<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR89-08.TXT
AUGUST 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
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6
PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6
USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 17
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 19
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC, . . . . . . . . page 20
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP NETWORK . page 23
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 27
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
IAB MESSAGE
This is a report to the Internet community of recent decisions and
initiatives taken by the Internet Activities Board (IAB).
A. REORGANIZATION
At its July 1989 meeting, the IAB reorganized itself and its
task forces, with the aim of providing more effective and
responsive leadership for the evolution of the Internet and
its protocols.
A.1 The IAB
The Internet Activities Board (IAB) functions as a Board
of Directors for the Internet. The IAB itself sets
technical policy and standards for the Internet protocols
and architecture, and the work of its two major task
forces: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
In more detail, the IAB performs the following functions:
* Sets Internet Standards.
* Manages the RFC publication process.
* Reviews the operation of the IETF and IRTF.
* Performs strategic planning for the Internet,
identifying long-range problems and opportunities.
* Acts as external policy representative for the
Internet community.
* Resolves technical issues which cannot be treated
within the IETF or IRTF frameworks.
The IAB is an independent committee whose members
generally share a long-term involvement in, and
responsibility for, Internet design, engineering, and
management. The IAB members were chosen for the specific
roles they play ( e.g., the chairs of the IETF and IRTF),
to reflect major interests in the Internet community (e.g,
national network, vendor, government, and international
groups), and for specific areas of expertise (e.g.,
security). They are deeply committed to making the
Internet function effectively and to evolving the Internet
to meet a large scale, high speed future.
All IAB members are required to have at least one other
major role in the Internet community in addition to their
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
IAB membership.
The IAB chair serves for a period of two years. The
current IAB chair is Vint Cerf of NRI
(vcerf@NRI.Reston.VA.US).
A.2 The IETF
To help coordinate the operation and management of the
Internet, the IAB established the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), with general responsibility for short-
and mid-range architectural evolution and issues
resolution required to make the Internet function
effectively.
IETF is a large open community of network designers,
operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the
Internet and the Internet protocol suite. The work of the
IETF is governed by a board known as the Internet
Engineering Steering Group, or IESG. The chairman of the
IETF and of the IESG is Phill Gross of NRI
(pgross@NRI.Reston.VA.US).
A.3 The IRTF
The previous research task forces have been renamed
Research Groups (RG's), that collectively form the
Internet Research Task Force or IRTF. The IRTF is a
community of network researchers, generally with an
Internet focus. The RG's typically have 10 to 20 members,
and each covers a broad area of research, pursuing
specific topics, determined at least in part by the
interests of the members as well as recommendations from
the IAB and IETF.
The work of the IRTF is governed by the Internet Research
Steering Group or IRSG. The chair of the IRTF and of the
IRSG is Dave Clark of the MIT Laboratory for Computer
Science (ddc@LCS.MIT.EDU).
B. PROTOCOL STANDARDS
B.1 IP Multicasting
The IP multicasting architecture and the host/gateway
interface defined in RFC-1054 were advanced to the state
of a full Internet Standard with status Recommended.
Vendors are urged to implement this interface in hosts as
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
soon as possible, in order to get the advantages of local
network multicasting. Gateway-gateway routing protocols
for Internet multicasting are still under development;
when they are mature, the IAB intends to make them
Recommended for gateways.
B.2 Network Time Protocol (NTP)
NTP has been advanced to the state of a full Internet
standard, status Elective. An updated RFC replacing RFC-
1059 will be forthcoming.
B.3 Common Management Information Protocol over TCP/IP (CMOT)
CMOT, defined in RFC-1095, was advanced to the state of a
Draft Internet Standard in April, 1989.
C. Network Management
For the past several years, a high priority IAB concern has
been the development of protocols and tools for management of
the Internet, especially fault diagnosis and performance
monitoring. An ad hoc Network Management Review Committee met
in February 1988, and its report led the IAB to adopt a
strategy of SNMP as a short-term solution, CMOT as a long-term
solution, and a common MIB to ease the transition from one to
the other (see RFC-1052).
When a second ad hoc Network Management Review Committee met
recently to review progress (see RFC-1109), the situation had
changed significantly. Commercial realities had forced the
IAB to modify its strategy, accepting the long-term
coexistence of SNMP and CMOT; in the end, we will have to let
the market decide. Furthermore, the enforcement of a common
MIB was constraining CMOT development from fully exploiting
the capability of CMIP, and reducing the effectiveness of the
Internet as a testbed for CMIP. Therefore, the IAB
(reluctantly) agreed to relax the common-MIB requirement.
While it is recognized that the resulting loss of uniformity
may make life harder for network managers in the short term we
believe that unconstrained development of management protocols
and tools today will result in better management facilities in
the future.
D. Directory Services
At the request of the FRICC for an initiative in the area of
an Internet White Pages service, the IAB caused an hoc meeting
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
to be convened to "review current requirements and solutions
for directory services" (RFC-1107). The conclusions from
this meeting, which were published in RFC-1107, formed the
basis for the strategy that the IAB adopted at its July 1989
meeting. The IAB's plan will be published soon.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
No progress to report this month.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
Due to the reorganization of the IAB and its task forces our
group has been renamed the Privacy and Security Research Group
of the Internet Research Task Force. Our charter has not
changed as a result of this reorganization.
The following New Request for Comments authored by members of
this task force are now available in the online library at
NIC.DDN.MIL.
RFC 1113: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part I Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures;
This RFC suggests a draft standard elective protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions
for improvements. This memo obsoletes RFC 989 and RFC 1040.
Authored by John Linn.
RFC 1114: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part II Certificate-Based Key Management; This RFC suggests a
draft standard elective protocol for the Internet community,
and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
Westine [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
Authored by Seve Kent and John Linn.
RFC 1115: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part III Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers; This RFC
suggests a draft standard elective protocol for the Internet
community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvement. Definitions, references, and citations are
provided for algorithms, usage modes, and associated
identifiers used in RFC-1113 and RFC-1114 in support of
privacy-enhanced electronic mail. Authored by John Linn.
The workshop on the commercial version of the IP security option
(IPSO) is chaired by Steve Kent and is held in conjunction with
Interop 89 at Santa Clara, CA on October 6, 1989. Approximately
ten participants have submitted position papers for distribution
at the workshop. Several task force members are attending.
The next meeting of the Privacy and Security Research Group will
be at Hanover, NH this 24-26 October 1989 hosted by Matt Bishop
of Dartmouth College.
Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM)
USER INTERFACE
--------------
No report received.
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
1. On Sept 6-8, the IETF Steering Group (IESG) held its initial
meeting. The members of the IESG are:
Phill Gross, NRI
Craig Partridge, BBN
Noel Chiappa, Consultant/Proteon
Robert Hinden, BBN
David Crocker, DEC
Rob Hagens, University of Wisconsin
Ross Callon, DEC
Vint Cerf, NRI (IAB Chair, ex officio)
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
The goal was to begin planning a coordinated IETF agenda for
protocol evolution in the Internet. Topics included:
- Reviewing the IAB reorganization and the list of priority
issues for Internet Evolution proposed during the July
IAB meeting.
- Discuss and agree on IETF charter, IETF Areas, and IESG
organization (e.g., are other Areas needed?)
- Take a critical view of how the Internet may evolve in
3-5 years based on:
- Technology (faster local and metropolitan networks,
more economic carrier tariffs, faster hosts and gateways)
- New Service Requirements
- Continued growth in attached networks
- Agency Programs (e.g., FRICC activities and their
impact on the Internet and IETF, particularly FRICC
planning for the National Research and Education
Network (NREN))
- Define specific tasks for IESG and Area directors
(e.g. Plan for Internet evolution, OSI implementation plan,
routing architecture, etc)
- Begin defining IETF agenda and tasks for new Working Groups
2. The IESG and the IAB chair refined the IETF charter as
follows:
- Responsible for short- and mid-term evolution of Internet
protocol architecture, with explicit role in Internet
standards process
- Focus for Internet operational stability
- Technology Transfer from Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)
- Forum for interchange between vendors, users, agency
contractors, network managers, and researchers
3. It was decided that the proposed organization of topics and
six technical areas be realigned into eight areas. Three
new areas were added (see below) and the topics under the
former User Services area were folded into Host Services.
The new alignment, with the IESG members responsible for each
area, is as follows:
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
- Technical Areas
o Host-based Services (Transport and application
infrastructure), Craig Partridge, BBN
o Internet-based Services (IP and Internet
infrastructure), Noel Chiappa, Consultant/Proteon
o Routing (Internet routing protocols and routing
architecture),Robert Hinden, BBN
o Network Management (NM protocols, NM applications,
NOC services), David Crocker, DEC
o OSI Interoperability (Coexistance of OSI in Internet)
Rob Hagens, University of Wisconsin,Ross Callon, DEC
(New)
o Applications (eg, Email, file transfer, directory
services, etc), TBD
o Security Services (eg, Authentication, access
control, secure config. mgt.), TBD
o Operations (at large position), TBD
4. Additional details from the meeting will be reported
next month.
5. The Point-Point Protocol (PPP) WG held two video conferences
in August. The document is now complete, and will be submitted
to the RFC editor. There are already four implementations in
progress (BSD unix, MS-DOS under the Karn package, 2 vendor).
6. The 2 Host Requirements documents have been submitted to the
RFC editor.
Phill Gross (pgross@nri.reston.va.us)
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK
August was a busy month. Although the WPSs were very stable with
only one minor problem with a hung interface, there were 4
line/modem outages, 1 gateway hardware failure, and 1 power outage.
In addition, there were scheduled outages of the SRI and BBN
gateways for upgrades, the RADC gateway for electrical work at
RADC, and the overall network for a hardware and software upgrade
to enhance performance.
Current sites (going from east to west):
BBN BBN WPS
RADC NY WPS
DARPA, NRL Washington WPS
ISI LA WPS
SRI SRI WPS
Future installation work will include:
Ft. Monmouth (NY WPS) -- The site at Ft. Monmouth will be
connected to the NY WPS as soon as the tail circuit is
available. The availability of on-site wiring is uncertain due
to the telephone company strike.
CMU (Pittsburgh WPS) -- Negotiations concerning on campus wiring
at CMU are complete. POP wiring and tail circuit are estimated
for September. POP equipment installation and wiring are being
scheduled accordingly.
NCSA (Chicago WPS) -- On 8/24-25, the gateway and the WPS were
installed and the WPS was briefly checked out on the cross-
country trunks. The Chicago WPS was then placed in failsafe
loop to await completion of the tail circuit to NCSA. As of
8/31, the tail circuit has reportedly been finished, but we are
awaiting installation of the dial-up phone line that will allow
us to remotely control the WPS and check out the tail circuit.
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
The IETF Point-Point working group held two all-day meetings, on
August 9 and August 31, using the terrestrial wideband video
teleconferencing system. Both meetings were three-site conferences
between BBN, DARPA, and SRI.
The Open SPF IGP working group of the IETF held one all-day video
teleconference meeting on August 14. This meeting was also a
three-site conference held between BBN, DARPA and SRI.
INTERNET R&D
The Open Routing working group met jointly with ANTF and some guest
members at the Stanford IETF. The meeting focused on points in the
draft architecture that need to be elaborated and on useful
experiments that can be started now. Also discussed were what
needs to be done to bring this work before ANSI this fall.
Marianne Lepp presented the architecture to the OSI working group.
Work continues on fleshing out the architecture and the next level
of the protocol.
REAL-TIME MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING SYSTEM
As part of the Real-time Multimedia Conferencing System project,
BBN has developed a set of multimedia conferencing tools that
include the basic conference daemon (which waits for requests to
start a conference from some remote workstation), the conference
manager (which manages multiple applications running on the
workstation and handles all communication between workstations in
the conference) and two initial applications. The first two
applications released were "presenter" and "viewfile". Presenter
is a tool that allows someone to create a computer controlled
"slide show", where each slide is an arbitrary window-based
application. Presenter controls switching between slides and
provides an "overlay" mechanism that allows sketching over any
application.
Progress continues on Version 2 of the conferencing tools,
scheduled for release in mid-September. Version 2 contains a
number of enhancements to the existing conferencing tools as well
as significant extensions to the set of tools that work under
conferencing (and under presenter). Enhancements include:
1. Floor switching has been speeded up significantly.
2. Presenter has been extended to serve as a talk preparation
as well as a talk presentation tool.
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
3. We have also demonstrated a version of conferencing
working under the X window system. This includes X to X
conferencing as well as X to Suntools conferencing. The
X version is still in prototype form and will not be part
of the 2.0 release.
Version 2.0 will include a suite of new conferencing tools. These
tools include:
1. Viewshell: a shared UNIX shelltool.
2. Sketch: a tool allowing the conferees to simultaneously
develop a drawing at the same time, sending the drawing
updates back and forth to each workstation rather than
the primitive input events (mouse motions and keyboard
input).
3. Xnavigate: an X-based application that runs on the Sun
workstation but displays its screen on an associated Amiga
personal computer with a videodisk player. The videodisk
contains maps at various levels of detail and Xnavigate
allows the user to click on the map to zoom in and out
and move around the map. It also provides simple sketching
facilities.
4. Vdp. Vdp is a videodisk controller that provides a
window-based interface for controlling multiple videodisk
players which are part of a conference.
5. Maptool. Maptool provides a graphical interface to the World
Database II and allows the user to specify various types of
projections and viewing locations and then generates the map
as it would appear from that view.
6. Various other video-based tools.
In addition, work continued this month on the Video Information
Server and a suite of video tools for providing an application
environment for accessing and manipulating video for presentation
in a conference.
We currently have an environment that includes several videodisk
players, a optical videodisk recorder, a computer-controlled VCR, a
framestore, cable TV tuners, as well as a 16 by 16 video switch.
Access to the hardware is provided through an RPC-based switch that
controls the various devices in an application-transparent manner,
handling issues like access control, routing, and providing a
transparent interface to accessing a particular device.
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
For more information about this project, please contact Terry
Crowley (TCrowley@BBN.COM, 617-873-2677)
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Installations:
During August three new sites were turned-up on CERFnet. The
Claremont Colleges (Claremont Men's, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and
Pomona), the University of California Riverside (UCR) and the
California State University SWRL facility. On August 14, the
Claremont Colleges were turned-up on CERFnet at a speed of
56kilobits per second. Claremont are connected to CERFnet through
the California Institute of Technology. Technical difficulties
with a connector on the cisco gateway were encountered during the
install but this did not delay Claremont's turn-up.
On August 22, UCR was turned-up at a speed of 56 kilobits per
second. UCR is connected to CERFnet through the San Diego
Supercomputer Center (SDSC). UCR test equipment caused a few minor
difficulties during the installation, but did not delay the turn-
up.
On August 30, the SWRL facility's 1.544 Megabit per second link to
the University of California Irvine was turned-up. The install of
this link was delayed for one month due to circuit troubles. The
SWRL facility will provide the 19 California State University (CSU)
campuses with high-speed access to CERFnet. The CSU campuses and
Chancellor's Office are linked together via a X.25 wide area
network.
Network Performance:
Throughput on the network is higher than July with the largest
growth from University of California Los Angeles. Total throughput
for July and August exceeded one hundred million packets.
July/August Comparison of Packet Counts
July August
Packets In 25,804,071 101,839,672
Packets Out 20,665,739 76,831,293
Westine [Page 13]
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The University of California Irvine's cisco gateway is showing
repeated errors on its Ethernet port. Testing is currently
underway with the gateway to determine the problem.
Two versions of the Simple Network Management Protocol were
implemented on VETTE, a local Vaxstation running ULTRIX. One
version is from CMU and the other from MIT. The MIT version is
currently being used to monitor CERFnet. Scripts were written and
are being used to simplify collection of statistics for biweekly
and monthly reports.
Other Activity:
On August 22, CERFnet sponsored a seminar, "Network Security: What
About It?" at SDSC. The seminar was instructed by Russell Brand of
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. This seminar dealt
with the issue of network security and how to prevent breeches of
security as well how to deal with them. This seminar was rated by
80% of its participant as excellent, and good by the remaining 20%.
The California Internet Federation meeting was attended by a
CERFnet representative. Among the agenda items discussed was the
possibility of a 1.544 Megabit DWR circuit between BARRnet of the
Bay Area and CERFnet/Los Nettos.
The August-September issue of "CERFnet News" was published and
distributed. Electronic copies are available via anonymous ftp at
sds.sdsc.edu in the sub-directory cerfnet_news. The filename is
Aug-Sept89.txt. Hard copies are available by request to
armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu.
by Karen Armstrong <armstrongk@luac.sdsc.edu>
CICNET
-------
CICNet has been active in a variety of areas during the past month.
These include the implementation of our formal Business Plan
(Approved July 20, 1989), the turn-up of DECnet traffic over
CICNet, the physical reconfiguartion of our backbone network to
ensure greater facility survivability, and the establishment of a
Video Applications Study Group.
The Business Plan details the mission, strategies, tactics, and
timetables for implementing CICNet as an effective midlevel network
organization. Copies are available.
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
Due to CICNet proximity to several Department of Energy national
laboratories, the accomodation of DECnet traffic, as well as
TCP/IP, was thought to be important. Cathy Aronson, CICNet/MERIT
has been primarily responsible for the successful turn-up of DECnet
traffic over our backbone. The project is nearing completion with
good results so far.
MCI has agreed to reconfigure the CICNet backbone facilities,
making them more geographically independent, and therefore less
likely to be compromised by a single point of failure. The complete
reconfiguration will be accomplished by fourth quarter, 1989.
CICNet has formed a group to evaluate the various types of video
applications and solutions that might be appropriate over our
network. Participants from end users, networking groups, and
vendors are expected.
by Joel Maloff <Joel_Maloff@um.cc.umich.edu>
CORNELL
-------
No progress to report this month.
Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu)
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden finished editing the two Host Requirements RFC's and
submitted them to Jon Postel for publication. One RFC covers the
transport layer and below, and the other covers application and
support protocols; they are respectivey 115 and 97 pages in length.
Jon Postel participated in ACT ONE at UCLA, 17-18 August. Jon
Postel hosted a Calinet meeting at ISI, August 16.
Nine RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1109: Cerf, V., "Report of the Second Ad Hoc Network
Management Review Group", NRI, August 1989.
RFC 1110: McKenzie, A., "A Problem with the TCP Big
Window Option", BBN STC, August 1989.
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Internet Monthly Report August 1989
RFC 1111: Postel, J., "Request for Comments on Request
for Comments, Instructions to RFC Authors",
ISI, August 1989.
RFC 1112: Deering, S., "Host Extensions for IP Multicasting",
Stanford University, August 1989.
RFC 1113: Linn, J. (DEC), IAB Privacy Task Force,
"Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part I -- Message Encipherment and Authentication
Procedures", August 1989.
RFC 1114: Kent, S. (BBNCC), J. Linn (DEC), IAB Privacy
Task Force, "Privacy Enhancement for Internet
Electronic Mail: Part II -- Certificate-Based Key
Management", August 1989.
RFC 1115: Linn, J. (DEC), IAB Privacy Task Force,
"Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part III-- Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers",
August 1989.
RFC 1116: Borman, D. (Cray), Internet Engineering Task Force,
"Telnet Linemode Option", August 1989.
RFC 1117: Romano, S., M. Stahl, M. Recker, "Internet Numbers",
SRI-NIC, August 1989.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
We are enhancing the packet video system to accommodate video
codecs other than the Concept Communications Image 30 which has
been used until now. In September we will conduct a parallel
demonstration of CLI, PictureTel and VideoTelecom codecs between
the ISI and DARPA sites. To accommodate these codecs, we have
developed serial line protocol conversion software on a coprocessor
board for the PC with four high-speed ports, and have adapted the
packet video program, PVP, to handle the various frame (packet)
sizes for the different codecs.
PVP now automatically refreshes the images of all conference
participants upon the addition of each new participant to the
conference. This is to "paint" a complete image of new
participants rather than have images "build" as motion occurs in
parts of the scene. Similarly, PVP requests refreshes if it
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
detects any missing video segments. This is to remove any image
anomalies which may occur due to the missing data.
Testing of MBFTPTOOL in the conferencing environment continued. A
mechanism for submitting file transfers to take place at a later
time, as in BFTPTOOL, was added to the MBFTPTOOL. This feature
allows the user to specify the maximum number of transfer attempts
that will be made and the results message be sent to a user other
than the user currently logged on.
A new version of the BFTP source code, including the MBFTPTOOL, is
now available via anonymous FTP. The compressed tar-file,
"BFTP.210.tar.Z", may be found in the "pub/" directory on
"venera.isi.edu".
Eve Schooler attended the Groupware Technology Workshop at Xerox
PARC.
Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler
(casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU,
schooler@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
No progress to report this month.
Paula Caruso and Alan Katz (CARUSO@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
IBM LA Scientific Center was brought online August 21st. A line
from Rand to IBM and one from TIS to IBM were brought up. This
completed a second loop in Los Nettos and adds a second connection
for both TIS and Rand. Our design goal is to keep stub network
connections to a minimum. We have had a few outages recently due
to link failures and configuration changes. No one has noticed the
outage because of the robust topology.
We have reached 50 entries in our cisco routing filter list. This
is the maximum cisco supports with 7.1 firmware. This filter list
is used to explicitly restrict the routes advertised to the
ARPANET. We must now come up with a new scheme to make sure only
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
Los Nettos and CERFnet routes are advertised to the ARPANET core.
ISI hosted the Calinet meeting on August 16. Discussion was based
on how a north/south link could be used. Sophisticated routing
technology must be used at both ends of this link, in order to
effectively and safely use this backdoor link between BARRnet and
Los Nettos/CERFnet. Current and future routing technology was
also discussed as possible solution to this routing challenge.
CALREN, a proposed California wide network, and how it would serve
as an educational and research network was also discussed.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
No report received.
MIDNET
------
No report received.
MIT-LCS
-------
No report received.
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
MRNET
-----
The first MRNet "Internetworking with TCP/IP" seminar was delivered
August 31. The seminar was a tremendous success. Over 120 people
from throughout the state attended. Jeff Wabik, MRNet Technical
Committee Chair, coordinated the seminar. Craig Finseth, Minnesota
Supercomputer Center, and Stuart Levy, University of Minnesota,
worked with Jeff to develop and deliver the seminar. Jeff, Craig,
and Stuart deserve commendation for the tremendous effort they put
forth to create this seminar.
An MRNet General Meeting was held August 31. During the meeting
three new members were accepted:
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
o Supercomputer Systems Engineering and Services Co (SSESCO) -
a company founded by Neil Lincoln to provide supercomputer
services.
o Unified Communications, Inc (UCI) - a Minnesota company
providing data communications solutions for system
interconnectivity. UCI is active in CCITT, ISO, and COS
standards activities. They are also bidding on OSI
migration contracts.
o Apollo Computer - the Minneapolis sales office of Apollo
Computer
MRNet annual dues were doubled to $1,000/year. Nonetheless, it was
generally recognized that this increase is only a partial step
towards fully funding MRNet.
MRNet and MSC look forward to hosting FARnet September 11 and 12.
by Tim Salo <tjs@msc.umn.edu>
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
NEARnet added Worcester Polytechnic Institute during August.
Equipment upgrades significantly improved performance of the
JVNCnet T-1 link, making the connection to the NSFNET much more
stable. The first NEARnet newsletter was distributed during the
month. NEARnet's first user conference will be held September 21
at BBN in Cambridge, MA. Both technical and user information
sessions will follow a general information session. If you would
like copies of the newsletter or information regarding the user
conference please send a note to ddoyle@bbn.com.
by John Rugo <jrugo@bbn.com>
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.,
----------------------------------------
The NNSC distributed the 6th issue of the NSF Network News and
published Chapters 5 and 6 of the Internet Resource Guide.
Requests for copies or information about publications should be
directed to nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net.
by Karen Roubicek <roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net>
NORTHWESTNET
------------
The NorthWestNet 2nd annual meeting will be held in Boulder,
Colorado October 30 through September 1. The meeting will be
focused on the theme "Building An NSF Regional Network with
Capacity: The Delivery of Value Added Services". It will provide
tracks for vice-presidents, technical support, user services, and
researchers. Contact Eric Hood (ocdeh@mtsunix1.bitnet) for
details.
Membership policies are being reviewed and revised. University
nodes are encouraged to connect research affiliates or research
parks to NorthWestNet via their LAN's, universisty nodes may and
connect other institutions to NorthWestNet via their LANs, and
finally, a subcommittee of the Directors is working on a revised
membership fee schedule to better accommodate small colleges and
small businesses. There has been some discussion about trying to
charge connection fees on the basis of anticipated volume of
traffic.
Western Washington University, and Battelle Pacific Northwest
Laboratory have been accepted as new members. We anticipate
several new members in the near future.
The technical committee elected Eric Hood of Montana State
University as chair and Lynn Cannon of Washington State University
as vice-chair.
An DECnet outage of long duration occured on the NorthWestNet
backbone. Normal operational procedures by Boeing failed to
correct this problem until approximately 24 hours after it was
reported.
by Dale Smith <DSMITH@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
Development of Border Gateway Protocol
During August work continued on testing Border Gateway Protocol
implementations between gated, Cisco and NSS routers on the NSFNET
research network. A BGP workshop was held in Ann Arbor on August
21 and those attending represented a subset of the IETF
Interconnectivity Working Group. Remaining BGP issues on the
agenda included a follow-up RFC on BGP applications.
Additionally, work is going on to develop deployment plans for BGP.
RFP for New NSFNET Nodes Now Available
The National Science Foundation has issued a solicitation for
proposals from organizations interested in becoming nodes on the
NSFNET backbone. These proposals are due to NSF by October 2,
1989, with implementation expected to begin in early 1990. The NSF
expects to add up to eight new nodes to the T1 backbone under this
program.
The new sites will augment the existing thirteen backbone nodes
which connect mid-level (regional or super-consortium) networks to
the NSFNET backbone and, in turn, to the Internet. The third-level
(campus or local) networks, connect to the mid-levels and range in
size from a statewide network serving multiple organizations to a
local-area network within a single university's engineering
department.
Organizations which are eligible for access to the NSFNET through
the mid-level networks include colleges and universities, as well
as government, not-for-profit, and for-profit research and
educational institutions.
Because of the critical role mid-level sites play in assuring a
highly reliable service to users, several operational requirements
must be met for a proposed site to be considered as a new node
location. Qualified technical and engineering staff are also
needed at node sites to coordinate installation and operation as
well as to provide support for the local organizations connecting
to the Internet through the node. Details of these requirements
are described in the solicitation as is information on associated
costs.
The proposals submitted will be evaluated under the administration
of the Division of Networking and Communications Research (DNCRI)
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
of the National Science Foundation. Awards are expected to be
announced around December 31, 1989. Copies of the complete
solicitation are available from the National Science Foundation;
contact Jane Caviness, Acting NSFNET Program Director, or Daniel J.
VanBelleghem, Associate NSFNET Program Director, at (202) 357-9717
or by electronic mail (jcavines@nsf.gov or dvanbell@nsf.gov) for
additional information.
"Connecting to the Rest of the World" Seminar held in Denver
Denver, Colorado was the site of "From the Campus to National
Networking: Connecting to the Rest of the World," on July 27th and
28th. Presented by Merit/NSFNET staff and national and regional
experts in networking, this seminar was part of Merit's continuing
outreach to representatives from diverse computing backgrounds and
facilities which would benefit from a national networking
initiative. Presentations included a down-to-earth discussion of
Internet technology and protocols, architecture and current
statistics of the NSFNET backbone, getting connected through mid-
level networks, and personnel and technical issues of maintaining a
network operations center. Other informative topics were "National
Science Foundation Perspectives" which included the How-to's of
proposals and funding. In addition, Ginger Caldwell and NCAR
(National Center for Atmospheric Research) staff conducted a tour
of their supercomputer facility at the Mesa Laboratory.
Future seminars on internetworking to be presented by Merit/ NSFNET
will be announced in this publication.
Advanced Topics Seminar
Merit/NSFNET sponsored a second Advanced Topics seminar for
regional/technical representatives of the 13 backbone nodes on
August 22 and 23 in Ann Arbor. Attendees participated in
discussions of current networking issues and heard a number of
presentations: Albert Ng, NSFNET Project Manager at MCI, spoke on
Telecommunications (T1, Digital Reconfiguration Service); Dave
Piscitello of Bellcore spoke on Switched Multi-Megabit Data Service
(SMDS), and Jacob Rekter (IBM-Yorktown) and Jessica Yu
(Merit/NSFNET) gave a joint presentation on Border Gateway
Protocol.
by Patricia G. Smith (patricia_g._smith@um.cc.umich.edu)
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network
------------------------------------------------------
The University of Pennsylvania library catalog is now accessible
via PREPnet. To use it, emulate a VT100 terminal and telnet to
PENNLIB.UPENN.EDU.
The Pennsylvania State University is now providing Internet access
to its library's on-line card catalog system (LIAS), a database of
agricultural information (PENpages), an electronic bulletin board
about Penn State (EBB), and a database of statistical information
about Pennsylvania (EDIN). These applications are all available
through PREPnet. To telnet to them, use the following:
LIAS - LIAS.PSU.EDU
EBB - (includes EDIN)
PSUVM.PSU.EDU (3270 emulation)
CAC3270.PSU.EDU (VT100 emulation)
PENpages - PSUPEN.PSU.EDU
(The required emulation is VT100. After the telnet session is
established you will be prompted for a username. Enter PNONPA in
response to this prompt).
Tom Cummings (tc1r@andrew.cmu.edu)
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
No report received.
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
DDN NIC
The NIC assigned 88 new government-sponsored (connected) IP network
numbers in August, which brings the total number up to 1,813. The
grand total of all network assignments, including both connected
and nonconnected, is now 3,019. Also, in August we assigned 138 new
Autonomous System numbers (ASNs); the total number of ASNs currently
assigned is 515.
Over the past 6 months, the NIC has been registering an average of
50 domains per month. There are currently a total of 1,074 domains
registered including 43 top-level domains, 999 second-level domains,
and 32 third-level MIL domains.
Mary Stahl (Stahl@NISC.SRI.COM)
Internet Research
J.J. Garcia-Luna published an article on loop-free internet routing
in ConneXions (Vol. 3, No. 8) entitled "Loop-Free Internet Routing
and Related Issues." The article presents an approach for the dynamic
computation of shortest paths that is applicable to both distance
vectors and link states. A distributed algorithm that provides
loop-free paths at every instant is briefly described. The approach
described in the article treats the problem of distributed
shortest-path routing as one of diffusing computations, which was
first proposed by Dijkstra and Scholten.
Jose Garcia-Luna (Joaquin@NISC.SRI.COM)
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
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 65 sites online and 88 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
------------------------------
No report received.
UCL
----
1. UCL presented a paper at a RACE workshop in August on the
application of Neural Computing techniques to network topology
and routing optimization problems.
2. A large scale parallel network simulation, monitoring and
control system has been completed. Currently, we are using it
to study real time traffic correllation problems. The system
runs on a number of IBM RT/PCs and Sun workstations, and
includes a low level node simulation, a network simulator and
an Analysis and Response process, coordinated by a central
pacemaker (logical clocking) process. It is written in
Objective C and Pascal.
Results have been obtained for correlated video streams in an
8 node 300 Mbps broadband network. [Detailed simlation of 100
msecs of real time takes approximately 8 minutes on 1 RT plus
1 Sun).
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Paul Schragger is working on a scheduling simulator tool for
our gigabit network effort. The tool now produces candidate
route schedules and soon is to produce link schedules. Mike
Minnich continues to experiment with the Jain-Ramakrishnan and
other fair-queueing algorithms modified for distributed
control. Mike Davis is nearing completion of a wire-walker
program which synthesizes routing tables using SNMP data. Mark
Shaw and Stefan Levie completed a preliminary hardware and
software design for a PC-based implementation of NTP. Ken
Monington completed construction of two precision oven-
compensated quartz timebases for the fuzzballs. Dave Mills is
working on time transfer, authentication and high-speed
routing.
2. A massive two-week experiment involving over 100,000 hosts, as
revealed in Mark Lottor's domain-name file and other
information, was conducted to evaluate the penetration of
synchronized clock service in the Internet and to determine
accuracy using three time protocols, ICMP Timestamp, UDP/TIME
and UDP/NTP. This experiment is an update of others conducted
in early 1988 and in 1986. The results show that, of the
94,260 distinct hosts surveyed, 8455 support at least one of
these protocols and 946 are synchronized to national time
standards by NTP. Probability distribution functions obtained
with all three protocols reveal disappointing accuracies for
ICMP and TIME, with 10% of the total responses off more than
an hour and 1% off more than a day. NTP accuracies over all
paths ranging from Australia to Norway was within 50 ms for
all but 10% percent of the responses and five seconds for all
but a few apparently broken hosts. NTP accuracies between
radio-synchronized primary servers was usually within a few
milliseconds and always within 50 ms for all responses on
selected paths involving the NSF backbone and regional nets.
Further details will appear in a report now in preparation.
3. A precision timebase has been connected to the Backroom
fuzzball. Preliminary tests confirm our previous suspicion
that the limitations in timekeeping accuracy with NTP are the
radio clock, not the timebase. Sources of error up to two
milliseconds, as determined by ionospheric ray-tracing
methods, include variations in ionospheric height and ray mode
on various frequencies throughout the day, and were confirmed
using an oscilloscope and communications receiver. The results
show room for minor improvement in the local-oscillator design
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report August 1989
suggested for use in NTP.
4. After an extensive investigation, it appears that the curious
90-ms time offset noted in Scandinavian clocks has been traced
to a previously unsuspected asymmetric path under the
Atlantic. Another curiosity involving low-level packet
duplication on NSF backbone paths was confirmed using
fuzzballs co-located at the NSS sites and appears to originate
within the NSS itself.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
1. Carol Ward attended the NSFNET Advanced Topics Seminar of
MERIT.
2. The Westnet Steering Committee met on August 11, 1989 at the
University of Denver. Plans were covered for operation during
FY'90. A subcommittee was appointed to address the
partitioning of expenses to the nodes upon devolution of NSF
funding upon the region.
3. We have been experiencing trouble on our only T-1 line,
between the University of Colorado at Boulder and NCAR. We
see frequent rebooting of the cisco's, and a wide variety of
error diagnostics. We are using Dowty CSU's and the "old"
cisco T-1 cards. We would appreciate hearing if anyone else
has experienced similar problems.
by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu)
Carol Ward (cward@spot.colorado.edu)