<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR89-05.TXT
MAY 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
IAB Task Forces
APPLICATIONS - USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ENGINEEERING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
PRIVACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
DSAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 14
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 17
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NSFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., NNSC . . . . . . . . page 23
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 25
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
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IAB TASK FORCE REPORTS
----------------------
APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE
As promised in the last Internet Monthly, here are the
(abbreviated) charters of the newly-constituted connection
architecture and testbed working groups. Both groups will be
meeting informally coincident with the meeting of the full task
force, at Bellcore, June 13-15.
CONNECTION ARCHITECTURE WORKING GROUP (Dan Swinehart, Chair)
The purpose of this group is to discover or develop an
architecture that captures, at a sufficiently high level, the
notions of voice [and video] connections and of the services
that use them. The members of the User Interface Task Force
build voice and video applications whose requirements cannot be
met fully either by existing telephone systems or by proposed
ISDN-based systems. The shortfalls are primarily in the area of
flexible, fast control of connections, not in the underlying
transmission and switching technologies. Like ISDN, a
satisfactory architecture must provide interfaces that a variety
of vendors can implement using a variety of methods. The group
will examine existing standards, architectures, and research
prototypes in order to develop a position on how an adequate
connection architecture might be developed.
TESTBED WORKING GROUP (Lester Ludwig, Chair)
The charter of the Testbed Working Group is to expedite the
development of an international, inter-organizational broadband
testbed for experimentation in multimedia communications and
computer-supported cooperative work. The working group will
perform the following tasks:
- Identify which sites would be willing to participate, under
what conditions.
- Identify the baseline hardware and applications suite to use
to bootstrap the testbed.
- Identify the value of this applications suite outside the
testbed.
- Identify how the applications will be used in any necessary
trials.
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
- Identify any measurements, requirements specifications, etc.,
that should be provided.
- Track relevant developments, including other testbeds.
- Share the load of getting associated proposals accepted and
deployed.
Keith Lantz (LANTZ@ORC.OLIVETTI.COM)
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
ANTF will have its next meeting in July.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
The Workshop on the Future of the Internet System Architecture
and TCP/IP Protocols was held 1-2 June 1989 at the University of
Delaware. About 77 souls attended the workshop, which included a
day of individual presentations and a day of panel discussions.
Several formal papers resulted from the presentations, which
will be combined with panel summaries and an executive overview
for early publication in a special issue of the ACM Computer
Communications Review.
Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING
1) Two new groups were organized and met during May. These are
both sub-groups under the auspices of the User Services WG. The
new groups are the Network Information Services Infrastructure
(NISI) and the User Documents groups. Meeting reports are
available from USWG chair Karen Bowers
(bowers@nri.reston.va.us).
2) The MIB WG met at Proteon on May 18th. Issues included a
common format for network interface objects and the Lan Manager
MIB. Results are available from MIB WG chair Craig Partridge
(craig@nnsc.net.com). During the meeting it was noted that any
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
decisions to include the Lan Manager MIB in the Internet core
MIB rested finally with the IAB.
3) There is an IAB Network Management meeting planned for June
12th. The meeting will be chaired by Vint Cerf (NRI). This
meeting is an (approximate) one year follow-up to the meeting
that produced RFC 1052. The rough agenda is to examine the
status of Internet NM resulting from the decisions of the RFC
1052 meeting and to review future directions (including
interaction with other efforts like the NIST NM SIG).
4) Several working group meetings were postponed until the DARPA
video teleconferencing sytstem is available again.
5) I am chairing a FRICC sponsored workshop in June on OSI
migration and related Directory Services issues. The IETF OSI
WG chairs have been invited to insure coordination of these
efforts.
Phill Gross (gross@SCCGATE.SCC.COM)
INTERNET MANAGEMENT
No report received.
PRIVACY
The Privacy Task Force held a productive meeting 23-25 May 1989
at University College London (UCL), England. The next meeting
of the PTF is planned for 24-26 October 1989 at Dartmouth
College in Hanover, NH.
At the meeting the following draft RFCs were distributed for
review and comment: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic
Mail: Part II Certificate-Based Key Management and RFC 1040,
Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I:
Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures. Steve
Wilber distributed his article on "MAC Layer Security Measures
in LANs".
The task force discussed Kerberos authentication and key
distribution protocols in light of various concerns raised over
the last several months. At the request of Dave Mills, proposed
security mechanisms for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) were
reviewed, but the task force was unable to evaluate the
mechanisms in the absence of a more thorough security
requirements description. The task force began exploration of
security mechanisms for gateway-gateway protocols, e.g., EGP3.
Westine [Page 5]
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Use of the CCITT X.509 authentication framework with
certificates representing both gateways and networks was
discussed. The task force initiated work on defining standard
cryptographic algorithm interfaces for use with protocols in
order to promote use of such algorithms in widely distributed
protocol implementations.
Steve Wilber discussed the UCL environment, its computing
services, and projects. Michael Roe of UCL presented
Authentication Strategies for OSI Applications. Steve Kille of
UCL presented and demonstrated a UCL prototype of an X.500
directory server agent (Quipu) and an interactive directory user
agent.
TIS reports that their MH-Mail based implementation of RFC 1040
with key management will soon be ready for limited release. TIS
plans to make its Mach-based implementation available to PTF
members protocols in light of various concerns raised over the
last several months. At the request of Dave Mills, proposed
security mechanisms for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) were
reviewed, but the task force was unable to evaluate the
mechanisms in the absence of a more thorough security
requirements description. The task force began exploration of
security mechanisms for gateway-gateway protocols, e.g., EGP3.
Use of the CCITT X.509 authentication framework with
certificates representing both gateways and networks was
discussed. The task force initiated work on defining standard
cryptographic algorithm interfaces for use with protocols in
order to promote use of such algorithms in widely distributed
protocol implementations.
Steve Wilber discussed the UCL environment, its computing
services, and projects. Michael Roe of UCL presented
Authentication Strategies for OSI Applications. Steve Kille of
UCL presented and demonstrated a UCL prototype of an X.500
directory server agent (Quipu) and an interactive directory user
agent.
TIS reports that their MH-Mail based implementation of RFC 1040
with key management will soon be ready for limited release. TIS
plans to make its Mach-based implementation available to PTF
members for beta testing at the end of June. Plans are to make
a Unix-based version of the implementation available to a wider
range of Internet users in September.
Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM)
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SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS
No report received.
DSAB
----
Nothing to report this month.
Charlotte Tubis (Tubis@Purdue.Edu)
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INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
SATNET
After over 10 years of faithful service, the SATNET was officially
turned off on May 12, 1989 at 20:00 GMT. Up until that time,
SATNET performance continued to be excellent. Statistics collected
by ISI showed an average of 100% uptime for the remaining SIMPs --
Fucino, Italy and Roaring Creek, USA.
In place of the SATNET, there will be two point-to-point circuits
from the US to Europe. The first, an IBS circuit to RSRE, has been
in place since January 1989. NTA and UCL are reachable via RSRE.
The second, an IBS circuit to CNUCE, is expected to be in place in
mid to late June. In the meantime, CNUCE can be reached via BITNET
and the VAN Gateway at BBN.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK
During May, we continued the shakedown of the switches and links
installed so far. After some initial problems in the first part of
the month, the network has remained very stable with minimal
software or hardware problems. Next month, we will be continuing
to install Wideband Packet Switches (WPSs) as power at the POPs and
tail circuits between the backbone and the gateways become
available.
Current sites:
BBN, (BBN WPS) -- installed
ISI, (LA WPS) -- installed
DARPA, (Washington WPS) -- installed
Future installation work will include:
RADC, Ft. Monmouth (NY WPS) -- Power at the POP was delayed, so
in June we plan to install a WPS at the NY POP and transition
the Wideband gateway at RADC to the new network. The site at
Ft. Monmouth will be connected to this WPS as soon as the tail
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Internet Monthly Report May 1989
circuit is available. We do not yet have a confirmed date for
the on-site wiring. This could take approximately 30-60 more
days as of the end of May.
SRI, Stanford (SRI WPS) -- In the first week of June, we plan to
upgrade the SRI BSAT to be used as the SRI WPS. As soon as that
machine is installed, we will transition the SRI IP and ST
gateways and the Stanford IP gateway to the new network.
CMU (Pittsburgh WPS) -- We have been informed that work on power
and wiring at the POP was begun on 4/28. However, we do not yet
have a confirmed date for on campus wiring for CMU. During
June, we will upgrade a Wideband BSAT for use as the CMU WPS.
NRL (Washington WPS) -- Work began during May for adding a
gateway at this site and connecting it to the already installed
Washington WPS. The tail circuit is confirmed for July 1, but
may occur sooner. Installation of the gateway and connection
will take place shortly after the circuit becomes available.
NCSA (Chicago WPS) -- Work began during May for connecting NCSA
to the Terrestrial Wideband. This will involve both a gateway
and a WPS. Plans will be finalized for this installation in
June.
INTERNET R&D
We shipped two SURAN Butterfly Gateways, one to SRI and one to Ft.
Monmouth and plan to install them this month. The second Ft.
Monmouth system will be shipped and installed after the first
machine is up and running.
The Butterfly VAN gateway has been running successfully for the
month. We are currently working with CNUCE to get EGP to run over
Telenet.
Marianne Lepp has written a draft of an extended architecture for
policy routing which for the Open Routing Working Group. The next
ORWG meeting is scheduled to coincide with the July IETF.
ISO/OSI MIGRATION
In support of the International Cooperation Board (used to be
called SATNET, but that's gone) Mike Brescia has met with Jon
Wilkes and others from the Shape Technical Center (STC), Den Haag,
the Netherlands, to work toward demonstrations of protocol
translations between ISO and TCP/IP.
Westine [Page 9]
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Application level protocol translations, supported by ISODE on a
Sun system, are planned come up as a first step, running on a
machine at STC where there will be many ISO protocol hosts able to
connect in.
Transport level protocol translation was being developed for a
while by people at STC, and the next level of effort will be for
Mike Brescia and Jon Wilkes to complete this and port the code to a
Butterfly gateway that will be running at STC.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Throughout the month of May, CERFnet received the remainder of its
equipment from vendors. Shortages in parts at the cisco Systems
manufacturing facility delayed the arrival of CERFnet equipment.
The new memory chip which is utilized in the CGS cisco boxes had to
undergo testing before it could be utilized in the boxes,
therefore, temporarily delaying delivery. Similar problems
occurred with AGS cisco boxes which are and will be utilized
throughout the CERFnet Backbone. The new 4S communications board in
the AGS boxes also had to undergo certain testing before being
released for use.
The installation of the CERFnet Backbone is underway. California
Institute of Technology (Caltech) was brought on line on May 23rd.
Susie Arnold, Associate Staff Programmer for CERFnet, traveled to
Caltech to assist in the installation. Case Datatel
representatives were also on-hand during the installation to ensure
the CSU/DSUs worked correctly. Routing problems occurred initially
between Caltech and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), with
the problems stemming from the SDSC end, however, these problems
were resolved by the end of the day.
The remaining CERFnet Backbone sites, will be turned up as follows.
University of California, Irvine (UCI) is expected to be turned-up
the week of May 29th. University of California, Los Angeles, is
now scheduled to be turned up the week of June 5th.
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The remaining CERFnet sites are tentatively scheduled to be brought
up as follows:
University of California, Santa Barbara - end of June 1989
University of San Diego (USD) - end of June 1989
University of California, Riverside - early July 1989
California State University/SWRL Facility (and campuses)
- early July 1989
Claremont Colleges- early August 1989
Occidental College- November 1989
Turn-up of the Agouron Institute connection is pending.
Notice of a due date of August 1st, for installation of the 56
kilobit circuit between Claremont and Caltech was received. The
1.544 megabit (T1) circuit between the CSU SWRL facility and UC
Irvine is due to be installed July 1st. The 56 kilobit line
between University of San Diego and SDSC has been installed.
On March 8th, the San Diego Supercomputer Center ( a backbone site
on CERFnet) was unavailable for several hours due to a power outage
at the center.
Among other activity to report, the CERFnet newsletter, CERFnet
News, was distributed to over 300 people both state and nationwide.
The distribution of the newsletter has also expanded to electronic
distribution. Contact Karen Armstrong at armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu if
you would like to receive CERFnet News.
by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@Luac.Sdsc.Edu)
CICNET
-------
No report received.
CORNELL
-------
Gated now has a working prototype of the Border Gateway Protocol,
which can currently exchange routing information with
implementations by cisco and IBM. At this point we still have not
linked in the usual gated configuration controls. Since BGP is
based on TCP, some extensions have been required to gated's "core"
facilities.
The gated routing table has been modified to support multiple
routes per destination net in the routing table. Multiple routes
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
can now be maintained on a per protocol, per AS basis. This change
required a selection of routes based on the "preference" of the
protocol (or protocol and AS for exterior protocols) modeled after
cisco's "administrative distance". The route used (installed in
the kernel, passed to other ASs) is the one with the highest
(lowest numeric) preference.
Gated's interface to the kernel's routing table has been isolated
into a separate source file to allow for modularity. The ultimate
goal is to provide the "core" facilities to treat the kernel
routing table as just another routing protocol module instead of
the special treatment it currently receives.
Gated attempts to determine if it's host system is functioning as a
gateway and if so, undoes the effects of ICMP redirects to the
kernel's routing table. This option may be manually configured in
the configuration file.
Jeff Honig and Scott Brim attended the IETF at Cocoa Beach with a
primary focus on the Interconnectivity and OIGP working groups.
Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu)
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden split the Host Requirements RFC into two RFC's, one
covering the link layer through the transport layer, and the other
covering the application and support protocols. This was necessary
because the total size had become unmanageable, nearly 200 pages.
however, we will continue to speak of the pair as "THE Host
Requirements RFC". The latest version of the RFC, incorporating a
number of changes, was made available for anonymous FTP on May 17.
Bob also helped to produce the study on Policy-Based Routing for
the NNT.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Greg Finn continued to study possible UNIX kernel modifications for
insertion of Source Quench congestion control into the IP protocol.
Greg Finn (Finn@ISI.EDU)
A series of questions were formulated to focus on various issues of
the Domain Name System performance. A new DNS query tool was
implemented to gather the necessary data. This tool, DiG (domain
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
information groper), is a command line tool which queries DNS
servers in either an interactive or a batch mode. It was developed
to be more convenient/flexible than nslookup for gathering
performance data and testing DNS servers. It's features and options
include most of those provided by nslookup, and several others. It
is available via anonymous ftp from VENERA.ISI.EDU in
"pub/dig.1.0.tar.Z". Currently, an asynchronous version is being
implemented so data can be collected in a more timely fashion.
Steve Hotz (hotz@ISI.EDU)
Jon Postel participated in NSFNET's status review 16-18 May 1989.
One RFCs was published this month.
RFC 1102: Clark, D., "Policy Routing in Internet Protocols",
MIT, Laboratory for Computer Science, May 1989.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
Work has continued on making the multimedia conferencing system
better integrated and more operationally robust. PVP, the packet
video host, was modified to run as a background process started
from a script for automatic rebooting from diskette. This change
allows technicians to telnet to the Butterfly and run a separate
program to act as a "terminal" for the PVP process when manual
intervention is required to correct problems. A race condition
between PVP and VT, the packet voice host, was discovered in
testing ST connections over the new and faster terrestrial wideband
net. This problem has been fixed.
The workstation conferencing environment is composed of MMCC, the
conference control program, MBFTPTOOL, a program for background
distribution of files among conference sites, and BBN's MMConf
shared workspace. The layout of both MMCC and MBFTPTOOL have been
changed to allow them to fit on the screen with MMConf. MMCC now
communicates conference id and site list to MBFTPTOOL through
several mediating files. These files are created and dynamically
maintained in a directory specified by the BFTPDIR environment
variable. MBFTPTOOL now displays destination hosts in a tabular
format including a status for each transfer in progress. Detailed
status for a particular transfer may also be displayed in a
separate subwindow. To make MBFTPTOOL easier for novice conference
participants to use, the middle mouse button now brings up a help
subwindow for each command/parameter.
Westine [Page 13]
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We held a teleconference with DARPA this month to demonstrate
packet video using Widcom codecs and the Terrestrial WBnet. While
the static resolution of the Widcom is better than the Concept
codec we use for multi-site video, motion quality is low at 56Kb/s.
We will explore higher rates with the Widcom and other codecs to
get improved video quality.
Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (djwalden@ISI.EDU,
schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
Alan Katz continued to learn C++, GNU G++, and the Interviews X
toolkit.
Alan Katz (CARUSO@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
Most member sites are sending all of their internet traffic over
Los Nettos now. IMP connections were decommissioned for USC,
Caltech, Rand and JPL. TIS, and UCLA lost their connections
earlier. We experienced routing problems when all of these sites
started sending all of their data over Los Nettos. Site routing
had to be changed to allow the site hosts to adapt to the new
routing. We also needed to make sure that all of the Los Nettos
member networks were authorized to be advertised to the NSFNet
core.
We have a June 14 due date for the T1 line to TRW. The due date
for the IBM lines is July 3. The lines connecting IBM will close a
loop for TIS IBM, and Rand providing better reliability for the
three sites.
We have received the last of 5 Datatels returned for repair. I now
suspect the change of shipping companies may have something to do
with the high Datatel failure rate this last delivery.
We are working on getting a signed agreement from NOSC and UNISYS
(in Camarillo) to become new members of Los Nettos. We can't order
equipment until we have some assurance that we will be reimbursed.
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
CERFNet's link from UCLA to SDSC and the NSFNet was upgraded from
56K to 512K. Both before and after the upgrade it was discovered
that there is about 15 ms. delay each way on this fractional T1
link. This delay is over and above the delay caused by the length
of a packet. The delays come from a pair of modems, a pair of IDNX
muxes, a pair of CSUs, cisco processing time, a pair of cisco
interfaces, and the long distance phone company facility. In
contrast, a full T1 with only a pair of cisco interfaces, a pair of
CSU/DSUs, and a short-distance T1 facility has only 1 to 2 ms.
delay each way. The figures were determined by graphing different
size ping packets vs. round trip time and extending the graph to
zero byte packet sizes. The zero byte delay figures include the
link layer protocol overhead which was not counted in the packet
sizes.
CERFNet has also installed a cisco at Caltech connected to SDSC
with a T1 line. We are working with CERFNet and Caltech to
optimize the routes and provide backup/alternate routing in case of
a link failure. Cooperation between CERFNet and Los Nettos
continues to be good.
Walt Prue (prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
No report received.
MIDNET
------
Over the last few months there has been a lot of activity at
MIDnet. We have accepted 5 new members, the University of Missouri
at Kansas City, U of Missouri at Rolla, the U of Missouri at St.
Louis, EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the
University of South Dakota at Vermillion. The lines to connect all
of these sites as well as carry out an extensive reconfiguration of
MIDnet are scheduled to be delivered on or about July 1st.
At the same meeting we also adopted an acceptable use policy and a
fee schedule for new corporate and non-corporate members. Anyone
interested in seeing these should contact me.
I have been traveling in the region quite extensively of late,
talking to smaller universities and colleges. We are getting some
favorable responses and expect to enroll several such institutions
in the coming months.
We are also planning to have a user services meeting this summer at
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Internet Monthly Report May 1989
which we hope to make some progress on deciding what sort of
services we should offer. We need to expand the types of services
we at MIDnet provide as well as making people aware of the servies
available from Merit and NNSC. We are also in the process of
developing a job description for a user services staff person.
Lastly we are working with a couple of Universities to give them
access to MIDnet via slip lines. We think that this will provide us
a means to connect some places that otherwise would not be able to
get a connection to the national networks.
by Dale Finkelson (dmf@westie.unl.edu)
MIT-LCS
-------
We are continuing our effort on studying the effectiveness of using
fair queueing algorithm and random drop strategy in IP networks.
Further results will be reported in a month or so.
Lixia Zhang (lixia@LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
MRNET
-----
The MRNet general meeting previously scheduled for June 14 has been
deferred. The Executive Committee intends to meet for several
half-day sessions to prepare recommendations for the future of
MRNet prior to the next general meeting.
Discussions continued with and about CICnet concerning whether
MRNet should receive its Internet access through CICnet.
Jeff Wabik, Chair of the MRNet Technical Committee, joined the
Minnesota Supercomputer Center where he will be able to continue
his contribution to MRNet. Jeff was previously at CDC.
The Mayo Foundation ordered a Cisco Router and plans to retire its
Bridge GS/3s (the current MRnet link hardware) by August. Mayo
received approval from the University of Minnesota to link to their
Cisco AGS box.
Cray Research's link to MRNet continues to move towards a standard
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
IP connection. During May Cray (128.162) was added to the
necessary autonomous systems so the Internet now knows about
128.162. Numeric addresses will work if domain names fail to reach
Cray.
Honeywell interconnected two more divisions, Space and Strategic
Avionics Systems Division and Solid State Electronics Center, this
month to the Honeywell Hub. They are in the process of installing
a link to Defense Systems Division. It should be operational in
early June.
MRNet has received inquiries on connection from:
o Minneapolis VA Hospital
o Minnesota State University Network
o Management Graphics
by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu)
NCAR/USAN
---------
The annual USAN site administrators meeting was held in Denver.
Current USAN members are Oregon State University, the Universities
of Wisconsin, Maryland, and Miami, the Naval Research Labs, Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Institute of Naval Oceanography,
and a new member which will begin transmitting in June - Penn State
University. Maryland and Wisconsin are withdrawing from USAN at the
start of the next fiscal year in October.
Besides bugetary matters, the meeting participants expressed a
great interest in statistical gathering facilities (mainly the
Braden/DeSchon NNStat code) and in the proposed products of the
IETF User Services Working Group.
by Don Morris (morris@ncar.ucar.edu)
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
MIT Lincoln Laboratory and BBN were added to NEARnet during May.
There are now seven operational sites, six of which are connected
using 10 Mb microwave technology. The connection to Lincoln
Laboratory involves a two-hop system, one leg of which stretches an
Ethernet over an eight mile microwave shot.
A network operations center has been established at BBN to remotely
monitor and control NEARnet. A problem reporting and tracking
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
system was implemented using the Informix database during the month
to help with NEARnet operations.
The NEARnet Planning Committee, which includes representatives from
fourteen New England institutions, met in April to begin planning
for the second-stage expansion of NEARnet.
It is anticipated that a microwave connection to DEC will be added
during June which will complete Phase 1. The first Phase 2 sites
are also planned to join during June, including an extension of the
NEARnet backbone to M2C in Westboro, Massachusetts.
by John Rugo (jrugo@bbn.com)
NORTHWESTNET
------------
After continued negotiations with our network manager, BCS, we have
reaffirmed our decision to go ahead with a reengineered network
featuring a mostly-tree topology replacing the current mostly-ring.
We are also experimenting with automated dialup SLIP links as a way
to repair partitions to the network.
Some observations on the reengineering process: our commercial
network manager tends to have quite different objectives from the
typical academic site, being much more focussed on achieving high
availability and easy maintenance by using proven technology;
also, having a commercial network manager seems to guarantee that
the process of getting a change in topology takes forever.
The network experienced a number of circuit-related outages plus a
failure of the NSS hardware. Upgrade of the Proteon routers to
release 8.1 of the Proteon software is now almost complete.
by JQ Johnson (jqj@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu)
NSFNET BACKBONE (Merit)
-----------------------
NSFNET Reconfiguration Update
In March of this year, Merit, IBM, and MCI announced a major
redesign project which would upgrade the network topology and
increase the number of T-1 circuits in the NSFNET, thereby
improving connectivity to spur sites and increasing network
capacity as a whole. Phase A of this redesign has been moving
along well; as of this writing, several of the new circuits are in
place and are routing production traffic at T-1 rates. This
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Internet Monthly Report May 1989
configuration is providing redundancy for what were previously four
single-tail circuits. The nodes which now have redundancy are:
BARRNet (NSS 13), Westnet (NSS 15), MIDnet (NSS 16), and
NorthWestNet (NSS 14). The redesign project will also result in
increased end-to-end bandwidth.
NSF Review
On May 16, a panel of 10 reviewers plus 3 representatives from the
National Science Foundation arrived in Ann Arbor to undertake the
18-month review of the Merit/IBM/MCI NSFNET project as had been
requested in the initial NSF solicitation. Comments reflecting the
reviewers' positive impressions were conveyed in their final
recommendation:
The Panel has reviewed the performance of MERIT-
IBM-MCI for the first 18 months after Award, and has
found the performance in general to be excellent,
ranging in specific evaluations from "Meets
Expectations" to "Exceeds Expectations" based on
outstanding examples of engineering implementation
and resource management.
Everyone at Merit/NSFNET looks forward to continued success with
the network.
July Internetworking Seminar -- Update
"From the Campus to National Networking: Connecting to the Rest of
the World" is the title of the Internetworking Seminar to be held
at the Embassy Suites Hotel-Tech Center South in Denver on July 27
and 28. Agenda topics include National Networking Perspectives,
Centralized Network Services, and Internet Access and Electronic
Mail. The focus of this seminar will be on issues of interest to
campus networking leaders, campus liaisons, and to those who help
end users. Those interested in learning more about
internetworking, NSFNET, and the potential benefits of connecting
their campus to national networking may want to attend. To obtain
additional information, telephone 1-800-66-MERIT or send electronic
mail to: julyseminar@merit.edu
June Seminar Postponed
The June internetworking seminar announced in last month's report
has been postponed until Fall 1989. Details will be published as
they become available.
by Particia G. Smith (PGS@nis.nsf.net)
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NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
The University of Nevada is now being advertised to the NSFnet
backbone via the SDSC cisco box. This is making use of the 56k
link between Las Vegas and San Diego.
A revised terminal gateway for our CTSS systems (CTSS_gate) is in
production use. It replaces the VMS element Loginout and results
in a single gateway for all terminal traffic regardless of
communications method used; IP, DECnet, LAT dial-in lines, X.25,
etc.
by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
Michelle Belmonte and Mary Stahl attended a meeting at the
University of Michigan to discuss the transfer of administrative
authority over the EDU top-level domain to the NSFNET project.
Preliminary plans for the transfer were made. The plans call for
NSFNET personnel to familiarize with the administrative domain
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
registration and data handling procedures, to maintain the EDU
domain data in parallel with the NIC for a period of time, to
generate EDU zone files and eventually offload the EDU domain from
the root domain name servers.
The elimination of ARPA hostnames from the host tables and domain
servers is proceeding on schedule, with the affected hosts being in
various stages of transition. As you may recall, DDN Management
Bulletin #42 specified a transition plan which entailed assigning
new domain-style nicknames to all ARPA hosts, and then after a
short adjustment period switching the primary ARPA names with the
newly-assigned nicknames.
To date, a total of 1,594 numbers have been assigned to connected
IP networks, 284 autonomous system numbers have been assigned, 40
top-level and 868 2nd-level domains have been registered with the
NIC Hostmaster.
Mary Stahl (STAHL@SRI-NIC.ARPA)
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 62 sites online and 86 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)
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK
------------------------------
In April 1989, THEnet was officially designated an NSF regional
network, gaining access to the NSFNET backbone through the NSS
located at Rice University.
On April 5, 1989, representatives from THEnet, SesquiNet and NSF's
DNCRI met to brief the NSF on the activities of SesquiNet and
THEnet and to discuss the outline of a cooperation agreement
between the two Texas networks. The salient points of this
agreement are:
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Internet Monthly Report May 1989
* The NSF has agreed to recognize both THEnet and Sesquinet as
certified regional mid-level networks. SesquiNet and THEnet
will both have primary access to the NSFNET backbone via the
Texas NSS located at Rice University.
* THEnet and SesquiNet will share the costs of an inter-city
communication topology that they jointly use. Initially this
shared topology will consist of a T1 triangle connecting Rice
University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University
of Texas at Dallas. This topology will be extended to hubs in other
cities in the future.
The THEnet manager's meeting was held on May 24. Approximately 120
people attended, representing the 58 member organizations.
Organization of THEnet, (charter and bylaws), current and future
network services and fees, user and directory services and OSI
plans were discussed. This was an open meeting; attendance from all
interested parties was encouraged.
On May 31, 1989, THEnet was voted in as a member of the Federation
of American Research Network (FARNET) at its meeting at JVNC.
THEnet General Information
Covering the state of Texas, with a link to the Instituto
Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Monterrey,
Mexico, THEnet is totally member-funded, receiving no external or
governmental financial support. Network information and operations
management is handled on a cost-recovery basis by the University of
Texas System Office of Telecommunication Services. THEnet's stated
goal is to provide and advance the electronic exchange of
information in support of the teaching, research, development and
related collaborative activities of the Texas higher education and
research communities.
THEnet is a network of physical connections between and within
organizations making various use of IP, DECnet, SNA, RSCS/NJE, OSI
and compressed digital video to provide researchers, faculty and
students the networking "tools" that they need for their particular
situations.
THEnet currently consists of approximately 1200 DECnet nodes, over
3500 IP hosts, 128 BITNET hosts, 10 IBM mainframe hosts connected
over SNA, and 6 OSI hosts.
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
Queries about membership or additional information should be
directed to:
Texas Higher Education Network Information Center
Commons Building Room 1.156A
Balcones Research Center
10100 Burnet Road
Austin, TX 78758-4497
(512) 471-2444
or one of the electronic mail addresses:
THEnet (DECnet): THENIC::INFO
BITNET: INFO@THENIC
Internet: info@nic.the.net
SPAN: UTSPAN::THENIC::INFO
by Tracy LaQuey (tracy@sirius.cc.utexas.edu)
UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., NNSC
----------------------------------------
The NNSC is soliciting contributions to the Internet Resource
Guide. The guide will describe facilities such as supercomputers,
databases, and libraries that are accessible from the Internet.
For more information, send a message to resource-guide-
request@nnsc.nsf.net.
Craig Partridge gave a presentation at the IFIP conference and
chaired a meeting of the MIB Working Group at Proteon. Karen
Roubicek attended the FARnet meeting at JvNC.
by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
UCL
----
Steve Wilbur presented a paper on MAC level Security Measures in
Local Area Networks at a workshop at EISS.
UCL hosted the Privacy Task Force meeting. Presentations on
Directory Services, X400 E-Mail and Key Distribution mechnaisms
were made by UCL research staff.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report May 1989
Work has started on building a primary rate ISDN interface for IP
gatewaying. We are looking at some of the channel allocation
algorithms that might be employed to control cost/performance
tradeoff, and there are some interesting n-ISDN-hop routing issues
similar to those met in PDN routing.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. The Workshop on the Future of the Internet System Architecture
and TCP/IP Protocols was held 1-2 June 1989 at the University
of Delaware. Paul Schragger and Mike Davis scrupulously
recorded the workshop proceedings and are now transcribing
thier notes for early distribution. See the INARC report for
further information.
2. Chuck Cranor and Alden Jackson investigated the performance of
our campus domain-name server and found several areas in which
substantial improvements could be made. Among the interesting
results are that the cache hit ratio is only about sixty
percent and eighty percent of the misses are due to data
remaining in the cache but marked for deletion because the
time-to-live (TTL) has expired. This rather dismal performance
can be explained, at least in part, by the observation that
the initial cache transient is in the order of forty hours,
but the mean TTL is only eighteen hours. Chuck presented these
results at the INARC Workshop.
3. Effort continued on improving and testing the new NTP Version
2 beta implementations for Fuzzball and Unix systems. A
revised authentication scheme is now in design which includes
provisions for authority and algorithm selection. Robert Cole
of HP Labs announced plans to propose an OSI version of NTP
for international standardization, while Julian Onions
demonstrated a prototype running over ISODE which actually
synchronize two OSI hosts over an Ethernet.
4. Our campus network-support unit is working the problem of
limiting licensed software access to the UDel Internet campus
community. Several local and regional network failures occured
during the month which backup routes did not work properly.
Our UDel PSN will shortly be retired, along with ARPANET
connectivity. Such is network life in Delaware.
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Internet Monthly Report May 1989
5. Dave Mills attended a three-day RARE meeting in Trieste,
Italy, which discussed status and plans for European research
networking. Davy also attended a one-day TARPON meeting in
Rosily, VA, to discuss issues and plans for the Research
Interned Gateway program.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
1. The next Westnet Steering Committee meeting will be held at
the University of Colorado at Denver on August 11, 1989,
beginning at 10:30 AM
2. Version 7.1 has been ordered for all cisco routers within
Westnet.
3. The University of Utah has a machine they are dedicating
totally to networking. Now, both the University of Utah and
the University of Colorado can/will supply nameserver services
to other Westnet sites. Contact Carol ward for information.
4. The New Mexico State University has applied for SPAN
membership.
5. Carol Ward has just processed 3 months of network traffic data
for Westnet sites. She will be mailing to each site hardcopy
of their site traffic statistics. Contact Carol if you wish
additional information.
by Pat Burns, (pburns@super.org), Carol Ward,
cward@spot.colorado.edu
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