee, a PRMD
name registration might cost more than an ANSI organizational
registration over a long period of years, but the cost of entry is
low, and the difference over time should not be significant.
Also, some organizations will want to use the same registered name
for both, and so we need to work out ways for this to be
accomplished.
In any case, the two kinds of registered Alphaform name values must
be drawn from a single pool of names, preferably seen as populating
the { 2 16 840 } joint-iso-ccitt arc. One way to do this is to
have a single registration agent to administer both registries, and
an agreement that any name registered in one is reserved to the
same owner in the other registry, with the meld for both registries
regarded as populating the { 2 16 840 } Alphaform Name arc.
All this looks like real progress, but we are still not out of the
woods with how to deal with the current installed base of ADMD
registered PRMD names which has been accumulating over the years
without any coordination among ADMD registrars.
NOTE: We are not aware at this time of any conflicting assignments,
so there may not be any problem with conflicts when we try to bring
the whole PRMD name registration process into a single national
MHSMD registry. If anyone knows of any PRMD name ownership
conflicts, please let us know about them!
Where we are currently hung up is on some ADMD proposals to retain
the status quo with uncoordinated ADMD registration of PRMD names,
with reliance on distinguishing any cases of conflicting PRMD name
assignments by qualifying them with their ADMD registrar's names,
in the normal way of distinguishing names in hierarchical naming
systems. The proposal is to establish a national registry for
thsoe who want nationally unique PRMD names for themselves, but
retain the ability for any ADMD to also register any name it
wishes, subordinate to the registering ADMD's name. Some of us
feel that this is just too messy to deal with.
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The Next meeting of the MHSMD will be held at ANSI on days adjacent
to the next ANSI RAC meeting. Another joint meeting session will
be held to continue working on ways to meld the two registration
operations. (ANSI RAC meeting: Feb 19 (Wed), MHSMD meeting: Feb
20-21 (Thu-Fri). The joint meeting will be held on Feb 20 (Thu).
Einar Stefferud (stef@ics.uci.edu)
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CALENDAR
--------
Readers are requested to send in dates of events that are
appropriate for this calendar section.
1991 CALENDAR
Dec 2-5 4TH INT. WORKSHOP ON PETRI NETS AND
PERFORMANCE MODELS, Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Billington, Telecom Austrl.
(j.billington @ trl.oz.au)
Dec 2-5 GLOBECOM'91, See IEEE Publications. Phoenix
Dec 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1992 CALENDAR
Jan 13-21 ANSI X3T5
Jan 19 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN,
Frame Relay, Broadband ATM)
Jan 20-22 RIPE, Amsterdam
Jan 28-30 ANSI X3S3.3, Tucson, AZ
Feb 9 T1E1, Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1,
Broadband, etc.) Fish Camp, CA Verilink
Feb 19-20 RARE WG1, Location unknown
Feb 20-21 RARE Manager Mtg, Location unknown
Mar 2 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame
Relay, Broadband ATM)
Mar 2-6 ANSI X3T5
Mar 2-6 CAIA '92 8th IEEE Conference on AI Application
Mar 3-5 ACM CSC, Kansas City, MO
Mar 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, Irvine, CA
Mar 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Mar 16-18 Multipeer/Multicast Forum,
Orlando, Fl, (mloper@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu)
Mar 16-19 Info Netwrk&DataComm, Espoo, FI
Espoo, Helsinki, Finland; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Mar 16-19 Int'l Zurich Seminar on Digital Comm.
Zurich, Contact: schlegel@tech.ascom.ch
Mar 16-20 IETF, San Diego, CA
Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.ca.us)
Mar 18-20 Computers, Freedom & Privacy II,
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC
Mar 23 T1M1, Management and Maintenance (ISDN,
Broadband, Frame Relay, etc.), Raleigh, NC,
Fujitsu
Mar 25-27 National Net 92, Washington DC
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
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Internet Monthly Report December 1991
Apr 6-16 CCITT SG VII Geneva, Switzerland
Apr 21-23 ANSI X3S3.3, Mountaon View, Ca.
<Spring> IETF, San Diego, CA
Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.va.us)
May 4-6 ANSI X3T5
May 4-8 DECUS '92, Atlanta, GA
May 4-8 IEEE INFOCOM'92, See IEEE Pub., Florence
May 11 T1E1, Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1,
Broadband, etc.)
Williamsburg, VA, Bell Atlantic
May 12-14 Joint Network Conference 3, Innsbruck, Austria
(this is the RARE Networkshop - renamed)
May 13-15 Third IFIP International Workshop on Protocols
for High Speed Networks, Stockholm, Sweden
Contact: Per Gunningberg, per@sics.se
Bjorn Pehrson, bjorn@sics.se,
Stephen Pink, steve@sics.se
May 18-25 INTEROP92, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
May 19-29 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 21, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 27-29 IFIP WG 6.5 Int'l Conference, Vancouver, Canada
Jun 8 T1M1, Management and Maintenance (ISDN,
Broadband, Frame Relay, etc.)
Minneapolis, MN, ADC TElecom
Jun 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Jun 10-11 RARE WG1, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 11-12 RARE COSINE MHS MGR, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, See IEEE Publ..
Jun 15-19 INET92, Kobe, Japan
Jun Murai (jun@wide.ad.jp), KEIO University
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
"North America Contact"
Jun 16-18 ANSI X3S3.3, Minneapolos, MN
Jun 22-25 PSTV-XII, Orlando
Umit Uyar, ATT Bell Labs, <umit@honet5.att.com>
Jerry Linn, NIST <linnrj@ECF.NCSL.NIST.GOV>
Jul 6-10 IEEE802 Plenary, Bloomington, MN
Jul 13-17 ANSI X3T5
Jul 13-24 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, San Diego, CA
Aug 2 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN,
Frame Relay, Broadband ATM)
Aug 16 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN,
Frame Relay, Broadband ATM)
Aug 17-20 SIGCOMM, Baltimore, MD
Deepinder Sidhu, UMBC
Aug 18-21 ACM SIGCOMM '92, Maryland
<sigcomm92@nri.reston.va.us>
Sep 7-11 12th IFIP World Computer Congress
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Internet Monthly Report December 1991
Madrid, Spain; Contact: IFIP92@dit.upm.es
Sep 14-18 ANSI X3T5
Sep 21-25 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 22-24 ANSI X3S3.3, Boston, MA
Oct 5-8 FORTE'92, Lannion
Roland Groz (groz@lannion.cnet.fr)
Michel Diaz (diaz@droopy.laas.fr)
Oct 26-30 INTEROP92, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Nov 9-13 ANSI X3T5
Dec ANSI X3S3.3, Boulder, CO
Dec 6-9 GLOBECOM '92, See IEEE Publications.
Dec 7-11 DECUS '92, Las Vegas, NV
Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1993 CALENDAR
Mar 8-12 INTEROP93, Wasington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Mar 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Apr 18-23 IFIP WG 6.6 Third International Symposium
on Integrated Network Management, Sheraton
Palace Hotel, San Francisco, CA (kzm@hls.com)
May 23-26 ICC'92, Geneva, Switzerland
May-Jun PSTV-XIII, University of Liege.
Contact: Andre Danthine,
May 23-26 ICC'93, Geneva, See IEEE Publications.
Jun 7-11 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Aug 18-21 INET93, San Francisco Bay Area
Aug 23-27 INTEROP93, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Aug SIGCOMM, San Francisco
Sep 13-17 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 20-31 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, Seoul, Korea.
Oct 12-14 Conference on Network Information Processing,
Sofia, Bulgaria; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Nov 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, LaJolla, CA
Dec 6-10 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1994 CALENDAR
Apr 18-22 INTEROP94, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Aug 29-Sep 2 IFIP World Congress
Hamburg, Germany; Contact: IFIP
Sep 12-16 INTEROP94, San Francisco
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Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
1995 CALENDAR
Sep 18-22 INTEROP95, San Francisco, CA
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
-------------------------------
Note:
T1E1: Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1, Broadband, etc.,)
T1M1: Management and Maintenance (ISDN, Broadband, Frame
Relay, etc.)
Cooper [Page 38]