<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR89-03.TXT
MARCH 1989
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).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
APPLICATIONS - USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET ENGINEEERING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
INTERNET MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
PRIVACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
DSAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
NTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
NSF NETWORKING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., NNSC . . . . . . . . page 18
NSFNET BACKBONE (Merit) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NSFNET BACKBONE SITES & MID-LEVEL NETWORK SITES:
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 22
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 22
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH AND UINIVERSITY
SATELLITE NETWORK PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
OARNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
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TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
No report received.
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
We are proceeding with action items identified at our February
meeting. Notes from that meeting are available from
estrin@oberon.usc.edu.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
No internet-related progress to report.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
The following announcement has been sent to selected engineering
and architecture mailing lists and is to appear in the March
issue of the ACM Computer Communication Review.
Workshop on the Future of the Internet System Architecture
and TCP/IP Protocols
1-2 June 1989, University of Delaware
Sponsored by the Internet Architecture Task Force
and the Internet Activities Board
The Internet Activities Board (IAB) has been guiding and
coordinating the research and development activities of the
DARPA/NSF Internet System for several years. The Internet
Architecture Task Force (INARC) of the IAB has been asked to
explore the inherent limitations in the existing Internet
architecture and supporting IP/TCP protocol suite and how the
lessons learned can be applied to future systems. The INARC will
hold a two-day workshop on 1-2 June 1989 at the University of
Delaware to explore these and related issues. While the emphasis
of the workshop will be on the past and future evolution of the
Internet system, specific issues relevant to other
architectures, protocol suites and migration strategies may be
discussed as well.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
Interested persons from all walks of network life are invited to
attend. Participants will be encouraged to present short
briefings on specific technical issues, including those
suggested below, but this is not a requirement for admission.
While some participants may be invited on the basis of their
known expertise, biases and past vocalizations on these issues,
participants outside the IAB, INARC and their dependencies are
actively encouraged. In order to manage the local arrangements
it is necessary that participants register their intent to
attend by contacting the INARC chair:
David L. Mills
Electrical Engineering Department
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
(302) 451-8247
mills@udel.edu.edu
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the
following:
1. Are the Internet architecture and protocols suitable for
use on very high-speed networks operating in the 1000 Mbps
range and up? If the network-level or transport-level
protocols are not usable directly, can they be modified or
new ones developed to operate effectively at these speeds?
2. Are the Internet addressing and gateway-routing algorithms
adequate for very large networks with millions of
subscribers? If not, is it possible to extend the
addressing scope and/or develop new routing paradigms
without starting over from scratch?
3. Can the Internet model of stateless networks and stateful
hosts be evolved to include sophisticated algorithms for
flow management, congestion control and effective use of
multiple, prioritized paths? Can this be done without
abandoning the estimated 60,000 hosts and 700 networks now
gatewayed in the system?
4. Can the existing Internet of about 300 routing domains be
evolved to support the policy and engineering mechanisms
for many thousands of domains including education,
research, commercial and government interests? Can this be
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
done with existing decentralized management styles and
funding sources? If not, what changes are needed and how
can they be supported, given practical limits on
infrastructure funding?
Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING
1) The IETF will meet April 11-14, 1989 in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
The meeting will be hosted by Kennedy Space Center. An
abbreviated version of the agenda is below.
2) Responding to a vote of attendees at the Jan IETF meeting in
Austin, the April meeting is 3.5 days. The first two days are
devoted fully to Working Group sessions, the third day is
devoted fully to technical presentations and network reports,
and the concluding half day is devoted to reports from the
Working Groups.
3) Highlights of Working Group status:
- There are now 20 Working Groups.
- A total of 15 Working Groups will meet in Cocoa Beach.
- There are three new WGs meeting for the first time in
Cocoa Beach. They are Network Management Services
Interface, NOC Tools, and Host Dynamic Configuration.
- Three other WGs have progressed to the point of making
detailed presentations during the technical sessions
on Thursday. These groups are Interconnectivity,
Open Routing, and OSFPIGP.
4) Overview of WG status:
IETF Working Group Status
(April 1989)
Working Groups RFC or Met Current Meeting Chair or POC
Draft? Jan 89? Report? Apr 89? (address)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Authentication Yes No No Yes Jeff Schiller (MIT)
jis@athena.mit.edu
CMIP-over-TCP (CMOT) Yes Yes Yes No Lee LaBarre (MITRE)
cel@mitre-bedford.arpa
DNS (new) Yes Yes Yes Yes Paul Mockapetris (ISI)
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pvm@isi.edu
Host Requirements Yes Yes Yes No Bob Braden (ISI)
braden@isi.edu
Host Dyn. Config. (new) - - - Yes Ralph Droms (Bucknell)
droms@sol.bucknell.edu
Interconnectivity Yes Yes Yes Yes Guy Almes (Rice)
almes@rice.edu
Internet MIB No Yes Yes No Craig Partridge (BBN)
craig@nnsc.nsf.net
LAN Mgr MIB (new) No - Yes Yes Amatzia_Ben-Artzi@
spd.3com.com
NM Ser. Interface (new) - - - Yes Jeff Case (UTK)
case@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu
NOC Tools (new) - - - Yes Bob Enger (Contel)
enger@sccgate.scc.com
NSFnet/Reg Monitoring Yes Yes Yes Yes Susan Hares (Merit)
skh@merit.edu
Open SPF-based IGP Yes No Yes Yes Mike Petry (UMD)
petry@trantor.umd.edu
Open Systems Routing Yes No No No Marianne Lepp (BBN)
mlepp@bbn.com
OSI Interoperability No Yes Yes Yes Ross Callon (DEC)
callon@erlang.dec.com
PDN Routing Group No No Yes Yes C-H Rokitansky
roki@isi.edu
Performance and CC Yes Yes Yes Yes Allison Mankin (MITRE)
mankin@gateway.mitre.org
Pt-Pt Protocol Yes Yes Yes Yes Drew Perkins (CMU)
ddp#@andrew.cmu.edu
ST and CO-IP No Yes Yes Yes Claudio Topolcic (BBN)
topolcic@bbn.com
TELNET Linemode Yes Yes Yes No Dave Borman (Cray)
dab@cray.com
User Services (New) No Yes Yes Yes Karen Bowers (NRI)
bowers@sccgate.scc.com
5) Agenda for the April 11-14 IETF Meeting
TUESDAY, APRIL 11th -- Working Group Sessions
o OSPFIGP (Petry, UMD and Moy, Proteon)
o Network Management Services Interface
(Case, UTK and McCloghrie, TWG)
o OSI Interoperation (Callon, DEC and Hagens, UWisc)
o Performance and Congestion Control, TCP Subgroup
(Mankin, Mitre)
o Point-Point Protocol (Perkins, CMU and Hobby, UCDavis)
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o User Services (Bowers, NRI)
o Authentication (Schiller, MIT and Rochlis, MIT)
o LANMAN MIB (Ben-Artzi, 3Com)
o Domain Name System WG (convened by Drew Perkins, CMU)
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12th -- Working Group Sessions
o NOC Tools (Enger, Contel and Stine, Sparta)
o Joint Interconnectivity and Open Routing WGs
(Almes, Rice and Lepp, BBN)
o Public Data Network Routing (Rokitanski, FERN)
o Performance and Congestion Control (Mankin, Mitre)
o ST and Connection IP (Topolcic, BBN)
o Host Dynamic Configuration (Droms, Bucknell, P.Gross, NRI)
o Joint Monitoring Access for (NSFNET) Adjacent Networks
(Hares, Merit)
THURSDAY, APRIL 13th
o Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about OSPFIGP
(including how to pronounce it) (Moy, Proteon)
o An Interim Routing Architecture (or what to do until
Open Routing gets here...) (Almes, Rice)
o The Open Routing Architecture (Lepp, BBN)
o Internet Report (BBN)
o Growth of the Internet (DCA B600)
o Report on the NASA Science Internet (Medin, Ames)
o Report on the DOE Energy Science Network (Hain, LLNL)
o NSFNET Report
- Architectural Changes to NSFNET (Gerlich, MERIT)
- Nifty NSFNET Stats, using NNStat (Hares, MERIT)
o Arpanet Evaporation Timetable and An Overview of
FRICC Initiatives (eg, NNT, RIB, and RIG) (P.Gross, NRI)
o The DCA TCP/IP Certification Program (M.Gross, DCA-DCEC)
o IP Header Compression (Van Jacobson, LBL)
FRIDAY, APRIL 14th
o Working Group Reports and Discussion
o Concluding Plenary Remarks and Group Discussion
o Tour of Kennedy Space Center
6) For more information about the IETF, please send to
ietf-request@isi.edu.
Phill Gross, IETF Chair (gross@sccgate.scc.com) Corporation for
National Research Initiatives
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INTERNET MANAGEMENT
No report received.
PRIVACY
No report received.
SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS
No report received.
DSAB
----
No report received.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
WIDEBAND NETWORK
Wideband Network activities this month consisted largely of the
continued support of network operations and performance under
conditions of heavy usage. In addition, reconfiguration of the
network associated with the coming transition from a satellite-
based to a terrestrial fiber-based transmission medium has begun.
A prototype interface between the Sun Workstation based Wideband
monitoring system and DARPA's Automated Network Monitoring (ANM)
system was developed this month, thereby providing currently-
available ANM graphical network management capabilities to the
Wideband Network. The interface is implemented via an intermediate
process which provides a translation service between the monitoring
data format used by an ANM management module and the format used by
the existing Wideband Satellite Network Poller (SNP). This
connection allows ANM processes such as the Integrated Monitoring
Display Process to access the management module for status and
performance information from the Wideband Network.
SATNET
This month, SATNET performance was excellent. Statistics collected
by ISI showed an average of 99+% uptime for the remaining two
SIMPs. During this period, there was a hardware problem with the
DCEC gateway, but the CSS gateway provided uninterrupted
connectivity.
On March 20, the Goonhilly SIMP was decommissioned by British
Telecomm. The connections between the Butterfly gateway at RSRE
and the gateways at BBN, NTA, and UCL continued to be stable. At
this point, only the U.S. and Italian SIMPs are still operating.
The new point-to-point link between CNUCE, Italy and DARPA, U.S. is
expected to be operational in mid spring at which time these SIMPs
will be retired.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK
The hardware and software development for the transition of the
Wideband Network to terrestrial links continued to make progress
this month. The installation work will begin the first week of
April and continue as tail circuits between the backbone and the
gateways become available. An initial Terrestrial Wideband Network
will be run in parallel with the satellite-based Wideband with the
two networks connected by a gateway at BBN. This arrangement will
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report March 1989
help to maintain connectivity between sites and minimize
disruptions as we transition gateways to the new network.
The Terrestrial Wideband Network will use one of several cross-
country T1 trunks that are being provided as part of the National
Networking Testbed (NNT). This trunk will go from Boston to San
Francisco in an in-line sequence of hops. Wideband Packet-
Switching nodes (WPS's) will be placed at the NNT Points of
Presence (POPs) and in a few cases at user sites. T1 tail circuits
will be used to connect the original set of Wideband sites (minus
NOSC, DCEC, Lincoln Lab, JPL, Mitre/ESD, and MIT) to this backbone.
The software for the Terrestrial Wideband Network will be fielded
in two phases. The first phase will support most current Wideband
services except for dynamic groups and reserved bandwidth streams.
It will nonetheless support static groups and multimedia
conferences. A second phase will follow the first and will
implement possible features such as higher bandwidth trunks, e.g.,
6 Mbits/sec DS2 trunks, and additional services for resource
management.
INTERNET R&D
Martha Steenstrup has written a white paper with arguments on why
congestion control is necessary and an outline of a congestion
control algorithm with both feed-forward and feed-back controls.
We are in the process of buying/acquiring simulator tools to begin
testing the algorithm.
The Open Routing Working Group (of the IETF) is now chaired by
Marianne Lepp. The group has resolved the main issues of the top
level architecture. The main unresolved issue is how to do data
reduction. In February ORWG met jointly with the ANTF (Autonomous
Systems Task Force) and got some excellent feed-back and guidance
on policy issues from ANTF. During their own meeting time, they
worked out a list of key issues to be decided in the protocol.
Many of the questions have been answered, but it was useful to get
together and discuss what is left. ORWG met again by
teleconference this March. The topic of discussion was how to deal
with size. A number of abstractions were discussed, but the issue
has not been resolved yet. ORWG is preparing a functional
specification which should be available by next month.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
------------------
A quiet month. We are putting together a suggested plan for what
should be done with the RIGs in terms of initial policy-based
routing. Work on Gated has been mainly testing and consolidating
last month's EGP work. The main exception was major cleanup and
enhancement of the NYSERNet Inc. SNMP interface to gated. Gated
now generates SNMP traps through NYSERNet's snmpd for link up, link
down and egp neighbor lost conditions.
Jeff Honig and Scott Brim
(jch@devvax.tn.cornell.edu,swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu)
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Results indicate that, while the IP level congestion control
algorithm is very effective at controlling congestion and is
reasonably efficient in using available bandwidth, it unfairly
distributes that bandwidth among competitive sources. Currently, a
model gateway creates an SQ message for each datagram that causes a
gateway queue overflow. The unfair distribution was not expected.
The probability of receiving a SQ message from a congested gateway
seems out of proportion to that source's use of the congested path.
A question arose: Would fairness be markedly improved if instead,
when an overflow occurred, a gateway randomly chose from its
overflowing queue the message to discard and for which it builds a
Source Quench? The source datagram that causes an overflow will
not necessarily be discarded and provoke an SQ message in that
case. The probablility of a source's receiving an SQ message is
related to the recent reception history of the overflowing queue.
A large series of simulations was run that seems to demonstrate a
marked improvement in distribution of resource. A comparison of
the distribution of process finishing times shows a much narrower
spread when the random SQ approach is used.
Greg Finn
Jon Postel attended the CERFNET meeting at SDSC in San Diego, and
the Calinet meeting in San Ramon, CA, 7-9, March. Jon Postel
participated in the Collaboratory Workshop of NSF, in New York
City, 12-14 March. Jon Postel gave a talk on "Los Nettos", at the
Third IEEE Metropolitan Area Nets Workshop, Dana Point, CA, 28-30
March.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
Two RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1094: Sun Microsystems, Inc., "NFS: Network File System
Protocol Specification", March 1989.
RFC 1096: Marcy, G., "Telnet X Display Location Option",
Carnegie Mellon University, March 1989.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
LOS NETTOS
JPL was added as a new member of Los Nettos. The installation went
without a problem. A T1 line for Rand is on order and the current
delivery schedule is May 1. TRW is joining Los Nettos. With
Pacific Bells new intra-LATA tariff, it is cheaper to run a longer
T1 line from TRW (in GTE territory) to USC (in Pacific Bells
territory) than having both local loops in GTE territory. NOSC
will be joining Los Nettos as well. A line is on order. IBMs
installation is delayed until their move to a new building. The
move is currently anticipated in July. UCLA is now using Los
Nettos as their only path to the Arpanet. Any sites wishing
information about joining Los Nettos should contact Walt Prue at
Prue@isi.edu or via phone at 213-822-1511.
Walter Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
The multimedia teleconference facility in Washington was moved from
the DARPA building at 1400 Wilson up the street two blocks to 1555.
The new room is much larger and has a much better setup than the
temporary installation at 1400. In conjunction with the move, a
Widcom video codec was set up. We are adapting the packet video
software to test the Widcom codec as an alternative to the Image30
codec to demonstrate improved video resolution.
We have been helping BBN to test the latest version of their MMConf
conferencing software. We have also worked on integration of
MMConf and MMCC, the control software for voice and video
conferencing. The new MMConf can present both plain text and
multimedia Diamond/Slate documents. This should make it easier for
teleconferencing users to prepare materials. Also, we joined the
ranks of Slate multimedia mail sites, having coerced mmdeliver, the
program responsible for multimedia mail delivery, to run on our Vax
where mailboxes are stored.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
A new mailbox has been set up for people to request use of the
teleconference facilities. It is VIDEO-CONF-REQUESTS@BBN.COM (or
@ISI.EDU which will forward to BBN).
Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (djwalden@ISI.EDU,
schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU)
NSFNET PROJECT
Annette DeSchon fixed a number of minor BFTP bugs and released a
new tar-file, version 1.12 or BFTP.12.tar.Z in the "pub/" directory
on venera.isi.edu. She started work on the Multiple-host
Background File Transfer Program, or "mbftp", for the Multimedia
Conferencing Project.
Bob Braden attended a two-day meeting convened by the FRICC to
rewrite the NRN (National Research Network) program plan. This
meeting was held in Annapolis and included representatives of the
FRICC, the IAB, congressional staff, and the major common carrier
companies.
Braden chaired a one-day video teleconference of the End-to-End
Task Force, using facilities donated by MCI, and also attended a
one-day video teleconference of the IETF Open Routing Working
Group, using the Internet packet video system. He also worked on
arrangements for the upcoming IAB teleconference.
Finally, we returned to work on the Host Requirements RFC, honing
the text and making changes suggested by Mike Karels, Bill Barns,
Charlie Lynn, Dave Borman, Paul Mockapetris, Jon Postel, and
others. The version available for anonymous FTP from
venera.isi.edu has changed almost daily.
This will be the last report from the ISI NSFnet project.
Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon (Braden@ISI.EDU, DeSchon@ISI.EDU)
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
FAST PARTS
FAST is a DARPA funded research project to develop an automated
broker for the acquisition of standard electronic components.
The FAST broker currently serves 50 project at 19 Universities, 4
companies, and 3 government agencies. FAST interacts with its users
on the ARPANET via formated electronic mail messages.
FAST continues to develop communication links with its suppliers
using both X12 and commerical E-mail routes via MCI. We have
recently begun to explore the automatic generation of FAXs from the
SUN workstation.
Paula Caruso presented "FAST PARTS" at the Electronic Contracting
Conference of the National Contract Management Association, in
Philadelphia, April 3, 1989.
Alan Katz continued work on a Remote Execution Protocol and checked
out release 3 of X windows, version 11 which was recently installed
here.
Alan attended the SCAE conference on Concurrent Engineering: CALS
Phase II and Beyond on March 15-16 in Costa Mesa, California.
Paula Caruso and Alan Katz (Caruso@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU)
MIT-LCS
-------
No internet-related activity to report this month.
Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report March 1989
NYSERNET
--------
An open seminar was held in Troy MAR29-31 on how to ->USE<- SNMP to
manage a network. SNMP/MIB/SMI theory was covered in 4 hours and
then the practical aspects of network management including several
hours of "hands on" with representative agents (cisco,proteon,unix)
and NMS's was completed in over 265 slides. The Draft of the
pseudo public NYSERNet network operations manual was distributed as
a supplement to the seminar.
RFC 1089 was published on running SNMP over the Ethernet MAC layer.
Work on a common SNMP Application Protocol Interface (API) by the
SNMP authors is drawing to a close, posting to the snmp mailing
list will be done before the Florida IETF. The API will make NMS
tools highly portable across protocol implementations, mix and
match tools should be available following RFC publication.
THE TCP/IP NETWORK:
- adding 12 more sites in the next 60 days - P4100's are now being
used for all 9.6kbps and 56kbps leaf connections, one difficulty is
their lack of support of the Proteon Serial line MIB error info
which we've been using for the last 2 years on the p4200's. Very
difficult to do without. - the root domain server C.NYSER.NET was
moved to a dedicated SUN3/50, aside from the 10's of thousands of
TCP connections from IBM's FAL/DNS implementation it is is as
stable as named ever is. - we're finally responding to the
pressure of PC/MAC users who are internet'ed, newer NYSERNet sites
are primarily PC/MAC sites, we will begin operating a POP server
and a PCMail Repository in the near future.
"NYS" ARPANET:
Canadian DND research network cutover from Rochester
Butterfly/Arpanet connection to Proteon/NYSERNet in Rochester.
Another circuit terminated in Buffalo is on order for the Canadian
DND.
Cornell, Columbia, UofR-CS, Rockefeller, all removed from Arpanet,
outsanding for removal are: NYSER, GE-SYR, Hazeltine, Bellcore,
RADC, BellLabs. All except for RADC are scheduled to be removed by
1May89.
NYSERNet's ARPANet circuit is tested to Cambridge, awaiting PSN
installation to our Gateway in Troy,NY. GE-SYR and Hazeltine will
be cutover to NYSERNet.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
NNT:
- both the Arpanet (long-haul) and the Wideband are moving to the
NNT, most of this will be completed VERY early April. - Much
wideband equipment (ButterFlies) will be located in the POP's for
enhanced reliability and lower cost - DOE Internet is next
Martin Schoffstall (schoff@rebel.nyser.net)
SRI
---
No internet progress to report this month.
Zaw-Sing Su (Zsu@KL.SRI.COM
UCL
---
Jon Crowcroft attended and gave a paper on UCL work at a workshop
on Telematique a Grande Vitesse (TGV) in Liege, Belgium. A number
of Supercomputer Users throughout Europe are sponsering this series
of workshops on high speed networking driven very much by the user
requirements (e.g., CERN etc).
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Much effort this month was spent on proposals and document
preparation of various kinds. Our grads continue hacking
theses and various odd jobs. Jeff Simpson is finishing up a
Masters Thesis on a formal model and grammar for a policy-
based routing protocol. Paul Schragger built a token-ring
simulation environment in OPNET as a class project. Dave Mills
attended the FRICC retreat in Annapolis, MD, and the IAB
telemeeting in Washington, DC.
2. In extended discussions with Mike Little of SAIC we are
working on a basic strawman architecture and engineering model
for policy definition and implementation. The motivation for
this study is to explore engineering methodologies appropriate
for the policy requirements being developed by the ANTF. The
strawman draws from the autonomous-confederation model of
RFC-975 plus recent discussions in the ORWG and ANTF. One
somewhat radical feature of the strawman is that the IP
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address space is reused in each confederation and routing
between confederations is based only on the space of
confederation numbers.
3. Activity continued this month testing the new NTP Version 2
beta implementations for Fuzzball and Unix systems. Various
subtle bugs were found and corrected in the implementations
and specification. Careful measurements made at several sites
over periods of days to weeks have demonstrated that the new
version has far superior stability and accuracy relative to
the older versions. The present factors limiting accuracy
appear to be instabilities in the crystal oscillators used in
the time servers and in the various propagation modes used by
the NIST broadcast time services.
4. Precision crystal oscillators have been ordered for two of our
time-server hosts. These should improve frequency accuracy to
the order of 10**-10 and, in particular, allow further
investigation into the factors limiting stability and
accuracy.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
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NSF NETWORKING
--------------
NSF NETWORKING
UCAR/BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC., NNSC
The NNSC is updating the contact information for local/campus
NSFNET liaisons. Please send any changes to nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net.
Karen Roubicek attended a meeting at NSF to plan a networking
conference for end-users in April.
by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE
Merit/NSFNET Internetworking Seminar
An Internetworking Seminar will be held April 17 and 18 at the
Radisson Suite Resort at Hilton Head, South Carolina. This seminar
is designed for campus liaisons and for those who help end users.
Limited openings still exist. For further information or to
register, please telephone 1-800- 66-MERIT or send electronic mail
to 'nsfnet-info@merit.edu'.
NSFNET Advanced Topics Seminar
The NSFNET Internet Engineering Group sponsored a seminar in Ann
Arbor on March 8 and 9. Eighty-four attendees participated in
discussions of current networking issues.
Presentors from across the country discussed such subjects as IS-IS
routing, SNMP in the NSFNET, network monitoring tools, NSFNET
architectural changes, and a number of other topics. In
conjunction with the seminar, a working-group meeting of the Joint
Monitoring Access for Adjacent Networks (JO-MAAN) was held and
attended by some 50 people. This group discussed ways in which the
NSFNET backbone, regional networks, and campus networks could
cooperate to solve user problems expediently.
Network Mapping Capabilities Enhanced
The Internet Engineering Group is currently expanding the use of
digital cartographical software in order to generate both
interactive and hardcopy network maps. Software and data have been
acquired from several sources and we can now produce maps of the
NSFNET backbone as well as several regional networks. The
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
interactive version is based on the X Window System and will be
used for network planning and other purposes.
We are collecting geographic coordinates from regional networks in
order to produce these maps and welcome this information from the
regionals. Please send comments or inquiries via electronic mail
to 'ie@merit.edu' or telephone 1-800-66-MERIT.
Updates to NSFNET-IS Remote Query Database
Two enhancements to the Merit-NSFNET Information Services remote
query database have been made. The CONTACTS command has been
expanded and the TOPOLOGY command has been added. Complete
documentation may be obtained by sending electronic mail to either:
nis-info@nis.nsf.net or nis-info@merit (Bitnet)
and specifying "HELP" as the first line of the message. (The
"subject" field is ignored.) If assistance is needed in using the
server, send electronic mail to either:
userhelp@nis.nsf.net
or
userhelp@merit (Bitnet)
Comparison of Packet Counts
------------------------------------------------------------
February 1989 / March 1989
Packets In Packets Out
February 573,390,288 593,669,705
March 745,599,984 755,073,841
% increase 30% 27%
------------------------------------------------------------
by Patricia G. Smith (PGS@nis.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE SITES & MID-LEVEL NETWORK SITES
BARRNET
No report received.
CERFNET
Technically Speaking
During the month of March, CERFnet placed equipment orders for
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Internet Monthly Report March 1989
circuits, cisco gateways and CSU/DSUs. CERFnet expects to receive
notice from vendors regarding firm delivery dates shortly. The
installation of the backbone has been rescheduled for the first
week of May. Installations for remaining sites will begin the last
week of May and first week of June.
A 56 kilobit link was initiated from the San Diego Supercomputer
Center to Qualcomm, Incorporated, a San Diego based company, on
March 28th.
The cisco AGS at the California State University Chancellor's
Office SWRL facility and CSU Fullerton are running the 7.1 release.
They have found a major (instant, consistent crash) with DECnet on
the 7.1 release. DECnet circuits are not automatically figured at
this time. However, Appletalk routing is now being done by the
cisco.
Other Network Activity
On March 1st and 2nd a CERFnet representative attended the FARNet
meeting held at Stanford University.
On March 7th CERFnet held a plenary meeting at the San Diego
Supercomputer Center. Items discussed included the Fiscal Year
1989 Budget, the Los Nettos/CERFnet Cooperation Plan, the CERFnet
Topology, and the installation schedule. The next meeting is
scheduled for July 10th, 1989.
A signed agreement was received from the California Institute of
Technology.
CERFnet accepted an Associate Membership from Custom Product
Design, an Irvine based company. University of California at
Irvine, will manage their membership.
by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu)
CICNET
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation's NSF-supported CICNet
became fully operational on 3 March 1989. CICNet is comprised of T1
circuits, provided by MCI, and Cisco routers on campuses at the
University of Chicago, the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses of
the University of Illinois, and the remaining Big Ten University
campuses, with the exception of Purdue University.
Last December, Merit assumed the responsibility for the
implementation of CICNet, with the assistance of the CICNet
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Technical Committee, composed of members from each of the
participating universities. Jessica Yu, of Merit's Internet
Engineering staff was the coordinator and the principal person at
Merit overseeing the engineering aspects of the implementation.
Cathy Aronson, formerly a network operator in Merit's NOC, began
her duties as the person in our Internet Engineering group with
principal responsibilities for CICNet in January of this year, and
is taking over Jessica's CICNet role in the engineering aspects of
this project. On 1 March 1989, Joel Maloff assumed duties as the
new Executive Director of CICNet, replacing Barbara Wolfe, who has
moved on to a position at Southern Methodist University. Joel was
formerly associated with the National Telecommunications Network, a
consortium of fiber-optic-based communications providers. Two
CICNet positions within Merit's Information Services will soon be
filled, and three new operators in Merit's Network Operations
Center have been hired to accommodate our expanded operations and
management responsibilities.
The full eleven-node network has been up and running for four weeks
and the Merit NOC is closely monitoring CICNet. During this period
there were no major outages on the network. Some data regarding
pre- and post-CICNet connectivity situations, collected by Jessica
Yu, give an indication of the improvement provided by the new
network:
Ping Delay Times: Ann Arbor to Ohio State hosts
OSU Hosts round trip delays (min/ave/max)
to 35.1.1.30 pre-CICNet CICNet
------------------------------------------------------
128.146.1.4 84/85/88 16/16/22
128.146.8.60 94/118/337 24/29/39
128.146.8.62 91/97/110 21/29/28
130.101.2.2 131/136/141 65/87/121
Merit's CICNet staff can be reached at CICNet@merit.edu, or at 1-
800-66-MERIT. A current PostScript version of the CICNet topology
map (CICNet.PS) is stored on the MAPS directory on the nis.nsf.net
(35.1.1.48) Information Services host machine, and is obtained via
anonymous FTP. current PostScript version of the CICNet topology
map (CICNet.PS) is stored on the MAPS directory on the nis.nsf.net
(35.1.1.48) Information Services host machine, and is obtained via
anonymous FTP.
by James C. Sweeton (SWEETON@merit)
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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
No report received.
JVNCNET NORTHEAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
No report received.
MERIT/UMNET
No report received.
MIDNET
No report received.
MRNET
Bethel College was formally accepted as a member of MRNet this
month. Congratulations to Bethel College.
ETA Systems has upgraded their link to MRNet to use Cisco routers.
This will enable more of the ETA internal network to access MRNet
and the Internet. ETA also expects their traffic to increase as
more people are able to easily access MRNet.
The NSF grant for equipment to connect Carleton College and St.
Olaf College was approved. These schools are moving towards
upgrading their connections.
Several ad hoc committees were formed during the March general
meeting. These committees include:
o A business plan committee which will explore alternative
organizational structures for MRNet as well as recommend the
range of services MRNet ought to offer to its members.
o A membership committee which will, is some sense, examine
what the mission of MRNet ought to be and by implication who
our members are likely to be.
o A bylaws committee which will review the MRNet bylaws and
recommend any updates which are believed warranted.
by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu)
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NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH AND THE UNIVERSITY
SATELLITE NETWORK PROJECT
NCAR recently acquired a new Cray XMP-18 and is bringing up the
UNIX operating system UNICOS on it. This allows the possibility of
Internet access via TCP/IP. Since the LAN for the supercomputers
was historically a NSC Hyperchannel, practical access to the
Internet is only possible via a TCP/IP Hyperchannel <-> ethernet
NSC router known as the EN641. Unfortunately, the NCAR local class
B net, is a bridged network. If an attempt is made to use the same
class B net for the Hyperchannel and ethernet side, then many of
the "subnets" on the ethernet side are unreachable because the
EN641 insists on a subnet mask as the only way to direct packets to
the proper interface. The EN641 does not have the ability to use a
static table of {subnet, interface} pairs to direct packets. As a
result, NCAR will have to acquire a class C address for hosts on
the Hyperchannel.
by Don Morris (morris@windom.ucar.edu)
NORTHWESTNET
During March, NWnet experienced one significant (leased line
related) outage, but otherwise performed very reliably. That
outage made us realize that although we had designed the network
for redundancy, this redundancy existed only for TCP/IP; our DECnet
design was not robust in the presence of single link failures since
several areas spanned multiple sites. We have renumbered, but the
moral for multiple- protocol networks seems to be that one must be
careful to analyze each protocol topology separately.
Router upgrades to Proteon's 8.1 release are in progress, and
should be completed during April.
After analysis of traffic patterns and network reliability, we have
concluded that the present ring topology (circumference 9) of NWnet
does not serve our needs: it puts several sites 2 or more analog-
modem hops away from the NSS (implying very high RTTs to NSFnet)
without contributing substantially to network uptime. We
anticipate shifting to a star topology later this spring. Our
analysis continues. One promising possibility is the use of dialup
IP to create fallback circuits when failures partition the network.
Our network manager, Boeing Computer Services, is finally beginning
to provide us with some performance and traffic data on the
network, which should make further analysis substantially easier.
by JQ Johnson (jqj@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu)
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OARNET
No report received.
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
PSC is now providing NSFnet to ARPAnet connectivity via a new
gateway, psc-gw4 (192.5.146.4, 10.7.0.14). Psc-gw4 carries all of
the traffic from NSF only networks to ARPA/MIL only networks and
about half of the traffic from ARPA/MIL only networks to NSF only
networks (The rest is carried by uxc.cso.uiuc.edu). Psc-gw4 has
been very stable and has not had problems running out of resources.
It and its 56k link to the ARPAnet have been relatively unstressed.
However our connection to the ARPAnet, PSN14, is seriously
congested. Psc-gw4 discards 20% of the traffic presented from the
NSFnet because PSN14 refuses the traffic. This is the long term
average: During prime time it often discards more than it delivers.
The 56k link almost never reaches 50% utilization.
All PSCnet east Proteon P4200 have been upgraded to version 8.1.
PSCnet west Proteons are running version 8.0. We will be upgrading
them to 8.1 when we resolve DECNET configurations.
by Matt Mathis (mathis@fornax.ece.cmu.edu)
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
The 56k link between UNV and SDSC has been installed and tested.
The UNV gateway cisco is now scheduled to arrive in early April.
As planned, during the month we started carrying IP traffic over
the 56k DECnet link to SAIC (net 192.5.8). This is a temporary
measure and will be replaced by a CERFnet link in early May.
Our 56K SDSCnet link to the Research Institutes of Scripps Clinic
has been converted from SDSCnet to a p4200 link. It is currently
carrying IP traffic. DECnet will be added in the near future.
RISC is net 192.42.82.
A Class B address (132.249 - SDSClan) has been assigned to the San
Diego Supercomputer Center. We will be converting from out
existing Class C address (192.12.207) but a Flag Day has not yet
been selected.
Paul Love San Diego Supercomputer Center loveep@sds.sdsc.edu
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SESQUINET
No report received.
SURANET
SURAnet continues to increase in the number of sites connected and
in the number of networks advertised to the NSFnet.
At present there are 58 sites online and 71 networks are being
advertised to the NSFnet.
The current list of sites and networks can be obtained via
anonymous FTP from noc.sura.net, password guest, cd pub. File name
is "online".
by Jack Hahn (hahn@umd5.umd.edu)
WESTNET
1. Carol Ward attended the SNMP workshop at NYSERNet, and David
Wood attended the FARNet meeting at Stanford. Both meetings
were well received by the attendees.
2. The T-1 connection between the University of Colorado and NCAR
(finally) seems to be reliable and free of significant error.
3. We had a couple of cisco CPU cards fail near the end of this
month. This is worrisome to us; we are wondering if such
occurrences are endemic in the hardware. We would appreciate
hearing from any of you who have experienced statistically
significant events with cisco hardware -- especially multiple
failures within a short duration.
4. The microwave link between the University of Wyoming and
Colorado State University (which replaced an analog circuit)
is working very well, yielding much improved performance.
by Pat Burns (pburns@super.org), David C. M. Wood
(dcmwood@spot.colorado.edu)