<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR88-02.TXT
FEBRUARY 1988
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@NNSC.NSF.NET).
BBN LABORATORIES AND BBN COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION
---------------------------------------------------
WIDEBAND NETWORK
A new BSAT release has been distributed to the Wideband Network
sites which corrects a number of bugs that have been identified in
the BSAT's processor node and satellite channel I/O device
software. The occurrence of sporadic BSAT system-level restarts
and glitches in channel connectivity has been dramatically reduced
since the distribution of this release.
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
The SATNET and the Wideband Network were directly connected for the
first time this month via a single Butterfly Internet Gateway
located at DCEC in Reston, VA. With the addition of the Wideband
Network interface, the DCEC gateway now has four network legs: the
ARPANET and EDN net, as well as the SATNET and the Wideband
Network. Direct SATNET-Wideband connectivity has so far been
sporadic; the source of this problem is being investigated. The
provision of a stable SATNET-Wideband connection may result in
improved access to certain West coast hosts for European Internet
users.
The Wideband Network provided the wide-area connectivity for a
successful three-site demonstration of the Cronus Distributed
Operating System on February 17. The demonstration was given as
part of USAF/ESD's Technology Validation Experiment (TVE). It
incorporated participating Cronus "clusters" located at RADC,
ESD/Mitre, and BBN.
SATNET
February has been a busy month for the SATNET. A new modem was
shipped to Tanum early in the month to replace the channel 1 modem
that had gone bad. Tanum was then back in operation on both
channels. At about that time, a higher than expected error rate
was observed on both channels. Coordinating with the four earth
stations, the power levels were adjusted and the error rate
returned to normal.
We have distributed a new software patch to the SIMPs that
increases the throughput of the SATNET when two channels are in
operation. The Measurement Task Force is continuing work to
characterize the IP and TCP behavior of the SATNET.
Late in the month, we experienced an outage on the CSS to Roaring
Creek phone line. The DCEC to Roaring Creek phone line was also
down at the time isolating the SATNET from the ARPAnet. When the
CSS line was repaired, the Roaring Creek PSP terminal and the
channel 0 uplink at Tanum were found to be experiencing problems.
The problem at Roaring Creek has been fixed but we are still
working on the problems at Tanum. The DCEC to Roaring Creek phone
line was repaired on Tuesday, March 1.
INTERNET R&D
A new Butterfly Gateway was installed in Ottawa, Canada. This
gateway replaces the LSI-11 gateway there and is the first
Butterfly Gateway on the Arpanet with X.25. The installation went
well and the gateway has been stable since.
A new interface was added to the DCEC gateway, which provides a
direct connection between the Satnet and the Wideband network.
Westine [Page 2]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
This will have the affect that traffic to/from Satnet which goes to
destinations directly connected to the Wideband network, will not
go over the Arpanet.
We submitted several documents for the Internet Engineering Task
Force IDEA series. They are:
o IDEA002.TXT - A Comparison of "Link State" and "Distance
Vector" Routing Algorithms, Ross Callon (BBN)
o IDEA003.TXT - Guidelines for the use of Internet-IP
addresses in the ISO Connectionless-Mode
Network Protocol, Ross Callon (BBN) and
Hans-Werner Braun (U Mich)
o IDEA007.TXT - Requirements for Inter-Autonomous Systems
Routing, edited by Ross Callon (BBN) for the
Open Routing Working Group
o IDEA009.TXT - Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP), Version 3,
Marianne Gardner (BBN) and Mike Karels (UCBerkeley)
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
ISI
---
Internet Concepts Project
Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris visited Hanan Potash at the
Scientific Computing Center in San Diego, Feb 17. Jon Postel,
Danny Cohen, and Walter Prue hosted the Los Nettos meeting at ISI,
Feb 1. Steve Casner hosted the UITF meeting at ISI, Feb 10-11.
Eight RFC's were published this month.
RFC 1041: Rekhter, J., "Telnet 3270 Regime Option",
T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM, January, 1988.
RFC 1042: Postel, J., and J.K. Reynolds, "A Standard for
the Transmission of IP Datagrams over IEEE 802
Networks", USC/ISI, February, 1988.
RFC 1043: Yasuda, A., and T. Thompson, "TELNET Data Entry
Terminal Option DODIIS Implementation", Defense
Intelligence Agency, February, 1988.
RFC 1044: Hardwick, K., and K. Hardwick, "Internet Protocol
on Network Systems HYPERchannel Protocol
Specification", NSC, and NASA-Ames GE,
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
February, 1988.
RFC 1045: Cheriton, D., "VMTP: Versatile Message
Transaction Protocol, Protocol Specification",
Stanford University, February, 1988.
RFC 1046: Prue, W., and J. Postel, "A Queuing Algorithm
to Provide Type-of-Service for IP Links",
USC/ISI, February, 1988.
RFC 1047: Partridge, C., "Duplicate Messages and SMTP",
CIC at BBN Labs, February, 1988.
RFC 1048: Prindeville, P., "BOOTP Vendor Information
Extensions", McGill University, February, 1988.
Multimedia Conferencing Project
We finally received the Image 30 video codec boards from
Concept Communications this month. The boards have been
checked out in a self-loop mode, and we have begun
modifications to the on-board firmware to implement HDLC
serial line protocol required to interface to the Butterfly.
Coding of changes to accommodate the new codec have been
completed for the packet video program (PVP) that runs in the
Butterfly. The major difference between processing for the
Image 30 and the old ISI codec is that the frame rate is
constant for the Image 30 and that the segments of each video
frame must be delivered in order and uninterrupted. (Damaged
frames may be discarded without loss of synchronization.)
Check-out of this code awaits completion of the codec firmware
mods.
The Image 30 codec has low delay and a fast frame rate
(30/sec) compared to other codecs, but its resolution is lower
and there are some unusual motion effects. In the future we
plan to explore variable frame rate and/or data rate to try to
minimize the motion effects. We may also be able to improve
resolution by trading off some of the frame rate. The coding
in PVP was done with this evolution in mind.
Dave Walden and Steve Casner (DJWalden@ISI.EDU,
Casner@ISI.EDU)
Brian continues working on the simulation of the Echo
Canceller Algorithm. Brian decided that this would be
worthwhile because no information was available which
indicates how the system was going to behave for different
values of Loop Gain, i.e., for what the value of K will the
system become stable. Brian was also interested in how the
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
system would behave for different kinds of inputs and
attenuation through the Hybrid and the value of the 64 tap
weights.
The simulations were done with different inputs,
amplitudes, loop gain, and attenuation. The results were very
useful in pointing out the value of loop gain necessary for a
stable system and also for a particular convergence rate.
Brian Hung (Hung@ISI.EDU)
NSFNET Project
Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon completed a major revision to
the NNStat statistics package, Release 2.0. This release
fixed a number of bugs that created reliability problems in
earlier versions. It also included significant extensions in
functionality. The remote command interface to statspy was
entirely rewritten, and remote attach commands were
implemented. Complete remote control of statspy is now
possible using the rspy program. A new data reduction program
in R2.0 will look up all IP addresses in recorded data files
and add host/network names. We plan to release NNStat source
very shortly. Bob has begun a paper describing the internal
organization and algorithms used by statspy.
Bob Braden attended a meeting of the Federation at Ann Arbor,
which was largely concerned with the new NSFnet backbone. He
also participated, as an IAB member, in a one-day review of
the competing network management protocols.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Supercomputer and Workstation Communication Project
Alan wrote a graphics display program which runs under X-
Windows and a front end to it which runs in GNU Emacs Lisp.
This allows Alan to do graphics programming in the Emacs Lisp
environment. Alan has also been experimenting with some
Mandlebrot set graphics using this program.
Alan continues work on a split editor for GNU Emacs, and has
written more utilities that run under X-Windows including a
screen snapshot program.
Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU)
Westine [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
MIT-LCS
-------
The network simulator we are building has reached another stage in
maturity. Based on an IP network substrate, it can now emulate 3
versions of pseudo Berkeley UNIX TCP implementations: 4.2 (which
retransmits all after a timeout), 4.3 (which retransmits only one
segment after a timeout), and slow-start algorithms as proposed by
Van Jacobson.
New graphic tools are also available. In addition to graphic
displays of the dynamic load at each point in the network (such as
channel busy status, packet queue length at gateways), the
simulator now can produce graphic prints of simulation results,
such as the curve of TCP transmission sequence number versus time.
To experiment with rate-based flow control mechanism, a pseudo
version of NETBLT protocol has been installed into the simulator.
Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
NTA & NDRE
----------
No report received.
SRI
---
No internet-related progress to report.
Zaw-Sing Su (ZSu@SRI.COM)
UCL
---
No internet-related progress to report.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
Westine [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Traffic on the NSFNET Backbone continued to escalate
throughout the month, with over 120 nets now on the backbone
and approaching 400 nets on the core system. Some sites are
reporting increasing incidence of temporary lockup conditions
with the DEQNA Ethernet interface and/or driver, which is
believed due to escalating traffic. Minor changes to the
preemption strategy were made in order to help relieve the
pressure and to resist route-flaps due gratuitous redirects.
2. Work continued on robust clock-synchronization algorithms to
improve accuracy, decrease vulnerability, reduce network
overheads and support vast hordes of chimers. The fuzzball NTP
implementation was again modified to support a variable-rate
polling feature in which the polling interval is dynamically
adjusted to varying conditions of network delay dispersion and
loss rate. On most paths this allows the polling interval to
be increased to as much as 1024 seconds (17 minutes) once
initial synchronization has been achieved, but without
significant loss in accuracy or robustness.
3. New software versions including the latest NTP support were
distributed to all fuzzballs in the US and Europe. A
configuration for a primary service network including five
multiply-redundant time servers at ISI, NCAR, U Maryland, U
Delaware and Ford Research was designed, implemented and is
now in operation. It appears that DECWRL, MIT and NASA/AMES
may join this network, which is designed to tick wholesale
time to secondary time servers at local-net confluences, which
then tock to the retail customers, perhaps using other time
protocols such as Unix 4.3bsd timed.
4. A document "Network Time Protocol (Version 1): Specification
and Implementation" is now in final draft and ready for RFC
submission. Mike Petry reports a companion NTP daemon for Unix
4.3bsd is nearing test status.
5. Mike Minnich is now wickedly abusing a pair of Proteon
gateways in order to assess their overload and fairness
behavior. A raft of GFE stuff, including a Sun workstation,
WWVB clock and other trappings was finally prized loose from
another place and installed in my lab, which now boasts three
Suns, two PCs, four fuzzballs, and rich connectivity to campus
nets, NSFNET and ARPANET.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
Westine [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
NSF NETWORKING
--------------
UCAR/BBN LABS NNSC
The NNSC published and distributed the second NNSC bulletin, and
the third issue of the NSF Network News was completed for
distribution in March. Please send requests for these publications
to <nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net>.
Karen Roubicek attended the meetings of the Federation of American
Research Networks hosted by MERIT in Ann Arbor, and Craig Partridge
participated in the Network Management Review Meeting held in San
Diego as well as the USENIX meeting in Dallas.
By Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NEW NSFNET BACKBONE
At the recent Federation Meeting held in Ann Arbor on the 8th and
9th February, we briefed the Federation of American Research
Networks about the new NSFNET backbone. During the informational
sessions, various related technical issues were presented and
discussed. This was the very first direct communication between
Merit/IBM/MCI and the sites for the new NSFNET backbone.
After the Federation meeting Hans-Werner Braun, Scott Brim, Ed
Krol, Jim Ellis, Gene Hastings, and Karen Roubicek met informally
to discuss some of the issues with the transition from the current
NSFNET backbone to the new one. They have outlined some scenarios
and will have followup discussions to make the transition smoothly
and as transparent to users as possible.
The communication links for the four node test network located in
Ann Arbor MI, Reston VA, Milford CT and Yorktown NY are installed
and connected to the IDNX equipment. Work is underway to make this
network operational.
The IBM 4381 system for the Information Services for the new NSFNET
backbone has been installed and the installation of software is in
progress. We anticipate that the Information Services system will
begin to be available before the operational network becomes
functional. The IS system is currently connected to a Merit
Ethernet and supports Telnet, FTP and SMTP.
We are continuing to beta test the Wisconsin ARGO (OSI) code. We
were able to test the ARGO implementation between the University of
Michigan and the University of Wisconsin via non-encapsulated ISO
packets. This is possible via the bridged USAN satellite network
which reaches the University of Wisconsin within two satellite hops
(which means approximately a one second round trip delay). The
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
testing was done largely by Rob Hagens at the Wisconsin site and
Bilal Chinoy at Michigan. So far we have tested a Ping equivalent
(CLNPPING) and remote login (Rlogin) between the two sites. Both
looked almost indistinguishable from their TCP/IP equivalents.
There are some remaining problems with the TP4 code, as the version
we have was optimized for local low delay data networks. Those
problems were anticipated and, in fact, part of the reason for the
USAN test, which allows for high delay testing, but with
predictable delays. The kernel version at Wisconsin should allow
for modulating the TP4 characteristics to overcome these problems.
We are testing a version of "gated" modified by Jeff Honig
(Cornell) to allow for EGP communications between a RT/PC and a
Proteon gateway. Further testing is planned on different vendors'
gateways. This testing is necessary to verify EGP communication
capability between the new NSFNET backbone and the attached
regional networks. We also did some testing between a Unix gated
and a Fuzzball in case EGP may need to be used at some of the
current NSFNET sites.
By Jessica Yu (jessica_yu@um.cc.umich.edu)
NSFNET BACKBONE SITES
CORNELL UNIVERSITY THEORY CENTER
No report received.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
The connection from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu to IMP 94 port 6 is up and
running. UIUC is currently draining NSF traffic from Midnet and
the Chicago area to the ARPANET. We will take on more of the
NSFnet traffic when local routing becomes a bit more stable and
folks get back from IETF.
Chicago area network is progressing smoothly. The T1 between
Urbana and Chicago has been up since early January. University of
Chicago should be connected to the Chicago end via T1 within the
next two weeks. Northwestern should be soon after that. Notre Dame
is scheduled for early April via 56Kbps.
Fermi Lab is installing a 14.2Kbps line (TCP/IP only) to Urbana.
We are hoping to strike a deal whereby a 56Kbps line goes in
between the Chicago end of the T1 and Fermi. This could provide
HEPnet/SPAN connectivity for all of the Chicago area network
participants as well as UIUC/NCSA. (Currently all participants run
9.6Kbps lines to Fermi strictly for this purpose.) A single shared
line would save hundreds of dollars monthly.
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
No schedule is set for Argonne Nat'l Lab to upgrade to T1 or for
Illinois Institute of Technology to connect via 56Kbps.
By Charlie Catlett (catlett@ncsa.uiuc.edu) and Ed Krol
(krol@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu)
JOHN VON NEUMANN NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
No report received.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH & UNIVERSITY SATELLITE
NETWORK PROJECT
Intermittent transmitter radio problems have at the NCAR site have
plagued USAN this month. Radio swaps have been made and it is hoped
that the problems will not reoccur.
The satellite connection on USAN of the Naval Research Lab in the
Washington D.C. area is in place and checked out. Actual packets
flowing on this link are still awaiting the ethernet connection at
NRL.
By Don Morris (morris@scdsw1.ucar.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
We were visited by a Tiger Team from CRC to check on our PSN. They
decided that our's was improperly configured; they requested
replacement hardware. Since this will take at least 60 days, we
are still at least that far from having an operational connection
(trunk lines are still pending, of course).
Our Proteon p4200 has had a pretty good month - some "memory loss"
on routes which a reboot cleared. As the problem has not
reappeared, we are just keeping an eye on it.
We have installed the latest version of SRI's MultiNet on the
Center's VAX's.
Finally, the FTP server for our Cray mentioned last month, is now
in production use. Again, thanks to NCSA on which this server is
based.
By Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
NSFNET MID-LEVEL NETWORKS
BARRNET (No report received)
JVNCNET (Refer to JVNNSC backbone report)
MERIT/UMNET
The PSCNET T1 connection at the University of Michigan was
established this month and now provides for our primary path to the
Internet. The average delay times between the University of
Michigan and PSC-GW dropped from about 700 msec to about 35 msec.
About 550 msec of our previous connection were due to the USAN
satellite delay. Our traffic to PSC-GW now traverses three Proteon
gateways.
New tools are available for the Merit PCPs and SCPs to collect
packet statistics for IP traffic carried by the network nodes, as
well as to display the IP routing table at the nodes.
Work will start soon on implementing TCP within the Merit packet
switching nodes. This will be augmented by a Telnet implementation
shortly thereafter to allow direct terminal access to Telnet
servers for the currently almost 9500 terminal ports within the
Merit network.
By Jessica Yu (Jessica_Yu@um.cc.umich.edu)
MIDNET
MIDnet did not have any significant problems during the month of
February. UNL took our road show to 3 MIDnet members during the
month. We found this to be a very valuable experience from both our
point of view and the local campus point of view. We learned a grea
deal about how they are trying to connect their campuses to MIDnet,
the problems they are experiencing and the sort of assistance that
will be of most use to them. The persons on the campuses learned
some about the nature of the problems that they are having with
connections to various NSF sites and ways that they can diagnose
and solve those problems. We will be continuing these trips in
March and April and hope that the rest will have as good an effect
as the previous ones.
By Dale Finkelson (dmf@fergvax.unl.edu)
MRNET
The MRNet link to NSFNet via NCSA is working well. A local hack
running on an NCSA systems allows hello routing information to get
to the uc.msc.umn.edu gated system on MRNet via the Proteon 4200's
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
that link MRNet to NCSA. (ie, not via rip)
Mayo Clinic is now up and is 129.176.0.0
By Thomas Jacobson (thomas@umn-rei-uc.arpa)
NCSANET
(Refer to the UIUC & NCSAnet backbone report)
NORTHWESTNET
NorthWestNet is now fully connected and is using two routes to
NSFnet--via 56 kbps satellite to NCAR from Oregon State University
and via 56 kbps land line from University of Washington to SDSC.
The Boeing Companies have made a renewable grant of $250,000 worth
of CRAY cycles to NorthWestNet, and Management Committee has
established process for distributing the grant. The Training
Committee is negotiating with University of Washington to
coordinate NorthWestNet training activities. John Skelton, Oregon
State University, is the newly elected Chairman of the Technical
Committee. The Network has requests from two additional
institutions for connection.
By Dick Markwood (MARKWOOD@vaxf.colorado.edu)
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
NYSERNET
As of 1 January 1988, NYSERNet had the following topology:
Clarkson
Syracuse--+ | NISC
| | |
Rochester--------Cornell---------RPI---Albany
| || ||
| ....Alfred || ||
Buffalo...Fredonia || ||
| ....Oswego || ||
| || ||
Binghamton || +-------- || ------StonyBrook
| || | ||
| || | ||
CUNY--NYTEL/NSMAC--Columbia======NYU==Rockefeller
| |\ | | /| | ||
| | \ | NYNEX/S&T / | | ||
| | \ BNL / | | WP/CO
| | \ / | |
| | +-------------POLY---+ | |
| | | |
| +------------------------------+ |
| |
+--------------------------------------+
||
==== || T1
||
\ | / 56kbits
.... 9.6kbits
The Rockefeller/NYU link was upgraded from 56kbits to T1 in
February The NYTEL White Plains Central Office (WP/CO) was
connected by T1 to the Rockefeller node, in preperation for
connection to IBM Yorktown Heights. The RPI/NYU link was upgraded
from 56kbits to T1 on March 1st. Alfred University was connected
to NYSERNet in February at 9.6kbits.
NYSERNet's SGMP/SNMP V2.0 (a NOC implementation) was announced for
licensing to the INTERNET community.
Representatives of NYSERNet participated in the Federation/Merit
meeting in Ann Arbor.
Mark Fedor and I participated in the "Network Management
Convergence Meeting" on the 29th of February in San Diego.
Westine [Page 13]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
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 several months. In addition, we have added one
campus this month (Prairie View A&M). 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
Prairie View A&M University 129.208
Rice University 128.42
Texas A&M University 128.194
Texas Southern University 192.31.101
and the University of Houston 129.7
The serial line from NSFnet/NCAR to SesquiNet/Rice has been
operational for several months, and routes to SesquiNet via NSFnet
are now being advertised. Performance is very good. We have fixed
one source of occasional outages (a marginal local loop in
Houston), and have enjoyed good stability.
We are still testing cisco's support for dual protocol (IP and
DECnet) routing.
We are also testing cisco's support for 1822-HDH ARPANET support.
This should be operational during the month.
By Guy Almes (almes@rice.edu)
SURANET
No report received.
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
WESTNET
1. The paperwork to proceed with hiring a full time technical
support person is proceeding through our Office of Affirmative
Action. We expect to have this person on board in April, 1988.
2. We have met with MCI, who was the low bidder for our inter-
LATA circuits, to establish formal trouble reporting
procedures and centralized lines of reporting.
3. The HELLO Protocol experiment has been proceeding well.
4. We are still waiting for MCI and Mountain Bell to install the
remainder of our circuits. We hope that most of them will be
in place by March 30, but have been promised that they will be
in place no later than April 20, 1988.
By Pat Burns (pburns%csugreen.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
No report received.
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
No internet monthly progress to report.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
No progress to report.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
The most recent meeting of the Internet Architecture Task Force was
held at BBN on 17-18 December 1986. It was organized as a workshop,
with the primary focus on evolution of the next-generation
internet, whether based on the existing Internet or not. The goals
of the workshop were intended to foster exploration and evaluation
of new technology specifically required for the very large, very
fast internet of the future, with special relevance to research
networks under consideration by DARPA, NSF and collaborating
agencies.
Presentations were prepared, but informal, and there was
opportunity for discussion and debate. While most presentations did
not involve a formal paper, several did include briefing aids and
other archival material, which was distributed to the attendees at
the meeting. For additional copies, please contact the individual
authors.
Speaking for myself and I believe most of the attendees, the
meeting was successful, interesting and brought together members
from diverse research communities not captured in one room since
the days of the old Internet Research Group meetings. It is clear
that the energy level of the community is healthy and sustainable;
however, it is also clear that focus and support are needed to
channel this energy toward technical realization, demonstration and
evaluation.
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
The following summary of the workshop was edited by Mike Minnich
from material submitted by the various session chairs. My sincere
thanks go to the participants, session chairs and especially Mike.
Thursday, December 17
MORNING SESSION
1. Standards, Evolution, and Requirements
CHAIR: Paul Tsuchiya, MITRE
Talk: "User Requirements", Miles Fidelman, BBN
Talk: "User Requirements, DOE Research", Bill Johnston, LBL
Talk: "Standards and Evolution", Paul Tsuchiya, MITRE
2. Very High Speed Networks and Switching
CHAIR: Jon Turner, Washington University
Talk: "Key Issues for Public Networks", Jon Turner, Wash.
University
Talk: "BPN Architecture", Guru Parulkar, Wash. University
Talk: "Very High Speed Networks", Jil Westcott, BBN
AFTERNOON SESSION
3. New Architectures, other than Very High Speed
CHAIR: Dave Clark, MIT
Talk: "Next Generation Internet Protocol", Ross Callon, BBN
Talk: "The Network Interface Buffer Architecture",
Dave Clark, MIT
CHAIRPERSON'S COMMENTS:
This session related to those architectural issues not specifically
related to high speed.
The first talk, by Ross Callon of BBN, described requirements and
approaches for a next generation Internet. His conclusions are:
1. Policy controls on allocation are needed, for example congestion
control.
2. Routing is needed that does not require complete routing tables,
for example partial source routes.
3. We need more flow state.
4. The IP datagram model will not be sufficient. The next talk was
by David Clark of MIT LCS, and described a host-network interface
architecture which would permit a high-performance division of
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report February 1988
networking function between the host and a separate outboard
processor. The major component of this interface architecture was
named messages, where the names are used by the controller to map
the message to the intended buffer.
The following discussion considered the extent to which bandwidth
need be considered a critically expensive resource in the next
generation network. As the net provides a more complex set of
types of service, it may be able to load the links more heavily
while still meeting the requirements of the users. However, the
techniques to do this are not clear, and the needed speeds of
switching may not permit support of multiple types of service.
There was no consistent conclusion.
Friday, December 18
MORNING SESSION
4. Naming and Directory Services
CHAIR: Debbie Deutsch, BBN
Talk: "Addressing, Routing, Mobile Hosts", Keith McCloghrie, TWG
Talk: "Portable IP Hosts", Jose Rodriguez, Unisys
Talk: "Naming and Directory Services", Debbie Deutsch, BBN
CHAIRPERSON'S COMMENTS:
Three presentations were given, two concerned with addressing at
the Internet level, and one with named for users and applications.
Keith McCloghrie from Wollongong, made a proposal for logical
addressing in the Internet. Packet addresses, perhaps the same as
existing IP addresses, would identify the destination of a packet.
Separate routing addresses would be used for routing. The
conversion from packet addresses to routing addresses would be
performed by address servers. The packet addreses would be
relatively stable while routing addresses could change with time.
While routing based on routing addresses would be hierarchical,
"back-door" routes, based on unilateral aggreements, could
circumvent potential inefficiencies.
Jose Rodriguez discussed the Portable Host Access Component Project
at Unisys. The goal of this project is to provide DDN connectivity
to portable personal computers as hosts. Doing this requires some
flexibility in the way Internet addresses are used. The Internet
architecture needs a way to deal with such mobile hosts. Two
potential approaches are shadow hosts, much like IP multicast
agents, and real-time name servers.
The last presentation, which was given by Debbie Deutsch of BBN
Labs, concerned naming and directories for applications and their
users. There currently is no framework for naming and managing
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these entities in the Internet. The current work of ISO and the
CCITT (the X.500 series) can provide a basis for research in this
area and its applications to distributed systems, remote services,
and management at the application level.
5. Engineering Issues
CHAIR: Len Bosack, cisco
Talk: "Merit/IBM/MCI Proposal for NSFNET", Jacob Rekhter, IBM
Talk: "Dissimilar Gateway Protocol", Mike Little, M/A-COM
Linkabit
Talk: "Internetting: DARPA Concerns", Mark Pullen, DARPA
AFTERNOON
5. Engineering Issues, continued
Talk: "Inter-AS Routing", Ross Callon, BBN
Talk: "Policy Based Routing", Tassos Nakassis, NBS
5a. Bomb Scare
6. General Services
CHAIR: Miles Fidelman, BBN
Talk: "DOE Energy Sciences Networking", Bill Johnston, LBL
Talk: "Multi-media Conferencing", Claudio Topolcic, BBN
CHAIRPERSON'S COMMENTS:
The most notable emerging service requirement is for much higher
bandwidth (megabit to terrabit). Bandwidth requirements are
increasing both in the aggregate, and for support of individual
applications:
1. In the short term, new load is stemming primarily from
increasing numbers of host connections, in particular mainframe
systems on the military side of the net, and PCs all over the
place. These connections are leading to an increasing aggregate
requirement but not increasing the bandwidth required by individual
application sessions.
2. It is perceieved that the continued increase in available
computing power (e.g. gigaflop processors) will lead to
requirements for equivalent growth in communications support (e.g.
gigabit and terrabit networks). Discussions about current support
requirements for supercomputer centers does not seem to support
this case - since the primary applications seem to be remote job
entry and the return of results in files comparable in size to
current files routinely passed across the Internet (though this
does seem to indicate that there will be specific hosts sites that
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are the locus for large volumes of traffic).
3. In contrast, the distribution of modest amounts of computing
power around the network, coupled with communications intensive
applications (e.g. multi-media conferencing, distribution of large
technical data packages) do seem to require that significantly
higher bandwidths be delivered to end applications. Estimated
requirements for multi-media conferencing are on the order of 1-100
Mbits/Second, a technical data package for a large system can
easily fill an optical disk (i.e. gigabytes of data).
Also notable is an increasing requirement for selectable qualities
of service. For example, real-time multi-media conferencing
requires end-to-end delays in the .1 second range, while
distribution of large files does not. An increasing sensitivity to
cost also argues for quality of service mechanisms that select on
cost (coupled with chargeback mechanisms).
The increasing use of the Internet to support researchers (as
opposed to research) is leading to a need to simplify the
operational characteristics of the Internet. On the military side,
there appears to be an intent to assign responsibility for data
communications to the telephone organizations in place on military
bases. Clearly the current problems associated with managing
gateways have to be cleared up. The increasing connection of large
mainframes to the Internet will require that network management
mechanisms be interfaced to host-based management software that
expects to be able to see underlying networks.
Finally, it appears that the powers that be are moving toward
charging for usage - accounting mechanisms will need to be embedded
in the Internet.
7. Security and Privacy Issues
CHAIR: Mike Padlipsky, MITRE
Talk: "An OSI Approach to Network Security", Mike Padlipsky, MITRE
CHAIRPERSON'S COMMENTS:
The Security session, only added to the agenda during the first
morning, consisted of a single presentation, by its ad hoc
Chairman, Michael Padlipsky. An attempt to distill and abstract
several years' worth of thinking and work on an Outboard Processing
Environment (formerly known as Network Front-End) based security
architecture, the talk was deliberately misleadingly titled "AN OSI
Approach to Network Security". An overlay turned the OSI into
Orthogonal Security Interposition, by which was meant in essence
that the recommended approach would consciously avoid being
intermingled with the conventional protocol suite(s) in play (the
"orthogonality") and would operate by being "interposed" between
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the Host and its offloaded protocol interpreters, interecepting the
transactions of an appropriately designed Host-Front End protocol
and taking appropriate actions for labeling, auditing, and
encryption in concert with counterpart implementations of the
security mechanism at the target system. It should be noted that
it was primarily the fact that Dave Clark had actually spoken in
favor of protocol offloading the day before which inspired the
speaker to be willing to risk exposing these thoughts in his
presence, but the approach has long been believed to have merit in
those environments (DoD, e.g.) where the necessary ubiquity of the
security mechanism-bearing OPEs can be mandated, thus justifying
the amount of "assurance" one would need to posit for the OPEs.
(Indeed, assurance considerations are even more important as a
reason for the recommended orthogonality than the also interesting
capablility of avoiding being bound to a potentially changing
protocol suite which could be conferred by an H-FP of the RFC 928/9
sort.)
Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING
The planned agenda for the March 1-3 IETF meeting in San Diego is
below. A more detailed report on the meeting will be given in the
March report.
There have been 9 documents produced by the IETF since the last
meeting (IDEAS 002-010). Many of these are planned to be submitted
as RFCs. A major activity for the various working groups at the
March 1-3 meeting will be to discuss these documents, incorporate
comments and perform any final editing to prepare them for
submittal (or for the next level of discussion). As a reminder,
the papers are:
o IDEA002.TXT - A Comparison of "Link State" and "Distance
Vector" Routing Algorithms, Ross Callon (BBN)
o IDEA003.TXT - Guidelines for the use of Internet-IP addresses
in the ISO Connectionless-Mode Network Protocol,
Ross Callon (BBN) and Hans-Werner Braun (U Mich)
o IDEA004.TXT - Routing Information Protocol, Chuck Hedrick
(Rutgers)
o IDEA005.TXT - Requirements for an Open Internal Gateway Protocol,
edited by John Moy (Proteon) for the Open IGP
Working Group
o IDEA006.TXT - ISO Presentation Services on top of TCP/IP-based
Internets, Marshall Rose (TWG)
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o IDEA007.TXT - Requirements for Inter-Autonomous Systems Routing,
edited by Ross Callon (BBN) for the Open Routing
Working Group
o IDEA008.TXT - The Responsible Person Resource Record, edited by
Louis Mamakos (U of Md) for the Name Domain Working
Group
o IDEA009.TXT - EGP3, Marianne Gardner (BBN)
o IDEA010.TXT - The DCA Protocol Testing Lab, Unisys.
003 and 006 will be discussed in the OSI WG; 004 in the Short-term
Routing WG; 005 in the Open IGP Routing WG; 007 in the Open Routing
WG; 008 in the Domain WG and 009 in the EGP3 WG. Ross Callon will
be presenting aspects of 002 and other topics on Thursday. All
IDEAS are available by anonymous ftp from the <ietf> directory on
SRI-NIC.ARPA. There is a brief synopsis of each IDEA in
<IETF>IDEA-INDEX.TXT on SRI-NIC.ARPA.
Agenda for the March 1-3 IETF
------ --- --- ----- --- ----
TUESDAY, March 1
8:30 am Opening Plenary (Introductions and local arrangements)
8:45 am Working Group meetings convene
- Open Systems Routing (Hinden, BBN)
- Open Systems Internet Operations Center (Case, RPI)
- Authentication (Schoffstall, RPI)
- Open IGP (Petry, UMD/Moy, Proteon)
- Internet Host Requirements (Gross, Mitre/Braden, ISI)
5:00 pm Recess
WEDNESDAY, March 2
8:30 am Opening Plenary
8:45 am Working Group meetings convene
- Short-Term Routing (Hedrick, Rutgers)
- Domains (Louis Mamakos, UMd)
- Performance and Congestion Control (TBA)
- EGP3 (Gardner, BBN)
- OSI Technical Issues (Rose, TWG)
11:30 am Lunch
1:00 pm Detailed Report on the New NSFnet (Braun,
UMich/Rechter, IBM)
- including overview, topology, network management,
packet switch architecture and routing.
3:00 pm Break
3:15 pm Status of the Adopt-a-GW Program (Enger,
Contel/Gross, Mitre)
- Remember the pre-Christmas `brain-dead' message?
Donors of equipment will be credited and data will
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be presented showing the improvements.
3:45 pm BBN Report (Hinden/Gardner, BBN)
- Background and status of the Core gateway upgrade
to butterflies; Internet and network operations
report, including the PSN 7.0 and new EE transition.
5:00 pm Recess
THURSDAY, March 3
8:30 am Opening Plenary
8:45 am Working Group Reports and Discussion
- OSI Technical Issues (Rose, TWG)
- Open Systems Routing (Hinden, BBN)
- Short Term Routing (Hedrick, Rutgers)
- Open Systems Internet Operations Center (Case, RPI)
- Authentication (Schoffstall, RPI)
- Open IGP (Petry, UMD/Moy, Proteon)
- Internet Host Requirements (Gross, Mitre/Braden, ISI)
- Domains (Louis Mamakos, UMd)
- Performance and Congestion Control (TBA)
- EGP3 (Gardner, BBN)
- InterNICs (Feinler, SRI)
11:30 am Lunch
1:00 pm Technical Presentations
- Routing and Miscellanea (Callon, BBN)
- Internet Multicast and VMTP (Deering, Stanford)
- TCP Performance Prototyping (Van Jacobson, LBL)
3:00 pm Break
- Cray TCP Performance (Borman, Cray Research)
- DCA Protocol Testing Laboratory (Swanson, Unisys)
4:45 pm Concluding Plenary Remarks
5:00 pm Adjourn
Phil Gross (Gross@MITRE.GATEWAY.ORG)
INTERNET MANAGEMENT
No report received.
PRIVACY
The IAB Privacy Task Force had a productive two-day meeting at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore,
California on 2 and 3 March. Attendees were: Dave Balenson,
Curt Barker, Don Brinkley, Morrie Gasser, Steve Kent, John
Linn, Dan Nessett, and Steve Wilbur.
Most of the meeting's discussion could be divided into two
basic categories, mail-related and mail-unrelated. Mail-
related discussion included a development status review,
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discussion of RFC-1040 and on comments received thereon,
discussion of interactions with RSA Data Security, Inc., and
consideration of a successor key management RFC's
organization. In mail-unrelated discussion, we reviewed
activities in the Internet Engineering Task Force's
Authentication working group and considered various future
topics (e.g., resource access control and policy routing)
being discussed in the IAB.
John Linn (linn@CCY.BBN.COM) Secretary, Privacy Task Force
ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY
No report received.
SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
No report received.
SECURITY
No report received.
TACTICAL INTERNET
No report received.
TESTING AND EVALUATION
No report received.