<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR88-04.TXT
APRIL 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
The major focus of this month's development activities was the
implementation and installation of Wideband Network support for a
number of cross-country 56 Kbps Arpanet Inter-Switch Trunks (IST).
This Wideband Network support is provided via the direct connection
of Arpanet PSN trunk interfaces to local BSATs, and the transparent
transmission of the PSN's trunk traffic to a corresponding BSAT-PSN
pair at another site on the opposite coast. This transmission
facility is provided via new IST support software in the BSAT,
which is capable of encapsulating PSN-to-PSN packet fragments
within the standard Wideband message format and then sending these
messages within pre-established dedicated satellite channel stream
capacity. This results in what appears to the PSN pair as a 56
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
Kbps terrestrial line with a long propagation delay.
Two of the three planned Wideband-based ISTs (one running between
ISI and BBN and another between ISI and DCEC) were providing
connectivity to their respective PSNs as of the end of the month.
There are still, however, some problems that need to be corrected
in these links, since the PSNs attached to them have to date been
reporting an unusually large number of line up/down transitions.
This situation is being investigated and will be corrected as soon
as possible. The third IST, which will run between SRI and DCEC,
has not yet become operational due to an I/O board failure at SRI.
A replacement has been shipped and will be installed upon receipt.
SATNET
The SATNET has been very stable through the month of April. We
have had no unscheduled outages of the SATNET SIMP's or PSP
terminal hardware. The availability of the SATNET was again above
99% from tests run by ISI for all sites except Tanum. Scheduled
repositioning of the Tanum dish has been taking the site off the
channel periodically. The only other outages during the month were
scheduled SATNET Measurement Taskforce tests.
The UCL to RSRE line was upgraded to the new service and operated
for a short time last month. A problem developed with the line and
it was turned back over to BT. It appears that the problem has
been resolved. The link has been up for several days.
VAX TCP/IP NETWORKING
David Waitzman, Craig Partridge, and Robb Foster met with Steve
Deering at Stanford to discuss the implementation of multicast
routing in 4.3bsd and the Butterfly gateways. BBN is currently
working with Steve to develop a list of work items that we expect
to finish between now and the end of August.
INTERNET R&D
On Tues (4/12/88) MILSRI gateway was upgraded to an 11/73
processor. This completes the upgrade of all Mailbridges and EGP
servers to 11/73s. Many thanks to Bob Enger for finding hardware
donors and for coordinating the installation effort. Also thanks
to the following people for the donation of processors and memory.
Phil Karn Bellcore 7 processors
Paul Pomes U of Illinois 1 processor 3 memory boards
Bob Enger Contel 1 processor 3 memory boards
Dan Tappan BBN 1 processor 1 memory board
Westine [Page 2]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
Bill Nesheim Thinking Machine 1 processor 1 memory board
Mike Petry U of Maryland 2 processors
Our work on Internet multicast is continuing. We plan to extend
the SPF routing in the Butterfly Gateway to distribute the
Multicast group membership among other Butterfly Gateways. We also
began work on implementing an Improved Packet Radio (IPR) interface
for the Butterfly Gateway.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
ISI
---
Internet Concepts Project
Paul Mockapetris presented the domain system to NNSC Domain
Tutorial at BBN, Cambridge, Mass, April 28-29. Jon Postel attended
the CERFNET meeting in Long Beach, CA. Jon Postel to attend NSF
EXPRES review meeting at CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, April 6-8.
Three RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1050: Sun Microsystems, Inc., "RPC: Remote Procedure Call
Protocol Specification", April 1988.
RFC 1052: Cerf, V., "IAB Recommendations for the Development of
Internet Network Management Standards", NRI,
April 1988.
RFC 1053: Levy, S., T. Jacobson, "Telnet X.3 PAD Option",
Minnesota Supercomputer Center, April 1988.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
Multimedia Conferencing Project
Preparations are underway to expand the packet video system to more
than two sites. The on-board firmware of the Image 30 video codec
has been modified to accept a merged packet stream of data from
multiple sites and display each site in its own quadrant of the
screen. The standard product Image 30, with its circuit-switched
interface, can only handle a single site. Some changes are still
needed in the the packet video program (PVP) that runs in the
Butterfly to use the new codec scheme.
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
Meanwhile, PVP has been modified to checksum all video data and
discard damaged packets since we observed an unusually high number
of screen glitches in transmissions from BBN to ISI. Because the
error rate is asymmetrical, a hardware fault is suggested. PVP is
also being modified to use both point-to-point and conference modes
of ST protocol connections to prepare for testing with the
Butterfly ST Gateway.
Work is also underway to expand the conference control program that
runs in a small window on the Sun screen. In addition to the video
camera control functions, the program will be used to establish
voice and video conference connections. We expect this program
will make the conference system easier for novice users to manage.
Steve Casner, Eve Schooler, Dave Walden (Casner@ISI.EDU,
Schooler@ISI.EDU, djwalden@isi.edu)
Brian Hung is in the final stages of completing his echo cancellor
assembly language code and is beginning the debugging process.
Brian Hung (Hung@ISI.EDU)
NSFNET Project
The major projects this month have been finishing and documenting
the Background File Transfer program, and working on the Host
Requirements draft RFC. An RFC on BFTP is nearly ready for
submission. Bob Braden also chaired a meeting of the End-to-End
Task Force at Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, April 12-13.
Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon (Braden@ISI.EDU, DeSchon@ISI.EDU)
Supercomputer and Workstation Communication Project
Alan Katz worked on a second version of the Mandlebrot set graphics
viewer that runs under the X Window system. This version will
separate the "back end" fractal calculation from the "front end" X
interactive display. Alan intends to then run back end part on a
remote supercomputer.
Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU)
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
MIT-LCS
-------
Our network simulator started to play its role in network studies.
Mark Lambert has been using it to investigate flow rate adjusting
algorithms for NETBLT, based on observed network behavior at the
end point. Andrew Heybey is simulating a distributed data rate
tuning algorithm proposed by Mosely. The slow control convergence
of the algorithm, which had no explanation before, was quickly
revealed to be due to the queueing delay effect on propagating
control information.
We are sorry to announce that Mark Lambert, the implementor of both
PCmail and NETBLT protocol, is leaving us for Oracle in May. We
wish him best of luck in his new career and married life.
Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
1. The "DoD OSI Implementation Strategy" has been delivered to
DCA. When it has past OSD inspection, it could be released
for public comsumption in June. The timing could be directly
related to the release of the GOSIP FIPS.
2. The FTP/FTAM application bridge is complete; it has been
updated to reflect current ISODE, NBS Implementors Agreements,
and FTAM IS status. The documentation is complete as well;
however, the timeliness of obtaining public release from the
government is variable.
3. The VTP implementation has been upgraded to reflect current
ISODE, NBS Implementors Agreements, and 2nd DIS VT status. It
contains a TELNET profile and a rudimentary Forms Mode profile
which currently supports the Honeywell VIP terminal for
demonstration purposes. The TELNET profile is complete; the
Forms Mode will be complete in September. We are interested
in testing partners.
4. For the internet engineering testbed, the instrumented DoD
gateway, the instrument host, traffic generators, simple date
base system, and a remote experiment initiating process are
complete. Four classes of experiments relating to congestion
control are planned for development over the remainder of this
fiscal year: a) Van Jacobson's TCP improvements; b) TCP rate
base evaluation; c) Source Quench evaluation; d) gateway
Westine [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
fairness methods.
5. We are preparing another Internet Engineering Plan with a
scope for FY90 - FY92 for DCA. All contributions to problems
in current technologies, solutions that are feasible or need
work to evaluate feasibility, or efforts that should be
planned to use future technologies are appreciated.
Ann Whitaker (Whitaker@Gateway.Mitre.Org)
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
SRI
---
Internet Research
Two papers: "A Distributed, Loop-Free, Shortest-Path Routing
Algorithm" at IEEE INFOCOM '88, New Orleans; and "Distributed
Routing Using Internodal Coordination," at IEEE Computer Networking
Symposium '88, Washington, D.C. are presented by J.J. Garcia-Luna.
Both papers describe a new distributed algorithm for the dynamic
calculation of the shortest paths in a computer network. The
algorithm is loop-free at every instant, independent of
transmission and processing delays in the network, or changes in
topology.
J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves (garcia@tsca.istc.sri.com)
UCL
---
Infrastructure:
We have been testing the Cisco X.25 with our own X.25 IP tunnel
code and doing some preliminary performance tests in preparation
for the new UK-US Academic service link. With suitable X.25
parameter settings we see a very reasonable percentage of the line
bandwidth available for TCP/IP.
Plans to install two high speed networks at UCL, one a proprietary
fibre net for CS, the other a true FDDI network for the entire
college, are now fairly complete. We are surveying the available
network management tools to see what could be used for
configuration control and fault isolation for such a system. The
Westine [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
college network will connect most large departments, using MAC
Bridges, with possible direct connection of high performance
servers. We are obliged to operate a multi-protocol system, with
DECNET and TCP/IP pre-dominating, but XNS and OSI protocols already
running in some departements, we need an integrated solution to
management urgently.
Research:
Hinting has been added to the Thorn directory service, so that DUAs
may now transparently locate other DSAs on behalf of a user. This
has highlighted some problems with the authentication architecture
of the X.500 directory standard.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. In order to gain some insight into the effect of source-quench
mechanisms in Internet gateways, Mike Minnich has developed a
simulation model that drives the generation of quench messages
as a closed-loop control system. Initial experiments with
this model have shown that the stability of the system can be
very sensitive to variations in the delay parameters of the
model. This leads us to believe that the design of high-
performance congestion-avoidance mechanisms may require
dynamic measurement of delay parameters in order to fine-tune
the feedback loop and avoid oscillations.
2. Mike Minnich has also been beta-testing the Unix NTP daemon
developed by Mike Petry at the University of Maryland. We have
it running on several of our VAXen as well as a Sun in our
lab. Some initial portability problems were discovered and
subsequently corrected. The clockwatchers among you who have
not yet converted to the new daemon may well want to do so,
since it has much thicker firewalls than previous versions.
Those who run bind and NTP on the same machine should be
especially appreciative of this: timewarps into the past cause
bind to empty its cache and enter a somewhat rigid state of
catatonia for the duration of the warp.
3. A considerable quantity of NTP data collected on the NTP
primary time servers was analyzed for hints on NSFNET Backbone
performance and possible glitches. A version of the S
statistical package was used along with ad-hoc data extraction
Westine [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
programs to produce a set of graphs found useful for
diagnosing network swamp fever. Perhaps the most useful of
these graphs is what might be called a wedge diagram, a
scatter diagram of clock offset versus delay, which often
reveals subtle path characteristics like unsuspected asymmetry
and route flaps.
4. The analysis uncovered what appears to be occasional severe
congestion on X.25 links used by U Maryland gateways, as well
as curious behavior on the Backbone routing somewhere between
the Rockies (NCAR) and the ARPANET. It also clearly shows
route flapping over terrestrial and satellite paths between
ISI and the Atlantic states. The present state of the
analysis, including suggestions for incorporating the ideas
into AI-based network-management systems, was incorporated
into a memo distributed to the INENG and NSF technical
communities.
5. The document "Network Time Protocol (Version 1): Specification
and Implementation" was distributed as a Department report and
submitted for consideration as an RFC. A simple simulator was
built for the synchronization and filtering algorithms
described in that document and presented with off-air data
collected over various network paths in the US and Europe.
Detailed statistics and performance data were produced for
possible inclusion in a future paper.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
NSF NETWORKING
--------------
NSF NETWORKING
UCAR/BBN LABS NNSC
Approximately 90 technical liaisons from NSFNET sites attended the
NNSC two-day tutorial on the Domain System April 28 and 29. The
course covered general information about the domain system and
details on hooking up specific systems.
Craig Partridge attended the End-2-End meeting and hosted a meeting
of the Management Information Base Working Group at the NNSC.
Karen Roubicek attended the FARnet meeting and the Net'88
Conference in Washington.
by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE PROJECT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY THEORY CENTER
Cornell will be receiving additional funding for the continued
operation of the current NSFNet backbone until July 1. In that
this is not full funding, a few tasks have to be eliminated. They
are as follows:
1) Operations will no longer be 24 hours. We will continue to
deal with all problems between the hours of 9am and 5pm EST.
2) No additional networks will be added to the backbone.
The addition of new networks would only increase the
likelyhood of problems on the backbone. We feel that it
would be unwise and unfair to our current user base to
continue adding new networks regardless of the level funding.
Jeff Honig has been devoted to gated development in support of the
new NSFnet backbone. He spent three days at IBM Yorktown working
with Yakov Rehkter modifing's gated's EGP code for use on the NSS
Routing Control Processors. Since his return most of his time has
been spent enhancing gated for support of the regional side of
NSS-regional communications with some time spent with further
enhancements for the NSS side.
by Martyne M. Hallgren (martyne@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu)
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
NEW NSFNET BACKBONE
Significant progress has been made on the backbone project since
the last Internet Monthly Report. This was aided by cooperation of
the staff at all the NSFNET backbone sites. We are on the verge of
installing all the equipment, with the first Nodal Switching
Subsystem (NSS) components already shipped to the sites at Boulder,
San Diego, Princeton, Champaign, and Ithaca. MCI also completed
end-to-end testing (including the CSUs) for several circuits.
The NSS pre-assembly process in Ann Arbor is on schedule and
continues to operate smoothly. All the NSFNET backbone sites should
receive completely configured NSSs by mid-May. Pittsburgh, Lincoln,
Ithaca, and Ann Arbor have received their IDNXs and will be
contacted shortly by IBM to schedule the installation and assurance
testing of this equipment. Ann Arbor's IDNX is already installed
and connected to the three circuits of the operational network and
to the two test network circuits.
Jacob Rekhter of IBM Research is at a very advanced stage with his
implementation of ANSI IS-IS SPF-IGP for the new NSFNET Backbone
network. This code has been performing very well on the six NSS
nodes of the test network. Over the last few weeks, important
progress has been made on the EGP interface. The EGP
implementation already includes the Autonomous-System-centered
improvements which were outlined to the technical people
responsible for regional networks by means of two documents and
many electronic mail discussions. These two documents have also
been submitted for publication as IDEAs.
Jeff Honig of the Cornell University Theory Center worked with
Jacob Rekhter for a week in Yorktown on the adaptation of the gated
EGP code into the NSS environment, as well as on the EGP
implementation enhancements necessary for the new backbone.
Cornell's significant cooperation, which has also continued after
Jeff's visit, was of great assistance to the EGP integration. The
changes Jacob and Jeff made to the EGP implementation are also
available in new versions of gated His new implementation is now
used in a simulated regional network connected to the backbone test
network. Host-host communications is now possible while traversing
all of the SPF, EGP, and RIP routing environments.
by Laura Kelleher (Laura_Kelleher@merit.edu)
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
NSFNET BACKBONE AND MID-LEVEL SITES
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSAnet
No report received.
JOHN VON NEUMANN NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
This report is designed to inform the JVNC Consortium and JVNCnet
network members as well as the Internet community of monthly 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.
Network brief:
The John von Neumann National Center's high speed network (JVNCnet)
connects seven north-east states plus two mid-west states.
JVNCnet's 13 Consortium Institutions *, plus JVNC and 10 non
Consortium Sites form the 24 node network.
The topology of the network (see attached diagram) is a combination
of tree and double rings providing redundancy and high bandwidth
access to the JVNC center and NSFnet backbone. The high speed
links are mostly T1 lines (1.544 millon bits per second), the rest
are 56,000 bits per second (both terrestrial and satellite).
The routing switches are a combination of VAXs, UB routers and
CISCO routers.
The network is operated from the JVNCnet Network Operations Center
(NOC) lodated at the John von Neumann Center, which is staffed 24
hours/7 days a week.
Monthly Status Overview:
We are still rerouting all traffic between Penn State and NCAR via
JVNCnet and the University of Colorado. The users are very
satisfied with the access that they now have to NCAR. We started
to reroute the traffic from Prinecton to NCAR via JVNCnet as well,
with equal good results.
The installation of the 6 new New England schools has been
completed on schedule.
The overall uptime for the gateways this month (reachability
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
information) was 90.45% (worst case).
A program was written to detect and remove routing loops on the VAX
routers at JVNC and log the occurrences.
Traffic on the JVNCA gateway has been very high this month, with a
total number of packets in and out (of one of its ethernet
interfaces) of 112,647,844 packets.
The University of Pennsylvania reterminated the place where the
JVNC gateway (and the T1 line) end. This caused a disruption of
the service to that campus measured of approximately 20% of this
month time (worst case).
The access to the Universities of Arizona and Colorado was
interrupted twice this month for problems with the satellite
equipment. A problem of frequency shift on the radio equipment was
corrected by Vitalink once we noticed that the round trip delay
started to grow out of normal behavior.
Access to the NSFnet sites was of approximately 77% (worst case).
The access to Illinois was the more affected one with a worst case
reachability of 46%.
The JVNC PSN is still not connected to our host. As soon as it is
connected and running, we are going to be able to lower the NSFnet
backbone traffic considerably (by "draining" all the ARPANET
traffic that we currently send/receive to the backbone).
A Network Operations Center (JVNCNet NOC) has been established at
JVNC to provide better service and coordination to the 24 node
network. The NOC is staffed by the network staff from 9am to 5pm
Mon-Fri, and is on call between 5pm and 9am. The computer
operators monitor and perform minor troubleshooting tasks between
5pm and 9am and provide for backup network operations center.
For more Information Contact:
Network Operations: JVNCnet NOC, "JVNCnet-noc@jvnca.csc.org"
Network Informations: JVNCnet NIC, "JVNCnet-nic@jvnca.csc.org"
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
JVNCnet Network Topology
------------------------
Boston U.---Harvard*--MIT*--Brown*--Wesleyan
| | |
Dartmouth-----Northeastern | Yale
| | |
Umass (Amherst) | |
| | |
| ============ |
----------------|| ||-------------
|| ||
IAS*-------------------|| ||----------U. of Penn*
Montclair State--------|| JVNC ||----------Penn State*
NYU*-------------------|| ||----------U. of Colorado*
Columbia*--------------|| ||----------Princeton*
U. of Arizona*---------|| ||----------Rutgers*
Rochester*-------------|| ||----------NJIT**--Stevens**
============ |
--------UMDNJ**
* CSC Institution
** NRAC Institution
by Sergio Heker (heker@jvnca.csc.org)
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY SATELLITE
NETWORK PROJECT
Preparations are under way for the acquisition of the NSFnet NSS
and the conversion to the new NSFnet. The USAN network, a star
configuration of gateways, will be designated an Autonomous System
and will use RIP as the IGP. Since the NSS is also a node on this
star and it is necessary to communicate routing information to the
NSS via EGP, the plan is to use a gated host on the USAN backbone
to act as an EGP agent.
by Don Morris (morris@scdsw1.ucar.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
Early in April a Proteon P4200 was installed between the PSC
ethernet and an extended section of the University of Pittsburgh
ethernet. This gateway gives them a direct connection to PSCnet
and access to the NSFnet backbone through our network.
On April 21 and 22 the DDS circuits connecting Temple, Drexel, and
Lehigh Universities to the University of Pennsylvania were
Westine [Page 13]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
reterminated on the new premises of Penn's computing services
group. Our networking equipment was moved April 21 and by the next
day everything was back in working order.
We have continued to offer and provide name service to PSCnet
institutions. We are continuing to work out the bugs in the
system. Two staff members attended the domain tutorial offered by
the NNSC in an effort to better understand the system.
Our efforts to connect our second Arpanet gateway to the new PSN on
our premises should soon come to fruition, as we finally have the
electronics and cables necessary. The gateway machine is being
prepared for the connection.
Beta tests of a new driver for our Arpanet gateway's X.25 interface
to the PSN are continuing. This new driver will allow more virtual
circuit connections simultaneously.
Equipment has arrived and a line has been installed for a third
trunk line to the new PSN #21.
MCI technicians have visited our premises to connect and test the
CSU's on the new backbone circuits. Equipment racks and the IDNX
have been delivered here. During a site visit on April 25 by IBM
and Merit representatives several space and environmental issues
were resolved.
by Dave O'Leary (oleary@godot.psc.edu)
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
The group from "Task Force 100" visited SDSC on April 1. The PSN
was upgraded to the current software level (it still had last Aug's
version). Concurrently the backpannels were replaced. The team
was unable to activate the 2 trunks, however, since:
1. The one to UCLA was terminated - but not in the PSN there
2. The line to ISI was lost (again) in climbing the 12 stories.
The p4200 continues without any anomallies.
The University of Hawaii will be converting their SDSCnet (MFEnet
protocol) line to a p4200 link during the first week of May.
NorthWestNet was turned-up in GATED on April 1, as scheduled.
Our client RSH is ready for production use on our Cray under CTSS.
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
Our VMS systems, using SRI's Multinet, are running 4.8 BIND. Also,
we have been running GATED in listen mode for several weeks without
a problem. We plan to move our GATED functions from our small SUN
(3/50) to one of the VAX's during May.
by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
BARRNET (No report received)
MERIT/UMNET
Michigan State University now has a functional 56 Kbps link to the
ARPANET PSN at Purdue University. A T1 line from Michigan State
University to the University of Michigan has been installed. This
line, which is jointly funded by Merit and Michigan State
University, should become functional very soon.
by Laura Kelleher (Laura_Kelleher@merit.edu)
MIDNET (No report received)
MRNET
During April, MRNet held a meeting of the full membership. During
this meeting it was proposed that MRNet consider providing
different "levels of service", ranging from fully supported 24
hours per day 7 days per week service, to a less expensive limited
support mode for those members who do not require 24/7 service. No
final decisions were reached on this issue.
Several new institutions attended the general meeting, and
expressed an interest in joining MRNet. The MRNet equipment was
consolidated into a separate room, specifically prepared for use as
the MRNet hub.
A user who had been using the MRNet network number by mistake was
identified, and has subsequently stanched the flow of mislabeled
packets. Access to some NSFNet sites (Princeton, for example) was
reported as being relatively good during April (at least "better
than it was in March"). Access to other sites, including MIT, was
irregular, and access to Stanford was reported as being poor.
by Ken Carlson (kgc@uf.msc.umn.edu)
NORTHWESTNET
NorthWestNet has reached a contractual agreement with the
University of Washington to provide training coordination for the
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
network. The network issued an RFQ to vendors for TCP/IP software
that has resulted in group discounts with several vendors. The
Management Committee is negotiating final details of Articles of
Incorporation and Bylaws which will establish the Northwest
Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC) as a 501(c)3 organization.
This will be a three-tiered organization with the original primary
nodes as full members. Smaller institutions will be Associate
Members and for profit organizations will be Affiliate Members. We
have had promising discussions with two DOE establishments about
joining the network. Both are likely to become members in the near
future. We have also had inquiries from several for profit
organizations.
by Dick Markwood (markwood%vaxf.colorado.edu@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
NYSERNET
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
1) The Syracuse/Cornell link was upgraded to T1.
2) Mark Fedor and Marty Schoffstall participated in the
unified network management Management Information Base
(MIB) working group of the IETF.
3) Most of the NYSERNet principles participated in the
NET88 conference jointly sponsored by Educom/NYSERNet/NSF.
by Marty Schoffstall (schoff@nic.nyser.net)
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
OARNET (No report received)
SESQUINET
The complete initially proposed SesquiNet configuration, now
augmented by Prairie View A&M, has been operational now for several
months. The following campus networks are being served, and are
advertised via EGP to the core:
Baylor College of Medicine 128.249
BCM-Technologies 192.31.88
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.
As mentioned last month, we have spent considerable time learning
how to make effective use of both our Arpanet and our NSFnet
connections. It was disappointing, therefore, to learn that our
Arpanet IMP (and all the other Arpanet IMPs in Texas) was scheduled
to be disconnected on May 1st. We have been spending most of our
time preparing for that disconnection.
During the last week in April (within three days of the scheduled
disconnection of our part of the Arpanet) we finally succeeded in
getting the last bug fix to the cisco support for 1822-HDH Arpanet.
It works very well.
During the coming month, we will be working on configuration
changes in anticipation of the new NSFnet backbone site here.
We will soon resume our testing cisco's support for dual protocol
(IP and DECnet) routing.
by Guy Almes (almes@rice.edu)
SURANET (No report received)
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
WESTNET
1. The circuits for Westnet "West" were installed near the end of
this month, providing connectivity to Arizona State
University, the University of Arizona, Brigham Young
University, the University of Utah, and Utah State University.
All circuits for Westnet are now in place. We are just now
testing these circuits. Routing across these circuits should
commence imminently.
2. We had some minor problems with Cisco's implementation of
hello due to a change Dave Mills had made in the timing
metric. This has been fixed.
3. Ed Sharp of the University of Utah, where Westnet's IBM NSS is
being installed, has signed the IBM site agreement, under
protest. We do not believe that we should be required to
maintain confidentiality regarding the details of the IBM NSS
when there are issues such as performance, robustness, error
recovery, etc. That we should all be openly discussing. Such
a requirement from IBM is anti-intellectual and could probably
be counterproductive in the long run. Ed decided to sign the
agreement anyway, as getting a company as large and convoluted
as IBM to change such a policy would probably have meant an
extended delay for the installation of the IBM NSS. We were
also disturbed that IBM was going to delay the installation of
the NSS "until the agreement was executed." I have never
before heard of an item of equipment being held "hostage." If
any of you have similar feelings, let us know.
4. Westnet had good attendance at the BBN Workshop on Domain Name
Service. This was a particularly timely and valuable workshop
for us.
by Pat Burns (pburns%csugreen.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
No report received.
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
The ANTF is in the midst of scheduling a meeting or
teleconference for late June or early July. The agenda will be
a discussion of internet accounting and security mechanisms as
a follow up to a FRICC workshop planned for mid-June.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
The task force met April 12-13 at Sun Microsystems in Mountain
View. The most interesting items discussed included:
BSD Networking Code
The BSD networking code, newly freed from distribution
restrictions, has been officially announced by Mike Karels.
This code implements the TCP performance improvements that
Van Jacobson and Mike have developed. All vendors whose
products are based on 4.2/4.3BSD are urged to obtain this
code and install it. Bill Nowicki announced that Sun OS/4.0
includes the Van Jacobson performance improvements.
IP Multicasting
Steve Deering has made a significant revision
(simplification) of the IGMP protocol for IP multicasting.
The meeting approved a draft RFC describing the new version,
and intends to push for its adoption as an Internet
standard. Eric Cooper reported that IP multicasting is
being used in a file server system at CMU. Steve presented a
draft of an inter-multicast-router protocol. This will be
issued as RFC-1054.
Steve has updated his modification to the 4.3BSD IP layer to
support the latest multicasting spec. Unfortunately, we
were unable to get this code included in the Berkeley
release discussed above; Van hopes instead to include the
multicasting code in an update release during summer 1988.
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
After a regrettable hiatus, BBN is again funded to work on
IP multicasting. Plans include multicast-router support in
Butterfly gateways and in 4.3BSD.
Transaction Transport Protocol
The VMTP specification has been published as RFC-1045, but
has generated very little comment. Dave Cheriton announced
work on revising the BSD version of VMTP, and a joint effort
Stanford/Sun effort to port VMTP into Sun/OS.
There was extensive discussion of the performance
implications of a wide-spread use of VMTP, which uses rate-
based flow control rather than windows. Van expressed a
fear that rate-based flow control will be unstable until we
learn out how to stabilize it, and that this is a very hard
problem. Dave Cheriton presented a proposed solution to
this problem, and the flames licked the ceiling.
This appears to be one of the most important open
theoretical issues in transport protocols at this time.
A New Approach
Dave Cheriton presented a paper on the deliberate (but
controlled) use of recursion in communication protocols.
His provocative and stimulating thesis was that it is
possible to unify and organize all the protocol layers in an
entirely new manner. It would sure put a torpedo through
the ISO hull!
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
Activity was low this month. The next meeting is to be called
after the dust settles from Barry Leiner's meeting at RIACS in
late June.
Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU)
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
INTERNET ENGINEERING
Proceedings of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
currently available from the DDN Network Information Center
(NIC) are:
Jul 1987 (MITRE), NIC document number = IETF-87/3P
Nov 1987 (NCAR), NIC document number = IETF-87/4P
COST: Each copy is $25.00 (US and Canada) or $30.00
(overseas).
HOW TO ORDER: To place an order for a set of proceedings, send
a check, money order, or purchase order in US dollars, made
payable to SRI International. Orders should be sent to the
DDN Network Information Center at the address below.
California residents (except military) must include 6.5% sales
tax.
Please remember to include with your order: your full name;
the name of your organization or company; your business
address; your telephone number; your email address, if
available; and the name or document number of the proceedings
being ordered.
SRI International
DDN Network Information Center
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Room EJ 291
Menlo Park, CA 94025
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Phone 1-800-235-3155, or 415-859-3695, and ask for Carol Ward
or send electronic mail to NIC@SRI-NIC.ARPA
Mary Stahl (Stahl@SRI-NIC.ARPA)
INTERNET MANAGEMENT
No report received.
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
PRIVACY
During April, minutes from the March IAB Privacy Task Force
meeting were distributed to the task force membership and to
USC folk intending to pursue privacy-enhanced electronic mail
implementation activities.
The next privacy task force meeting is scheduled for
Wednesday-Thursday, 15-16 June 1988 at DEC, Littleton, MA.
John Linn (Linn@CCY.BBN.COM)
ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY
No report received.
SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS
A rapid-prototyping user-oriented set of testbeds is being
conducted by 15 universities under subcontract to the
Universities Space Research Association, in turn under
contract to NASA Office of Space Science and Applications.
The purpose of these testbeds is to investigate the use of
advanced technologies to support telescience, and to identify
the requirements for the information systems of the Space
Station era. The program is well under way, and a major
meeting was held at the University of Colorado in early March.
Details on the program and status can be obtained from RIACS
(Maria@riacs.edu).
Plans are being formulated for a Task Force meeting this
summer. The intent is to finalize three pending white papers
and identify what items we should take up next.
Barry Leiner (Leiner@RIACS.EDU)
No report received.
TACTICAL INTERNET
No report received.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report April 1988
TESTING AND EVALUATION
No report received.