<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR89-11.TXT
November 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 4
USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
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Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 19
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 22
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 22
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP NETWORK . page 24
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 29
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
Westine [Page 2]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
IAB MESSAGE
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
The ANRG had a one day BBN-ISI videoconference on November 9. We
discussed charging, fault-isolation, and application level
relays in the context of administratively autonomous networks.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
The End-to-End Research Group met for a one-day teleconference
on November 8. Topics discussed included the following.
TCP TIMESTAMPS
Van Jacobson reported experimenting with a TCP that is able to
avoid the 3-way SYN handshake when timestamps are available.
This approach was validated previously by the Mercury Project at
MIT.
HIGH-SPEED TRANSPORT PROTOCOLS
Dave Feldmeier of Bellcore summarized briefly his research on a
transport protocol for high-speed networking. He said that his
proposed protocol is "not lightweight", will operate over
datagram, virtual circuit, and fast-packet-switching networks,
and will support the full range of qualities of service, from
bulk transfer to constrained delays. Little information was
given about how these things will be accomplished, and as this
is corporate rather than university research, the papers on his
work could not be made available to the group.
As background, Feldmeier also described some of the Bellcore
research on fast packet switches, and in particular the Sunshine
and Dawn projects, and on resource reservation schemes. Clark,
who is a participant in Dawn, added more information.
Westine [Page 3]
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PERFORMANCE ISSUES
A. How can we find experimental evidence for the postulated
"phase change"in the behavior of a complex network as
congestion occurs?
B. To what extent can local behavior in switches -- e.g.,
Fair Queueing, or the declumping advocated by some of
the fast-packet-switching research -- change global
network behavior? Shenker and Jacobson went a few more
rounds on this.
C. What would be the effect of Fair Queueing on large
multi-thread hosts, e.g., large mail gateway machines?
Some fear that the widespread introduction of Fair
Queueing could result in collapse of the Internet mail
delivery system. We need to understand the potential
effect on email and DNS operation.
To help answer such questions, we need data from real networks
to analyze; in particular, we need timestamped packet traces.
The group discussed several approaches to obtaining such data.
NETWORK TIME
The group discussed briefly the possible implications for
network protocols of having universal clock synchronization,
e.g., obtained with NTP. It was suggested that protocols could
be simplified in a number of ways.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
The minutes of the October 24-26, 1989 meeting of the Privacy
and Security Research Group (PSRG) were distributed on November
22, 1989. Work is continuing on the implementation of Privacy-
Enhanced Mail, with beta-testing of TIS's initial implementation
to begin in December. In response to the workshop on
requirements for the Commercial IP Security Option (CIPSO)
conducted at Interop 89, the PSRG has initiated work on a
framework document on labelling. Russ Housley will act as
coordinator.
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The next meeting of the PSRG is scheduled for January 17-19,
1990 in California. This meeting will be held in conjunction
with a meeting of the End-to-End Research Group, and a joint
meeting of the two Research Groups is planned.
Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM)
USER INTERFACE
--------------
No report received.
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
IETF Chair: Phill Gross (NRI)
The IETF met on 30 Oct - 4 Nov at the University of Hawaii. The
meeting was be hosted by Torben Nielson (UH) and NASA. Highlights
included 19 working groups meeting, an open steering group meeting,
a focus on Pacific rim network connectivity, and the completion of
the Point-to-Point Protocol Specification (published as RFC 1134).
The Proceedings are in final preparation. We plan to mail
Proceedings to attendees by the end of December.
The IETF Steering Group (IESG) held an open meeting at the Hawaii
IETF plenary. At that meeting, we decided, beginning this month,
to include reports from each area in the monthly IETF report to the
Internet. The eight area reports are below.
APPLICATIONS AREA REPORT
Interim Director: Phill Gross (NRI)
There are currently two working groups in this area;
- Telnet (Borman, Cray)
- Domain Name System (Mockapetris, ISI)
Each of these WGs has produced RFCs, but continue to work on
related topics in their areas.
We need to begin some activity in other application areas as well.
Some proposal have been made:
- Common protocol for remote printing that could be
used by both TCP/IP and PC-based networks.
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- Remote backup facility from both TCP/IP and PC-based
networks.
- Electronic mail (bitmaps for SMTP, standardizing
addressing hacks)
- Usage of DECnet Naming Service in TCP/IP networks
- Network FAX
Some of this work would need to be coordinated with prospective
application services (e.g., RCP) under the Host and User Services
Area.
The highest priority issue in this area is the designation of a
permanent director.
OSI AREA REPORT
Directors: Ross Callon (DEC), Robert Hagens (Univ. of Wisconsin)
The OSI Area has expanded rapidly. The initial OSI working group
(OSIIWG) has been converted into a general OSI WG (OSI-General). In
order to meet the challenge of operating OSI in a dual environment,
the following new working groups have formed, or will be forming
shortly.
List of Working Groups
Name: OSI-General
Chair: Callon & Hagens
Scope:
+ Forum for OSI-related issues not covered by an
existing WG
+ Initial starting point of any OSI issue
Name: OSI-X.400
Chair: Hagens
Scope:
+ 822/X.400 gateway issues (including RFC 987 and
successors)
+ Follow work of NIST X.400 groups
Name: OSI-X.500
Chair: Deutsch (tentative chair)
Scope:
+ X.500 and DNS interactions
+ Evaluation of any missing pieces in X.500
+ Naming service requirements in a dual environment
+ Follow work of NIST X.500 groups
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Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Name: OSI-NSAP-ADMIN
Chair: TBD
Scope:
+ Produce NSAP administration guidelines
Name: OSI-RA (Registration Authority)
Chair: TBD
Scope:
+ Produce X.400/X.500 name registration guidelines
+ Follow work of NIST and ANSI registration groups
Name: OSI-MIB
Chair: TBD
Scope:
+ Definition of MIB variables for dual protocol hosts
Readers interested in a summary of the work of the OSIIWG should
consult the Current Meeting Report for the OSI-General working
group.
OPERATIONS AREA REPORT
Interim Director: Phill Gross (NRI)
There are currently two active WGs in the Operations area:
- JoMAAN (Hares, Merit)
- Benchmarking Methodology (Bradner, Harvard)
JoMAAN is a long standing and productive WG. Benchmarking
methodology is a new WG with the goal of developing standard
methods for measuring performance in, for example, routers and
bridges.
We have identified the need for at least one more near-term WG -- a
TCP/IP Installation Guide. A prospective chair has been identified
and we will attempt to hold the initial meeting at the February
IETF at FSU.
I had not included an Operations Area in my original plans for an
IETF steering group. Instead, I had included the important topic
of User Services as a distinct Area.
In our early IESG discussions, we realized that there were several
broad topics that generated what amounted to long-term standing
WGs, and these often were operations-oriented topics. Therefore,
our original thinking was to broaden out the User Services Area to
be an Operations Area, which would include network operations
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Internet Monthly Report November 1989
(e.g., JOMAAN), network information services (e.g., user services
working group), and network connectivity planning (e.g.,
Interconnectivity working group).
However, the User Services WG has been very active, and we finally
decided to move those efforts under Craig Partridge's Host Services
Area rather than let those efforts languish under an area without a
director. At this time, we feel it is better to leave these
activities under Craig, rather than attempting to eventually move
it under the Operations area. To emphasis the committment of IETF
to the important user services issues, we have changed the name of
Craig's area to Host and User Services.
It is a high priority matter to designate a permanent Director for
the Operations Area.
SECURITY AREA REPORT
Interim Director: Phill Gross (NRI)
This is an incredibly important area that demands immediate attention. I
am very happy to announce that Steve Crocker (Trusted Informations
Systems) has acepted the invitation to direct this IETF area.
Steve has a rich history in the ARPAnet and Internet. Steve was
the author of RFC 1 in April 1969, and in fact authored
approximately one third of the RFCs published in that first
eventful year. More recently, Steve has been involved in protocol
verification techniques and security related matters. Next month
Steve will report in this space.
There is currently only one WG in this area:
- IP Authentication (Schiller, MIT)
However, this WG has essentially completed its initial objective of
developing an IP Authentication option, and has moved on to
developing a method for SNMP Authentication. Therefore, in the
interest of keeping those objectives distinct, this WG has been
asked to split into two -- IP Authentication and SNMP
Authentication. Both will be chaired by Jeff Schiller until
further notice. The goal will be to conclude the IP Authentication
portion expeditiously, so full attention can be given to other
matters.
We have identified the need for at least one additional near-term
WG -- the Secure Configuration WG. The goal will be to draft a
short RFC documenting the proper ways to configure a new system to
minimize the known windows for attack (e.g., turn off STMP debug,
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etc). We have tentative agreement from the CERT to join us in this
WG.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT AREA REPORT
Director: David Crocker (DEC)
The Network Management IETF Area has recently seen a flurry of
activity and coalescence. Each of its three major areas has had
development progress. In addition to the technical work, there
appears to be a degree of stabilization to the specification
process, for network management.
The Area is broadly divided into three technical domains: SNMP-
related protocol issues, CMIP-related protocol issues, and MIB-
related data structure definitions. The MIB-related work further
sub-divides into Transmission media -- broadly defined as anything
below the IP layer -- and the rest of the MIB.
The SNMP Working Group has tried to keep the SNMP protocol and the
SMI framework for data structures completely stable, in order to
minimize operational impact, so that the focus of their work has
been to upgrade the core MIB, with 100 variables, up to about 170
variables. The core MIB was restricted to pure TCP/IP issues,
except for very minor host-specific information. This emphasis has
been retained in the upgrade, which is called MIB II.
The NetMan Working Group, sometimes referred to as the CMOT Working
Group, has renamed itself to OSI Internet Management Working Group.
The group is continuing to pursue long-term use of the OSI CMIP
protocol. A current debate is between the currently-published CMOT
specification, versus a revision which would use the full CMOT,
full SMI, and the full OSI upper stack -- as opposed to operating
over the lightweight Presentation Layer, as currently defined.
This would rely upon ISO advancing CMIP to full International
Standard, which is expected to happen shortly.
Though not yet formed, another group is developing. The range of
specification efforts has the potential for unexpected and
undesirable interactions, such as between MIB variables.
Consequently, I am creating an advisory group to assist with
coordination of the MIB specification(s) and to resolve any
technical conflict. I hope to have it in place by the next IETF.
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HOST AND USER SERVICES AREA REPORT
Director: Craig Partridge (BBN)
This area combines two distinct activities: work on improving the
quality of host-based services from the transport layer up to, but
not including, applications; and work on developing and improving
the quality of user services available on the Internet.
In the area of Host-Based services, the plan for the next year is
to actively encourage new work on standards for various support
services such as remote procedure call, external data formats,
distributed file systems, and network graphics.
Under User Services, the key focus is on improving the services
that already developed, and encouraging and fostering new
activities such as the publication of the User Directory, the FYI
notes, and the SIGUCCS project, that hold promise for improving
user services offerings in the Internet.
Report from the last IETF meeting:
The major activities in Host-Based Services were the meeting of the
Host Configuration Working Group (which is progressing faster than
expected towards developing a configuratihon protocol) and the Ad-
Hoc TCP Options WG (which got bogged down a bit at its meeting).
In User Services, the major news is that Karen Bowers, after
getting the User Services WG started under IETF, has taken on new
responsibilities at NRI which make it difficult for her to continue
as USWG chair. Joyce Reynolds (ISI) has agreed to be the new chair
of the USWG, effective immediately.
INTERNET SERVICES AREA REPORT
Director: Noel Chiappa (Consultant/Proteon)
The Internet Services Area is a fairly active one, with many groups
focusing on particular issues. A major recent accomplishment is
the production of the standard Point-to-Point Protocol document ,
and an initial options document. Both of these documents are now
available. The basic protocol document has been submitted to the
RFC editor as a proposed standard. Further work on the Point-to-
Point protocol will be accomplished in the Point to Point
Extensions working group, which will add support for additional
protocols to the basic specification.
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Of the ongoing groups, the Connection IP group and the Performance
and Congestion Control group, have documents well under way. A
major long term issue in this area is congestion control. The
initial round of mechanisms being discussed in the Congestion
Control group may not be sufficient, and further work in the area
(perhaps involving some research on the IRTF side) is needed.
Router Discovery, MTU Discovery, and IP over FDDI have been formed
and are quite active. Discovery of available routers is a pressing
problem. Currently the community has to either configure hosts
with router addresses, or use a variety of non- standard techniques
to find them; something standard is clealy needed quickly.
Several new groups are in the process of being formed, and will be
announced shortly. The most important is a Router Requirements
group, to redo RFC-1009 and bring it up to the standards of the
Host Requirements RFC's. A group is being put together to
standardize use of IP with the Appletalk environment. Among other
things, it will document the KIP protocol, which has come into wide
use.
A working group is being set up to address IP over Multi-Media
Bridges. There are a number of vendors who wish to offer multi-
media bridges, but there are a number of technical issues to be
solved before the IP protocol family will operate over such
devices. Multi-cast has been in an interim state in the
architecture for years. A number of RFC's on the issue have
appeared, but they need to be brought forward to the "recommended"
state and mandated for use.
Other topics will be receiving attention soon. The Internet needs a
clear standard for the use of variable length subnet masks. The
original subnet RFC did not deal with the details of this issue,
and it needs to be regularized. Detection of dead nodes,
particularly dead routers is a pressing problem. Most hosts fail
to recover gracefully from routers that crash, and although the
Host Requirements RFC discussed the issue, more work is needed. A
group is being created to consider the issues involved in
integrating the Switched Megabit Data Service, SMDS, into the IP
architecture. This new service to be offered by the phone
companies will provide true packet service (i.e. no connections or
connection setup) over a T3 rate interface. It looks like the
world's largest LAN, and presents some scaling problems for the IP
architecture; clearly, ARP cannot be used in its existing form!
Westine [Page 11]
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ROUTING AREA REPORT
Director: Bob Hinden (BBN)
The major issue in this area is the topic of a standard internal
gateway routing protocol (IGP). The IESG discussed this in detail
at the open meeting in Hawaii. We plan to make this tpoic the
focus of a special meeting at the next IETF meeting at Florida
State University (Feb 6-9, 1990).
Because of its importance and its early promise, we have also
decided to form a WG to specifically examine at the experimental
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). One possible outcome would be for
BGP to eventually replace EGP as the exterior gateway routing
protocol. Another possible outcome might be that the better parts
of BGP could become a basis for a new or better EGP.
Phill Gross <pgross@NRI.Reston.VA.US>
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INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK AND ST/IP GATEWAY
During November, the Terrestrial Wideband supported 8 video
conferences. These included meetings of the IETF Open Routing WG,
the IETF User Doc WG, the IRTF Autonomous Networks RG, the IRTF
End-to-End RG, and the Internet Engineering Steering Group.
Professor Leonard Kleinrock (UCLA) held discussions with DARPA on
November 22. Dr. Barry Boehm held an ISTO meeting with his staff
at DARPA on November 27.
This month we worked out a plan with DARPA to use the Terrestrial
Wideband and the ST gateway to support large scale distributed war
gaming as implemented by the SIMNET system. We are working to have
sufficient infrastructure in place by March 1990 to support a 5-
site SIMNET demonstration involving 800 simulated vehicles.
Software development of an ST host for this wargaming application
began this month.
In the last week of November, we ran a successful experiment with
4-way conferencing.
INTERNET RESEARCH
The open routing architecture paper is mostly completed and will be
available for comment in December. The major elements of the
architecture are clustered policy gateways (for redundancy and data
reduction); centralized policy, route, and address servers; source
routing; and route set-up. The paper discusses these elements both
in terms of their functionality and in terms of their
instantiations in internet entities.
The next steps after completing the architecture paper is to
specify the Interior Gateway to Policy Gateway Protocol and the
mechanisms for dissemenination of outage data.
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INTERNET O&M
The biggest event of the month was the partition of the Arpanet
from 11/4 to 11/13. This partitioning was experienced by many of
the Internet users as routing problems, causing many complaints to
the NOC, to gw-fire, and to the gateway group. The reason becomes
clear when you consider the following picture:
host 10.e.f.g
|
_____________________________________________________ net 10
| | | | |
| | | | |
trunk X X | | X
down | |
| |
isolated O O | | O
psn | | | | |
| | | | |
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
BMIL gws <ISI> <AMES> <BBN> <DCEC> <MTR>
(mailbridges) - -- - -- -
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
______________________________________________________ net 26
|
|
___________
| random- |
| gateway |
-----------
|
|
( random-)
( net )------ host r.s.t.u
If a user on host 10.e.f.g is trying to get to host r.s.t.u on
random-net, his message may get all the way to r.s.t.u. But
random-gateway may "know" that the route back to net 10 is through
BMILISI (or BMILAMES, or BMILMTR). It will send the return message
to BMILISI, which will send it out to its PSN, which will drop it
because the trunk is down. So even though the source and
destination are up, and there is a path between them, there is a
problem.
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Gateways in general have a special problem when a directly-
connected network is partitioned. The gateway routes at the
network level, and cannot recognize a partition in order to re-
route traffic to another gateway with access to a non-isolated
node. During this partitioning, it was suggested that we unplug
the Arpanet interface cables from the backs of BMILISI, BMILAMES,
and BMILMTR. This would have let those gateways know that the
Arpanet interfaces were down, so they wouldn't have advertised
routes to the Arpanet through themselves. However, this would have
adversely affected the hosts on PSNs 22, 51, 111 and 17 (behind
111). They were not experiencing any routing problems, but they
would have if we had done this.
Though there is no solution to the general problem, the Arpanet
topology is being made more fail-safe by the addition of a
microwave link between BBN and MIT, so in the event the T1 trunk
from east to west coast goes down, the VSAT links at MIT will carry
all the cross-country traffic.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Network Performance
The installation of NYSERnet version of Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP) on CERFnet has aided network operations
tremendously. A graphical display of CERFnet illustrated on the SUN
workstations alerts the staff of network troubles in near real-
time.
The California State University (CSU) Chancellor's Office T1 link
to the University of California at Irvine was down from Friday,
November 24 until Wednesday, November 29. Because of this the CSU
campuses did not have access to CERFnet. After several days of
extensive troubleshooting, including swapping out the CSU/DSUs at
each end and testing the circuit, the link was brought up. The
cause of the problem is still being investigated. A full report
will be issued in the upcoming weekly network managment report.
Interested parties may obtain CERFnet weekly network management
reports via anonymous ftp to sds.sdsc.edu in the subdirectory
[.cerfnet_stats]. Type cd [.cerfnet_stats] to change to the
subdirectory.
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Installations
CERFnet is adding a new backbone member. The University of
California's Office of the President located in Oakland, California
will have a 512 kilobits-per-second link to the San Diego
Supercomputer Center in the near future.
Five new industrial members will be brought up on CERFnet. A
division of Xerox Corporation in San Diego is scheduled to be
brought online in early December. Xerox will have a 56 kbps link
to the SDSC. Also, a T1 link from Science Applications
International Corporation of San Diego to SDSC is scheduled to be
brought up in mid-December. Scheduled to be brought up in late
January is a 56 kbps link to Quotron Systems Incorporated of Los
Angeles. Quotron will be connecting to CERFnet through UCLA.
Supercomputing Solutions of San Diego will be brought online in
late January. Supercomputing Solutions will have a 56 kbps link to
SDSC. A 56 kbps link between Science Horizons of Encinitas and SDSC
will be brought online in early February.
Minutes
CERFnet held an open session on October 24 to discuss the need for
CERFnet provided dial-up service. A solid three hour discussion was
held with participants representing over 25 academic and commercial
institutions.
Among the items discussed were participants need for dial-up
service, types of services to offer, i.e. e-mail and file transfer,
the different technologies that are available, and how much dial-up
should cost. Results of this session will be summarized and used to
design a CERFnet dial-up service.
Other Activity
CERFnet recently announced the First Annual Summer Research
Fellowships. Up to two $5,000 fellowships are available to support
full-time graduate student research in the summer.
The December 1989-January 1990 issue of CERFnet News was completed
in November. The issue contains articles on how Simple Network
Management Protocol is working on CERFnet, CERFnet NIC services, an
overview of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet, the new CERFnet
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Internet Monthly Report November 1989
fellowships, the CERFnet Report column, and the Internet Notes
column. Electronic distribution will begin December 4. Hard-copy
distribution will begin December 18. Back issues of CERFnet News
are available via anonymous ftp to sds.sdsc.edu in the subdirectory
[.cerfnet_news].
by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu)
CICNET
-------
No report received.
CORNELL
-------
No report received.
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden added a much-requested feature to the packet monitor
program statspy: the ability to count bytes as well as packets. A
new release including this feature was nearly completed this month.
Work is also underway to add to statspy the extended language
features mentioned in the SIGCOMM '88 paper: boolean expressions
and case statements.
Bob Braden held a one-day video teleconference for the End-to-End
Research Group on November 8, and presented an internal ISI seminar
on ATM. He attended a one day meeting at ISI of the group
responsible for the engineering of the DRI, and continued to help
DARPA with planning experiments for the DRI open-gateway testbed.
Bob Braden
Greg Finn has begun comparison testing of the IP/SQ algorithm
within SUN's UNIX. Jon Postel attended a Calinet meeting in
Oakland, CA, 16 November. Joyce Reynolds attended the IETF
meetings at Hawaii, October 30-Nov 3.
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Four RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1125: Estrin, D., "Policy Requirements for Inter
Administrative Domain Routing", USC, Computer
Science Department, November 1989.
RFC 1132: McLaughlin, L., "A Standard for the Transmission
of 802.2 Packets over IPX Networks" The Wollongong
Group, November 1989.
RFC 1133: Yu, J., and H-W. Braun, "Routing between the NSFNET
and the DDN", Merit Computer Network, November 1989.
RFC 1134: Perkins, D., "The Point-to-Point Protocol: A Proposal
for Multi-Protocol Transmission of Datagrams Over
Point-to-Point Links", CMU, November, 1989.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
Use of the teleconference system is accelerating! Eight
teleconferences were held this month for various IETF and IRTF
groups and for DARPA staff members. Half of these were three-site
conferences.
A series of experiments were started with the sound I/O facilities
on the NeXT machine, as part of our investigation of that
workstation as a platform for our real-time voice and video
software.
New versions of MMCC, the multimedia conference control program,
and MBFTPTOOL, the multiple site background FTP program, were
installed at the conference sites. The latest version of MBFTPTOOL
is available via anonymous FTP from the "pub/" directory on
venera.isi.edu in compressed tar-file format, BFTP.213.tar.Z.
Steve Casner attended the IETF ST/CoIP Working Group meeting at UH.
Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner
(deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU,
casner@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
No internet-related progress to report.
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
Jon Postel and Walt Prue attended the Calinet meeting held in
Oakland November 16. The North-South link was discussed again.
Completion is delayed until 1990. A few possible options on how to
use the link were discussed. The next Calinet meeting is scheduled
for 29 March 1990 at ISI.
Unisys (Camarillo) was brought up as the latest Los Nettos member
29 November 1989. Unisys is connected through UCLA.
We have a signed contract from NOSC to add them to Los Nettos.
NOSC will be connected through ISI.
We experienced a routing problem with two of our networks. There
were no links down to indicate any problem existed. However SNMP
based route monitoring tools immediately alerted us to the
existence of a problem. SNMP based diagnostic tools helped us to
quickly isolate the problem. Ping is not enough to verify proper
operation of a network.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
No report received.
MIDNET
------
MIDnet has added several new members in the last couple of months:
McDonnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis
EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, SD
University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD
University of Missouri-Rolla
University of Missouri-St. Louis
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Activity in MIDnet is increasing quite a lot of late. Much of this
is due to the extensive archives currently available at Washington
University (anonymous ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu).
by Dale Finkelson (dmf@westie.unl.edu)
MIT-LCS
-------
"A New Architecture for Packet Switching Network Protocols" by
Lixia Zhang is now available as technical report MIT/LCS/TR-455.
Copies can be obtained ($15.00 each) from:
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science Publications Office 545
Technology Square, Room 113 Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 253-5894
Andrew Heybey prepared a new release of the MIT network simulator.
Work continues on an X-based DUA tool for use in conjunction with
the Quipu X.500 directory software.
Chuck Davin (jrd@PTT.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
We have completed a draft technical report on our Internet
Engineering work for the past year. It will be titled "Evaluation
of Internet Performance -- FY89." (The previous year's report was
called "A Model of Internet Performance Measurement"). The work
was done in the DCA Internet Engineering Net, which is joined to
NSFNET and the MILNET in a transit LAN here at MITRE. The DCA
Internet Engineering Net is a large and growing facility based on
T1 links. Its host and gateway systems are extensively
instrumented, with Ethernet-based tools similar to tcpdump, and
with NETMON, an internal protocol performance tracing facility for
BSD UNIX. Most of the systems now have OSI stacks as well as DoD.
The DCA Net is dedicated to Internet development and evolution
projects, including OSI transition. Projects are mainly those
sponsored by the Defense Communication Engineering Center, but this
year we have provided testing facilities for the University of
Maryland OSPF implementation, and other such cooperation is
welcomed.
In the year's work, we implemented and evaluated the DEC-NIST OSI
Congestion Avoidance algorithms. Our implementation is for the
University of Wisconsin TP4-CLNP, which is the basis for the OSI-
POSIX stack being integrated into Berkeley 4.4. We have begun to
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
integrate our code into Berkeley's alpha release, so that the
algorithms can be present as a per-connection option by the time of
the beta release. Rick Wilder gave an informal presentation on
this work at the IETF OSI Interoperability Working Group in Hawaii.
The tech report will be publicly released in early 1990, along with
a tech report on our measurement tools and techniques, called
"Design and Implementation of an Instrumented Gateway". The other
performance evaluation results, on Source Quench and Random Drop,
will be discussed in next month's Internet Report. A distribution
of NETMON is available by anonymous FTP from aelred-3.ie.org and
comments are welcomed. We have recently started a mailing list
about our tools, ie-tools(-request) @gateway.mitre.org.
Allison Mankin (mankin@gateway.mitre.org)
MRNET
-----
Work continues on upgrading MRNet's link to the NSFnet backbone.
The T1 line has been installed, but is not yet operational. Jeff
Wabik is working with UIUC to coordinate the migration to the new
link, new routers, and an Autonomous System Number for MRNet. The
movement to an independent system number for MRNet should migrate
much of the work for maintaining MRNet routing from UIUC.
The Minnesota private colleges' proposal for connection to MRNet
continues to be approved in principal. Nonetheless, the
implementation of their connection awaits formal approval of
funding.
3M connected to MRNet at 56k bps.
The four incumbents for the MRNet Executive Committee were the only
people accepting nomination. Elections for 1990 Executive
Committee members will be completed shortly.
The following organizations are in various stages of applying for
MRNet membership:
o Minnesota private colleges (10 schools)
o Minnesota State University System (7 schools)
o Secure Computing Technology Corp.
o Management Graphics
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
o Unisys
The next MRNet general meeting is tentatively scheduled for January
at MSC.
Jeff Wabik, Craig Finseth, and Stuart Levy plan to offer their
"Internetworking with TCP/IP" seminar again sometime in February.
by Timothy J. Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu)
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
NEARnet added Motorola Cambridge Research Center to the network
during November. NEARnet and Microwave Bypass Systems,
manufacturer of 10Mb/s microwave equipment, provided a 10Mb/s
connection from an OSF sponsored show to the Internet. A
demonstration of Transarc's Andrew File System featured use of the
connection. Operation of the network continued to be stable.
by John Rugo (jrugo@bbn.com)
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
NNSC/UCAR/BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
Craig Partridge gave a presentation discussing the IAB, IETF, and
Gigabit Networking at the Westnet Technical workshop. Craig
Partridge and Karen Roubicek attended the IETF. The NNSC published
Chapter M of the Internet Resource Guide, as well as revisions to
Chapters 1, 3, and 6 of the guide. Requests to be added to or
removed from the distribution list should go to resource-guide-
request@nnsc.nsf.net. The guide is also available via anonymous
ftp at <nnsc.nsf.net>, cd resource-guide.
by Karen Roubicek <roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net>
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
NORTHWESTNET
------------
No report received.
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
During November 1989, NSFNET backbone traffic passed the two
billion mark. This represents an increase of 7% over September
1989 and a 550% increase over November 1988. In addition, as of
11/30/89 total network connections stand at 1897.
Border Gateway Protocol
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a prototype Inter-Domain routing
protocol, is now in use between the Merit mid-level network and the
NSFNET backbone. BGP is performing functions compatible to the
Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) which is currently used across the
NSFNET. The expansion of BGP to its full architectural model as a
large-scale border gateway protocol still requires further
experimentation and evaluation.
Research Network
All circuits on the NSFNET Research Network are now being monitored
with the Cylink Network Management System (CNMS) instead of the
Integrated Digital Network Exchange (IDNX). CNMS gathers
information about the digital circuits by querying the Advanced
Channel Service Units (ACSUs) which are part of the Nodal Switching
Subsystem (NSS).
MERIT/NSFNET Staff Activities
Bilal Chinoy attended the 5th Annual Supercomputer Conference in
San Diego where he gave a presentation on network performance
benchmarking.
Susan Calcari took part in several activities during CAUSE 89 in
San Diego including a pre-conference seminar on "Introduction to
Internetworking/NSFNET Overview." Susan also took part in a panel
discussion regarding regional and national networking and funding
for the National Research and Education Network.
Susan Hares gave presentations on routing at two regional network
meetings: NorthWestNet in Seattle and Westnet in Salt Lake City.
RFC 1133, "Routing between the NSFNET and the DDN" by Jessica Yu
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
and Hans-Werner Braun has been published. This document is a case
study of the implementation of routing between the NSFNET and the
DDN components (MILNET and ARPANET).
Kenneth Latta recently completed a one-month residency at the IBM
International Technical Support Center in Raleigh, NC. Other
November activities included completion of a NetView-Information
Management software bridge.
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.
PREPNET-Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network
--------------------------------------------------------------
No report received.
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
Since our last report:
Both our Proteon p4200 and cisco AGS have been updated to the
latest rev levels.
We continue to have linemode problems with Telnet under UNICOS -
usually caused by non-cooperating clients.
Our old PSN (26) finally did get removed.
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
The latest version of Multinet has been installed. With it, our
VMS systems can be watched by SNMP.
During December, we are planning two Flag Days during the month to
move the Center from our current Class C address (192.12.207) to
our Class B address (132.249). The center point of 132.249 will be
our NSC EN641.
S. Arnold and P. Love attended the last IETF meeting. S. Estrada
attended the November CaliNet meeting. SDSC continues to be active
in these plus FARnet.
by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
DDN NIC
Over 200 new IP network numbers have been assigned in November,
which brings the total of all IP networks assigned to 3,648; that
total includes 2,084 connected networks and 1,564 unconnected
networks.
Domain registration was slightly higher than usual, with 60 new
domains being registered this month. There are now a total of
1,234 domains registered, including 44 at the top-level, 1,152 at
the second-level, and 38 third-level MIL domains.
Mark Lottor, Mary Stahl, Jose Garcia-Luna, and Zaw-Sing Su attended
the IETF meeting at University of Hawaii. Lottor made a
presentation of recent results from his domain-tree-walker program
and related information.
by Mary Stahl (Stahl@NISC.SRI.COM)
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Internet Research
Jose Garcia-Luna participated in the Open Distance Vector Routing
Working Group at the last IETF. He presented a loop-free routing
algorithm based on distance vectors, and simulation reults
comparing it with the distributed Bellman-Ford algorithm and
topology-broadcast algorithms.
Jose Garcia-Luna (Joaquin@NISC.SRI.COM)
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 75 sites online and 124 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
------------------------------
On 15 September, UT System OTS brought up a T1 data circuit between
UT Austin and Rice University in Houston, replacing a 56 Kbps
circuit. This circuit increased the capacity of the link by a
factor of 24, giving THEnet better connectivity to the NSFNET
backbone and the Internet in general. This circuit is the first
leg of an Austin-Dallas-Houston T1 triangle.
On 1 November, UT System OTS brought up a T1 data circuit between
UT Austin and UT Dallas, replacing a 56 Kbps circuit. This circuit
provides better connectivity between UT Dallas and UT Austin, and
between UT Dallas and the NSFNET backbone. This circuit is the
second leg of an Austin-Dallas-Houston T1 triangle.
On 20 November and 21 November 1989, UT System OTS personnel
traveled to Edinburg and Brownsville to install the routing
equipment necessary to (1) install a 56 Kbps DECnet circuit between
UT Pan American at Edinburg and UT Pan American at Brownsville, and
(2) install a 56 Kbps DECnet circuit between UT Pan American at
Edinburg and UT San Antonio, replacing the 9600 bps data circuit
between UT Pan American and Southwest Texas State University. The
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
routing equipment consisted of a DECSA Communications Server placed
at Edinburg and a VAXstation II placed at Brownsville, along with
the necessary Data Service Units and Ethernet transceivers required
to make all the appropriate connections. Both machines were
installed with no problems. The BrownsvilleEdinburg circuit was
already installed by the phone company and was ready for the
routing equipment, but due to a faulty DSU at Edinburg and
remodeling operations at Brownsville the circuit was not made
operational until November 30. The Edinburg-San Antonio circuit
has not yet been installed by the phone company. It is expected to
be operational the first of next year.
by Don Nash (don@thenic.the.net)
UCL
----
We have now successfully ported the X11 Windows protocol over the
ISODE ISO Transport Service. This works over both TCP (treated as
network service) and X.25. We are working on aligning the mapping
with ANSI proposals for such a stack.
You may have heard that UCL is developing a Message Transfer Agent
called PP. We have reached the stage where the system is ready to
let out of UCL on a limited basis. This message is a request for
beta test sites, and also announces a mailing list.
MAILING LIST
For anyone interested in PP, there is a mailing list: pp-
people@cs.ucl.ac.uk. To join, send to pp-people-
request@cs.ucl.ac.uk (S=pp-people-request; OU=CS; O=UCL;
PRMD=UK.AC; ADMD=Gold 400; C=GB;).
WHAT IS PP
PP is a Message Transfer Agent, developed primarily at the
Departments of Computer Science at UCL and Nottingham. This
develpment started in early 1986, aimed as a follow on to MMDF,
getting things "right", and adding in X.400. This took much longer
than we'd have imagined, and has also changed significantly since
the original ideas.
The main aims of PP are:
- robust operation for switching large numbers of messages
- support for other groups to build UAs
- managability
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
- support for multiple message transfer protocols
and conversion between them
- message content conversion
The major components of the first release of PP will be:
- (UA) service interfaces giving a superset of RFC 822
and X.400(88) funtionality, including some aspects beyond
both. Thies, who will be planning to replace MMDF or Sendmail
with PP. I will look at commercial test sites, but will
need persuading.
Any beta test site should be running ISODE now. PP will link with
ISODE 5.0 (recommended) or the version on ISODE development sites.
Beta test sites shoudl be familiar with large mail systems used in
complex configurations.
We are interested in any sort of feedback, including:
- bug fixes
- portability issues, and ports to new UNIX flavours
(currently SUNOS and Ultrix only).
- functionality issues (particularly if fixes offerred)
- new UUCP channel (the current channel and rmail are not
very satisfactory)
- new Channels
We are interested in sites which plan to work on (openly available)
UAs. Whilst PP can be used with MH, we are hoping that state of
the are UAs will be contributed to go with PP.
In general, I'd like sites which are able to put in some real
effort, and want to make the whole thing fly. If you just want to
look, please wait for 5.0.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Paul Schragger continues work on the gigabit reservation
algorithm, which now generates collision-free timetables for
reservation requests. He is also developing a formal graph-
theoretic description based on a series of open, directed-
trail, covering-enumeration algorithms for constrained
bipartite lattices, hereafter known as trailblazer algorithms.
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
2. Mike Davis has snarfed a third of a gigabyte of traffic-
monitoring data on the NSFNET backbone and begun design of
parsing programs to extract interesting data. Mike, Erik
Perkins and Ken Monington are finishing up the design of a
VLSI switch for our gigabit project. Erik is also working on
experiment analysis and design for RIG related activities.
3. Dave Mills presented briefings on our high-speed network
activities at a UNIXEXPO panel and attended a telemeeting of
the E2E task force. He is also working on papers for CCR,
including a report on the last INARC workshop.
4. Analysis and simulation have been completed on improved
algorithms for use in Network Time Protocol (NTP)
implementations. The new design improves frequency stability
to the order of a millisecond per day, while reducing the
polling overhead by a factor of 16. New algorithms for
combining the timescales of multiple peers have been adapted
from those used at NIST and other national standards labs.
5. With the kind cooperation of the US Coast Guard, we have
installed a LORAN-C receiver to keep our cesium clock company
and insure it keeps accurate time to the microsecond. However,
it seems we have to know a bunch of other things, including
precise geographic coordinates, receiver delays and whatnot,
so we plan to simply haul it to US Naval Observatory for
rewind of spring. Of course, since the clock can never be
turned off, transporting it any distance means heavy-duty
batteries, power inverters, etc.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
1. Westnet held its annual Technical Workshop in Boulder, CO,
November 15-17.
There were excellent presentations on PC networking and
Supercomputing applications by Elizabeth Walden, Dean Wallace,
and Mark Christon. We are also very appreciative of Craig
Westine [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report November 1989
Partridge of BBN, Sue Hares of MERIT, Eric Decker of cisco,
Roy Perry of US West, and MCI for their participation in the
workshop.
2. We continue to try to get a working T1 circuit between NCAR
(in Boulder) and New Mexico Technet (in Albuquerque).
3. We have tried running cisco's 8.0(6) firmware on the Westnet
router at NCAR, but dropped back to 7.0 because of
difficulties with propagating Westnet routes via EGP to the
NSS.
4. We have made a minor reconfiguration between Idaho and Utah.
The connections now runs from Univ of Utah to Idaho State
Univ., and from there to the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory to Boise State University.
5. Cray Computer Corporation in Colorado Springs is now
connected.
by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu)
David C. M. Wood (dcmwood@spot.colorado.edu)