<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR87-04.TXT
Westine [Page 1]
~
APRIL 1987
INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS
------------------------
The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research
community the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems
discovered by the participating organizations.
This report is for research use only, and is not for public
distribution.
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 ARPANET mail to Ann Westine
(Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@SH.CS.NET).
BBN LABORATORIES AND BBN COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION
---------------------------------------------------
SATNET
The SATNET has continued to provide stable service throughout the
month. We are continuing to experience some problems with channel
1 hardware. Tanum is experiencing problems with its modem and is
now only on channel 0. We are still waiting for the spare modems
from Linkabit to pass testing. Channel 0 has remained healthy so
problems with channel 1 have not seriously affected the overall
performance of the SATNET. Connectivity tests performed by Steve
Casner reported an availability of 99.8% out of 99.9% for the SIMPs
during the month of April.
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WIDEBAND NETWORK
The development of both the dynamic group addressing and shared
stream allocation features for the BSAT has been completed. These
features were installed in the Wideband sites early in the month
via the distribution of BSAT software Release 4.0. Remote
monitoring of the BSAT's stream allocation data base was also
initiated with Release 4.0.
Assembly of the first run of Butterfly Satellite Modem Interface
(BSMI) boards was completed during the month. Approximately one
half of these boards were successfully tested and made available
for installation in the BSATs. BSAT software Release 5.0,
incorporating support for the BSMIs, was distributed to the field
mid-month in preparation for the BSMI installations. At the
month's end, BSMIs were being used for satellite channel access at
the BBN and Lincoln Laboratory sites. Installation of the
remaining BSMIs, including correction of a BSMI problem at CMU and
Ft. Monmouth, will be performed next month.
The Wideband Network was moved to a CONTEL ASC (aka American
Satellite) transponder on the Westar-IV satellite on 24-25 April.
The move was performed for contractual reasons only, CONTEL ASC
having replaced Western Union as the provider of the Wideband
Network's earth stations and space segment. The transition went
smoothly, with no significant problems encountered.
GATEWAYS
The Butterfly and LSI-11 gateways continue to provide stable
service. There are currently about 220 active networks in the
Internet. We are working to add IP reassembly to the Butterfly and
LSI-11 gateways to be able to handle fragmented EGP updates. This
has already happened on Satnet and the updates will soon be too
large for the ARPANET/Milnet.
We have isolated the Ethernet problem that was showing up in the
some of the Wideband Butterfly Gateways (ISI-WB, MIT-WB, SRI-WB) to
a cable which was out of spec (too long). We are testing a shelded
version of the cable which so far seems to work fine.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
ISI
---
Internet Concepts Project
Paul Mockapetris made draft revisions of the Domain RFCs 882 and
883 for the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Boston at
BBN April 21-24. Paul worked with Doug Kingston of BRL in
identifying some operational problems in the existing system and
worked on the design of the Protocol Accelerator.
One RFC was published:
RFC 999: Westine, A.W., and J. Postel, "RFC 900-999
Request for Comments Summary".
Paul Mockapetris (Mockapetris@ISI.EDU) and Ann Westine
(Westine@ISI.EDU)
Multimedia Conferencing Project and SuperComputer Workstation
Communication
MMC and SWC activities this month were joined in an
interesting way: The multimedia conferencing facility was
tested by actual use for discussions of both MMC and SWC
topics. First there was a teleconference for collaboration
between BBN and ISI on refinements to the new ST protocol
document. We found that collaborative editting of the
document in this mode worked well and have decided that future
work on the document will be done with Diamond and MMCONF.
The second teleconference was among MIT and ISI folks to
review the results of recent experiments with the NETBLT
protocol over the Wideband Net. MMCONF was used to examine
relevant points from several typescripts and messages at both
sites simultaneously.
Alan Katz did further work on an X-Windows environment on the
Sun as similar to suntools as possible. Annette Deschon and
Alan did local tests on traffic generated by XDemos on the
local ethernet and found a pretty constant rate of 50 packets
per second each way (in some sense, this should be the maximum
traffic each S un running X-Windows should be able to
generate). Alan also did tests with the same environment
running on DARPA's Vax over the wideband net and found
performance slow, but acceptable, as was expected. Alan began
learning about NEWS (and postscript) as an alternative remote
window procedure (which may in fact be better for the
supercomputer/workstation application, though it is now not as
popular). Alan attended the IAB Scientific Computing Task
Force meeting at the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore on
Westine [Page 3]
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April 23-24.
Brian Hung has automated the process of sending multimedia
messages containing bitmap data from the IBM-PC AT using the
old Multimedia Message Content Protocol(MMCP). Brian is
working on a new program that performs the same function as
the current multimedia scanner input program but uses the
Diamond document format instead. Brian has written a small
program that formats a message containing only header
information and have sent out some messages to Steve Casner.
Steve was able to receive the messages with out any problems.
Brian's next step is to add bitmap data to the multimedia
message.
Steve Casner, Alan Katz, and Brian Hung (Casner@ISI.EDU)
NSFNET Project
Annette DeSchon distributed to NSFNET gurus a proposal for the
data to be collected in an NSFNET gateways database. She has
collected much of this data for the current NSFNET topology.
In addition, she developed programs to automatically generate
summaries of the gateway data and templates for the collection
of additional data.
From this data she generated an updated network-level map of
NSFNET and also a subnet-level map that shows the internal
structures of SURANET, NYSERNET, and JVNC. These maps were
distributed at the meeting of the Internet Engineering Task
Force at BBN.
Bob Braden chaired a meeting of the End-to-End Protocols Task
Force at CMU, April 15-17, and attended the INENG meeting at
BBN, April 21-24. The revised gateway requirements document,
authored by Braden and Postel, was completed in draft form,
and made available for public FTP retrieval. Braden discussed
the document at the INENG meeting.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) and Annette DeSchon
(Deschon@ISI.EDU)
MIT-LCS
-------
No internet related progress to report.
Liixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
Westine [Page 4]
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NTA & NDRE
----------
No report received.
ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL
----------------------
Tactical Internet Multicast Protocols
David Young attended the End-to-End Services Task Force meeting on
17 Apr 87. He met the evening before with Steve Deering to discuss
the extensions to IP multicast proposed in his (David's) draft RFC.
The discussion of David's RFC at the task force meeting itself was
primarily on his proposal to pass a membership list as a call
parameter to expedite the host group formation.
Jim Stevens could not attend the meeting, but he sent a network
message to the task force describing new distributed methods to do
multicast group assignment within the confines of the 32-bit IP
address field. The key to the first method is allocating 12 bits
of the 32-bit address to a unique number - the "serial number" -
belonging to the multicast agent that is doing the assignment. The
second method provides for "captive" assignment - that is,
assignment, in the absence of a multicast agent, by a local host,
using its own address as a portion of the address that it assigns.
John Jubin (Jubin@A.ISI.EDU)
SRI
---
No report received.
UCL
---
UCL has now extended the local swamp to 3 ethernets, as well as the
three rings, and the Admiral internet. The Admiral network is being
upgraded to use 256kbps between each gateway interface, rather than
64kbps per channel. We are also connecting our workstations to an
X.25 switch which provides up to 64 * 64kbps channels, as a
fallback network for the department.
The Eternets are subnetted together via a Cisco gateway. We are
investigating the use of MAC bridges with access control and loop
resolution for further extension of the local system.
Westine [Page 5]
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A preliminary graphical tool for investigating TCP and SEP
performance over various network paths has been completed.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Development continues on the Dissimilar Gateway Protocol
(DGP). Dave Mills simulated candidate multiple-path routing
algorithms using a test jig written in BASIC and the
configuration data previously collected for the NSFNET
Backbone and client nets. As evidence the incredibly rich
profusion of communal connectivity, the algorithms found up to
eighteen distinct paths between some nets. Work continues on
modifications to the algorithms to incorporate hierarchical
constraints as proposed in the design documents. A design
review was held at Linkabit on 9 April.
2. Dave Mills attended a NAS meeting on survivable telephone
networks at CONTEL in New York City. His attendance at the
joint INENG/ANSII meeting in Boston was cancelled at the last
minute due to a nasty case of flu.
3. Gary Delp continues to do battle with the bits on Memnet. The
hardware is growing state machine by state machine. Two
technical reports have been put together, one describing an
analysis of the board under construction, and the other an
overview of the Memnet project. The analysis is co-authored
with Adarshpal Sethi, and Dave Farber. The overview is written
mostly by Marshall Rose, an adjunct faculty member. These
reports are available from the Department of Electrical
Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716.
4. Memnet is a research project modelling the local area network
resource as globally shared memory rather than a packet
transport system. The processors perform reads and writes on
locally cached, but consistent memory. Gary indicates that use
of this distributed resource costs only a 10X performance hit
over the "equivalent" non-shared resource; this is seen as a
*major* improvement over software driven/packet network
alternatives.
5. "A Distributed-Protocol Authentication Scheme," authored by
Dave Mills, appeared as RFC-1004. This scheme was originally
intended for use with DGP, but can be used with many similar
applications. Reply comments indicate active and continuing
interest in this area.
Westine [Page 6]
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6. Testing of the new fuzzware version for NSFNET Backbone sites
and other places has turned up an elusive bug that results in
occasional system crash/restarts, but only in some
configurations. In spite of exhaustive testing the bug has not
yet been found, although substantial review and rework of
possible causes has been completed.
7. The WWVB radio clock at Linkabit has returned to life. Due to
resource problems, the TCP-based time service TCP/TIME is
being withdrawn from the fuzzballs. The UDP-based time
services UDP/TIME and UDP/NTP will continue indefinately.
Users have been warned on many occasions that this would
happen.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
NSF NETWORKING
--------------
UCAR/BBN LABS NSF NETWORK SERVICE CENTER (NNSC)
We are working on setting up an on-line calendar of meetings of
Internet-related groups such as task forces, working groups, etc.,
and are collecting information from chairpersons of such groups.
Craig Partridge attended the End-to-end Task Force meeting and
presented the state of work on the High-Level Entity Monitoring
System (HEMS) to the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting.
Drafts of some of the RFCs explaining the system are now being
circulated for comment. Karen Roubicek attended the METANIC
Meeting in Washington to discuss cooperation among the growing
number of information centers.
By Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE SITES
CORNELL UNIVERSITY THEORY CENTER
Backbone Operations
21,225,000 packets were delivered by the backbone in March, up 26%
from February (which was up 35% from January). The backbone
fuzzballs are feeling the stress; besides the usual number of power
problems and line outages one usually experiences, a number of
software problems were uncovered and most of them fixed.
The "dropped" statistics (counts of valid but undeliverable
packets) have been discovered to be less than useful on some of the
fuzzballs, although not all. It seems that every time certain
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fuzzballs emit a "Hello" packet to an attached ethernet the dropped
count is incremented. We still don't know why.
Coordination and Interoperability Issues
Gatedaemon current events: Hold-down periods in all protocols are
now rationalized; even more sanity-checking to avoid routing loops;
interfaces are handled more effectively, including better support
of point-to-point links. Also all copyrights except the original
ones (Berkeley & Kirton) have been removed.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
We have converted our campus to a class B backbone. It is our
intent to control access to the Internet by only allowing that net
Internet access. We have a connection to our the Chicago campus
using P4200 at 56kb. They are in the process of acquiring a
connected address to use at that campus. Another P4200
daisychained off that is 192.5.200 (Argonne National Labs) - who
will be reachable via NSFNET as soon as we can do some gated'ing.
TCP/IP and FTP have been running on CTSS for the past month
crashing our Cray fewer and fewer times. FTP is currently open to
all local users and is working reliably now. The service is
unavailable from off campus until we convert the hyperchannel to a
subnet of the connected net. No code to do - we just wanted to not
introduce a lot of noise for initial trials. TELNET server was
written to spec and requires local echo. Amazing how many clients
don't support that. Lest people doing supercomputing think this
junk at Illinois for CTSS is the only place they will have trouble,
our implementation is almost exactly the same as UNICOS. Great
minds think alike and having a Cray echo characters across a
hyperchannel is not a pleasant thought.
We have dropped off of USAN and are converting our Vita-Link dish
to a hub. This conversion and the installation of a dish at
Indiana University should occur about 15 May.
By Ed Krol (krol%uiucvmd.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU)
JOHN VON NEUMANN SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
No report received.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY SATELLITE
NETWORK PROJECT
The Splitting of the UCARNET/USAN (128.117) into two nets (128.117
and 128.116) is now complete and has been stabilized. The 128.116
net will increase its functionality as a pass-thru network with the
addition of a PROTEON P4200 IP router to NAS at NASA Ames (128.161)
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for the PLDS project of the NASA Science Internet (NSI). Another IP
router box is anticipated between 128.116 and SESQUINET (Texas).
Imminent is the arrival of a SUN 3/280 server that will gateway
128.116 to the NCAR HYPERchannel network and to an ARPANET PSN at
the University of Colorado (56 Kbps). The NCAR HYPERchannel
network uses internal protocols.
Connectivity is currently available directly via 128.116 to the
following nets: 128.117, 192.12.207, 128.121, 128.174, 192.5.146,
128.84, 128.8, 35, 128.193, 128.104, 192.12.220, 192.12.221, 10,
128.128, 18, 128.138.
By Don Morris (morris@scdsw1.ucar.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
NSFNET
The PSC Fuzzball and PSC-Gateway were relocated, and the lines to
JVNC and UIUC reterminated on April 6. The line from PSC-Gateway to
PSN 14 was extended at the same time. With the exception of the
PSN, all of our long-distance communications lines now terminate in
the same building as PSC offices, making it easier to keep an eye
on things.
There was a site survey on April 9 for a proposed new PSN, part of
a larger plan to reduce ARPANET congestion. Installation is
estimated to occur in August.
The PSC Fuzzball handled 16.9 million packets in April. There are
problems (first noted on April 17th) with performance and
stability, possibly UDP related. We have a netwatch session running
to try and see a problem. We will be evaluating a Hewlett Packard
Ethernet Protocol analyser for general use, and will see if it can
help here. PSC Fuzzball was rebooted on April 23rd and 28th at the
request of the NISC, to fix links confused by these errors.
PSCNET
In view of the improved service to B.PSC.EDU via a dedicated path
to PSC-Gateway, we have also installed a second Ethernet interface
in A.PSC.EDU, which is now being announced as 128.182.65.1.
Performance has been much improved, though there are still some
problems with the VMS IP software. While we are waiting for bug
fixes, we have adjusted parameters to minimize the impact.
As a result of bringing PSC-Gateway and the Fuzzball to our
building, we have been able to eliminate one of the gateways on the
direct IP path. There are currently only 2 P4200s on this link, one
at PSC offices and one at the Westinghouse machine room near the
XMP. The gateway at PSC is on the stub Ethernet with the Fuzzball
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and PSC-GW, and the other is on the private Ethernet whose only
occupants are A.PSC.EDU and B.PSC.EDU. The link between the two is
running at 256kbps.
ALCOA came on line this month, with a 56kbps connection to the
P4200 at Westinghouse. We are announcing 192.31.3 to the Internet,
their domain is ALCOA.COM.
Lines have been ordered for the first link in the T1 Academic
Affiliates net, sometimes called PSC-AA-NET. The first link is
being installed to the University of Maryland in College Park.
By Eugene Hastings, Mgr. Communications, PSC
(hastings@morgul.PSC.EDU)
SDSCNET
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
UC Santa Barbara, our first consortium member linked to the center
over a tcp/ip-Proteon p4200 path, became operational during the
month. While it took awhile to get the line "in shape" (it is a
56k DDS line with a cross-campus broadband link at EACH end), it is
now functioning very smoothly. We expect to install Proteon's
DECNET forwarding software about 1 June. While this will be of
some use to UCSB, it will primarily serve one of our initial
consortium members, the Salk Inst. plus an industrial participant.
The site inspection for our ARPANET PSN was conducted during April
by DCA/BBN/CRC. The PSN is still scheduled for an Aug. 1987
installation.
During April we installed a new version of the SRI Multinet tcp/ip
software. It has several improvements, one of the main ones being
the elimination of the "tiny-gram" problem; the previous versions
proclivity for sending ftp'd files a byte or two per packet. We
are also in the midst of installing the LBL mail system
SoftwareTools. When we complete the job in the next few weeks,
mail from all of our networks will be gatewayed. These include, in
addition to NSFNET, BITNET, SPAN, SDSCNET, MFENET and HEPNET.
Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@SH.CS.NET)
NSFNET REGIONAL AFFILIATED AND CONSORTIUM NETWORKS
BARRNET
BARRNET has been completing hardware installation during the past
month. Much of this effort has involved a detailed learning
process of T1 communications technology and in particular procuring
and testing CSU's which maximize throughput of a random bit stream
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
such as that produced by the Proteon p4200 gateways. At present 5
of our 6 initial nodes have had all hardware installed and tested
(only NASA/Ames remains).
An important concern that needs to be resolved before BARRNET is
made fully operational is the control of routing information
propagating out of each campus ("autonomous system") to other
BARRNET gateways and associated campuses. We don't want bogus
information to "damage" other parts of our networks and we don't
want certain legitimate information propagated because of
administrative or technical restrictions. We have outlined a
proposed solution which involves a minimal software change by
Proteon and anticipate that most of the nodes comprising BARRNET
can be made fully operational by the end of May.
No firm date is yet available for BARRNET's connection to NSFNET,
although we plan to make this connection through NASA/Ames to the
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
By Tom Ferrin (tef@cgl.ucsf.edu)
MERIT
Staff training for use of the CMU enhanced asynchronous version of
the MIT PC/IP package has started and we now have generally many
more users of the asynchronous IP support on Merit terminal lines.
Preparation for general user distribution of floppy disks for the
async IP/TCP support as well as the Ethernet version has continued
as well.
The Ethernet support is still beta tested by a couple of sites,
which are using the support fairly heavily, including for the
exchange of multimedia mail documents.
Since the IP switching function in Merit is working to a large
extent (more still needs to happen for congestion control) work has
started on a TCP within the Merit network for terminal as well as
host support. To this extent the interface to our MTS mainframes
is also now being worked on, but further design discussions still
need to happen.
Hans-Werner Braun attended the Internet Engineering Task Force
meeting in Boston and also visited Proteon together with Milo Medin
(NASA) and Mike Petry/Louie Mamakos (UMaryland) on the preceeding
day to discuss several aspects of networking issues with regard to
Proteon efforts.
Dave Katz attended a meeting of the ANSI X3S3.3 (Network and
Transport Layer) group, where he is a voting member.
By Hans-Werner (hwb@mcr.umich.edu)
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MIDNET
Our gateway/routers have arrived; we are still waiting for delivery
of the DSU's/CSU's. We have scheduled a training seminar for mid
June to cover the operation of the gateway/routers. Telephone
lines are still scheduled for June 1. We are in the process of
establishing a MIDNET NIC.
By Doug Gale (doug%unlcdc3.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU)
NORTHWESTNET
No news to report from last month. We are still waiting for the
official NSF approval.
By Hellmut Golde (Golde%UWACDC.Bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU)
NYSERNET
As of 1 May 1987, NYSERNET has the following topology with 56kbit
links and Proteon Gateways. Reachability to NSFNET, ARPANET,
MILNET, etc is available to each site. April additions include
SUNY Albany, Clarkson University, and NYNEX Science and Technology
Center.
Clarkson
|
|
Rochester--------Cornell---------RPI--------SUNY/Albany
| |
| |
| |
NYTEL----Columbia------NYU
| |
| |
| NYNEX
|
BNL (Brookhaven National Laboratories)
The current implementation schedule has all nysernet academic
members available via 56kbit service by the 3rd week of May. T1
cutover for NYU to Columbia and Columbia to Cornell is schedule for
June/July. Creation of an experimental root domain server is in
progress.
By Marty Schoffstall (schoff@nic.nyser.net)
SESQUINET
We are in the process of ordering gateways (from Cisco) and phone
lines (from SouthWest Bell), and plan to be up by June 15th in our
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initial configuration of:
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston Area Research Center
Rice University
Texas A&M University
Texas Southern University
University of Houston at University Park
We are also working with the NSFNET people to build a direct
connection from the Rice node to the NSFNET backbone site at NCAR.
We are, as ever, open to contacting new potential members, but our
focus during May will be in getting our initial configuration up.
Questions regarding growth or operations can be sent to Guy Almes
(almes@rice.edu) or to Farrell Gerbode (farrell@icsa.rice.edu).
By Guy Almes (almes@RICE.EDU)
SURANET
The following nets are being EGP advertised to the core on
SURANET's behalf.
128.61. Georgia Tech
128.109. TUCC
128.150. NSF
128.154. NASA Goddard
128.163. U of Kentucky
128.164. George Washington Univ
128.167. SURAnet
128.169. U of Tennessee
128.173. Virginia Tech
192.5.57. Univ of Delaware (udel-cc)
192.5.219. Clemson
192.16.177. Univ of Alabama
The phone line from Georgia Tech (Atlanta) to the University of
Georgia (Athens) has been installed. A Proteon router has been
shipped from Maryland to the University of Georgia and is awaiting
installation.
NASA Goddard (128.154.) was connected to SURANET this month.
Discussions are going on with other Federal research laboratories
about connecting to SURANET.
Reliability of the Proteon p4200 boxes, using Version 7.2 of the
Proteon software and the resistor fix, continues to be good.
Using software obtained from Charles Catlett at the University of
Illinois we plan to initiate 24 hour monitoring of SURANET node
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
reachability in the near future.
We are contacting telecommunication suppliers in preparation for
connecting the ten SURANET Phase II campus sites to the network.
Video tapes of the Feb. 13-14 SURANET Technical Meeting are
available by sending a P.O., or check, for $91.00 to SURA Inc. c/o
Jack Hahn, Computer Science Center, University of Maryland, College
Park, MD., 20742.
SURANET will be holding a Network User Services forum primarily for
SURA members but open to other interested NSFNET members. For
information contact Jack Hahn (@umd2.umd.edu:hahn@umdc.bitnet) or
Henry Schaffer (tsches@tucc).
SURANET is testing a conferencing server concept being operated by
Dr. Jeff Case at the University of Tennessee using Vaxnotes over
SURANET.
By Jack Hahn (hahn%umdc.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU)
WESTNET
A letter was transmitted to NSF on April 2, 1987, entailing a
detailed response to the questions raised by NSF regarding the
proposal submitted in September of 1986. This also included a
revised budget.
Issues still remaining include:
(a) 56 kbps access by Utah State University and the University of
Wyoming. It appears that the University of Wyoming will have
56 kbps access through a subchannel of a microwave link which
will be installed during the forthcoming Colorado fiscal year
(July 1, 1987 to June 30, 1988). The circuit to Utah State is
still questionable, and expensive (over $3,700 per month).
(b) Interaction with the backbone. It appears that the backbone
node (in our case NCAR) is to be responsible for the
circuit(s) to the regional networks. I perceive this as a
potential problem, as the installation of this circuit must be
done in a timely manner, else the region will be inter
connected and waiting for external connectivity. I recommend
that the regions be given responsibility for these circuits.
However, I do agree that the backbone node should be
responsible for all hardware beyond the transceiver cable at
the backbone node end.
(c) We as yet have no funding. This is beginning to evoke severe
reaction at the regional sites, as many have invested heavily
in campus LAN's and feel as if they have done their part
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
regarding purchase of hardware, and NSF should 'deliver' its
part. Furthermore, many researchers throughout the region
presently have a claimant need to access Phase II Centers
NOW...
Progress during the last month, in addition to the response to
NSF, includes:
(a) a thorough circuit definition and cost analysis,
(b) completion of Colorado Supernet,
(c) connection through NCAR to NSFnet by Colorado Supernet
(d) the formulations of: an initial marketing plan, an
advertising brochure, and a one page fact sheet.
By Pat Burns (pburns%CSUGREEN.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu)
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TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
Current members are myself and Richard Bolt (MIT Media Lab),
Steve Casner (ISI), Terry Crowley (BBN), Jose Garcia Luna
Aceves (SRI), Sunil Sarin (CCA), Joseph Sventek (ANSA,
Cambridge, UK), and Dave Taylor (HP Labs).
Keith Lantz (Lantz@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU)
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
Informal discussion notes from the March meeting available
from estrin@usc-oberon.usc.edu.
Distributed copies of Dave Mills' DGP and the ANSI Draft
Network Routing Architecture document for online discussion.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC-CSE.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
The END2END task force met for two days at CMU during April.
Three new members were present -- Van Jacobson, Bill Nowicki,
and Craig Partridge. Dave Young of the SURAN project at
Rockwell also attended for one day, to talk about his proposed
extensions to the Internet multicasting facility to support
specific SURAN requirements.
Van gave a presentation of his work on TCP/gateway performance
issues; Joel Emer talked about the MIT Common System project;
and Craig discussed the transport protocol issues in gateway
monitoring.
There is now a multicast agent implementation for 4.3BSD; it
will be available as soon as some BBN licensing issues are
straightened out. Deering has written an RWHO daemon that use
Internet multicasting instead of broadcasting (!). The
Internet multicasting code is nearly working in MACH at CMU.
Cheriton reported progress on a BSD kernel implementation of
his VMTP protocol; it implements many features of VMTP,
including: logical name resolution (ESP), authentication,
multicasting, and forwarding. One potential VMTP application
which Dave is considering is encryption key distribution. The
task force decided that VMTP would also be an appropriate
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
transport protocol for gateway monitoring. To this end,
Cheriton plans to develop a VMTP subset simple enough for
inclusion in gateways, and try it out monitoring gateways in
the Stanford environment.
Van Jacobson made a number of interesting points, based on his
analysis of the coupling between TCP retransmission and the
gateway system:
(1) The variances are as important as the means.
(2) There is an inevitable tendency (predicted by Catastrophe
Theory) for the system to organize itself to oscillate
between empty queues and full (or overflowing) queues.
The most benign result is that packets always get
clumped. Van uses physical methaphors to describe this,
like "a growing packet crystal" and "cooling the
packets".
(3) His experiments and simulations show that this tendency
can be controlled with either queue randomization or fair
queueing in the gateways.
(4) RTT is the fundamental transfer function for the gateway
system.
(5) Measures which have been incorporated into host TCP's for
CPU efficiency, like sending large bursts and economizing
on ACK's, may be a bad idea from the viewpoint of
throughput.
(6) His "slow start" algorithm greatly improves throughput.
There was a vigorous discussion on point (5); several
participants felt that clumping, both in the hosts and in the
network, should be a good thing, as it improves efficiency.
For example, clumping tends to make better use of ARPANET
connection blocks (and the VC setup in the ARPANET in turn
probably helps cause clumping).
It was unclear how applicable Van's current results are to
rate-controlled protocols like NETBLT. Van admitted that
while he knows now how to make TCP self-tuning, he does not
know how to make NETBLT self-tuning. It may require more
explicit performance data from the gateways to the hosts. The
idea was advanced that the gateway system ought include an
explicit internal organization to manage its overall buffering
as a resource.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
The INARC list was quiet this month.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING
1) A special meeting was held in early April to discuss
Internet technical coordination between various agencies
(including DARPA, DCA, NSF, NASA and OSD). The invited
attendees were:
o Mike Corrigan, OSD
o Dennis Perry, DARPA
o Steve Wolff, NSF
o Phill Gross, MITRE
o Mike St.Johns, DDN PMO
o Hans-Werner Braun, U. Michigan
o Milo Medin, NASA
In order to deal with a potentially very large combined
technical group, initial discussions centered around a
multiple working group format in which there could be a small
central coordinating committee and a varying number of ad hoc
and standing working groups.
It is envisioned that the working groups will have a life of
their own, with meetings possibly scheduled outside the normal
IETF. Future IETF meetings would be composed of detailed
working group status reports, other technical presentations
and an opportunity for the working groups to meet. As an
example, a three day meeting might dedicate the first day and
a half to working groups, the remainder dedicated to a plenary
session of technical presentations and status reports. It is
expected that the Working Group Chairs will report progress
monthly (to be included in this report and/or a separate Task
Force report) as well as at the full IETF meetings.
2) The Internet Engineering Task Force met in Boston on April
22-24. The meeting was hosted by Bob Hinden of BBN. Bob and
BBN did an excellent job of providing facilities for what
turned out to be a rather large gathering.
This was a very large meeting for two reasons: this was the
first meeting since the IETF reorganization (described above)
and it also included a day and a half joint session with the
ANSI Network Layer Group X3S3.3. An attendence list has been
distributed to the IETF mailing list.
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
There were 47 attendees who listed IETF affiliation, 31 who
listed X3S3.3 affiliation (including several who listed dual
affiliation) and 10 from agencies (and/or BBN observers) who
listed no affiliation. This gives a total of over 85
attendees.
3) The final agenda for the April 22-24 meeting is below.
Thanks go to Lyman Chapin who helped coordinate the joint
session of the meeting.
Wednesday, April 22 -------------------
Morning
- Welcome, Task Force Reorganization Gross (MITRE)
- Enhanced AHIP StJohns (DDN)
- BBN Report Hinden/Gardner (BBN)
- Progress Report on
- Congestion Control Simulation Stine (MITRE)
- Arpanet Performance Measurement Gross (MITRE)
- TCP Performance Enhancement Jacobson (LBL)
Afternoon
- Gateway Monitoring Partridge (BBN)
- Management Architecture LaBarre (MITRE)
- Internet Problem Descriptions Groups
Thursday, April 23 ------------------
Joint X3S3.3/IETF Meeting on Gateways and Routing
(concluded Friday Morning)
Morning
- Welcome Chapin/Gross
- IETF status/overview Gross (MITRE)
- FCCSET report Gross (MITRE)
- ANSI/ISO status/overview Chapin (Data
General)
- ANSI routing architecture Tsuchiya (MITRE)
- NSF gateway requirements Braden (ISI)
- Routing Directions at SRI Su and Garcia
(SRI)
Afternoon
- Burroughs Integrated Adaptive Routing Piscitello
(Unisys)
- DECNET Phase V Routing Oran (DEC)
- Discussion & questions
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
Friday, April 24 ----------------
Joint X3S3.3/IETF Meeting on Gateways and Routing (Con't)
Morning
- SPF Routing in the Butterfly Gateways Mallory (BBN)
- Other Advanced Routing Work at BBN Gardner (BBN)
- Congestion Avoidance Jain, et al (DEC)
- Adjourn Joint Session
Afternoon
- Parallel IETF Working Groups
4) There were two breakout sessions during the IETF meeting.
On Wednesday afternoon, separate groups worked on Internet
problem descriptions and, on Friday afternoon, working groups
were organized.
Internet Problem Descriptions
At the first IETF meeting in January 1986, a list of Internet
problems was developed covering short, intermediate and long
range issues. In response to IAB guidance, an attempt was
made to develop such a list in a more rigorous fashion at the
February 1987 meeting. The IETF membership was divided into
groups with the goal of compiling problem descriptions in
particular areas. Problems were listed in the following
format:
o Problem Category
o Problem Description:
o Severity: (low, medium, high)
o Time Frame: (time until problem becomes critical)
o Owner: (Responsible Agency or group)
o Plan/Options:
The resulting Internet Problem Descriptions (designated "IETF
Form-1") contained a mixture of intermediate range protocol
issues and very short range O&M issues. The resulting problem
list was not exhaustive and further work was done on Wednesday
afternoon, April 22. These new forms will be edited and made
available in the IETF archive directory at SRI-NIC.
Task Force Working Groups
Working Groups should have a narrow focus. Ideally, they
should be formed to address a single issue and then disolve
when the work has been accomplished. With this philosophy in
mind, working group topics were identified and appropriate
chairs were chosen during the course of the meeting. On
Friday afternoon, the following groups met:
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
- EGP2 RFC (Petry, UMd)
- Name Domain Planning (Kingston, BRL)
- Gateway Monitoring (Partridge, BBN)
- Performance and Congestion Control (Stine, MITRE)
- NSF Routing (Hedrick, Rutgers)
- Misc. MilSup Issues (StJohns, DDN PMO)
Reports have already been received from most of the Working
Groups. These reports will be compiled and sent to the task
force mailing list. Since this was a preliminary meeting for
these groups, there may be further refinement in their
specific charters.
5) Mike StJohns has arranged for an archive directory at the
NIC for task force papers. The directory is <IETF> on the
host SRI-NIC. All files are available for anonymous FTP.
6) Using the attendence sheets from the last meeting, the
Task Force mailing list has been checked, corrected and
updated. The main list, ineng-tf, has 97 entries. The
interest list has an additional 21 more.
With a list this large, it turns out to be very convenient to
compile and edit it locally. Therefore, I have created three
new lists at MITRE:
- - ineng-tf@gateway.mitre.org (aliased to
ietf@gateway.mitre.org) - - ineng-interest@gateway.mitre.org
(aliased to ietf-interest@gateway.mitre.org) - - ineng-
request@gateway.mitre.org (aliased to ietf-
request@gateway.mitre.org)
I plan to 1) continue to maintain the lists locally and 2)
send copies of the full list to ISI at regular intervals.
Submitted by Phill Gross (Gross@GATEWAY.MITRE.ORG))
PRIVACY
The Privacy Task Force held a successful meeting on 31 March-1
April at RIACS, NASA/Ames, Mountain View, CA. The attendees
were David Balenson (NBS), Matt Bishop (RIACS, meeting host),
Morrie Gasser (DEC), Steve Kent (BBNCC, task force chairman),
John Linn (BBNCC, task force secretary), Dan Nessett (LLL),
Mike Padlipsky (Mitre/Bedford), Rob Shirey (Mitre/Washington),
and Steve Wilbur (UCL).
We began the meeting with discussion of the PTF's released
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
RFC989, also discussing potential implementation activities
and considering some issues raised by the minutes from the
September 1986 meeting. Several PTF members are considering
prototype implementation efforts based on the RFC; continuing
discussion has identified some changes and clarifications to
be made in a subsequent revision.
We explored key management architectures to support electronic
mail privacy, emphasizing a certificate mechanism based on RSA
public-key cryptography. Major issues included definition of
user identification fields to be included in certificates and
consideration of possible server facilities to register users,
generate certificates, and make certificates available to mail
senders.
The next meeting was tentatively scheduled for 28-29 July at
NBS.
John Linn (Linn@CCY.BBN.COM)
INTERNET MANAGEMENT
The first Internet Management Task Force meeting will be in
May.
Vint Cerf (Cerf@A.ISI.EDU)
ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY
No report received.
SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
We met at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns
Hopkins University (hosted by Peter Shames) on April 23-24.
Discussions were held in four areas: equations and multimedia
communications, the Interagency Research Internet, the need
for very high bandwidth communications, and network related
user services (such as white pages and database directories).
A demonstration was given of the Diamond multi-media mail
system by Terry Crowley of BBN. Vint Cerf (Chairman of the
IRI Engineering Task Force) joined us for the discussion on
the Interagency Research Internet.
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Internet Monthly Report April 1987
We plan to generate three short white papers (perhaps to be
published as RFCs). One will be on the different methods for
equation input and interchange, and will be a follow-up to the
RFC published by Alan Katz. The second will be a summary of
the requirements for high bandwidth networking in the
scientific community. The third will be on some of the
network related user services needed in the scientific
community and approaches to providing those services.
We had a short discussion on the charter of the task force,
and concluded that the title "Scientific Computing" was too
narrow, as many of the future networking requirements for the
scientific community will come from uses other than just
computing, such as remote control and monitoring of
experiments. We therefore have changed the name of the task
force to "Task Force on Scientific Requirements."
Barry Leiner (Leiner@ICARUS.RIACS.EDU)
SECURITY
No report received.
TACTICAL INTERNET
No report received.
TESTING AND EVALUATION
No report received.
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