<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR90-01.TXT
JANUARY 1990
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 4
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 21
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 23
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 23
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network . page 26
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 30
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30
Westine [Page 2]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
IAB MESSAGE
Internet Activities Board Report
The IAB met at ISI on January 3-4, 1989. Two new members joined
the board: Lyman Chapin of Data General, and Tony Lauck of Digital
Equipment Corporation.
The following actions were taken by the IAB at this meeting.
A. IGP Policy
The following is to be the general policy on intra-AS routing
protocols ("IGPs") for the Internet: there will be one primary
standard protocol that will be RECOMMENDED, but there may be
other standard protocols which will be ELECTIVE.
All general-purpose Internet gateways will be expected to
support the primary standard; support of any of the other
standard protocols will be optional.
A primary standard will be selected after the IAB has received
recommendations from the IESG.
B. Minutes
IAB meeting minutes will be published in the future.
C. Scientific Requirements Task Force
The recent IAB reorganization left this one task force dangling.
At the recommendation of the Task Force chairman, Barry Leiner,
the task force has been disbanded. However, the IAB hopes that
its members will continue to provide extensive input to Internet
planning by participation in appropriate IETF working groups.
D. Standards Procedures
The IETF has made recommendations to the IAB about some detailed
changes to the standards procedures, to make clear to all in the
Internet community the significance and status of every protocol
specification in the "standards track". The IAB has not
completed work on this recommendation, but the results will be
announced as soon as they are available.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
No report received.
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
END-TO-END RESEARCH GROUP
The End-to-End Research Group met for two days at the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC) on January 17-18. The entire second
day was devoted to a joint meeting with the Privacy and Security
Working Group; see their report for a summary of this day.
The topics discussed during the first day included the
following:
o MULTICASTING
The group discussed the question: what are the primary areas
left for research in Internet multicasting (see below).
o DATA ENCODING
Craig Partridge presented some partial results for performance
measurements on various data encodings. It was observed that
our machines are increasingly RISC-based with boundary
alignment constraints; "bytes are not cheap". A useful effort
would be to design a data encoding that would be efficient for
RISC CPUs.
o ASYMMETRIC ROUTES
The group discussed the architectural question: are asymmetric
routes (i.e., different routes in the two directions)
intrinsically bad? This issue arose out of Dave Clarks RFC on
policy-based routing (RFC-1102), which argued for symmetric
routes at the inter-AD level. Three arguments have been
raised against asymmetric routes: (1) they double the effort
for billing and accounting; (2) they cause "wierdness" when
things break; and (3) there may be a problem constructing a
path for sending control information back to the source from
an intermediate gateway. The group decided that, with respect
to (3), an architecture that makes it difficult to send an
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
error message from the gateway system back to the source is a
bad idea. Clark suggested one solution might be to send
control or error information forward to the destination and
thence back to the source (like the DEC congestion bit).
o TCP WINDOW SIZE
Revisiting the issue of TCP operation over a "big fat pipe"
(see RFC-1072, RFC-1106), we learned that Van Jacobson is
thinking of a modification to classical-VJ slow-start and
congestion-avoidance, to handle this problem. The RG wants to
follow up on this.
o HIGH SPEED PROTOCOLS
Dave Clark presented his latest strategy for defeating
protocol layering.
A number of the discussions concerned the general question:
what are the research issues? The following issues were
identified in the meeting:
o Scaling issues for resource location protocols.
o Implications for all protocol layers of synchronized clocks.
o Scaling of clock synchronization protocols, e.g., NTP.
o Best algorithm for multicast routing.
o Inter-AD multicast routing algorithms.
o Congestion control with multicasting.
o Self-organizing set of agents, e.g., NTP agents.
o Data encodings efficient for RISC chips.
o TCP congestion control over big fat pipes.
o Possible phase changes with network growth.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
The Privacy and Security RG met at Xerox PARC, January 17-19,
1990 including a one-day joint session with the End-to-End RG.
Topics of discussion for the January meeting included Privacy-
Enhanced Mail implementation status, security requirements for
Network Time Protocol (NTP) and for the Transport Layer, and a
developing framework RFC on security labelling.
Westine [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
On the Internet Privacy-Enhanced Mail front, implementation
activities have continued at TIS, with work on upgrading to
production-level software for message processing and key
management in preparation for the beta test phase now expected
to begin early spring of this calendar year. The initial beta
test community will be the PSRG and IAB members.
Discussion of the progress in this area and plans for software
in support of certification and registration have been the
topics of meetings and workshops held in December 1989, and
continuing this month with representatives of BBN, RSADSI and
TIS attending. In the course of these workshops, BBN has begun
to develop an alternative to the user registration procedure
outlined in RFC 1114. The new procedure involves a mechanism by
which organizations could directly act as issuers of
certificates for their own users with out compromising the
integrity of the system as a whole. This would provide faster
turnaround than the RFC 1114 registration mechanism which has
RSADSI as a co-issuer, and would eliminate the need for RSADSI
to retain organizations' private keys. It would also reduce
significantly the fee paid to RSADSI for each user certificate.
Dave Mills of the End-to-End RG spent some of his time during
the January meeting explaining the operation of NTP to the PSRG
and outlining security requirements for the protocol. This work
will be followed up by Matt Bishop who, with Dave's input, will
be editing a white paper on NTP security requirements and a
recommendation of mechanisms to address them.
The joint E2E/PSRG meeting focused on a list of topics proposed
by E2E members on ways of addressing security problems in a
variety of end-to-end communications environments. Topics
included VMTP, discovery protocols, security implications of
multicast, and general questions about providing security at the
transport layer. Several examples of current security software
and hardware technology were cited, and security protocols SP3
and SP4 of the Secure Data Network System (SDNS) program were
cited as possible building-block mechanisms to addressing some
of the end-to-end concerns. Work on a profile of SP4 for use in
Internet hosts was cited as a possible focus for an IETF WG in
the newly formed Security area.
PSRG members reviewed a draft outline for framework RFC was
presented and some revision to the outline was made. This
document summarizes the motivation for the use of security
labels at various protocol layers, considers security label
requirements in various contexts, and reviews labelling
approaches in use today.
Westine [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
Ongoing work includes additional consultation on NTP security
requirements coordinated by Matt Bishop, and further development
of the labelling framework RFC edited by Russ Housley. The next
PSRG meeting is planned for early April at DEC, in Boxborough,
MA.
Ken Rossen (kenr@BBN.COM)
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY
------------------------
The Collaboration Technology Research Group (formerly the
Applications / User Interface Task Force) has not been as
inactive as our absence from the last several Internet Monthlies
might suggest. Indeed, we have had two meetings, June 13-15,
1989, at Bellcore, and October 19-20, 1989, at BBN. Highlights
of those meetings and other related events include:
- The group has been renamed the Collaboration Technology
Research Group. This is to emphasize our application-driven
approach to technology; i.e., technology is not an end in
itself. At the same time, however, the particular application
domain provides some of the best motivations for research in
user interfaces and multi-media technologies, so those topics
will continue to pervade our discussions.
- The evidence is mounting that high-speed network researchers
are paying insufficient attention to the issue of multi-channel
synchronization (a.k.a. media synchronization). Example
applications where multi-channel synchronization is required,
include keeping the audio channel in synch with the video
channel during a real-time teleconference, or keeping the
graphics "channel" in synch with the audio channel when playing
a voice segment using a voice editor. In both cases, two
different communication channels, with different qualities of
service, are clearly correlated and must be synchronized with
each other. Unfortunately, there appears to be little ongoing
research that is addressing these issues. In particular, the
bulk of the research on Asynchronous Transfer Mode has assumed
that channels have independent connection request and burst
statistics. The ANSA (Cambridge), MUSE (MIT), and IMAL
(Bellcore) projects are among the few groups addressing these
issues.
- Related to this, standards for (asynchronous) exchange of
multi-media information also appear to be slow in coming. The
group consensus is that neither X.400 nor ODA are adequate, but
there is no serious alternative on the table. Low-level efforts
Westine [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
continue to find a "champion" to host a workshop on this topic.
- With respect to real-time teleconferences, experience to date
suggests: the more comfortable people are with each other, the
better open floor works---because the better/more comfortable
people are at employing the necessary non-computer-supported
"social" protocols to negotiate floor changes; a preemptive
request for the floor (such as might happen with MMConf or
Dialogo, for example) should not be granted unless the current
floor holder has been inactive for some tunable period of time;
and floor control mechanisms are amenable to the same analysis
to which data link protocols are subjects---for example, just as
CSMA/CD doesn't work over long distances or under heavy load, so
too with running open floor. Further experimentation is
required, however, to validate the anecdotal evidence available
to date.
- There is still no shared window system that is (a) readily
available, (b) runs on an equally accessible hardware/software
base, and (c) is reasonably bulletproof. Olivetti's Dialogo is
available on fairly generous licensing terms (including
sources), but runs on Mach and suffers some from its replicated
architecture. HP's SharedX runs under 4.3 BSD, but includes
significant hardware dependencies and is available only on very
restrictive licensing terms. MMConf too is 4.3 BSD-compatible,
but runs under SunWindows and sources are unavailable. None of
these systems works well with heterogeneous display hardware.
- The Testbed Working Group continues to negotiate with NSF,
DARPA, and NRI vis a vis wide-area testbeds for research in
collaboration technology.
- The "Voice in Computing" program at BNR's Computing Research
Laboratory bears watching by all those interested in desktop
audio. They are addressing both workstation architecture and
voice processing issues.
- MIT continues as a front-runner in applications of video.
Glorianna Davenport's group at the Media Lab is developing
multi-media databases for video editing and review. In the
meantime, at Project Athena, the MUSE project is developing
video production tools for courseware. In the process, both
groups have developed an excellent sense of user requirements
and the underlying service primitives necessary to support those
requirements. There are still open issues, but what they
already know warrants wider distribution. (BBN Systems and
Technologies has also developed some video tools, which although
more limited in functionality, can be more easily integrated
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
into traditional workstation environments (i.e. without Parallax
boards).)
- MIT also remains a front-runner in audio, courtesy principally
of Chris Schmandt's group, one of whose ongoing efforts has been
to "tame" their AT&T #5ESS ISDN switch. The latest advance is
to use their Sun-based Phoneserver to provide a better
application interface to said switch, specifically, to the Q.931
signaling protocol. Chris's group has also developed a nifty
little speech-based interface to X window managers. For
example, saying "hide" or "expose" will hide (or expose) the
window with the input focus. This is implemented by a
combination of hardware and software; the hardware consists of
their PC-based audio server and the software consists of an
application program that listens for (speech) input and invokes
X window management requests.
- US West Advanced Technologies has developed one of the better
examples of a metropolitan-area broadband testbed in support of
distributed groups. Their experiences reinforce the conclusions
of prior studies, for example, that audio is both more important
(for teleconferencing) and more difficult to get right than
video, but that video provides a sense of comfort and enables
the use of more social protocols. They also recommend that such
networks provide "video automatic number identification (ANI)"
and "video busy signals."
Our next meeting is scheduled for February 28 - March 2, at
Xerox PARC. The principal topic of discussion will be multi-
media terminal/workstation architecture.
Keith Lantz <lantz@orc.olivetti.com>
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
IETF REPORT
Chairman: Phill Gross/NRI
1. There will be an open meeting of the IESG on Thursday afternoon
(Feb 8, 4-7pm) at the February IETF meeting. The agenda will be:
o Presentation of New Proposed IAB Standards Process. This will
help to set the context for the next two topics.
o Review of the standardization status of some current Internet
protocols. The IAB is organizing the Internet standards process.
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
In conjunction, the IAB has asked the IESG to make recommendations
on numerous current Internet protocols.
o Review standardization of Intra-AS (i.e., IGP) routing protocols.
(See 2. below)
2. There is a strong need for high functionality *open* IGPs for
the TCP/IP protocol family. The goal is increased routing
functionality and multi-vendor interoperability. Current open
IGP's (e.g., RIP) no longer fulfill modern routing requirements.
There are now several candidate IGPs being proposed for Internet
standardization.
The IESG earlier made the following recommendation to the IAB:
o One IGP routing protocol should be designated as a RECOMMENDED
standard for routers in the Internet. Other routing
protocols may be designated as Internet standards but
these will be ELECTIVE, not RECOMMENDED.
o All Internet routers which implement a dynamic routing protocol
will be expected to implement the RECOMMENDED standard IGP
routing protocol.
o Internet routers may also implement other ELECTIVE Internet
standard routing protocols, or proprietary non-Internet-
standard routing protocols, as they wish.
o Any future proposals for IGPs will be treated equivalently.
o Making a decision at this time should not preclude making an
orderly evolution in the future, if conditions warrant.
The goal will be to collect information on the candidate protocols
at the February IETF meeting at FSU. Each candidate protocol will
be given the opportunity to brief the IETF plenary. Then the IESG
will hold an open session in the plenary to discuss this (and
other) issues. Audience participation will be strongly encouraged.
The IESG will then forward collected information and a
recommendation to the IAB.
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
Important criteria for this decision are:
o State of protocol development and standardization effort,
o technical merit of protocol and component algorithms,
o operational experience,
o status of product availability (or, expected time-to-market),
o OSI integration issues (e.g., fully independent stacks MUST
always be supported, but efficiency may arise from
converging mulitple protocol functions),
o publicly available code (preferably for unix, for inclusion
in 4.4bsd), and
o provision for Authentication.
******IESG AREA REPORTS******
HOST AND USER SERVICES AREA
Director: Craig Partridge/BBN
Three new working groups have been created:
The Distributed File Systems WG, which is charged with
investigating network performance of various file systems and
considering if any of the current distributed file systems are
appropriate candidates for standardization. The chair is
Peter Honeyman.
The End-To-End User Connectivity WG, which is charged with
developing a plan for how user-reported connectivity problems
can be repaired in a timely fashion. The chair is Dan Long.
This effort is in cooperation with FARNET.
Network Graphics WG, which will look at the network
performance of graphics protocols. The chair is TBA.
INTERNET SERVICES AREA
Director: Noel Chiappa/Consultant, Proteon
Report not Received
ROUTING AREA
Director: Robert Hinden/BBN
A new working group was formed called "IS-IS for IP Internets
Working Group". It is chaired by Ross Callon. The purpose of
the group is to extend the ANSI IS-IS Routing protocol to be
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
used for IP. An internet draft titled "Use of OSI IS-IS for
Routing in TCP/IP and Dual Internets" was published. A talk is
scheduled at the February IETF to present this work.
Open Routing Working Group completed their architecture
document. It it titled "An Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy
Routing". It is being published as an "internet-draft". A
presentation is scheduled at the February IETF meeting to
present this architecture and a open working group session to
review detailed comments.
The Interconnectivity Working Group has been split into two
groups. IGW will focus on the development the Border Gateway
Protocol. A new group called Topology Engineering Working Group
has been formed to deal with issues of Internet topology and
interconnection. This group will be in the Operation Area.
A new working group was formed to develop multicast extensions
to OSPF. It is called "Multicast Extensions to OSPF" and is
chaired by Steve Deering.
I would like to see a new working group formed to develop
standards for internet gateways/routers for route filtering
techniques. If you are interested in participating in or
chairing this group please contact me by email (hinden@bbn.com)
or at the IETF meeting.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT AREA
Director: David Crocker/DEC
Report not received.
OSI INTEROPERABILITY AREA
Director: Ross Callon/DEC and Robert Hagens/UWisc Reported by
Robert Hagens/UWisc
The OSI Area Directors have two interesting news items to
report:
PARIS, February 1 - The OSI IS-IS protocol passed muster at
the Paris ISO SC6/WG2 meeting:
(a) The IS-IS intra-domain routing protocol specification was
approved unanimously for registration as a Draft Proposal (DP).
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
(b) US delegates were successful in obtaining approval to add
the code point 1100 1100 to the ISO standard for identifying
Network layer protocols (ISO 9577) to identify the DoD IP. This
was also a unanimous decision, with active support from many
other national delegations. ISO 9577 can now be used to
discriminate among OSI Network layer protocols and the DoD IP
when both protocols share a common link layer circuit.
- report courtesy of Lyman Chapin.
MARINA DEL REY, January 29 - A new Request for Comments has been
issued: "An Echo Function for ISO 8473". This memo defines an
echo function for the connection-less network layer protocol.
Two mechanisms are introduced that may be used to implement the
echo function. The first mechanism is recommended as an interim
solution for the Internet community. The second mechanism will
be progressed to the ANSI X3S3.3 working group for consideration
as a work item.
When an ISO standard is adopted that provides functionality
similar to that described by this memo, then this memo will
become obsolete and superceded by the ISO standard. This memo
is not intended to compete with an ISO standard. This is a
Proposed Elective Standard for the Internet.
SECURITY AREA
Director: Steve Crocker/TIS
A new working group is being formed to consider Internet
security policy issues. Rich Pethia, manager of the CERT, will
chair the group. It will have its first meeting at the IETF
meeting in Florida.
IP Authentication
No substantial comments have been received since the last
IETF. It will be submitted to the RFC Editor immediately
following this IETF.
SNMP Authentication
There are 3 documents:
"Authentication and Privacy in the SNMP"
"Administration of SNMP Communities"
"Experimental Definitions of Managed Objects for
Administration of SNMP Communities"
Westine [Page 13]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
The first has just been placed in the Internet Drafts
directory. The others will be available at this IETF and will
be submitted to the drafts directory immediately following
this IETF.
We expect they will be submitted to the RFC Editor following
the next IETF meeting.
OPERATIONS AREA
Interim Director: Phill Gross/NRI
Report not received.
APPLICATIONS AREA
Director: Russ Hobby/UC-Davis
Report not received.
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
INTERNET R&D
Throughout the month of January, we have been collecting review
comments on the draft of the architecture for inter-domain policy
routing. We recently held a video conference with approximately 15
participants, at which we came to agreement about issues
outstanding in the document. The architecture draft is slated to
become an Internet Draft at the beginning of February. We will
present a talk covering the basic features of the architecture at
the upcoming IETF meeting.
We have also been working on a set of protocols for inter-domain
policy routing. A draft version of these protocols will be
completed in early March, at which time we will meet with others to
discuss them.
REAL-TIME MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING
This month we made significant improvements to our multimedia talk
presentation tool in order to make it easier to create and modify
talks. We also improved the way the individual data files that
make up a talk are managed and gathered together into a single
file.
Other activities included participation by Terry Crowley in the
Workshop on Architectures for Very-High Speed Networks. Terry
talked about applications such as multimedia conferencing and
distributed access to video information that would require the
resources of very high-speed networks. Some characteristics of
these applications include requirements for video with a wide range
of compression and quality characteristics, requirements for real-
time and non-real-time performance (e.g. video mail), and
unpredictable usage patterns (e.g. will conferencing be used for
group meetings, one-on-one calls, or as long-standing "tele-ports"
to other sites to help create community ties over long distances).
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
An interesting concensus that became apparent was the need for
testbeds where these applications could be tried out and better
information gathered about real traffic patterns.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK AND ST/IP GATEWAY
During January, the Terrestrial Wideband supported five conferences
and two conference demos. Three of the conferences involved four
sites. Conferences were held by the IETF Working groups on User
Documentation, and Open Routing. Bob Braden chaired a 4-site panel
on the DRI Open Gateway Testbed. Also, discussions were held
between Danny Cohen (ISI) and Ira Richer (DARPA).
Work on support of SIMNET over ST continued. Last month, tests
were run in the testbed to verify that the system could handle a
high traffic load and the anticipated long-haul delays. This month
a SIMNET-ST/IP gateway was fielded in the Washington SIMNET office
which allowed us to do similar tests over the real network between
Washington and BBN. In mid-January, over one megabit of ethernet
traffic and traffic from 800 simulated vehicles were successfully
passed between SIMNET applications (simulators, traffic generators,
and other applications) at each site. Multicast delivery in the
SIMNET host also passed preliminary testing in the testbed.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
CERFnet continues to expand its membership. During January, the
cisco routers throughout the network underwent software upgrades. A
portion of the backbone links were upgraded to T1. The DIAL N' CERF
(dial-up service) is stepping out into its pilot stage. The CERFnet
Network Information Center (NIC) was relocated to another machine
and new documents were added to the repository.
New members
During December, a division of Xerox Corporation located in San
Diego had all the necessary hardware installed to connect to
CERFnet. Due to delays in receiving their IP address number, their
installation was not completed until in mid-January. Xerox has a 56
kilobits-per-second (kbps) link to the San Diego Supercomputer
Center (SDSC).
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
Also, during December a backbone node was installed at the
University of California Office of the President (UCOP) in Oakland.
This is CERFnet's first Northern California site. UCOP has a 56
kbps link to SDSC.
Science Applications International Corporation of San Diego had all
of their CERFnet hardware installed in December. SAIC is currently
working on problems with their local-area network before bringing
up their T1 link to SDSC. Three new industrial members will be
installed in February.
These are Supercomputing Solutions (San Diego, California) on
February 6, Quotron Systems Incorporated (Los Angeles, California)
on February 13, and Science Horizons (Encinitas, California) on
February 20. Supercomputing Solutions and Science Horizons will
both have 56 kbps links to SDSC. Quotron Systems Incorporated will
have a 56 kbps link to the the University of California at Los
Angeles (UCLA). Another new industrial member, ISX Corporation
(Los Angeles, California), will be brought online during March.
ISX will have a 56 kbps link to UCLA. Walt Disney Imagineeing
(Glendale, California) will be brought online during April. They
will have a 56 kbps connection to Caltech.
Progress with DIAL N' CERF
DIAL N' CERF, the CERFnet dial-up service, is currently undergoing
in-house testing. The dial-up service currently uses SLIP, and
eventually will use Point-to-Point Protocol for Internet access.
DIAL N' CERF subscribers will be able to ftp and telnet from their
workstations such as PCs and Macs. Mail service will also be
available. DIAL N' CERF will be available to the community in
Spring . . . just in time for summer.
Increased redundancy
A T1 circuit between the UCI and UCLA was installed to complete the
redundancy of the backbone. The backbone link between SDSC and UCLA
was upgraded from 512 kbps to T1. Also, the backbone link between
UCOP and SDSC was upgraded from 56 kbps to T1. This makes the
CERFnet backbone all T1 circuits.
Cisco upgrades to 8.0
Throughout January, the CERFnet cisco routers were upgraded from
the 7.1 software version to the new software version 8.0. Among the
new elements of this release: support for three new network
protocols (Novell IPX, Apollo Domain, OSI); X.25 switching
capability; Token Ring local source routing; and enhancements to
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
network management and security.
Security management in this release has been improved
significantly. cisco now supports both the basic and extended IP
Security Option (IPSO). Also, cisco has added user-authentication
functionality to routers as well as terminal servers.
Farnet
On January 8 and 9, CERFnet hosted the FARNet quarterley meeting at
SDSC.
Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu)
CICNET
-------
No report received
CORNELL
-------
A new version of the gated software is now in alpha test.
Interesting developments are:
BGP implementation conformant with RFC1105.
Better configuration parser (using lex and yacc).
More flexibility in controlling route acceptance and propagation.
It will be possible to control route propagation and even set
metrics depending on what protocol and {AS,gateway,interface} the
route was learned from.
Multiple routes to a given destination (one per protocol for RIP
and HELLO, one per gateway for BGP and EGP). The active route is
selected by a preference. Preferences can be specified by
protocol, interface, gateway or AS.
MIB-2 draft SNMP support interfacing with NYSERnet's snmpd.
Extensive re-design aimed at both portability and ease of
implementation of new protocols.
Ability to selectively compile only desired protcols.
Enhanced tracing facilities, including EGP and BGP state machine
tracing.
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
Scott Brim is chairing a new IETF working group, the Topology
Engineering Working Group. He has submitted a paper, "IP Routing
Between U.S. Government Agency Backbones and Other Networks," as
an Internet Draft.
We are trying to get money to develop support for routing multicast
communications over wide areas, both within an AS and across AS
boundaries.
Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu)
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden organized what is hoped to be the final teleconference
to consider what gateway platform to use for the open gateway
testbed, Friday, January 26th.
As planning for this testbed proceeds, one difficult problem has
been finding a suitable name for the network. The current favorite
is Internet Research Architecture Network . . . IRANET. Bob also
held a two-day meeting of the End-to-End Research Group at Xerox
PARC, January 17-18, 1990 and attended the 2.5 day Gigabits
Workshop at BBN, January 24-26 1990 and hosted the 2 day IAB
meeting held at ISI 3-4 January 1990. Work on updating statspy was
nearly completed.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Memo About RFCs in Postscript and Ascii
From: postel@ISI.EDU (Jon Postel)
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 90 14:37:55 PST
Subject: About RFCs in Postscript and Ascii
RFCs have been traditionally published in ASCII text.
The IAB has decided that RFCs may be published in PostScript.
This decision is motivated by the desire to include diagrams,
drawings, and such in RFCs. It also allows authors that
normally work with document production tools that produce
PostScript output to use their normal tools. PostScript
documents (on paper, so far) are visually more appealing and
have improved readability.
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
PostScript was chosen for the fancy form of RFC publication over
other possible systems (e.g., impress, interpress, oda) because
of the perceived wide spread availability of PostScript capable
printers.
It has been pointed out that many RFC users read the documents
online and use various text oriented tools (e.g., emacs, grep)
to search them. Often, brief excerpts from RFCs are included in
e-mail. These practices are not yet practical with PostScript
files.
Therefore, the IAB has also decided that when ever an RFC is
published in PostScript a secondary version of that RFC is to be
made available in ASCII text. This secondary version may be
missing some elements of the primary version (e.g., diagrams),
and be formatted differently.
Work is in progress to provide the secondary versions of the
PostScript RFCs already published.
It has also been pointed out that PostScript is less standard
that has been assumed and that several of the document
production systems that claim to produce PostScript actually
produce nonstandard results.
It may be necessary to identify a set of document production
systems authorized for use in production of PostScript RFCs,
based on the reasonableness of the output files they generate.
--jon. (The RFC Editor)
Two RFC was published this month.
RFC 1139: Hagens, R., "IETF-OSI Working Group", January 1990.
RFC 1141: Mallory, T., and A. Kullberg, "Incremental Updating of
of the Internet Checksum", BBN Communications,
January 1990.
Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
We have begun to consider alternative platforms for the
teleconferencing system. We are continuing our investigation of
the sound I/O facilities on the NeXT machine. We are also
considering porting the system to a Sparcstation.
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
A new version of the background FTP program, BFTP, was released,
including the BFTPTool and the MBFTPTool. BFTP.215.tar.Z is
available via anonymous FTP from the "pub/" directory on
"venera.isi.edu".
Several teleconferences (some 4-site) were held this month
including telemeetings of the ORWG, IETF and those planning the DRI
testbed.
Steve Casner attended the meeting of the FRICC Engineering Planning
Group in Reston, VA.
Eve Schooler, Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden
(schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU,
djwalden@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
Alan Katz continued work on our electronic mail FAX server
described last month.
Alan Katz (katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
We are starting to develop a method for accessing the console ports
of cisco routers and CSU/DSU's at remote sites. We will include
the ability to power cycle the routers and CSU/DSU's. This will be
available via the cisco auxilary port if a network problem does not
partition a site. The consoles will also be available via dial in
access, when the network is partitioned.
We have integrated two monitoring tools into one character oriented
display. One tool pings interfaces within the net. The other does
SNMP queries to verify proper routing and EGP neighbor status. The
tools run independently but the display is integrated.
Walt Prue (Prue@isi.edu)
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
No report received.
MIDNET
------
No report received.
MIT-LCS
-------
Dave Clark organized the IRSG Workshop on the Architecture of
High-Speed Networks that met during 24-26 January at BBN.
Chuck Davin (jrd@PITT.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
MRNET
-----
Mahlon Stacy announced his resignation as Chair of MRNet.
Additional work responsibilities at the Mayo Foundation left Mahlon
with inadequate resources to meet MRNet's needs. Mahlon was MRNet
Chair since its founding in late 1987. The MRNet Executive
Committee undoubtedly speaks for all MRNet members in recognizing
Mahlon's contributions to MRNet and wishing him well in his new
responsibilities.
MRNet's new T1 link to the NSFnet backbone at UIUC worked well in
its first full month of operation. A substantial increase in
traffic appears to have occurred, but January statistics are not
yet available.
MRNet migrated to a class B address (137.192.0.0). The class B
address should position MRNet for expansion as it doubles in size
in the next six months.
Unified Communications, Inc. and Secure Computing Technology Corp.
connected to the MRNet network in January. Management Graphics,
Inc. and Hewlett-Packard expect to connect next month. The Mayo
Foundation replaced its two parallel 9600 bps lines with two 56k
bps lines to MRNet, upgrading from GS/3s to Ciscos in the process.
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
MRNet expects to welcome 16 new members when the mail ballots are
counted in early February.
by Timothy J. Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu)
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
During January, Xylogics Incorporated and the University of Maine
System were connected to the network. The core's redundancy was
improved by the addition of a T1 circuit between the Open Software
Foundation and Thinking Machines Incorporated. New services for
1990 including Kerberos, White Pages, NNTP, a resource guide and
pocket guide were announced in the latest newsletter. NEARnet will
hold its second Technical and User Seminar on March 19th. Routing
problems on the JvNCnet caused significant interruption to Internet
availability during the middle of the month. The problems have now
been resolved and operation is stable.
by John Rugo (jrugo@nic.near.net)
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Craig Partridge attended the End-2-End Task Force Meeting. Karen
Roubicek participated in the User-Doc Video Teleconference in
preparation for the February IETF.
The NNSC distributed additions to Chapter 2 of the Internet
Resource Guide.
Please send any information regarding available resources that you
would like to submit to the Internet Resource Guide to resource-
guide@nnsc.nsf.net.
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.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
The NNSC Staff has also been working on updating the various online
documents available on the NSFNET portion of the Info-Server. To
receive the help message from the info-server, send a message to
info-server@nnsc.nsf.net, in the body of the message type: REQUEST:
nsfnet, TOPIC: nsfnet-help.
by Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net)
NORTHWESTNET
------------
NorthWestNet has completed its transition from commercial
management by Boeing Computer Services to to management by the
University of Washington. Response has been excellent. The
University of Washington has elected to not use a commercial SNMP
monitoring system, but rather to use a locally modified version of
the NYSERnet v3.2 SNMP.
Portland State is scheduled to be connected February 8.
MCI has agreed to provide a 56 kbps circuit from Fargo to Seattle
provided that NorthWestNet agree to assume some responsibility for
maintenance and troubleshooting of the line. NorthWestNet is
rapidly moving forward to install the upgrade.
NorthWestnet is now in the midst of developing its 5 year plan as
well as formally planning for network operations services and
network administration.
by Dale Smith (dsmith@oregon.uoregon.edu)
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
NSFNET BACKBONE
Total packet counts for January 1990 were 2,465,715,622, up 18.1%
from December 1989's 2,087,081,146 packets. Total network
announcements through January 31 are 983.
NETWORK PLANNING
At the end of the month, Merit and IBM staffs met to explore future
directions for NSFNET nodes. The potential impact to network
performance due to anticipated increased traffic was discussed
along with the potential for offering an OSI network layer
prototype service.
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
VISITORS FROM EUROPE
During the last week of January four representatives of EASINet
(European Academic Supercomputer Initiative Network) met with
Merit/NSFNET personnel. They discussed issues regarding the
interconnection between the NSFNET and EASINet. Each now has a
better understanding of the other's needs, allowing the groups to
work closer together.
MERIT/NSFNET PROJECT HAS NEW MANAGER OF INFORMATION SERVICES
Glee Harrah Cady, formerly with Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale,
CA, has taken a position as the new manager of Information Services
for the Merit/NSFNET staff. Cady, who previously worked as
Marketing Manager for Amdahl's 5990 Processor, says her job in the
upcoming months is to re-accent the name of her group. "We have a
two-fold name, and a two-fold goal. First, we need to get the
Information our clients need, and make it available to them.
Secondly, we are a Service group. We need to not only keep up with
the needs of our NSFNET clients, but anticipate those needs and
create new information products to meet them."
Cady, who left sunny California just in time to experience some of
Michigan's fine winter weather, was Assistant Director of Computer
Systems for the Research Libraries Group in Stanford before working
for Amdahl.
MERIT/NSFNET STAFF ACTIVITIES DURING JANUARY
Dale Johnson, Manager of the Network Operations Center, represented
Merit at the IAB FARNet meeting held at the San Diego Supercomputer
Site on January 8 and 9. Johnson presented NSFNET status to the
group as well as participating in the meeting discussions.
Susan Hares attended the CICNet meeting in Columbus, Ohio, and gave
a presentation on the AD-RD Model, Border Gateway Protocol, and ISO
and CICNet. Dana Sitzler and Cathy Aronson also represented Merit
at that meeting.
by Patricia G. Smith (psmith@merit.edu)
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
No report received.
NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
PREPNET-Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network
--------------------------------------------------------------
LaSalle University joined PREPnet in January. This brings the
total number of members to 23.
PREPnet has three new resources available to members. University
of Pennsylvania medical school provides a version of its MEDINFO
bulletin board on PREPnet.
Two of the new resources are provided by University of Pittsburgh.
The NIH (National Institutes of Health) Guide contains information
on scientific initiatives and administration regarding extramural
programs.
The Guide is published weekly, and information from the last four
weeks will be online.
NIAC, the NASA Industrial Applications Center at University of
Pittsburgh provides the Federal Laboratory Directory. The files
contain information pertaining to research centers, facilities and
laboratories which function under the direction of the US
government.
Thomas W. Cummings <tc1r+@andrew.cmu.edu>
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
Greg Dobrich joined the PSC networking staff. He is assuming the
position of Network Coordinator.
The number of networks connected through the PSC NSS and PSCNET
increased by six since our last report.
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
PSC has acquired a test AS number and is presently testing the BGP
in-house. In the near future we hope to conduct tests with the
NSFNET.
Greg Dobrich (dobrich@a.psc.edu)
RIPE
A coordination group for European IP internetworking has been
formed. It is called RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans) and aims at
achieving maximum interconnectivity between the various wide area
IP networks in Europe. Currently there are networks of regional,
national and international extent. Connections between them have
been made ad hoc with bi-lateral agreements about funding,
acceptable-use and routing.
RIPE aims to coordinate this ad hoc internet, achieve maximum
connectivity for the users and a reasonable amount of manageability
to the participating networks. This is no easy task because
currently there is no strong pan-European backbone network
comparable to NSFnet. This also means that there is no focal point
for management information and coordination of technical matters
such as routing, DNS, etc. These functions have to be performed in
a cooperative effort of the participants.
RIPE has formed four task forces to tackle the most immediate
problems:
1 - Connectivity and Routing
2 - Network Management and Operations
3 - Domain Name System
4 - Formal Coordination
Considerable progress has already been made in all technical areas.
A global picture of existing and planned connectivity is being
built, a RIPE whois database is already operational containing 129
networks which are able to access all other RIPE networks, 55 of
which have Internet connected status and are connected to NSFnet.
This database is used to implement some first routing policies.
DNS servers are also being coordinated. First operational
agreements such as backup routes and sharing of expensive
international circuits are already agreed and working.
More information can be obtained by anonymous ftp from
mcsun.eu.net. Look in directory ripe and ripe/docs. There also is
a general mailing list for all those interested in RIPE activities.
To subscribe send mail to ripe-request@mcsun.eu.net. The RIPE
whois database can be queried with standard whois (NICNAME) clients
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
on the same host. Currently it also contains data from the
"Internet Numbers" RFC and the NSFnet routing database.
All European IP service providers are invited to participate.
Contact the RIPE chairman Rob Blokzijl <k13@nikhef.nl> for details.
Rob can be reached by phone at +31 20 5920413.
by Daniel Karrenberg (daniel.karrenberg@eu.net)
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
No report received.
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
DDN NIC
In January, 68 new numbers were assigned to connected IP networks.
In addition, 112 numbers were assigned to unconnected networks this
month. A total of 3,948 network numbers has now been assigned
including 2,249 connected networks and 1,699 unconnected networks.
The total number of assigned Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) is
now 575.
There are currently a total of 1,338 registered domains which
includes 45 at the top level, 1,249 at the second level, and 44
third-level MIL domains.
Douglas MacGowan <MACGOWAN@NISC.SRI.COM>
Internet Research
Mary Stahl participated in an editorial board meeting of the IETF
User Docs Working Group by video teleconference. The topic of the
teleconference was the production of a bibliography for internet
users.
Zaw-Sing Su participated in an ORWG teleconference this month.
Mary Stahl <Stahl@NISC.SRI.COM>
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
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 76 sites online and 141 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".
SURAnet has signed an agreement with TELECOM*USA to install a T-1
backbone. The agreement is for 16 additional T-1 lines. Fourteen
lines have been ordered to date and installation is scheduled for
the period beginning February 1 through early April, with most
scheduled for completion by March 8.
by Jack Hahn (hahn@umd5.umd.edu)
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK
------------------------------
No report received.
UCL
----
Zheng Wang, one of UCLs PhD students, has completed two papers on a
new alternate path routing scheme which is showing great promise at
congestion avoidance under high load.
Jon Crowcroft attended a workshop on High Speed Networks held in
Boston.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Mike Davis is studying previously collected NSFNET measurement
data and has started collecting similar data from our
burgeoning campus network goo. He and Erik Perkins are wading
through the muck of ARPANET and long-haul testbed hookups. Ken
Monington is working on synchronization issues and logging
mounds of cesium and LORAN timekeeping data and comparing it
Westine [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
with published USNO data.
2. Mark Shaw completed and tested a precision clock board and
interface software for the IBM AT and is working on another
smaller, cheaper one for general use. Stefan Levie has made
substantial progress on a port of Dennis Ferguson's "xntpd"
Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon to the MSDOS system and
ka9q Internet environment.
3. Paul Schragger is working on simulation and performance models
for high speed networks using proposed routing algorithms and
various forms of contention and reservation techniques.
4. Dave Mills attended the End-2-End research group meeting at
Xerox PARC and briefed the Privacy and Security research group
on the authentication model practiced in NTP. He also reported
status and plans of our high speed network project at the High
Speed Network workshop at BBN in Cambridge.
5. Paal Spilling of the Norwegian Telecommunications
Administration visited to discuss common research interests in
network synchronization. He dusted off an ancient LSI-11
fuzzball system and brought up an NTP time server in Norway,
with future plans to hook it to a cesium clock.
6. Edited proceedings of the INARC Workshop on the Future of the
Internet System Architecture and TCP/IP Protocols, held at U
Delaware last June, appeared in the January issue of the ACM
Computer Communication Review. A paper "On the accuracy and
stability of clocks synchronized by the Network Time Protocol
in the Internet system," by D. Mills, also appeared in the
same issue.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
1. The Westnet Steering Committee met on 12 January 1990 at the
University of Denver. Topics covered include: national
networking, plans for FY'90, issues of policy such as who
controls the Westnet gateways, what they can be used for, etc,
Westine [Page 30]
Internet Monthly Report January 1990
a BITNET update, NOVELL software, and a draft costallocations
algorithm for when NSF funding devolves upon the region.
2. Cisco has established Colorado State University as a beta-test
site for FDDI. The FDDI hardware has been installed, and is
in the process of being debugged (incl. software).
3. Westnet has a Request for proposal out for digital circuits.
Responses are due back Feb. 6, 1990.
by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu)
Carol Ward (cward@spot.colorado.edu)
Westine [Page 31]