<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR89-09.TXT
September 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 3
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 12
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 13
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 14
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network . page 16
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 19
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
IAB MESSAGE
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.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
The next quarterly meeting of the Privacy and Security Research
Group will be in Hanover, NH this 24-26 October1989 hosted by
Matt Bishop of Dartmouth College. Plans are to discuss security
issues for gateway protocols and standard interfaces to DES and
RSA.
John Linn and Stephen Kent are presenting a paper, "PRIVACY FOR
DARPA-INTERNET MAIL", at the NIST/NBS National Computer Security
Conference in Baltimore in October. This summarizes the current
status of the DARPA Internet Activities Board (IAB) Privacy and
Security Research Group's ongoing effort to enhance privacy of
electronic mail transferred in the DARPA-Internet. The
results of this effort are detailed in RFC 1113, 1114, and 1115.
Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM)
USER INTERFACE
--------------
No report received.
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INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
No report received.
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INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
REAL-TIME MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING
Release 2.0 of the BBN Multimedia Conferencing System was installed
as the standard computer conferencing component of the DARPA packet
voice/video/data conferencing system this month. This release
includes a number of significant performance improvements, several
new tools, and functionality enhancements to existing tools. New
tools include a terminal emulator that runs under conferencing, a
tool for displaying map projections, new tools for controlling
analog video devices and a sketching tool that allows parallel
activity at all sites in the conference (without requiring floor
transfers). Presenter, the slide presentation tool, was enhanced
with features to make it useful as a talk preparation, as well as
presentation, tool. Contact Terry Crowley (tcrowley@bbn.com) for
more information.
INTERNET RESOURCE GUIDE
The NSFNet Network Service Center (NNSC) is in the process of
publishing a guide to resources on the Internet. These resources
include facilities such as computational resources (e.g.,
supercomputers), library catalogs, on-line databases, archives,
white pages, networks, network information centers,, or specialized
programs on the Internet which are available to large numbers of
users. Each entry in the guide will contain a description of the
resource, a description of who may use the resource, the type of
access supported (email, FTP, Telnet), and contact points for
further information such as a phone number, email address, and name
of a contact person where appropriate. We expect each listing to
be approximately one page of text.
If you're part of an organization that maintains a resource that
should be included in the guide, please send a description of the
resource to: resource-guide@nnsc.nsf.net. If you want to join the
list to receive the guide, please send a message to resource-
guide-request@nnsc.nsf.net.
Westine [Page 5]
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INTERNET R&D
As part of the work on Open Routing we have fleshed out the virtual
gateway protocol (VGP), a point of confusion for a number of
people. This is the protocol that will run among and between
clustered gateways that we are calling "virtual gateways." We have
also worked on the Routing Agent Protocol (RAP) and are addressing,
among other issues, database synchronization, authoritative agents,
data dissemination.
ST GATEWAY
Unit testing and debugging of the merged IP/ST gateway was
completed. This gateway successfully supported heavy concurrent
loads of IP and ST (voice and video) traffic. Voice and video
quality did not suffer under heavy loads. However, under
saturation conditions, this version of software is tuned to favor
real-time traffic and delivery times of IP datagrams will vary
widely. Under normal conditions, both kinds of traffic experienced
favorable delay and throughput. This version of the gateway
software will be installed in the next month at video conference
locations on the Terrestrial Wideband Net.
The IETF PPP working group held a three-way conference between BBN,
SRI and DARPA on Sept 25. The "Collaborative effort on
Environments" group held a meeting between BBN and ISI on Sept 27.
Barry Boehm, Director of DARPA/ISTO, at ISI, held 2 video
conference meetings with his staff in Washington on September 5 and
19.
ISO/TCP MIGRATION
At SHAPE Technical Centre, the ISODE application level protocol
conversion was demonstrated for file transfers between 2 hosts, one
running FTAM over TP0 and X.25, and the other running FTP over
TCP/IP on an ethernet. A third host in the middle provided the
translation service. The local X.25 net was limited in speed to
2400 bits per second, and files were transferred faster than 2000
bits per second with little impact on cpu load on any of the three
machines. A second test with all three functions (FTAM,
conversion, and FTP) in a single SUN 3/260 system, resulted in 100%
CPU saturation at a transfer rate of about 920K bits per second.
The data line between STC and RSRE in England is being tested by
the PTT's, as is the line between RSRE and BBN in the U.S. The
butterfly gateway for STC has arrived finally, after many physical
and bureaucratic diversions. Plans are to have the gateway
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
installed and operating on the data line before the end of October.
Upgrade Hardware for RSRE, UCL, NTA and CNUCE sites, and backup
gateways for RSRE and UCL are ready to be shipped. Hope the
bureaucratic diversions are smoother the second and following
times.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK
During September, the network has generally continued to behave
well. However, there were several outages (> 30 minutes) -- 1
power failure, 3 line problems, and 3 modem problems. In addition,
we are currently investigating up/down oscillations in the link
between the SRI WPS and Stanford. There was also scheduled
downtime for a new software release.
Last month, we installed a WPS at the Chicago POP and a gateway at
NCSA. The WPS was briefly checked out on the cross-country trunks,
but was then placed in failsafe loop to await completion of the
tail circuit to NCSA and installation of the dialup line that
allows us to remotely control the WPS. On 9/11 this work was
completed and we brought the WPS back onto the network. During the
following week NYSERNET, NCSA and BBN staff worked together to
check out the line and gateway. On 9/18, the NCSA-gateway came up
on the Terrestrial Wideband. The NCSA folks have not yet connected
up their local ethernet.
At this point, the Terrestrial Wideband topology from East to West
is:
WPS site User site
-------- ---------
BBN BBN
NY POP RADC
Washington POP DARPA, NRL
Chicago POP NCSA
LA POP ISI
SRI SRI, Stanford
Future work:
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) -- CMU reports that only some of the modems
for on-campus wiring have arrived. Modems are needed for both
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
Terrestrial Wideband and ARPANET connections at CMU. At last
report, it was unclear when the remaining modems would arrive
and where the modems received so far would be used (Wideband or
ARPANET). Installation and shakedown are estimated at 2 weeks.
POP wiring and tail circuit are being scheduled accordingly.
The WPS and gateway were shipped 9/22 for installation as soon
as POP wiring and tail circuit are complete.
SURANet connection -- SURANet, NRL, and BBN staff are working to
connect the SURANet to the Terrestrial Wideband via the NRL.
This will require installation of a line from the nearest
SURANet router to NRL, a SURANet router at NRL, and an ethernet
between this new router and the BGWY. The gating factor is
obtaining the line, which should take approximately 30 days. So
allowing time for installation and shakedown, the connection
should occur in about 1-2 months.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Over the past six months 25 sites have been turned-up on CERFnet.
Sites online to date include:
The Agouron Institute
California Institute of Technology
California State University (CSU) SWRL Facility and 12
of the CSU campuses (Chico, Fresno, Fullerton,
Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, Sacramento, San
Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Sonoma,
Stanislaus.)
Claremont Colleges
Hughes Aircraft Company
Qualcomm Incorporated
San Diego Supercomputer Center
University of California at Irvine
University of California at Los Angeles
University of California at Riverside
University of California at San Diego
University of California at Santa Barbara
On September 19, the California State University (CSU) SWRL
Facility's 1.544-Megabits-per-second link to the University of
California at Irvine (UCI) was brought up on CERFnet. CERFnet
staff worked with local carriers in early September to resolve
troubles with the circuit. The troubles were isolated to one
section of the circuit running between the central offices at Long
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
Beach and Seal Beach. On Tuesday, September 19, General Telephone
transferred the circuit over to a different line. The PING test and
the binary file transfer test were successful. The circuit has now
been switched back to the T1 line. On Wednesday, September 20,
SWRL was getting input errors on the line as recorded by the cisco
gateway box. A test was done on the CSU/DSU at UCI and it showed
zero errors on both sides over a 12 hour period, thus eliminating
the circuit, and indicating protocol as being the problem.
The University of San Diego reported a 15% packet loss in their
line to the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) on Wednesday,
September 20. A test of electronic mail showed that they could
retrieve mail from SDSC but could not reply back. There has been
no problem with the name service. Pacific Bell exchanged the
repeaters at the USD end and ran a loop back test. The new
repeater jammed in loop back and had be replaced. Unfortunately,
the circuit remained in loop back even with a new repeater which
indicated a problem with the CSU/DSU at USD. The CSU/DSU was
replaced and the circuit was released from loop back. USD's
connection is performing well.
The University of California at Santa Barbara will turn up two new
associate members, Advanced Computer Communications and
Communications Machinery Corporation.
The October-November issue of CERFnet News was completed and sent
to production. Hard-copy distribution will begin October 16.
Electronic Distribution will begin October 1. The current issue
and back issues are available via anonymous ftp to sds.sdsc.edu in
the subdirectory [.cerfnet_news]. Type cd [.cerfnet_news] to
change the directory. The filename of the current issue is Oct-
Nov89.txt.
by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu)
CICNET
-------
No report received.
CORNELL
-------
No report received.
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Implementation of the IP/SQ congestion control algorithm within
UNIX for the SUN release 4.0 operating system is essentially
finished. Numerous successful tests have been run and the author
uses it in his standard kernel. Work is beginning on a formal
series of tests, which involve large scale monitored transfers from
SUNs running the modified kernel through another modified network
site. That site will be modified (1) so that it generates a Source
Quench message whenever its queues overflow, and (2) so that it
acts as if it were configured with output channels of selected
bandwidth.
Greg Finn (finn@isi.edu)
Bob Braden attended the IRSG and SIGCOMM '89 meetings in Austin,
Texas, 18-21 September. Paul Mockapetris gave a presentation at
SIGCOMM '89 in Austin, Texas. Paul Mockapetris attended the
IETF/NREN planning meeting in Reston, VA, Septeber 6-8.
Three RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1118: Krol, E., "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet",
University of Illinois Urbana, September 1989.
RFC 1120: Cerf, V., "The Internet Activities Board", NRI,
September 1989.
RFC 1121: Postel, J., (ISI), L. Kleinrock (UCLA), V. Cerf,
(NRI) B. Boehm, (UCLA), "Act One - The Poems",
September 1989.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
As previewed last month, we have enhanced the packet video system
to accommodate video codecs other than the Concept Communications
Image30 which has been used until now. We conducted a parallel
demonstration of Compression Labs and PictureTel codecs between ISI
and DARPA. The PictureTel codec was also used for the second of
two DARPA/ISTO staff meetings held by teleconference between ISI
and DARPA this month. A three-way comparison including the
VideoTelecom codec was planned, but delivery of the unit for the
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
DARPA site was delayed. A separate demo will be held soon.
To accommodate the additional codecs, we have developed serial line
protocol conversion software on a PC-based coprocessor board with
four high-speed serial ports. This software interprets the various
line framing protocols of the codecs and encapsulates those frames
in HDLC line framing to interface with the packet video program,
PVP, running in the Butterfly. A codec control panel was added to
MMCC, the multimedia conferencing control program, to select among
the demo codecs and to set the data rate.
Best results were obtained with the PictureTel codec. It provides
twice the image resolution of the Image30, and allows filling
between received frames so it can tolerate the asynchrony between
transmit and receive clocks that results from packet transmission.
Its primary disadvantage is a higher internal delay, about 1/2
second, which impacts interactivity.
None of these codecs will allow multisite conferencing with all
sites viewed simultaneously as we can do now with the Image30.
Therefore, new codecs may be installed in parallel with the Image30
to give users a choice of high-res two-site or low-res multisite
conferences. The quality tradeoff may not be as bad as it sounds:
Concept has been working for several months on an improved coding
algorithm for the Image30. We've now seen a demo tape, with
hardware compression and a software simulation for the
decompression, showing a substantial improvement in resolution. We
hope real chips will finally be available soon.
The image refresh algorithm in PVP was modified in order to prevent
unnecessary refreshes upon connection, and to prevent an initial
appearance of a small amount of scattered pixels upon connection
establishment.
Work to provide an integrated conference environment continues. A
conference identifier is now assigned on a per conference basis.
It in turn is used as the name of a "conference directory" to which
shared applications connect and in which shared files are placed.
The conference is distributed to participating sites by MMCC, the
multimedia conference control program, which also makes sure the
conference directory exists at each site. MMCC can now
automatically establish and disconnect an MMConf session in
parallel with voice and video connections, bringing up MMConf in
the conference directory. New shell windows created during a
tele-meeting also set this as their working directory.
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MBFTPTOOL now has a conference mode which sets special transfer
modes and defaults for teleconferencing, as opposed to stand-alone
use. MBFTPTOOL is currently being modified to help MMConf
determine whether or not a file placed in the conference directory
needs distribution to the other conference participants. This
capability will allow file transfers to be performed by MBFTPTOOL
ahead of time and avoid redundant distribution by MMConf.
Eve Schooler, Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden
(schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU,
djwalden@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
Alan began work on a mail-based FAX server for the FAST project.
Alan has also been studying the ISO protocol suite, in particular
the remote execution service element (ROSE), in order to finish his
proposed remote execution protocol (T.REX).
Paula Caruso and Alan Katz (CARUSO@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
Cisco Systems has given us a method for extending our routing
filter list indefinitely. We are not limited to 50 entries as was
reported last month.
An SNMP trap demon was started for monitoring trap events. This
works well with the ciscos.
An SNMP based tool for character graphic display of network routing
status was created. It tells us if Los Nettos member networks are
known by the NSFNET and if optimal routes are being taken. Adding
new networks to check routing status is manually done but
customizing the tool is trivial.
Equipment was ordered to connect Unisys in Cammarillo to Los Nettos
as a regular member. The due date for the line is late October.
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
We are in the process of getting upgrades for the last of our
Datatel 3552 units to 1.3 firmware revision level.
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
-----
No report received.
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
NEARnet added Kodak Boston Technology Center and Northeastern
University during September. The T1 link to JvNC was stabilized by
the upgrade of router equipment. User Conference on September 21
attracted over 90 enthusiastic participants who listened to
presentations ranging from technical topics to user information
services. Dan Vanbelleghem of NSF explained the various funding
vehicles available to colleges during a workshop on September 22.
by John Rugo (jrugo@bbn.com)
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Craig Partridge attended SIGCOMM and Karen Roubicek attended the
FARNET meeting. The NNSC distributed revisions to Chapter 5 of the
Internet Resource Guide. Requests to be added to or removed from
the distribution list should go to resource-guide-
request@nnsc.nsf.net.
by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net)
NORTHWESTNET
------------
NorthWestNet is moving forward on the process of reconfiguring the
network to reduce the number of redundant links while providing
better network latency. This reconfiguration is expected to take
several weeks. Experimentation continues on providing backup links
via dialup.
The NorthWestNet 2nd annual meeting will be held in Boulder,
Colorado October 30 through November 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.
by Dale Smith (DSMITH@oregon.uoregon.edu)
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES SUPPORT OF NATIONAL NETWORK INITIATIVE
On Friday, September 8, the White House presented a plan to spend
nearly $2 billion enhancing the nation's technological know-how,
including the creation of a high-speed network that would link more
than 800 research sites around the country. The new network would
be called the National Research and Education Network (NREN).
"A future national high-speed computer network could have the kind
of catalytic effect on our society, industries, and universities
that the telephone system has had during the twentieth century,"
wrote D. Allan Bromley, Director of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy, in an introduction to the report. This report
should be available electronically on the Merit/NSFNET Information
Services mainframe within the next six weeks. For further
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
information send electronic mail to "nis-info@nis.nsf.net" or
"nis-info@merit" (Bitnet).
NSFNET RESEARCH AND TEST NETWORK ADDS CIRCUITS
The NSFNET Research and Test Network has expanded to a total of
eight circuits with the addition of three new circuits. The new
circuits are: Milford, CT - Reston, VA; Ann Arbor, MI - Yorktown,
NY; and Gaithersburg, MD - Reston, VA. The Merit Computer Network
is located in Ann Arbor; IBM research facilities are in Milford and
Yorktown; and MCI's research facility is located in Reston.
FDDI Developments
Working with the IBM Milford NSFNET Development team, Merit has
completed a device driver for a prototype implementation of the
Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) on the NSFNET backbone.
The prototype FDDI implementation in the NSFNET uses an
experimental adaptor manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
A BSD Unix 4.3 device driver was written by Merit, allowing the
board to be used in the IBM RT/PCs on the NSFNET backbone. In
conjunction with the software development, an Internet Request for
Comments has been published which proposes a standard method for
the use of the Internet Protocol over FDDI. Other ongoing research
areas include packet video, and X.400 and X.500.
by Patricia G. Smith (patricia_g._smith@um.cc.umich.edu)
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network
------------------------------------------------------
PREPnet added The Software Engineering Institute as a new member
during September.
Thomas W. Cummings <tc1r+@andrew.cmu.edu>
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
Our EN641 from Network Systems is in production use supporting our
UNICOS XMP (2 hours/day) and, later, our YMP. It is now announcing
the path to our UNICOS system. This is the first host using our
new Class B network 132.249.
Our Fuzzball is back striking the hours
Our old PSN (26) hasn't yet been removed. Should be soon. SDSC
continues to be active in CaliNet, IETF, and FARnet. S. Arnold and
P. Love attended the ACT ONE seminar at UCLA during last month.
by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
Internet Research
Jose Garcia-Luna attended the IESG Workshop on 7 Sep, 1989.
Jose Garcia-Luna presented two papers on routing at the SIGCOMM '89
Symposium, September 19-22, 1989.
The first paper, entitled "A Unified Approach to Loop-Free Routing
Using Distance Vectors or Link States," describes a unified
approach for the dynamic computation of shortest paths in a
computer network using either distance vectors or link states. The
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Internet Monthly Report September 1989
new approach treats the problem of distributed shortest-path
routing as one of diffusing computations, which was first proposed
by Dijkstra and Scholten. The paper verifies the loop-freedom of
the new routing algorithm proposed, and also demonstrates that it
converges to the correct routing entries a finite time after an
arbitrary sequence of topological changes.
The second paper was written together with C. Cheng, R. Riley, and
P. Kumar of Northwestern University, and is entitled "A Loop-Free
Extended Bellman-Ford Routing Protocol without Bouncing Effect."
This paper presents a new algorithm that maintains entire loop-free
paths from source to destination in a distributed manner and using
only the shortest distance and second-to-last hop in the updates
and routing tables maintained by nodes. This new algorithm improves
over previous schemes for loop-freedom used in such protocols as
the Border Gateway Protocol. The paper verifies the correctness of
the algorithm.
At the SIGCOMM '89 presentations, simulation results were given for
the average performance of both algorithms, using the ARPANET
topology of January 1988 as an example. The new algorithms were
compared favorably against the distributed Bellman-Ford algorithm
and an optimum topology broadcast algorithm (similar to the new
ARPANET routing algorithm).
Jose J. Garcia-Luna <Joaquin@NISC.SRI.COM>
SURANET
-------
No report received.
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK
------------------------------
No report received.
UCL
----
UCL hosted a meeting between NSF, NASA, DARPA, JNT and
representatives of other interested parties to discuss the
possibilities for increased bandwidth between Europe (and more
specifically the UK in the short term) and the US.
The International Collaborative Board and CCIRN had meetings at the
Defence Research Establishment, Ottawa, Canada (DREO) at the end of
September. A number of presentations on topics for collaboration
were made at a joint meeting.
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
UCL were partly off the air for some part of September due to
routing update problems in our first hop gateway to anywhere. An
upgrade solved the problem.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Paul Schragger's gigabit network scheduling simulator tool is
sputtering to life. It now produces candidate link and switch
schedules for a four-node network with arbitrary arrivals.
Mike Davis is compiling data from various sources to analyze
network behavior during periods of congestive stress. Mark
Shaw and Stefan Levie have begun implementation of the
hardware and software for a PC-based time-server
implementation. Ken Monington completed installation of
another precision oven-compensated quartz timebase, bringing
to three the number of precision-synchronized fuzzballs. Erik
Perkins began studying RIG-related documents in preparation
for future experiments. Dave Mills presented a briefing on
synchronization and NTP to a SAFENET meeting on protocol
standards for shipboard LANs.
2. As part of our regular curriculum in VLSI engineering, a gang
of undergrads have embarked on a project to design and build a
VLSI prototype of a crossbar switch/controller for our gigabit
project. This effort, which is supported by an NSF grant and
uses the MOSIS rapid-prototype system, should be completed by
next Spring.
3. We have found an opportunity to borrow an HP 5061 Cesium Beam
Standard and Austron 2000 LORAN-C Receiver for a few months. A
gang of four undergrads is being pursued to design, build and
test a suitable computer interface for use in precision time
and frequency transfer on high-speed networks. We are
collaborating with Paal Spilling and staff at NTARE, which
have similar capabilities.
4. We have been notified to expect installation of a 1.5-Mbps
tail circuit to the DOE segment of the RIG testbed. This
segment now consists of CalTech, SRI, LANL, ANL and UDel. We
plan to pursue experiments in flow/congestion management and
engineered queueing disciplines.
5. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) specification appeared in
PostScript form as RFC-1119. Two additional documents on NTP
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report September 1989
were submitted, one describing the concepts and principles of
network time synchronization and the other the results of the
glorious NTP experiments of last month, both sprinkled
lavishly with figures, graphs and tables for PostScript
lasers. New NTP primary servers engaged chime at Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute, University of Texas and HP Labs
at Bristol, UK. The NTP subnet now includes 15 primary servers
synchronized to national standards of the US, Canada and UK.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
1. A T-1 line was installed from New Mexico Technet to NCAR.
This will be run in parallel with the existing 56 kbps circuit
until it becomes stable. The circuit costs are being shared
between the NSF (the 56 kbps costs) and New Mexico Technet
(the difference between T-1 and 56 kbps).
A progress report/renewal request was forwarded to the NSF
including the proposed operation of Westnet for FY'90. Seven
of Westnet's seventeen circuits are exhibiting congestion at
56 kbps, and we are requesting that they be upgraded to T-1,
with the incremental circuit costs being born by the region,
and the hardware is being requested from the NSF.
by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu)
Carol Ward (cward@spot.colorado.edu)