<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR87-10.TXT
Westine [Page 1]
~
OCTOBER 1987
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 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 network mail to Ann Westine
(Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@SH.CS.NET).
BBN LABORATORIES AND BBN COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION
---------------------------------------------------
WIDEBAND NETWORK
The installation of a new Wideband Butterfly Gateway at Stanford
University was completed at the beginning of the month. The
gateway connects the Stanford campus ethernet to the Wideband
Network via a terrestrial T1 circuit terminating at the gateway and
at the SRI BSAT.
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A coast-to-coast meeting of the IAB was supported by the Wideband
Network and the multimedia conferencing facilities at BBN and ISI
on October 16.
BSAT Release 6.0 was distributed to the Wideband Network sites this
month. This new software incorporates both a user-code host
interface device reset function and a round-robin control slot
assignment scheme into the BSAT. These new features have been
described in previous Internet monthly reports. Additionally, the
new BSAT software has been adapted to run under the control of
Chrysalis Operating System Release 3.0.
SATNET
The SATNET has performed very well through the month of October.
We have had no SIMP outages and no major problems with the PSP
equipment. This is the second consecutive month showing an
availability of over 99% for the SIMPs from tests run by ISI. We
continue to see gateway resets at the SATNET sites and are waiting
for the next software release.
A bug has been found in the SIMP which may be limiting the
throughput of the SATNET when two channels are used. The software
patch is being tested. When the patch is deployed we will be
remeasuring the maximum throughput across the SATNET.
Work also continues on upgrading the lines among Goonhilly, RSRE
and UCL to 64 Kbps Kilostream service. The upgrade is expected to
take place in late November.
ARPANET USER DATABASE CUTOVER
The transition of the User Database Host from the TOPS-20 machine
at ISI (ISI-C) to a MicroVAX-II at BBN occurred on October 26. The
transition went smoothly with no problems reported.
INTERNET RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
The major events of the month was enabling EGP fragmentation in the
Butterfly and LSI-11 Gateways and updating the DDN Mailbridges to
support 400 networks. We now see about active 314 networks in the
Internet. The EGP fragmentation transition went well with only a
few gateways reporting problems with their reassembly.
There is currently serious congestion on the Arpanet to and from
the EGP server gateways (ISI, BBN2, and PURDUE). We think it is
caused in most part by the time it is taking these gateways (LSI-
11/23's) to generate and process EGP and GGP updates. The large
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processing time is due to the the growth in the number of networks
that make up the Internet. We are planning to replace the LSI-
11/23 processors with LSI 11/73 processors which are significantly
faster.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
ISI
---
Internet Concepts Project
Jon Postel attended the 10th Data Communication Symposium at
Napa, CA, 3-7 October 1987. Jon Postel attended the Unix
Workshop at Berkeley, CA, 19-20 October 1987.
Paul Mockapetris attended DSAB Task Force Naming meeting at
SRI, in San Jose, CA, 8 Oct 1987. The meeting concentrated on
a white/yellow pages service for the future, along with
general attempts to define a newer, better, and more
comprehensive name service than the domain system. The
general direction was toward a system which would combine
multiple naming systems, but this wasn't a universally
accepted view. Paul wrote an article, "Introducing Domains",
Connexions the Interoperability Report, Vol., 1., No.6,
October 1987.
Five RFCs were published this month by Jon Postel.
RFC 1021: Partridge, C., and G. Trewitt, "THE HIGH-LEVEL
ENTITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (HEMS)", October 1987.
RFC 1022: Partridge, C., and G. Trewitt, "THE HIGH-LEVEL
ENTITY MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL (HEMP)", October 1987.
RFC 1023: Partridge, C., and G. Trewitt, "HEMS MONITORING
AND CONTROL LANGUAGEL", October 1987.
RFC 1024: Partridge, C., and G. Trewitt, "HEMS VARIABLE
DEFINITIONS", October 1987.
RFC 1027: Carl-Mitchell, Smoot, and J. Quarterman, "USING
ARP TO IMPLEMENT TRANSPARENT SUBNET GATEWAYS",
October 1987.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
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Multimedia Conferencing Project
The fourth packet video/voice/MMCONF teleconference meeting of
the Internet Activities Board was held at ISI and BBN this
month. MMCONF/Diamond was used much more successfully in this
meeting, both for some prepared diagrams and for some slides
brought to the meeting on paper and scanned into Diamond
during the meeting (this was the first time this capability
has been exercised). The problem that had caused repeated
outages in the BBN gateway to the Wideband Net during a
previous tele-meeting has been resolved. That repair,
combined with the last-minute discovery of a long-standing
MMCONF bug, improved reliability substantially. Some new
features had also been added to MMCONF based on valuable
comments from previous teleconferences. Video resolution was
increased 25% in the horizontal dimension so the pixels now
have a 1:1 aspect ratio. The packet video data rate was also
increased, taking advantage of improved performance of the
Wideband Net. Several short demonstrations of the conference
system, including some for visiting attendees of EDUCOM '87 at
USC, were also held this month. Steve Casner attended the
User Interface Task Force meeting at BBN, 19-28 October 1987.
Steve Casner (Casner@ISI.EDU)
Brian is working on a document describing the current
implementation of a document scanner system on the IBM-PC AT.
Brian Hung (Hung@ISI.EDU)
NSFNET Project
Annette DeSchon continued working on the statistics collection
programs for the NSFNET. Bob Braden attended the End2End Task
Force Meeting at MIT, 21-23 October 1987.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Supercomputer and Workstation Communication Project
Alan Katz has been spending time writing some useful tools in
GNU Emacs lisp (which also runs well under X-windows). Alan
wrote another ISI-Phone server user interface, developed
further an EQN/Troff previewer which runs under Emacs, and
have completed a references and equations numbering program
which allows arbitrary naming of footnotes, references,
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equations, and figures and numbers them consectutively within
a GNU Emacs buffer. Alan tried to make the system general
enough so that it should work with Troff, Tex, Scribe, or any
other directives oriented text processing language.
Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU)
MIT-LCS
-------
The network simulator project we announced last June has been going
on for a few months. Up to now we have implemented the following:
- At the user interface, one can use the mouse to create an
arbitrary network topology, edit on it, and save it in a file
for later restoration.
During a simulation run, one can also use the mouse to pop up
windows to observe dynamic changes of various protocol
parameters in graphic display.
- Two kinds of communication channel models have been coded, one
emulates Ethernets, and the other, point-to-point links.
- The network switch is a model of IP gateway, which forwards
datagrams and sends ICMP Source Quench messages upon some
given conditions.
- Data sources are coded in two modules, host and transport
connections, so that one is able to observe the performance of
a number of transport connections that are multiplexed on the
same host.
At the transport level, a pseudo TCP model is being coded.
- The current code measures two performance parameters, the
queue length at any node (host or switch), and the transport
layer round trip delay. Both of which can be observed
graphically during a simulation run, and printed out on paper.
A third performance parameter, the effective throughput (of a
TCP connection), is being added.
When the TCP module is finished, we will be able to make some
interesting demonstrations. A long waiting list of simulation
tests has been created, which includes observing the
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oscillating behavior of network traffic under window flow
control, doing some quantitative study on the suggested TCP
slow-start mechanism, etc. More functional modules will also
soon be added to the simulator for further studies, such as
comparing window flow control with rate flow control.
Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
The objective of the MITRE Internet Engineering program is twofold:
1) to address internet level performance issues for the DoD
internet and 2) to address the interoperability between the DoD and
OSI protocol suites as support for a planned transition from DoD to
OSI protocols. During October, we continued work in the following
areas:
1. Documentation Availability
For those folks that asked for MITRE documentation, as soon as
MITRE and OSD public release are achieved, I will send the
documentation to you. Sorry, but the process could take a few
months. If anyone wants to set up conversations with the
respective authors, let me know and I will direct you to them.
2. VTP Implementation
We continued work on the Basic Class VT implementation. We have
upgraded the VT interface to ISODE Phase 3.0 and are in the process
of changing software to reflect the current state machine defined
in the second draft DIS. This year's work will also include
implementation of forms mode and synchronous mode capabilities. We
are providing a comparison of Honeywell VIP functions and VT forms
mode functions for the November ANSI X3T5.5 meeting.
3. Performance Analysis
We added spectral analysis techniques to data obtained via internet
performance measurements and congestion control simulation. The
first application is analyzing round trip times for periodicities
in their variation.
4. Landmark Routing
We installed a network simulation package, OPNET developed by MIL
3, INC., which is ported to an BSD 4.2 Apollo. We are using the
simulator to develop the state machine for the landmark routing
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protocol specification.
5. Congestion Control
We applied nonparametric statistical analysis to the set of
congestion control simulation results. We also used the boolean
minimization program "expressso" to categorize performance ranges
of simulation results obtained by varying the parameters to the
experiments. These results will be presented at the November IETF.
6. DoD/ISO Transition Plan
We continued redrafting the Plan to incorporate comments from the
initial government review. The Plan is scheduled for 60 day formal
DoD review at the end of November.
7. FTP/FTAM Bridge
We upgraded the implementation to use the new Phase 3.0 ISODE
release. Plans are to offer the bridge to the network community
for experimental use.
Ann Whitaker (Whitaker@Gateway.Mitre.Org)
NTA & NDRE
----------
1. The Nordic telecommunications administrations have decided to
turn the antenna dish at Tanum, in use for SATNET, from the
current position of 325 degrees to 342 degrees. The turn will
be performed in January/February. The decision was made
without any consultation or prior warning. The central
administration has admitted their mistake and try to come up
with a workable solution, which seems to be a 9.6 kb/s land
line from the Butterfly gateway at NTA-RE to the Goonhilly
SIMP (plugging into the second host port).
2. I have collected and sent over to Jon Reinhold of BBN
information on Norwegian-produced satellite groundstation
equipment which may be used in a possible upgraded version of
SATNET. We will work more on this matter, so that I can bring
a more definit plan to the January meeting in San Diego.
3. A Norwegian research network, covering all major research and
educational sites, is in its final planning stage. It will be
sponsored by Dept. of Education, Dept. of Industry and NTA.
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The network will initially support two sets of standards, X.25
and TCP/IP, but will gradually be converted to full ISO
standards as they are made available. It will utilize Local
Area Networks, private X.25 switches, leased lines and the
public X.25 network. The implementation will start in the
middle of next year.
4. SATNET and Butterfly seems to behave very well, but
connectivity into ARPA-land is not much to be proud of. But
the combination of the old PDP-11 gateway and the Butterfly,
supposed to establish connectivity between our Pronet Ring and
the rest of the world including Norway, is giving us much
grief. Most of the time the routing table in the PDP is empty,
thus no connectivity. We have many users and machines on the
Ring, including NDRE and NORSAR, thus connectivity is of great
importance. BBN has been examining the problem without finding
the source of the problem. But they have promised to give
priority to writing a Pronet driver for the Butterfly, so that
we can do away with the PDP-11.
Paal Spilling (Paal@TOR.NTA.NO)
SRI
---
Internet Research
In October, Jose Garcia presented four papers at MILCOM'87, Zaw-
Sing Su attended IETF Open Routing Working Group meeting at BBN and
contributed to the writing of a draft report, "Requirements for
Inter-Autonomous Systems Routing".
Zaw-Sing Su <zsu@tsca.istc.sri.com>
UCL
---
Research:
Work continues on ISO protocols using ISODE. A specification for
Layer Management of Transport, session and ACSE has been written,
and implementation has been started.
Work on a Diamond to pure ODA document conversion program
continues.
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A ROS/X.400 based pilot directory service including a picture
server has gone into trial.
Infrastructure:
UCL has recently been seeing very poor connectivity to remote
networks. We can see the US end of SATNET, but routes to networks
beyond that appear to fluctuate in and out of reachability very
rapidly. Relaying file transfers via hosts on the East Coast makes
access feasible. The question must be asked that if a human can
find a stable relay route (up for over 1 hour), why can the
gateways not find a stable IP route?
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. The massive disruption of the NSFNET community reported last
month has subsided somewhat, but continues at disturbing
levels. While traffic for various nets was redistributed over
the three gateways at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and U
Maryland, virtual-circuit thrashing is now seen at all three
gateways, resulting in occasional broken connections between
the gateways and other ARPANET hosts and gateways. The problem
has to do with a Unix driver for the ACC 5250 X.25 interface
and its managment of resources when the maximum number of
virtual circuits (64) is reached.
2. Investigation and experiment on Internet congestion control
continues. An analysis of the NSFNET Backbone logs showed the
new congestion-control (more properly congestion-avoidance)
mechanisms are working as expected. However, also as
expected, few hosts pay any attention to the ICMP Source
Quench messages generated, in some cases at levels of a few
percent of the aggregate traffic. Since these messages are
logged, it is in principle easy to identify persistant abusers
which ignore these things; however, this remains a task for
the Backbone managers to pursue.
3. Several new nets were added to the Backbone routing tables
during the month, bringing the total to about 95, which is
about one-third of the total nets known to the core system.
Due to causes yet to be found, some of these nets become quite
unstable, with the effect that delays frequently oscillate
wildly and loops occasionally form. Thorough review and
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testing revealed the spike-suppression and loop-avoidance
mechanisms of the routing algorithm could be improved in
several minor ways. The neccessary changes were implemented
and tested, then distributed to the Backbone and related
communities.
4. New features were added to the Backbone routing algorithm to
allow a "floating default" where traffic for ARPANET and nets
not reachable in the NSFNET community can flow out the nearest
gateway, rather than a static route via a gateway clear across
the country.
5. Development continues on the Dissimilar Gateway Protocol
(DGP). Most of the intricate design issues have been resolved.
Mike Little is working on a preliminary specification document
due in mid-November.
6. Mike Minnich attended the INENG meeting in Boulder. Dave
Mills attended the IAB meeting and also the Tenth DATACOM
meeting at Napa Valley, where he presented briefings on the
NSFNET Backbone, congestioncontrol mechanisms and routing
algorithms.
7. Planning continues for the INARC Workshop, which has by
popular demand (an understatement) been rescheduled for 17-18
December at BBN. One of the nice things is lively interest
beyond the usual Internet buzzards, in particular the UK and
US industrial research communities. See the INARC report
elsewhere for further information.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
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NSF NETWORKING
--------------
NSF NETWORKING
UCAR/BBN LABS NSF NETWORK SERVICE CENTER (NNSC)
The RFCs that define the High-Level Entity Management System (HEMS)
are now available from the Network Information Center in the <RFC>
directory at SRI-NIC.ARPA. The second issue of the NSF Network
News has been completed and will be distributed in mid-November.
Craig Partridge attended the End-to-End Task Force Meeting and
represented the NNSC with Karen Roubicek at the meeting of the
Internics Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force.
***PLEASE NOTE***The new NNSC hotline number has been changed to
(617) 873-3400.
By Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE SITES
CORNELL UNIVERSITY THEORY CENTER
New fuzzball software was installed which is expected to
dramatically improve NSFNet behavior (see Dave Mills's report).
Unfortunately there was no way this software could be tested in an
environment anywhere near as complex and stressful as the NSFNet
backbone, so we are still uncovering problems and improving it.
Also the new software does not yet work in perfect harmony with the
gatedaemons that form the protective wall around the backbone,
although we have made great steps in that direction (new fuzzball
and gatedaemon fixes are currently under test and about to be
deployed; even more fixes will follow). The result of all of this
is that there were some routing problems which reduced NSFNet
robustness (although not nearly as much as we had feared). In
addition our Arpanet connection needs grew far beyond the limit of
64 Virtual Circuits in our main DDN X.25 interface to Arpanet, so
that NSFNet network members would appear reachable to some Arpanet
sites but not others, at various times. We have redistributed
which NSFNet->ARPANet gateways announce which NSFNet component
networks with what EGP metrics, and that problem seems to be under
control for the moment. We have also decreased the virtual circuit
idle timeout on our busiest gateway from 10 minutes to 3 minutes on
an experimental basis.
The NSFNET community currently consists of approximately 120
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networks (the number varies with policy and operational changes).
Mark Fedor has gone to work exclusively on NYSERNET issues. NSFNET
Gatedaemon configurations will be handled by Cornell's Network
Information and Support Center (send questions to
oros@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu). Mark will take most of his
consulting with him. For gatedaemon development we have a good
person starting November 30th; until then we will be covering the
most important fixes as best we can.
Summary statistics from Doug Elias (more are available, of course):
NSFNET TRAFFIC REPORT Period: Sept., 1987
Total Traffic Figures
Between Sites Ethernet
Input 102868099 71756593
Output 102197912 70629065
In+Out 205066011 142385658
Grand 347451669
By Scott Brim (swb@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Midnet's networks have been announced to the fuzzball hence to the
Internet. Midnet's routing is still not up to snuff due to
inability of P4200 7.3 software to deal with multiple subnetted
networks. Version 7.4 should fix the problem and be available by
15 Nov.
Rerouting of the NCAR-UIUC link directly to Urbana (bypassing an
outrageously noisy T1-broadband cable hop from Chicago) was done.
We will be placing an order immediately, with delivery due in 45
working days, to reterminate the SDSC-UIUC link to SDSC-PSC. This
will cut the diameter of the NSFnet backbone to 2 from 3.
Our test window for ARPAnet has come and gone. DDN has promised to
have two lines to us by 5 Dec to correspond with the installation
of an additional PSN at Madison.
By Ed Krol (krol@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu)
JOHN VON NEUMANN NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
This report is a summary of the JVNCNET Monthly Report. A copy of
the full report can be obtained by sending a request to "JVNCNET-
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nic@jvnca.csc.org".
The purpose of the report is to inform the JVNC Consortium and the
JVNCNET network members as well as the Internet Community of the
monthly activities and status of the JVNCNET network.
The data used on this report is collected using a number of
techniques developed at JVNC, together with data from the JVNC
operations group. The NSFNET data is obtained from the NSFNET NOC
(Network Operations Center).
Network Statistics:
------------------
1.- links and gateways availability
better than 95.43 % (last month 90.46%)
2.- high speed lines status
all available 100%
3.- satellite links status
no significant events
4.- traffic
subnet 50 (better than):
145,685,725 packets in one direction
JVNC Supercomputer traffic/total JVNCNET =~ 46.26%
5.- Routing
maximum degree of unstability 600 kernel route
changes per 10 minutes in bursts. Almost all
routing changes coming from the NSFNET backbone.
Projects: --------
1.- Network Monitoring:
Status: On going
Working on providing backup monitoring capabilities to netsc so we
can keep the network monitored even when our primary monitoring
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server is down.
2.- Network Characterization:
Status: On going
The Network Characterization program is directed towards
determining the parameters that characterize the JVNCNET network's
diverse type of services. This effort will be utilized not only as
a research subject but to find/predict network bottlenecks and
problems before they are obvious to the end users. This task
started two weeks ago with the collection of data and the
automation of the collection, and will continue with the study of
the characteristics and patterns that distinguish each point to
point lines whether T1, 56kpbs or satellite. The results will be
available to the community.
3.- Traffic Analysis:
Status: On going
The traffic data is currently being collected from JVNCA, JVNCB,
and the fuzzball automatically. This will be extended to the other
VAXs on the same ethernet and the other routers on the network. At
the same time the data will be compiled per campus.
4.- Routing Analysis Package:
Status: On going
This package, now under development, will permit the operators keep
track of the routing stability of the network, as well as the
current status of the routing. Part of it is now providing the
network operations staff with routing stability indicators.
Comments: --------
The gateways were available more time than the previous month. The
amount of traffic passed through the major ethernet in one
direction was higher than last month (even though there are missing
observations of the data, thus representing a low bound). The
characteristics of the traffic for this month (not counting the
effect that not all the data was available) shows that the
"Supercomputer traffic" for the month was higher than the previous
month. The NSFNET backbone suffered from serious routing problems
making our internal routing as unstable as the one on the NSFNET
backbone (due to the fact that we all share the same routing flat
space). The routing behavior is being watched very closely to
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determine some known anomalies and some new ones, as well as the
interaction between the NSFNET backbone and the JVNCNET network.
The high speed lines have all behaved well this month. The
satellite system had no major problems except for a glitch with the
modulator at JVNC which was quickly detected (by JVNC staff) and
reset. PSN still not connected, BBN sent a technician a couple of
times, but he was unable to bring up the PSN for a number of
reasons.
Information: -----------
JVNCNET NOC: "net@jvnca.csc.org" (JVNCNET Network
Operations Center)
JVNCNET NIC: "JVNCNET-nic@jvnca.csc.org" (JVNCNET
information)
JVNCNET manager: "heker@jvnca.csc.org"
* CSC Consortium: Princeton University, MIT, Harvard, Brown,
University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, IAS, Columbia, University of
Rochester, NYU, Penn State, University of Arizona, University of
Colorado. ** NRAC (Newark Remote Access): New Jersey Institute of
Technology (NJIT), Stevens Institute of Technology, University of
Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).
By Sergio Heker (heker@jvnca.csc.org)
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH & UNIVERSITY SATELLITE
NETWORK PROJECT
The USAN connection to NRL (Naval Research Lab) in Washington has
been installed, finally, and is to undergo acceptance testing the
first half of November.
A network connection to the NASA Science Center at NASA Ames has
been put into place. The connection is via Proteon p4200 routers
and a 56Kbit land line. The Proteon router drops onto the USAN
(128.116) backbone at NCAR.
By Don Morris (morris@scdsw1.ucar.edu)
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PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
We have developed software that allows the encapsulation of IP
traffic within our consortium network, SDSCNET, which uses the
MFENET protocols. It relies on the remote VMS VAX running either
SRI or TWG for its local IP support. We hope to add support for
other packages in the future. Additional, we are using much the
same new software to move IP traffic over DECNET links, again
assuming that the VAX's are using SRI or TWG.
Our PSN's first trunk line (to USC/ISI) was installed on the 29th.
With luck, the line should be tested in another week. Perhaps we
will have the PSN moving packets by year end.
The Proteon with 7.3b continues to be reliable. We are looking
forward to 7.4 and another 512k for the box.
We have had no change in our line configuration this past month.
By Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
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29 Oct 1987
San Diego Supercomputer Center
Internet Connections
SDSC Ethernet ____________
|| | NSFnet |----to NCAR; 56kb
||--------| Fuzzball |----to NASA/AMES; 56kb (coming '88)
S || |__________|----to UIUC; 56kb
E || ____________
V || | Bridge |----to Industrial Participant; 56kb
E ||--------| GS/3 |
R || |__________|----to UC Irvine; 56kb (coming ~1 Feb)
A || ____________
L-------|| | ACC 5250 |
: ||--------|in micrVAX|---->to ARPANET PSN #26
S : || |__________| at SDSC
D : || (coming 1 Jan)
S : ||
C : ||
: ||
H-------|| ____________
O || | Proteon |----to UC Santa Barbara; 56kb
S ||--------| p4200 |----to UC Berkeley; 56kb
T || |__________|----to Industrial Part.; 56kb
S || | | (coming ~1988)
|| | |------to Salk Inst; T1**
|| | **DECNET also carried
& || |----||
|| ____________ || ____________
|| | DEC LAN | || | Unix Sys | to MILNET
9 ||---| Bridge100|---|| ______________ ||---| SDCSVAX |-->PSN @ NOSC
5-------|| |__________| || | UB Buffered| || |__________| at 56kb
: || (filters local ||---| Reperater |---|| ____________
M : || traffic plus all|| |____________| || | Unix Sys | to UCDLA
A : || broadcast pkts) || ||---| SDCC18 |-->PSN (Net
C-------|| || UCSD |__________| # 31)
S || (DELNI) Ethernet
|| (UB broadband)
|| ____________
|| | Apollo |
||--------| 580 |--->SDSC Apollo "ring" of Apollo 3000's, etc
|| |__________|
||
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Internet Network Numbers
School/Institution Network Number Domain
San Diego Supercomputer 192.12.207 sdsc.edu
SDSC Apollo Ring 192.31.21 sdsc.edu
UC Santa Barbara 128.111 ucsb.edu
UC San Diego 128.54 ucsd.edu
UC Irvine* (temp. path) 128.200 uci.edu
UC Riverside* (pending) 192.031.146 ucr.edu
Salk Institute 192.031.153 sdsc.edu
Ind. Part # 1 (GS/3) not registered
Ind. Part # 2 (p4200) 192.031.248 .arpa
* Over DECNET Bridge
NSFNET REGIONAL AFFILIATED & CONSORTIUM NETWORKS
BARRNET (No report received)
JVNCNET (Refer to JVNNSC backbone report)
MERIT
At the Merit Network central site in Ann Arbor, recent TCP/IP
development work has focused on the Telnet-to-Hermes gateway
function, with work continuing on congestion control in Merit's own
nodes. University of Michigan staff in Ann Arbor have completed
installing UDP into MTS, a major Merit host system; have the
implementation well under way for the HIM (Host Interface Module)
that will pass TCP/IP into MTS -- protocols supported initially
will include FTP and Telnet; and have been working on porting BIND
into the MTS environment. On the U-M campus, Merit's Ethernet IP
support is now in production use for bridging Appletalk networks
using the Kinetics FastPath hardware.
Merit member Michigan State University is near completion of the
installation of their own direct land line to the ARPA IMP at
Purdue. They are also ready to test switching their direct
Fuzzball link into Merit/Ann Arbor over to the use of Merit's
encapsulated IP over the normal Merit links. In Kalamazoo, Merit
member Western Michigan University has placed an order for a
MicroVax/Ultrix system to use as a DECNET to Internet gateway; in
addition, WMU is beginning to use the Merit Ethernet support for IP
on its campus.
By Christine Wendt (christine_wendt@um.cc.umich.edu)
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
MIDNET
In the last week MIDNet has become completely operational. All of
the member sites are speaking to one another and speaking to the
ethernet at Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. We have not yet been
announced to the Internet at large but we expect this to happen
fairly soon.
There are already researchers at several campuses starting to do
work at NCSA and others waiting to get to other sites where they
have time. We at UNL are planning to take an informational road
show out to the members of MIDNet starting in November. We plan to
put on meetings at each of the member campuses where we will
discuss with local users what they can use MIDNet for and how they
can use it. We hope these meetings will prove helpful to everyone.
By Dale Finkelson (dmf@relay.cs.net)
NORTHWESTNET
1. A copy of the network topology is shown below. The first links
should be operational in November; we hope that the whole network
will be running early next year. We are using Proteon routers at
all the nodes.
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Fairbanks
(Alaska
State Sys.)
|
| 56 (satellite)
|
|
Seattle 56 Bellevue 56 Pullman 56 Moscow
(Univ. of -------- (Boeing ---- ----- (Washington ------ (Univ. of
Washington) Comp. Serv.) State U.) Idaho)
| |
| 56 19.2 |
| |
| |
Portland Bozeman
(Oregon Grad. (Montana
Center) State U.)
| |
| 56 19.2 |
| |
| |
Corvallis Fargo
(Oregon ................... (N. Dakota
State U.) : State Sys)
| : |
| 56 : |
| : |
| : |
Eugene : 19.2 |
(Univ. of -----------------------------------------------------+
Oregon) :
: existing experimental
: 56/224 satellite link
:
:
San Diego :......... Boulder
(SDSC/ (NCAR/
NSFNET) NSFNET)
All speeds, e.g. 56, are in kbits/sec.
The existing MFE satellite link between Seattle and San Diego is not
shown.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
2. The link between Northwestnet and NSFNET has not yet been
determined. We have requested NSF to provide funding for a
terrestial 56 kb/s link between Seattle (University of Washington)
and San Diego (SDSC). This link would also replace the existing
SDSC satellite link between Seattle and San Diego, which uses the
MFE protocols. We also recommended to retain the experimental
VITAlink connection between Corvallis and Boulder.
3. By the time you read this, the Management and Technical Committees
of Northwestnet will have held a two-day conference at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center, October 26 and 27. The first day is
devoted to an overview of supercomputing and networking issues for
faculty and administrators from the participating institutions.
4. We have started preliminary discussion with institutions of higher
education in South Dakota regarding the possibility for them to
join Northwestnet.
By Hellmut Golde (GOLDE@CS.WASHINGTON.EDU or GOLDE@UWACDC.BITNET)
NYSERNET
As of 1 November 1987, NYSERNet had the following topology:
Clarkson
Syracuse--+ |
| |
Rochester--------Cornell---------RPI---Albany
| | |
Buffalo...Fredonia | |
| ....Oswego | |
| | |
Binghamton | +-------- | ------StonyBrook
| | | |
| | | |
CUNY--NYTEL/NSMAC--Columbia======NYU-+
| |\ | | | / | |
| | \ NYTEL/GC | NYNEX/S&T / | |
| | \ BNL / | |
| | \ / | |
| | +-------------Rockefeller | |
| | | |
| +------------------------------+ |
| |
+-------------POLY-------------------+
==== T1
\ | / 56kbits
.... 9.6kbits
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
A new site, SUNY Oswego, was connected to NYSERNet at 9.6kbits this
month.
The NYSERNet Network Information and Support Center opened outside of
Albany, NY combining RPI/NIC and Cornell/NOC services with permanent
full-time staff
By Marty Schoffstall (schoff@nisc.nyser.net)
SDSCNET (Refer to SDSC backbone report)
SESQUINET
The complete initially proposed SesquiNet configuration has been
operational now for three months. The following campus networks are
being served, and are advertised via EGP to the core:
Baylor College of Medicine 128.249
Houston Area Research Center 192.31.87
Rice University 128.42
Texas A&M University 128.194
Texas Southern University 192.31.101
and the University of Houston 129.7
Although the network is not very heavily loaded, we have still
experienced no gateway failures.
We have now done some analysis of the reliability of the network, based
on logs written by our monitoring program. For each of the sites listed
below, we note the number of (unscheduled) failures and the percent of
availability (percentage of time the site was up, deducting scheduled
down time).
--------------------------------
Site Failures Available
--------------------------------
BCM 0 100.0 %
HARC 5 93.7 %
RU 0 100.0 %
TAMU 2 99.2 %
TSU 2 98.9 %
UH 2 98.9 %
--------------------------------
While some of the problems were due to leased lines, most of the
unscheduled downtime was due to machine room power problems.
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
We continue to await the completion of the connection from NSFNET/NCAR
to SesquiNet/Rice via fuzzballs at the two sites.
By Guy Almes (almes@rice.edu)
SURANET
The number of nodes in SURANET continues to increase. The following
nodes are presently connected and functioning:
1)University of Maryland
2)George Washington University
3)Virginia Tech
4)TUCC (NC State, UNC, Duke)
5)Clemson University
6)Georgia Tech
7)U of Alabama (Birmingham)
8)University of Tennessee
9)University of Kentucky
10)University of Delaware
11)National Science Foundation
12)Florida State University
13)George Mason University
14)Gallaudet University
15)Catholic University of America
16)University of Virginia
17)CEBAF (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator)
18)Johns Hopkins University
19)NASA/Goddard
20)Vanderbilt University
21)Naval Research Laboratory
21)Louisiana State University
22)University of Florida
All of the above lines are 56kbs. The line to NASA/Goddard will be
upgraded to T-1 within a few days. A T-1 line from the National Bureau
of Standards will be installed very shortly connecting the Bureau to
SURANET via the University of Maryland.
In addition the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory will shortly connect
to SURANET via an ethernet connection to the University of Virginia and
the College of William and Mary will connect to SURANET via a 56kbs line
to CEBAF.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
Videotapes of the two SURANET meetings are still available. The 6 two
hour tapes of the Feb meeting are available for $91 and the 7 two hour
tapes of the July meeting are available for $105. If you would like to
purchase copies of one, or both, contact HAHN@UMDC.UMD.EDU.
By Jack Hahn (HAHN%UMDC.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu)
WESTNET
1. Equipment, including CSU/DSU's and IP Gateways, has been
ordered for the implementation of Phase II of Westnet. A total
of five IP Gateways will be installed midway through November
at the locations of: New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology, New Mexico State University, New Mexico Technet,
University of New Mexico, and the University of Wyoming.
2. A 9.6 kbps circuit has been ordered to connect the University
of Wyoming to Colorado State University, and will be installed
Dec. 1. The circuit will be upgraded to 56 kbps as soon as
this service becomes available into Laramie. New Mexico
Technet has applied to the AT&T Foundation for cost sharing of
a circuit between Albuquerque and NCAR, until the FY'88 money
becomes available. Until then, New Mexico Technet is providing
56 kbps circuits within the state of New Mexico as cost
sharing.
3. A workshop for Westnet Technical Personnel is being organized
to be presented from Nov. 9 to 11 at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. Personnel from 16 Westnet sites will be
in attendance. The first two days of the workshop will consist
of lectures, and describe the features of TCP/IP and the
Internet. The final half day will consist of a handson
session with the cisco IP Gateways. At that time, the Gateways
will be configured for the specific campuses which will
receive the devices.
4. Brigham Young University and the University of Utah have
requested to connect to NSFNET via Westnet. We are currently
exploring the costs and administrative structure of this
arrangement.
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
5. Joe Choy has granted permission for Westnet to plug circuits
from Salt Lake City and Albuquerque into the NCAR cisco
Gateway. Westnet will provide a 56 kbps board (2 ports)to
effect these connections, and an upgrade from the 68000 CPU
board to the 68020 CPU board to enhance the performance of
these connections.
By Pat Burns (pburns%csugreen.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU)
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
The task force held its second meeting October 20-21 at BBN
Labs. The first topic of discussion were some minor revisions
to our charter. First, we anticipate making contributions at
three different levels: 1) reference models, 2) architectures,
and 3) implementations. (For comparison, consider the OSI
Reference Model, the various network architectures that
conform to that model, and the various implementations of each
such architecture.) Second, our "current focus" has been
broadened somewhat to be "multimedia communications (including
real-time, computer-supported teleconferencing) and user
interface architecture".
In the spirit of multimedia communications, much of the
meeting was spent discussing the strawman voice server, as put
forth by Chris Schmandt. There being general agreement on the
overall architecture and level of functionality currently
offered, several members committed to acquiring the requisite
hardware and software and begin experimenting--with
alternative architectures for voice storage (e.g. voice
server-based disk vs. workstation disk vs. network-based file
server) and alternative phone interfaces (e.g. analog vs.
commercial PBXs vs. ISDN), in particular. While we hope to
produce a set of RFCs shortly, interested parties should tune
in (or stay tuned) to the UI-INTEREST distribution list.
Other items of discussion included an update on the video
component of the Wideband-based teleconferencing system,
mechanisms for conversation control and voice-editing in the
Etherphone project, and the human factors of voice
communication. More details will appear in the minutes of the
meeting, to be posted to UI-INTEREST.
The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for February 9-10 at
ISI. User interface architecture will be a major topic of
discussion.
Keith Lantz (Lantz@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU)
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
Nothing to report this month.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
This report is largely a repeat of last month's report and is
included primarily because of a change from the original 17-18
November meeting dates to 17-18 December. The meeting place is
unchanged. Please note the revised and clarified wording in
the announcement itself.
The Internet Architecture Task Force (INARC) studies technical
issues in the evolution of the Internet from its present
architectural model to new models appropriate for very large,
very fast internets of the future. It is organized as a
recurring workshop where researchers, designers and
implementors can discuss novel ideas and experiences without
limitation to the architecture and engineering of the present
Internet. The output of this effort represents advance
planning for a next-generation internet, as well as fresh
insights into the problems of the current one.
The INARC is planning a two-day retreat/workshop for 17-18
December at BBN to discuss a fresh start on advanced internet
concepts and issues. The agenda for this meeting will be to
explore architecture and engineering issues in the design of a
next-generation internet system. The format will consist of
invited presentations on selected topics followed by a general
discussion on related issues. Written contributions of
suitable format and content will be submitted for publication
in the ACM Computer Communication Review.
In order to have the most stimulating discussion possible, the
INARC is expanding the list of invitees to include any
researchers with agenda to plow, axe to grind, sword to wield
or any other useful instrument for that matter. While not a
precondition for admission, participants are encouraged to
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
contribute concise presentations, either written or oral
(fifteen to thirty minutes), in electronic form to
mills@udel.edu or in hardcopy form to
Dr. David L. Mills Electrical Engineering Department
University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 (302) 451-6534 or
737-9211
Speakers will be selected on the basis of quality, relevance
and interest. Every effort will be made to accomodate all
participants that wish to attend; however, participants are
asked to contact the chairman by electronic mail or telephone
at least a week in advance to confirm their intention to
attend.
Following is a list of possible areas and issues of interest
to the community. Readers are invited to submit additions,
deletions and amendments.
1. How should the next-generation internet be structured, as
a network of internets, an internet of internets or both
or neither? Do we need a hierarchy of internets? Can/must
the present Internet become a component of this
hierarchy?
2. What routing paradigms will be appropriate for the new
internet? Will the use of thinly populated routing agents
be preferred over pervasive routing data distribution?
Can innovative object-oriented source routing mechanisms
help in reducing the impact of huge, rapidly changing
data bases?
3. Can we get a handle on the issues involved in policy-
based routing? Can a set of standard route restrictions
(socioecononic, technopolitic or bogonmetric) be
developed at reasonable cost that fit an acceptable
administrational framework (with help from the Autonomous
Networks Task Force)? How can we rationalize these issues
with network control and access-control issues?
4. How do we handle the expected profusion of routing data?
Should it be hierarchical or flat? Should it be
partitioned on the basis of use, service or
administrative organization? Can it be made very dynamic,
at least for some fraction of clients, to support mobile
hosts? Can it be made very robust in the face of hackers,
earthquakes and martians?
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
5. Should we make a new effort to erase intrinsic route-
binding in the existing addressing mechanism of the
Internet IP address and ISO NSAP address? Can we evolve
extrinsic binding mechanisms that are fast enough, cheap
enough and large enough to be useful on an internet
basis?
6. Must constraints on the size and speed of the next-
generation internet be imposed? What assumptions scale on
the delay, bandwidth and cost of the network components
(networks and gateways) and what assumptions do not?
7. What kind of techniques will be necessary to accellerate
reliable transport service from present speeds in the low
megabit range to speeds in the FDDI range (low hundreds
of megabits)? Can present checksum, window and backward-
correction (ARQ) schemes be evolved for this service, or
should we shift emphasis to forward-correction (FEC) and
streaming schemes.
8. What will the internet switch architecture be like? Where
will the performance bottlenecks likely be? What
constraints on physical, link and network-layer protocols
will be advisable in order to support the fastest speeds?
Is it possible to build a range of switches running from
low-cost, low-performance to high-cost, high-performance?
9. What form should a comprehensive congestion-control
mechanism take? Should it be based on explicit or
implicit resource binding? Should it be global in scope?
Should it operate on flows, volumes or some other traffic
characteristic?
10. Do we understand the technical issues involved with
service-oriented routing, such as schedule-to-deadline,
multiple access/multiple destination, delay/throughput
reservation and resource binding? How can these issues be
coupled with effective congestion-control mechanisms?
11. What will be the relative importance of delay-based
versus flow-based service specifications to the client
population? How will this affect the architecture and
design? Can the design be made flexible enough to provide
a range of services at acceptable cost? If so, can the
internet operation setpoint be varied, automatically or
manually, to adapt to different regimes quickly and with
acceptable thrashing?
Westine [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
12. What should the next-generation internet header look
like? Should it have a variable-length format or fixed-
length format? How should options, fragmentation and
lifetime be structured? Should source routing or
encapsulation be an intrinsic or derived feature of the
architecture?
13. What advice can we give to other task forces on the
impact of the next-generation internet in their areas of
study? What research agenda, if any, should we propose to
the various NSF, DARPA and other agencies? What advice
can we give these agencies on the importance, level of
effort and probablity of success of the agenda to their
current missions?
Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING
1) Several new working groups have been organized or
formalized since the July meeting at MITRE. They are:
- Open Systems Routing (Hinden, BBN)
- Open Systems Internet Operations Center (Case, UTK)
- Performance and Congestion Control (Stine, Mitre)
- Open IGP (Petry, UMD)
- InterNICs (Feinler, SRI-NIC)
- Internet Host Requirements (Gross, Mitre)
- Internet Authentication Protocol (Schoffstall, RPI)
2) The most recent IETF meeting was (Mon-Weds, Nov 2-4) at
NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. The meeting was hosted by Don
Morris. He did an excellent job of handling all local
arrangements. He arranged for local Internet connectivity for
reading mail and doing local document editing.
3) The agenda for the 3 day (Nov 2-4) IETF meeting is below.
The basic format is:
1) Working Group meetings for the first 1.5 days,
2) Presentations and network reports on Tuesday
afternoon and
3) Presentations, Working Group reports and
discussion on Wednesday.
The several new working groups that will be introduced and
discussed during the opening plenary on Monday. All groups
Westine [Page 30]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
will be open. If the chair feels that more detailed
discussion is required to achieve results, she/he has the
option of calling meetings between regular IETF meetings.
Agenda for the November 2-4 IETF meeting at NCAR
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2
- Opening Plenary (local arrangements, Discussion of IETF
format, overview of new working groups)
- Working Group meetings convene
- Open Systems Routing (Hinden, BBN)
- Short Term Routing, Old Business (Hedrick, Rutgers)
- Open Systems Internet Operations Center (Case, UTK)
- Performance and Congestion Control (Stine, Mitre)
- Open IGP (Petry, UMD)
- Domain Issues (Lottor/Stahl, SRI-NIC)
(Lunch and Breaks scheduled by Chairs)
- Recess at 5:00pm
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Morning
- Opening Plenary
- Working Group meetings convene
- Internet Host Requirements (Gross, Mitre)
- EGP3 (Gardner, BBN)
- Internet Authentication Protocol (Schoffstall, RPI)
- InterNICs (Feinler, SRI-NIC)
- Short-Term Routing, New Business (Hedrick, Rutgers)
Afternoon
- Management/Monitoring Working Group Report (Partridge, BBN)
- SGMP Status and Demonstration (Case, UTK)
- NSFNET Report (Wolff, NSF)
- BBN Report (Hinden/Gardner, BBN)
- Recess at 5:00pm
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Morning
- Opening Plenary
Westine [Page 31]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
- IP over 802.X (Perkins, CMU)
- Congestion Control Simulation Results (Stine, Mitre)
- Recent Congestion Control Efforts for 4.2/4.3BSD
(Van Jacobson, LBL)
Afternoon
- Working Group Reports and Discussion
- Open Systems Routing (Hinden, BBN)
- Short Term Routing (Hedrick, Rutgers)
- InterNICs (Feinler, SRI-NIC)
- Open Systems Internet Operations Center (Case, UTK)
- Performance and Congestion Control (Stine, Mitre)
- Open IGP (Petry, UMD)
- Internet Host Requirements (Gross, Mitre)
- Domains (Lottor/Stahl, SRI-NIC)
- EGP3 (Gardner, BBN)
- Internet Authentication Protocol (Schoffstall, RPI)
- Concluding Discussion, announce next meeting.
- Adjourn
4) Proceedings for the July IETF meeting are available and a
limited number of copies will be distributed at the November
meeting. Allison Mankin (Mitre) worte the meeting notes and
did the bulk of the work in compiling the Proceedings. She
did an excellent job on a sizable document (the July
Proceedings are approximately 280 pages!). She had assistance
from several folks (notably Coleman Blake, Mitre) who
contributed writeups of various presentations. The
Proceedings include the reports from the working group meeting
in July.
Due to the size of the Proceedings, only a limited number of
copies will be carried to the November meeting for
distribution. An arrangement is being worked out in which
paper copies can be obtained by U.S. mail.
5) A number of the working groups have produced documents.
Some of these documents are planned to be submitted as propsed
RFCs after careful review. As a bookkeeping measure, we have
established an IETF document numbering series and online
copies of the documents will be kept in the IETF directory at
the NIC. An announcement will be made when this has been
completed.
6) Anyone wishing to receive more information about IETF, such
as obtaining copies of the Proceedings or the announcement
about IETF documents (and intermittent announcements when new
Westine [Page 32]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
documents are added to the <ietf> directory) should send a
note to Phill Gross (gross@gateway.mitre.org).
Phill Gross (gross@gateway.mire.org)
INTERNET MANAGEMENT
Nothing to report this month.
Vint Cerf (Cerf@A.ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY
Revisions were made to some areas of RFC989 (Privacy
Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I: Message
Encipherment and Authentication Procedures), based on
discussions and comments since the RFC was released. It is
anticipated that an updated version of RFC989 will be produced
following discussion at the Privacy Task Force meeting to be
held on 4-5 November.
John Linn (Linn@CCY.BBN.COM)
ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY
No report received.
SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
No report received.
SECURITY
No report received.
Westine [Page 33]
Internet Monthly Report OCTOBER 1987
TACTICAL INTERNET
No report received.
TESTING AND EVALUATION
No report received.
Westine [Page 34]