<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR90-02.TXT
February 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 18
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
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Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 36
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 36
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 36
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 39
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 39
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 40
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 40
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 41
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 41
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network . page 41
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 43
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 44
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 44
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 44
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 45
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 45
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IAB MESSAGE
IAB MEETING
JANUARY 3-4, 1990
USC/Information Sciences Institute
SUMMARY
A. The IAB reaffirmed its policy that an RFC published in Postscript
must, if at all possible, be accompanied by a version in plain
ASCII text.
B. The IAB modified the Internet standards procedures and the
nomenclature for the protocol specification documents. These
changes were intended to:
(1) clarify the meaning of the "requirement level" (Required,
Recommended, Elective, etc) of a standard;
(2) define more formal procedures for advancing standards
through the "standards track";
(3) require IESG recommendation and IAB approval for each step
in the standards track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard,
and Standard); and
(4) institute minimum times at each step, to aid vendors in
planning products.
[However, the IESG subsequently raised further questions on this
procedure, so the issue is probably not finally settled].
C. The IAB decided that IAB meeting minutes will be published to the
Internet community.
D. The IAB approved the following general policy on intra-AS routing
protocols ("IGPs") for the Internet: there will be one primary
standard protocol, which 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.
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MINUTES
1. ATTENDEES
IAB:
Bob Braden, ISI
Hans-Werner Braun, Merit
Vint Cerf, NRI
Lyman Chapin, DG
David Clark, MIT
Phill Gross, NRI
Steve Kent, BBN
Tony Lauck, DEC
Barry Leiner, RIACS
Dan Lynch, Interop, Inc.
Jon Postel, ISI
Visitors:
Bill Bostwick, FRICC
Paul Mockapetris, ISI
Mark Pullen, DARPA
Ira Richer, DARPA
2. REVIEW ACTION ITEMS: Cerf
The Executive Director distributed hard copies of the agenda,
the minutes of the last meeting, and a status summary of old
action items. The group reviewed the old action items.
The company Internet, Inc. of Reston, VA is trying to trademark
the name "Internet". Cerf will discuss with them the
sensitivity of this issue.
The group discussed the issue raised by the FRICC of "exotic
locations" for IAB and IETF meetings. Richer said that the
concern is travel time and expense, not exoticness. Clark
pointed out that Canada is not considered foreign travel.
Gross observed that the recent decision to reduce IETF
meetings to 3 per year should help.
3. ORGANIZATION REPORTS
A. IESG/IETF: Gross
Presented set of overheads outlining the 8 areas and 34 working
groups (WGs) within the IESG/IETF.
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a) IESG Areas and Directors.
1) Applications: Russ Hobby/UC Davis (2 WGs)
2) Security: Steve Crocker/TIS (2 WGs)
3) Operations: Phill Gross/NRI (interim) (2 WGs)
4) Host and User Services: Craig Partridge/BBN (5 WGs)
5) Internet Services: Noel Chiappa/Consultant (9 WGs)
6) Routing: Bob Hinden/BBN (6 WGs)
7) Network Management: Dave Crocker/DEC (6 WGs)
8) OSI Integration: Rob Hagens/U Wisc and
Ross Callon/DEC (2 WGs)
b) IESG meetings and subgroups.
c) IETF meetings, presentations and highlights.
It was pointed out that an IETF area director must make
a major time commitment, even though many IESG meetings
do not require extra travel.
d) Final agenda of the 15th IETF (Oct 31 - Nov 3, 1989).
e) Number of WGs per area.
A new WG to develop encapsulation of IP over SMDS will be
chaired by George Clapp (Ameritech) and Mike Fidler (OSU).
There is a new WG to update RFC-1009 (gateway requirements),
chaired by Jim Forster (Cisco) with Phil Almquist (BARRNET)
as editor.
Noel Chiappa spawned six new WGs in the Internet Services
area; a newly formed IS-IS group, as well as an Open
Distance Vector group. Four groups are winding down, four
others need help to wind down, while six others need to be
formed, do not have a chairperson, or have not met yet.
Concerning participation in IETF, meeting attendance at
Hawaii was 180, down from 220 at Stanford. There are >500
entries on mailing list, and about 60 active WG participants.
A concern was raised that we are stretching these 60 too
thin, and Gross was asked to report on the extent of
overlapping WG membership.
f) IETF WG summary by area.
g) Future IETF meeting sites.
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o Winter 1990: February 6-9, 1990, Florida State University,
Host: Ken Hays.
o Spring 1990: May 1-4, 1990, Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center,
Host: Gene Hastings.
o Summer 1990: July 31-August 3, 1990, University of British
Columbia, Host: John Demco.
Braden suggested more formality in the relationship between IESG
and IAB: the IESG should specifically state the issues on which
they want IAB response. Gross promised to provide list of IESG
recommendations to IAB. It was suggested that IAB members could
be on IESG and IRSG mailing lists, but it was decided that IESG
should be allowed to keep their mail private. Gross, the IESG
chair, and Cerf, an ex-officio member of the IESG, can forward
IESG messages when they think appropriate and after asking the
original sender.
Gross distributed a report on the IESG and its activities.
B. IRSG/IRTF: Clark
The IRSG held a one day meeting in Austin, TX, and agreed on
three activities:
1) Hold workshops.
2) Write an annual "State of Research" report.
3) Foster WG meetings.
Craig Partridge is organizing a workshop on gigabit networks.
While activity (2) is worthy in abstract, in reality it has
proved difficult to orchestrate. Clark is accepting advice
on how to achieve this.
One of the WGs should own the "getting big" problem. We need to
make sure that Deborah Estrin's ANRG and the proposed RG on
Naming/Addressing don't overlap in this area.
Discussion ensued about keeping the IRSG/IRTF healthy, when there
is a shortage of funding for network research. Richer observed
that the July IAB meeting created a list of important research
areas, and that a one-level-deeper description would be helpful.
C. OPEN GATEWAY TESTBED STATUS: Braden
Braden presented a set of overheads on the planning of the
proposed open gateway testbed. Two issues have been: finding
a gateway platform with open software, and setting up a network
operation center to keep track of versions and updates. We
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expect one platform to support all experiments, but will expect
experimentors to take turns. Braden has organized teleconferences
with vendors to determine which would be most appropriate; we are
currently awaiting more vendor information. DARPA has asked ISI
to run the NOC.
Two level of experiments are planned: IP-level and application
level. The application experiments (e.g., multimedia
teleconferencing) will be important to create real traffic for
testing the IP level. The group discussed the problem of creating
adequate test traffic. Lauck pointed out that artificial traffic,
even if constructed with the same statistics as real traffic, will
not behave the same under load as real traffic, because of
feedback: the addition of new traffic changes previous traffic
characteristics. Clark said that there is particular interest in
looking for oscillations caused by this feedback.
D. NSFNET: Braun
Braun presented a set of graphs showing NSFNET statistics.
a) T-1 data network #2 -- physical routing.
b) Number of regional, state, and local networks linked -- 897
as of December 1989.
c) Monthly traffic in packets.
Gathered using the NNStat tool. Traffic definitely still
increasing, and migration to T3 rates is already being
considered.
Kent suggested that Merit consult BBN network analysis folks
for insight into how much traffic can increase before severe
congestion begins.
d) Monthly summaries of major NSFNET application distribution
examples.
o Interactive data (telnet, rlogin) - 25%
o File transfers (FTP) - 21%
o Name service - 15%
o Electronic mail (SMTP) - 32%
o Other services - 7%
Although traffic grew enormously, the profile of the traffic
distribution remained roughly the same.
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e) Three month comparison of traffic.
f) 3-D graphs of traffic during days of the week.
Only packets are counted, not bytes. Braden noted that
byte counts have been added to NNStat/statspy. Mockapetris
can now send bad hosts warnings.
g) Where packets originate
- collected by Internet network number and sorted by traffic
- identified high traffic examples: Stanford and Berkeley.
OSI CLNP was demonstrated at InterOp but is not yet deployed in
the backbone. NSF wants T3 speeds, and Braun hopes to see them
in 1990. NSF hopes to have a T1 line into CERN by March.
Postel suggested that we raise the default maximum segment size
from 576 to 1500 bytes. However, later discussion led to the
conclusion that this must await MTU Discovery development.
4. RFC STATUS AND PROCEDURES
A. STATUS REPORT ON RFC PUBLICATIONS: Postel
As RFC Editor, Postel distributed hard copies of a draft message
on policy for RFCs in Postscript, of a status report on RFC
publication prepared by Joyce Reynolds, and a draft of the next
version of the "IAB Official Protocol Standards" RFC.
Six RFCs have been published in Postscript so far. Two have been
converted to text; Mills' RFC will probably can't be; others are
pending.
B. POSTSCRIPT RFCs, DRAFT STATMENT: Postel
The IAB discussed the draft statement on Postscript and agreed to
it, with the addition that the source of every document is needed.
It should also recommend using Postscript only for RFCs containing
diagrams.
C. STANDARDS PROCEDURES
There was a lengthy and thorough discussion of Internet standard
procedures.
o It was proposed and rejected that the Proposed Standard stage
was unnecessary and could be dropped.
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o It was reiterated that Internet drafts have a 6 month maximum
lifetime. Gross noted that Internet drafts will have only a
Summary section, but no Status of Memo; the RFC editor will
add the latter when the draft becomes an RFC.
o It was agreed that minimum times should be specified for each
stage in the standards process.
o It was agreed that IESG and IAB action will be required for a
protocol specification to enter the Proposed Standard, Draft
Standard, or Standard status.
Chapin suggested publication of an RFC announcing scopes of
IETF WG's. Gross took an action item to do this.
Gross presented a proposal for modification to the classification
of RFCs, which he felt would make the process clearer to the
world. Under this proposal, the "Requirement Level" (RL) of an
RFC would really only apply to a full standard. For proposed
standards and draft standards, the RL would state the INTENDED
requirement level when it becomes a standard.
A. In the new scheme, each Internet protocol specification has
two attributes: a state (or status) of Experimental,
Historical, Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, or Standard,
and a requirement level (RL) of Not Recommended, Elective,
Recommended, or Required.
The requirement level is to be assigned as follows:
State Requirement Level (RL)
_____ ______________________
Experimental Not Recommended
Historical Not Recommended
Proposed Standard <Anticipated RL when reaches
Standard status>
Draft Standard <ditto>
Standard Elective, Recommended, or Required
A specification in the Proposed Standard or Draft Standard
state is said to be in the standards track.
B. A new specification enters in either the Experimental or
the Proposed Standard state. The possible state
transitions are then as follows:
o Experimental -> Proposed Standard
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o Proposed Standard -> Draft Standard
o Draft Standard -> Standard
o Any state -> Historical
C. A protocol specification can enter Proposed Standard, Draft
Standard, or Standard state only with the recommendation of
the IESG and the approval of the IAB.
D. An Internet protocol specification which the IESG and IAB
enter into the standards track may have been originated by
a Working Group of the IETF, by a Research Group of the IRTF,
or by an outside source.
E. A protocol specification that enters the Proposed Standard
state must remain there at least 4 months, and in the Draft
stage at least 6 months.
F. Raising the requirement level on a Proposed, Draft, or full
Standard will require an additional waiting period, to give
vendors an opportunity to react and to adjust their planning.
Specifically, raising the RL of a protocol spec in the
Proposed/Draft stage will force the 4/6 months "clock" to
be restarted. Raising the RL of a full Standard will cause
the protocol specification to reenter the standards track
at the Draft Standard stage, inserting a delay of at least
10 months before the new RL can take effect.
G. Protocol specifications may be published in Experimental
or Historical state at the discretion of the RFC Editor,
and with appropriate review.
The IAB tentatively agreed to this plan, subject to some further
email discussions.
During this discussion, Chapin supplied much useful and interest-
ing information about the ANSI standard process. It became clear
that the IAB's standards problem differs from ANSI's in important
ways. Chapin also brought up an important concept, the "Journal
or Record", and suggested that the IAB needs one; "it gets you off
the hook for a lot".
It was suggested that the IAB publish a newsletter, that would
also serve as a Journal-of-Record, as an RFC at least once per
quarter. It would include the IAB news currently included in
the internet Quarterly and a summary of RFCs published and
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protocol status changes. Chapin pointed out that publication of
this RFC would synchronize the advance of the standards "clock".
The Internet Monthly was discussed. It should be split into two
newsletters, one operational in orientation and the other
continuing to cover research, perhaps including future gigabit
research activities.
5. COORDINATION WITH OTHER GROUPS
A. OSF: Open Software Foundation.
IAB is happy to accept ideas and input from OSF, but no official
affiliation with OSF is appropriate at this time. Since OSF
makes money selling particular software, there was concern that
they are rather like a vendor, and are not a parallel standards
organization.
B. NMF: Network Managment Forum.
No conclusions were reached.
6. IAB ORGANIZATION AND ISSUES: Cerf
A. CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The dilemma is how to make the IAB more open and yet preserve its
efficacy. Comparisons were made with ANSI, IEEE, NAS, and
government organizations. Since the IAB is concerned with broader
simple issues than just standards and is informally constituted,
no analogies could be drawn.
It was decided that minutes of IAB meetings will be published, and
the Executive Director was instructed to perform this task.
IAB members delivered oral statements of potential conflict of
interest; there were no surprises. Cerf will ask all IAB members
to fill out a NAS (National Academy of Sciences) bias-report form,
and the results will be circulated to all IAB members
B. STANDARDS SUMMIT
A meeting scheduled for February 20-22 will be held in
Fredericksburg, Virginia to discuss management of standards-
the explosion making procedures around the world, particularly
in view of groups with various special interests in the area.
The former chief scientist of the ITU arranged an invitation for
the IAB to participate. Expecting 100-150 people to attend.
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Cerf looking for another volunteer participant besides himself.
C. FORMER SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS TASK FORCE
At Barry Leiner's recommendation, the IAB agreed that the former
Scientific Requirements task force should be formally disbanded,
but could continue as an informal group under Leiner's care.
Members will be encouraged to join appropriate IETF WGs, e.g., in
the User Services and Applications areas.
D. DISCUSSION OF IRTF
The IRTF was discussed, and it was agreed that it is functioning
effectively.
7. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION: Leiner
A. CCIRN: Leiner
Leiner, the official IAB representative to the ICB and to RARE,
reported on activities of these groups. This led to a general
discussion of the high level of IP-related activity in Europe,
the roles of the CCIRN, RIPE, and RARE, and cooperation between
these groups and the IAB and its task forces.
Points which came up included:
o The CCIRN endorsed Brim's recommendations on international
connections: international links forming part of the
general infrastructure should be connected into the
national backbones. The IAB felt that the FRICC ought to
announce this policy officially, and Gross took an action
to cause the drafting of an RFC for this purpose.
o The North American and European members of the CCIRN, to
provide for more continental coordination prior to meetings
of the CCIRN, respectively formed the NACCIRN and EuroCCIRN.
Leiner agrred to provide documentation on the charters for
each of these groups.
o Gross announced out that the FEPG and RARE will hold
US/European workshops on CONS/CLNS gateways. Prime movers
include Rose, Hagens, and NIST. The first meeting will be
in DC or at IETF Talahassee meeting. Cerf suggested these
workshops should be used as springboards for future
cooperation with RARE.
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B. Multiprotocol Internet
Leiner raised the issue of the role of the IAB with respect to
non-IP internets. Cerf answered that it is our intent to build
an egalitarian multiprotocol Internet, parts of which will not be
IP-based. Leiner and Braun then questioned whether the IAB is
addressing the multi-protocol issues aggressively enough.
Gross said that our intent here needs to be more widely broadcast,
and that the statement again should come from the FRICC.
Leiner suggested that if the Europeans felt we were seriously
addressing parallel operation and interoperability of protocols,
they would be more anxious to be involved in IETF WGs. Gross
pointed out that IETF has an entire new area, OSI Integration,
appropriate for them to join; this area already works with a
RARE group on X.400 addressing issues.
Clark and Cerf summarized the IAB's role as follows:
(1) The IAB speaks for IP *protocols*.
(2) The IAB fosters development of *infrastructure* in US.
(3) The IAB is concerned with the *architecture* for the
future multiprotocol Internet.
Although it is not our responsibility to make the OSI
protocols evolve, we care how the combination works together
and interoperates.
C. ICB Report: Leiner
The next ICB meeting will be the end of February. Nothing has
changed on the fat-pipe to Europe. The ICB is addressing defense
issues and CCIRN addressing Research. The fat-pipe will be an
ICB-driven pipe (i.e., used for military cooperation), although
CCIRN may use it.
D. CA*Net: Braun
Canadian is building CA*Net as a sparse, 56Kbps backbone. Funding
will come from the National Research Council and from regional
(provincial) networks, with contributions from IBM Canada, which
will supply routers using NSFnet technology, and Integrated
Network Services (INSINC), which will supply the lines. CA*NET
presents "interesting" routing issues at multiple access points
to US backbones. There is a Canadian Council for Research
Networking (CCCRN).
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8. PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES: Kent
A. INTERNET USER CERTIFICATE REGISTRATION
Kent distributed a draft of "Internet User Certificate
Registration", describing the proposed rules for obtaining
certificates from RSADSI Inc. for use of private email. Gross
took an action item to find or create an IETF working group
to address the problem of electronic signature registration.
Kent led the meeting through the proposed agreement, pointing out
all the issues, pitfalls, and issues still under negotiation.
There was a discussion of the handling of expired certificates
and revoked certificates ("bad boy lists", which need to be in
located in a directory service). Another issues concerned the
controversial restriction that only RSADSI can issue certificates.
There was also some discussion of expanding the use of these
certificates beyond private email; for example, Kent pointed out
that they are exactly what is needed for gateway authentication.
The question was asked: why do we fully trust RSADSI?
Kent answered:
(1) Since only RSADSI maintains keys, an obvious audit trail
will be left if bogus certificates are found.
(2) RSADSI has obvious economic incentive as well as the
necessary expertise to protect information; "there are
lots of built-in safeguards."
The discussion led to several issues for Kent to take to an
impending meeting with RSADSI, to refine the draft procedures.
Kent asked Pullen about an Internet connection for RSADSI; Pullen
will take action.
It is taking longer than expected to get out the private email
software. TIS had promised the software for November 30, 1989,
but they didn't realize how long it would take for the software
to mature. They now expect a prototype version in January 1990.
This version uses public keys and X.509 but requires a highly
centralized key managment facility (to be provided by NIST).
Because there is no support for notaries, they do not want to
propagate this initial version too widely. A more complete
version is projected for initial testing in April 90, with
general use hopefully in mid 1990. The RFC status is Draft
Standard, Elective.
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Another issue was raised: what organization will act as the
certificate-granting authority for the U.S. government? NIST and
GSA were mentioned as possibilities.
B. Security Bug Reports: Gross
Gross introduced a proposed procedure for handling reports of
security-related software bugs. It could be used by the current
CERT and other similar groups that may be formed in the future
(e.g., a CERT for MS/DOS). Gross' proposal resulted from the
concern that vendors might not cooperate and that people might
fail to report bugs due to potential liability. A Washington, D.C.
law firm has critiqued the proposal. With small changes, the
writeup satisfies all the criteria they set out to achieve.
Lauck asked: What is the confidentiality of bug reports? Instead
of broadcasting the bugs, we could encourage a vendor to fix it in
the next system release, and in the meantime only give the bug
report to certain companies and government agencies. Cerf replied
that this is an instance of the standing debate: is it more
harmful to broadcast security bug reports or to keep them secret?
Also, how do we protect the reporter; if a bug report is not
truthful, a vendor could have grounds for a law suit.
The goal of the proposed procedure is to notify the community,
without harming the vendors or risking defamation. The proposal
contains a multi-step procedure, first reporting the bug only to
the vendor, but in later steps broadcasting the report to a
successively wider audience. The procedure would require positive
acknowledgments at all the early steps, and would use RFC-1113
private email for these broadcast reports.
One piece of legal advice was to put vendor on record as
supporting the procedure or not. If a vendor refuses to be on
the mailing list to receive and acknowledge security bug reports,
then archive the vendor's refusal!
9. IGP: Gross
Gross discussed the current serious candidates for a standard IGP:
OSPF, IS-IS, and an Open Distance Vector (ODV) protocol to be
developed.
1) OSPF is a Proposed Standard. A public domain version of it
is now available for alpha testing from the University of
Maryland, and it will be incorporated into GATED. Proteon
has an independent implementation.
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OSPF resulted from an official IAB/IETF effort started 18
months ago, and it is derived from IS-IS with modifications
appropriate for the Internet. However, there has been little
operational experience with it so far, and questions have
been raised about its documentation.
2) IS-IS was DEC-developed; there is lots of experience with a
subset of it in the NSFNET backbone, and DEC has developed
the full protocol for DECNET Phase V. Extensions would be
necessary in order to handle the Internet (e.g., subnetting).
3) The ODV WG was announced in July and met for the first time
in Hawaii. The WG expressed unwillingness to start from
Cisco's IGRP, because Cisco has patented the algorithm.
Gross recommended the following policy, which was adopted by
the IAB:
"The following is the general IAB policy on intra-AS routing
protocols ("IGPs") for the Internet: there will be one
primary standard protocol, which 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."
The IESG will be considering this issue at an open meeting in
Tallahasee, and will later make a recommendation to the IAB. The
IAB did not want to preempt the IESG recommendation, but it did
discuss the issue at painful length, in the context of the
meta-question: can we designate a time when the choice will be
made? It was suggested that setting the date now would reduce the
possibility of claims of unfairness.
Unfortunately, the choice of time frame probably prejudices
the result, since the different protocols are in different
development stages. Therefore, the IAB took no further action on
this issue pending an IESG recommendation, and wished the IESG
lots of luck!
The following points were made in the discussion:
o We want to wait until operational experience has been gained
with interoperation of multiple independent implementations.
(CMOT was brought up as a painful example of adopting a
standard before sufficient testing had occurred).
Westine [Page 16]
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o On the other hand, it is important to make the choice as
soon as possible; an earlier decision will result in
earlier vendor products.
o Lauck (naturally) spoke consistently in favor of IS-IS.
He said that there would be no problem with making the
necessary IP-specific extensions to IS-IS, and that having
a single underlying routing protocol for both OSI and IP
would save significant vendor effort.
o Pullen said that if it's a question of technical quality,
then simply pick one. However, absent clear technical
superiority, it is imperative to maintain an open path
to OSI.
10. WHITE PAGES: Pullen
About a year ago, the FRICC decided to make White Pages a priority
item, and in particular to support X.500. DARPA & NFS spearheaded
this activity for the FRICC. Clark, Leiner, and IAB came up with
a strawman list of potential activities to accomplish this, given
the global resources available. In particular, the IAB plan urged
multiple, interoperable pilot X.500 implementations. Pullen
particularly acknowledged the work that Clark [RFC-1107]
contributed to the planning effort.
Pullen outlined his approach to bringing X.500 service to the
Internet. The proposed applications are White Pages and
privacy-enhanced mail; other applications are possible.
11. NREN MANAGEMENT: Pullen
Pullen described plans being put together for management
committees for the NREN. This is expected to include a
broader and more formalized version of the FRICC, and a broad-
based advisory committee.
12. INTER-AUTONOMOUS DOMAIN ROUTING: Gross, Braun
The candidate inter-AD routing protocols are:
o EGP2
o EGP3
o BGP
o ORWG protocols
It was stated that EGP3 appears to be essentially dead, although
an RFC may be published some day. BGP is an interim effort,
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
created by Cisco, IBM, and Merit, with considerable other support.
The ORWG work continues to be the long-range hope, but it is not a
short-term solution.
BGP development is being overseen by the Interconnectivity Working
Group (IWG). Gross discussed his plans to create a Topology
Engineering Working Group (TEWG) to perform the more operational
function that IWG was originally chartered to do. The need to
ensure a link between FARNET and the TEWG was brought up.
Braden expressed a concern that the BGP RFC describes a protocol
but not an architecture; Braun replied that the architecture
document is in the mail to Jon Postel, for publication as an RFC.
He distributed copies of an early draft.
Richer raised his concern about the continuing failure to produce
a routing architecture document, promised by the IAB last July.
He indicated that funding for routing research might await such
a document.
13. OPERATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE: Cerf
Cerf pointed out that there are still many unsolved issues that
attend the evolution of the Internet, such as accounting and access
control. He agreed to write up his concerns for discussion at the
next IAB meeting.
14. FUTURE MEETING SCHEDULE
* April 24, 1990 Teleconference.
* June 28-29, 1990, Boston, MA.
* October 11, 1990, San Jose, CA, at InterOp '90.
* January 8-9, 1991, ISI, Los Angeles, CA.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
No news to report for February. A teleconference on billing
issues is being planned for March/April timeframe.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU)
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END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
Privacy-Enhanced Mail activities have continued at Trusted
Information Systems in preparation for a limited beta release
expected for this spring. TIS has been focusing on preparing
interim key management software to support this release.
Implementation progress, plans for subsequent releases,
modifications to the user registration process, and assignment
of Certification Authority responsibility will be among topics
discussed at the next P-E Mail workshop on March 27th with
representatives of BBN, TIS, NIST and RSADSI expected to attend.
Per discussion at its January meeting at Xerox PARC, the PSRG is
looking to assist in the establishment an IETF Working Group for
the use of Secure Data Network System (SDNS) protocols in the
Internet. Security protocols SP3 and SP4 and the associated Key
Management Protocol (KMP), developed in the SDNS program, would
seem to have some appeal for use as a generic method for
providing security services in a number of protocol
environments, and the United States, through ANSI, has
introduced SP4 to ISO as a candidate for international
standardization. PSRG members will be taking this up with Steve
Crocker, the IETF Area Director for Security, during March, and
hope to have more to report on this activity in the next
monthly.
The next meeting of the Privacy & Security RG is planned for the
first week of April, 1990, at Digital Equipment Corporation in
Boxborough, MA.
Ken Rossen (kenr@BBN.COM)
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY
------------------------
The CTRG met February 28 - March 1 at Xerox PARC. The major
topics of discussion were multi-media workstation architecture,
media synchronization, connection architecture, and the decision
by Olivetti to abandon many of its research endeavors world-
wide---including the elimination of 80% of its staff at Olivetti
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Internet Monthly Report February 1990
Research California in Menlo Park. As a result of this last
item, the chairman can now be accessed as
LANTZ@SPAR.STANFORD.EDU (no, he has not returned to Stanford).
Further details of the last meeting will appear in a future
Monthly.
Keith Lantz (LANTZ@SPAR.STANFORD.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
Internet Engineering Task Force and IETF Areas
Chairman: Phill Gross/CNRI
The Sixteenth IETF meeting was held at Florida State University
(FSU) on February 6-9, 1990. The meeting was sponsored by the
Super Computations Research Institute (SCRI) and the Department of
Energy. The local host was Ken Hays.
The agenda was very full. Approximately 35 working groups met for
a total of 44 separate sessions during the five half-day working
group periods. In addition to network status reports and technical
presentations there was a particular focus on Intra-Autonomous
Domain routing.
IAB Participation
We were very pleased to have several members of the IAB in
attendance at FSU. Not only did Vinton Cerf (IAB Chair) and Dan
Lynch (ACE) attend, but so did two new members of the IAB. Tony
Lauck (DEC) and Lyman Chapin (Data General, Chair of X3S3.3) were
invited to join the IAB in January. As an IAB member, I am
gratified to have these two new members on the IAB and I was
especially happy to see the participation of IAB members, new and
old, at the IETF meeting.
New Working Groups
Several working groups had their first meetings at an IETF plenary
at FSU:
Internet Services
- IP-over-SMDS
- MTU Discovery (also met prior to IETF)
- Router Discovery (also met prior to IETF)
- Router Requirements
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
Security
- Internet Security Policy
Routing
- IS-IS for Dual IP/OSI routing (also met
prior to IETF)
- Multicast routing for OSPF
Host and User Services
- Distributed File System
OSI Integration
- OSI NSAP Guidelines
Applications
- Network Printing Protocol
Operations
- Topology Engineering
- User Connectivity
In other WG news:
There was also a "Birds-of-a-feather" session on accounting in the
Internet. The purpose of the BOF was to determine if there was
enough interest and technical issues to form a WG in this area.
Depending on the outcome and proposed focus, such a WG could be
organized under the Network Management Area or the Operations Area.
Several WGs have completed their charter. These WGs are
essentially retired, although in some cases the WGs will simply be
inactive until further activity develops under their charter. The
WGs that have completed their charters include:
- NOC Tools (Internet-Draft complete, to be submitted as
an RFC)
- Performance and Congestion Control (Internet-Draft complete,
to be submitted as an RFC)
- IP Authentication (Internet-Draft complete, to be submitted
as an RFC)
OSI Integration
The OSI area has changed its name but not its important focus. The
original name "OSI Coexistance and Interoperability" was a
cumbersome attempt by the IETF chair to capture the charter of the
area in the title! The area's main focus was always intended to be
the sound planning required for the integration of OSI protocols
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
into the Internet. It was always intended for the OSI to "coexist"
with the other protocol families now in the Internet. It was also
intended for this area to consider methods for OSI protocols to
interoperate with the current TCP/IP protocols. This charter is
not new or unique. The DoD developed an OSI Implementation Plan
several years ago, which had a similar focus. The Federal Research
Internet Coordinating Committee (FRICC) also formed a planning
group with a similar focus. The IETF OSI Integration Area hopes
to act as a point of focus for technical OSI planning in the
Internet. Please contact the co-Directors (Rob Hagens and Ross
Callon) for a more information on activities in the OSI Integration
Area.
IGP Policy
Perhaps the most important topic at the FSU IETF plenary was the
discussions and presentations on Intra-AS routing protocols. As
was advertised prior to the meeting, the IESG made the following
recommendation to the IAB:
"There is a pressing need for a high functionality *open* Intra-AS
Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) for the TCP/IP protocol family.
Users and network operators have also expressed a strong need for
routers from different vendors to interoperate.
Based on these two requirements, the IESG hereby recommends that
one high functionality routing protocol be designated as the
"recommended" standard IGP for routers in the Internet. Other
routing protocols may also be designated as "elective" standards.
By this, it is the intent that all developers of Internet routers
make the "recommended" standard IGP available in their products.
However, it is not the intent to discourage the use of other
routing protocols in situations where there may be sound technical
reasons to do so. This recommendation is meant to *enable* multi-
vendor router interoperation. It is not otherwise meant to dictate
what routing protocol can be used in a private environment.
"Therefore, developers of Internet routers are free to implement,
and network operators are free to use, other elective Internet
standard routing protocols, or proprietary non-Internet-standard
routing protocols, as they wish".
During the FSU IETF meeting (specifically at the IESG meetings of
February 8th and 9th), the IESG discussed the question of choosing
one routing protocol to become the "recommended" standard IGP for
the TCP/IP protocol family. The two candidates under discussion
were ISO's IS-IS, enhanced to support IP in tandem with CLNP, and
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
OSPF. Both protocols use the SPF routing algorithms.
A preliminary recommendation is being forward to the IAB and will
be announced to the IETF mailing in early March.
IESG meetings and minutes
The IESG held an open meeting on Thursday at the FSU IETF. This
has become a standard practice for exchanging information between
the IESG and the IETF plenary, and will continue at future
meetings. Meeting notes from the open IESG meeting will be
included in the Proceedings of the FSU IETF.
Phill Gross, Chair
IETF and IESG
*******IESG AREA REPORTS*******
APPLICATIONS AREA
Director: Russ Hobby/UC-Davis
Network Applications in Need of Standards
The Internet has grown to the point where a vast number of people
have access and they are now asking "What do we do with it?". Most
TCP/IP implementations include three basic applications: remote
login (Telnet), file transfer (FTP) and electronic mail (SMTP).
These applications need to be looked at to see if they meet todays
need, but people want more!
The main reason for TCP/IP's success has been its interoperability.
Now that new applications are being looked at (and in some cases
developed), we need to provide standards for these applications to
insure continued interoperability. In the telephone world, the
user does not care what is happening with the switching and
circuits, he just wants to be able to talk to the person at the
other end. This also needs to be true with network applications.
We already see proprietary network systems, particularly with
microcomputer, that can not talk to each other. What we need are
agreed upon standards at the network level for the applications,
and the vendors can then sell their product because their's is the
"best" implementation and user interface. Also, regardless of
one's options on OSI, it will happen at some point and TCP/IP needs
to work closely with the OSI groups to make sure that there will be
interoperability at the application level.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
Here are a few of the applications, old and new, that have produced
some interest and questions.
Electronic Mail
There is no doubt that current email could use some
improvements. How can we include image information in email.
What about electronic signatures? Is what we really need an
electronic document standard that will include these issues and
more? How is X.400 going to fit into or work with the TCP/IP
world? What about ANSI Z39.50
Network Printers
An IETF working group for this one is forming now. We need to
define a standard method of sending printer output to a printer
connected to the network. Some items to consider are:
1) Authentication/security/accounting
2) Begin/end control of print job
3) Printing modes and options (postscript,
plain text, page/line size, ....)
4) Scheduling priorities
Network Backups
Define a standard method of doing disk backups to a mass storage
system on the network. This is becoming particularly important
with the increase of PCs and workstations that do not have mass
storage directly attached.
Distributed Network Bulletin Board System
Define a Bulletin Board System such that various parts of the
information base can reside on different computers. This allows
each provider of their information to provide the maintenance
and computing resources for that part of the information base.
Also as the information base grows, rather than having get a
bigger computer to handle the growth, you add more computers.
One idea currently being looked at UC Davis is to use the USENET
concept and NNTP, but use the Domain Name System to specify
which computer provides NNTP service for a particular newsgroup.
Distributed Network Calendar/Scheduling System
Define a system such that one computer can maintain a calendar
for a group of people/rooms/items, but can also communicated
Westine [Page 24]
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with calendars on other computers over the network for
scheduling.
Network FAX
Define a standard method of sending FAX information over a
network. If we can get email to include images, this need may
decrease, but people what to do FAX now!
Network Interactive Conversations
Define a standard method for interactive conversations over the
network. There are several programs that allow users to talk to
each other, but no standards for it. UNIX "talk" or Internet
Relay Chat (IRC) are probably the closest to defacto standards.
Network Database
Define a standard method of interacting with databases over a
network. SQL seems to one option.
Directory Services
What is the best way to provide this service? Whois? DNS?
X.500? We need an official way of doing it over TCP/IP.
HOST AND USER SERVICES AREA
Director: Craig Partridge/BBN
User Services
The User Services WG has announced that it will begin to produce
a new type of RFC, an F.Y.I. note. F.Y.I. notes are
informational RFCs, designed to help users and managers better
understand how to use the Internet.
The NISI working group has been re-instated. Dana Sitzler of
MERIT is chair. The groups charter is to examine the on-line
information services offered by the NIC, and consider what
service protocols could be standardized, so all NICs could
provide similar information using the same protocol.
Host Services
The TCP Big Windows WG has developed two possible ways to expand
the TCP window size and sequence space to sizes appropriate for
gigabit networks. Researchers at Cray Research and some of the
Westine [Page 25]
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national supercomputer centers have agreed to develop and test
these options and report on which one seems more suitable.
The Distributed File Systems WG has started work to identify
issues in operating distributed file systems over wide areas.
There is reason to believe that existing DFS protocols are not
well suited to this problem.
The Graphics WG decided to disband, in favor of trying to
arrange a one-time workshop in which people interested in
graphics, networking, and standards could discuss common
concerns. The WG felt that it was just too difficult to
persuade the graphics community to attend networking meetings,
or the networking community to attend graphics meeting.
INTERNET SERVICES AREA
Director: Noel Chiappa/Consultant
Report not received.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT AREA
Director: Dave Crocker/DEC
Report not received.
OSI INTEGRATION AREA
Directors: Ross Callon/DEC and Rob Haggens/U-Wisc
The OSI general WG has reviewed the following documents
RFC 1006
Internet Draft: DRAFT-UCL-KILLE-NETWORKADDRESSES-00.PS.1
Internet Draft: DRAFT-UCL-KILLE-PRESENTATIONADDRESS-00.PS.1
Internet Draft: DRAFT-OSF-SHUE-OSIUDP-00.TXT.1
and determined which should be progressed in the RFC Standards
Track, and for each document to be progressed, the anticipated
requirement level. These recommendations are listed in the OSI
general meeting report.
The OSI-NSAP working group had their initial meeting. The group
accepted their charter,
to develop guidelines for NSAP assignment and administration,
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
and identified eight issues/questions that need to be resolved.
These issues are detailed in the meeting report.
The OSI-X.400 working group meet to consider the transition to,
and operation of an Internet X.400 Private Management Domain.
Their work can be summarized into 2 points:
a) there is no need to specify a transition or Address
structure for the Internet; domain defined attributes
will suffice.
b) there is a real need to allocate funds to administer and
operate a PRMD on behalf of the National Research
and Education Network, NREN.
The group is preparing a detailed statement to this effect that
also includes details on the administration and operation of an
NREN PRMD.
OPERATION AREA
Interim Director: Phillip Gross/CNRI
The Interconnectivity WG (chaired by Guy Almes) will conquer by
dividing. IWG has had two main activities in recent meetings -
BGP, and operational routing and topology management. We have
decided to create a new WG, Topology Engineering (tewg), to focus
specifically on the second issue. Scott Brim (Cornell Theory
Center) will chair the new TEWG. TEWG will have a specific goal of
coordinating among the various relevant operational routing and
topology management groups in the Internet. This includes regional
networks, FARNET, national backbones, etc. Guy Almes will continue
to chair IWG, which will now take BGP as its main focus. Please
see the charters for IWG and TEWG, or contact the chairs for
additional information.
The Joint Monitoring for Adjacent NSFnet Networks WG (JoMANN) has
undergone a minor transformation. Sue Hares (Merit) organized
JoMANN, at least partly, to assist Merit in interacting with the
regional networks attached to NSFnet. JoMANN proved useful enough
that we have decided to establish it as a mainstay of the new
Operations Area. The WG will be renamed Network Joint Monitoring
(NJM) to emphasize that the new focus will be monitoring issues
beyond simply networks adjacent to NSFnet.
There is some other preliminary activity in the Operations Area.
We held a meeting of the reporters from the major national
backbones (NSFnet, ESnet, NSI, DCA/DARPA) in an attempt to make the
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
network status report a more regular and standardized feature. We
also had an ad hoc meeting of folks interested in developing
standard ways of collecting and reporting network data. We hope to
bring these two efforts together, if possible.
ROUTING AREA
Director: Robert Hinden/BBN
MULTICAST OSPF W.G.
This WG met for the first time at the February IETF. Twenty two
people attended the meeting, with the following topics being
covered: introduction to IP multicast, overview of the IGMP
protocol, survey of current multicast routing strategies, and
proposed modifications / additions (algorithms and data) that will
be necessary to support multicast routing in OSPF. Most the
discussion centered on a desire for performance characteristics of
multicast routing (e.g., how dynamic will host group membership be,
how often will the cache entries be calculated).
OPEN ROUTING W.G.
The inter-domain policy routing architecture document became an
Internet Draft at the beginning of February. It is available as
Title: An Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy
Routing
Editors: M. Lepp and M. Steenstrup for the Open
Systems Routing Working Group
Filename: draft-ietf-orwg-architecture-01.ps
Martha Steenstrup gave a presentation to the IETF plenary outlining
the important ideas in the document. The working group meet at
IETF and discussed the details of how the architecture works. Work
is progressing on the protocols for the initial version of inter-
domain policy routing. The group is scheduling a video conference
in Mid-March to discuss the proposed protocols.
The ORWG is now open. Send mail to msteenstrup@bbn.com if you
would like to be put on the mailing list.
OSPF W.G.
John Moy gave a presentation to the IETF plenary describing OSPF,
together with a comparison to the dual IS-IS. Also at the February
IETF, there was a meeting of OSPF implementors (led by Rob Coltun
and Jeff Honig). The main topic of this meeting was the
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
incorporation of the University of Maryland's OSPF code into the
"gated" program. Finally, field testing of OSPF in selected NSF
regionals (and other Autonomous Systems) has begun. A new mailing
list, ospf-tests@seka.cso.uiuc.edu has been formed to support this
effort.
INTERCONNECTIVITY W.G.
The IWG meet several times at the IETF meeting and worked on a new
versions of the BGP protocol and an accompanying usage document.
New versions of these documents will be released in March.
As part of the reorganization of the IWG, the old BGP mailing list
has been merged with the IWG list. The new list is iwg@rice.edu.
Please send messages concerning IWG/BGP issues to the merged list.
IS-IS Working Group
Radia Perlman presented a talk to the IETF plenary on the IS-IS
routing protocol and IP extensions. The working group meet several
times at IETF to further refine the IP extensions and develop plans
for several implementations.
OSPF / IS-IS Debate
There was much debate at the FSU IETF meeting on the merits of the
OSPF v.s. IS-IS for routing IP traffic. The intention is to pick
one as the recommended standard IGP for IP to allow for multivendor
routing in a single autonomous system. The discussion was loud and
heated, but no blood was shed.
I believe that the only conclusion that was reached is that we need
real operational experience with these protocols before one can be
selected as the "recommended standard IGP".
SECURITY AREA
Director: Steve Crocker/TIS
The new Security Policy WG, chaired by Rich Pethia, met at the IETF
meeting in Florida. There was a considerable interest. The WG
will propose ideas for an Internet-wide security policy. A mailing
list has been established. Send requests to:
spwg-request@nri.reston.va.us
A number of messages have already been sent on this list, and the
ideas are flowing rapidly.
Westine [Page 29]
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The SNMP Authentication portion of the Autnentication WG met in
Florida and discussed a trio of documents. These documents will
continue to undergo further review, but have been released for
general distribution with the intention of becoming a proposed
standard (elective). The three documents are:
"Authentication and Privacy in the SNMP"
"Administration of SNMP Communities"
"Experimental Definitions of Managed Objects for
Administration of SNMP Communities"
Keith McCloghrie, Chuck Davin and Jim Galvin are to be
congratulated for pushing through these documents.
The IP authentication portion of the Authentication WG did not
meet, but its document is complete and will be submitted to the RFC
editor for advancement to Proposed Standard (Elective).
Some security related topics have come up that are being pursued in
other areas. This is expected to happen reasonably frequently, and
our intent is to leave the primary responsibility with the other
area and coordinate as needed. Specific topics being coordinated
at the moment are:
- User profile, under development by the User Services WG,
chaired by Joyce Reynolds
- Telnet encryption and authentication, under development
by the Telnet WG, chaired by Dave Borman.
- Privacy Enhanced Mail, under development by the Privacy and
Security Working Group in the IRTF, chaired by Steve Kent.
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
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INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
INTERNET RESEARCH
During the month of January, we completed the Internet Draft
containing the inter-domain policy routing architecture. This
document was reviewed by about 15 reviewers in the open routing
area before submission as an Internet Draft, and is now being
reviewed by members of the Internet community.
At IETF, we presented the architecture both during a formal
presentation and at the working group sessions. There seems to be
a fair amount of interest in getting this implemented, both for its
own sake and because it would relieve a lot of the current Internet
routing problems.
We've also been scoping out the protocols for the initial version
of inter-domain policy routing. These include protocols for route
request, path setup, virtual gateway status monitoring, virtual
link status monitoring, and status dissemination. We held a video
conference on 27 February to review the first drafts of these
protocols among the group developing them, and we are now in the
process of revising the drafts based upon comments received during
the video conference.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK AND ST/IP GATEWAY
During February, the Terrestrial Wideband supported eleven
conferences and two demos -- more than 3 a week. Two of the
conferences involved four sites, four involved three sites, and
seven involved two sites. Conferences were held by the IETF
Steering group and IETF working groups on Open Routing and on
Benchmarking. In addition, Bob Braden chaired a discussion on DRI
related topics and a number of conferences were held involving
participants such as Ira Richer (DARPA) and Danny Cohen (ISI).
Work on support of SIMNET over ST progressed steadily. The first
phase of development was completed ahead of schedule. Final system
testing will be conducted during March. Weeklong SIMNET exercises
Westine [Page 31]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
have been scheduled for the last week in March and the first week
in April. In preparation for these exercises, SIMNET ST/IP
gateways have been installed at the SIMNET-Washington office, Ft.
Rucker and Ft. Knox. Another gateway is on site at Ft Leavenworth
and is scheduled for installation in the beginning of March.
INTERNET O&M
An error in the algorithm for disseminating EGP information within
a Butterfly Gateway autonomous system was found and fixed this
month. This error was responsible for a number of gateway
"restarts", particularly in the Wideband Butterfly Gateways. This
error was detected when EGP tables in gateways at certain Wideband
Network sites were increased to accommodate the larger number of
networks now present in the Internet. The resulting increase in
EGP traffic appeared to exacerbate the problem. A new version of
software was installed at BBN, CMU, RADC, and DARPA and Butterfly
Gateway restarts at those sites due to the EGP problem disappeared.
This new version of software will be distributed to all Butterfly
Gateway locations during the next month.
EURO-DRI INFRASTRUCTURE
An upgrade was installed in the Butterfly Gateway located at NTA-RE
in Kjeller, Norway. This upgrade included additional processors, a
non-volatile RAM board, a new terminal and load device, and up-to-
date software accomodating the new configuration. NTA-RE gateway
operations have been stable since the upgrade was done.
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Installations
On Tuesday, February 6th, Supercomputing Solutions Incorporated
(SSI) of San Diego were brought online. SSI has a 56 kilobits per
second (kbps) link to the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
SSI is involved in the mini-supercomputer business. On Tuesday,
February 13th, Quotron Systems Incorporated, in Los Angeles, were
brought online. Quotron has a 56 kbps link to the University of
California, Los Angeles. Two new industrial sites will be brought
online in March and April. ISX Corporation will be brought up
March 14th and will have a 56 kbps link to UCLA. Walt Disney
Imagineering will be brought online April 3rd and will have a 56
kbps link to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Westine [Page 32]
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Increased Redundancy
A T1 circuit between the backbone nodes at UCLA and UC Irvine was
brought up on February 9th. This new circuit acts as a default
route. Normally, traffic passing from the UC Irvine reaches the
NSFNET through their T1 circuit to the SDSC. If this link goes
down traffic takes the default route through the UCLA node, across
to the Caltech backbone node and down the T1 circuit to SDSC. From
here it can be routed to the NSFNET.
Memory Problems
CERFnet has recently encountered memory problems on one of its
cisco Systems AGS Gateways. This gateway at SDSC, Dr. Zog,
periodically cannot answer queries by the Simple Network Management
Protocol because of a lack of memory. The status of all sites
connected to CERFnet via Dr. Zog at SDSC is "unknown" at that time.
CERFnet operations are working to resolve this memory problem.
Other Activities
CERFnet hosted a seminar on February 16th at the San Diego
Supercomputer Center. This seminar titled, Introduction to Simple
Network Management (SNMP) Protocol, was taught by Pushpendra Mohta
of CERFnet and discussed SNMP, its design and goals. The morning
session delt with elements of SNMP. The afternoon session dealt
with the use of the SNMP based tools in network management. The
seminar was attended by 60 people.
The next CERFnet seminar is tentatively scheduled for May or June.
This seminar will be about the future of networking, dealing with
both fact and fantasy.
In February, Karen Armstrong attended the quarterly Internet
Engineering Task Force meeting at Florida State University. Karen
is particularly involved with the activities of the User Services
Working Group and the sub-group User-Documentation. Her
involvement is these groups allows her to provide the CERFnet user
community with valuable information, such as the latest
developments on the Internet and new networking-related
documentation.
by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu).
Westine [Page 33]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
CICNET
-------
No report received.
CORNELL
-------
No report received.
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
To more fully test the IP Source Quench congestion control
algorithm, application sender and gateway server programs that use
UDP have been created. This is needed to develop a detailed
picture of the algorithm's operation without confusion from TCPs
congestion and windowing control. These tests will yield benchmark
performance against which possible interference with TCP will be
judged.
Greg Finn (Finn@ISI.EDU)
Bob Braden presented a seminar to the ISI networking group,
summarizing the recent Workshop on Architectures for Very-High-
Speed Networks held at BBN.
Joyce Reynolds attended the IETF meetings in Tallahasse, Florida,
at Florida State University, 5-9, February. Paul Mockapetris
visited Open Software Foundation in Boston, MA, for X.500 demos,
12-16 February. Paul Mockapetris attended X.500 meeting in Boston,
MA with Retix, Banyan, and HP, 20-27 February.
Three RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1143: Bernstein, D., "The Q Method of Implementing
TELNET Option Negotiation", NYU, February 1990.
RFC 1144: Jacobson, V., "Compressing TCP/IP Headers for
Low-Speed Serial Links", LBL, February 1990.
RFC 1145: Zweig, J. (UIUC), and C. Partridge (BBN), "TCP
Alternate Checksum Options", February 1990.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
Westine [Page 34]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
A record 12 teleconferences were held in February, including one
that was the first time neither of the implementors' sites, BBN nor
ISI, participated.
We have developed a test program to investigate the sound I/O
facilities on the Sparcstation and the NeXT machine as alternative
platforms for the teleconferencing system. The program digitizes
audio using the built-in codec, then either loops it back
internally to the local speaker or encapsulates it in UDP packets
which are shipped over the Internet. Packets are either played
back on another machine's built-in speaker or bounced off a remote
host and played back locally.
There is a noticable delay of approximately one fourth of a second
on the NeXT machine when the test program is run in internal
loopback mode. We are hopeful that this delay may be reduced in
future releases of the NeXT operating system by additional DMA
modes for the transfer of data between the DSP and the main
processor. Delay in the Sparcstation is very low with small
buffers. The addition of the network code seems to have added very
little delay, compared to internal loopback. In tests run on our
local Ethernet, the packet loss has been between 0% and 1% and the
speech sounds pretty good.
A new version of the packet video host, PVP, was released that will
allow codec types and codec data rates to be changed during an on-
going ST connection. This will facilitate quick comparisons of
various codecs without requiring frequent loading and starting of
different sets of PVP modules.
Steve Casner attended the IETF meeting in Tallahassee, FL, where
the Connection-Oriented IP WG laid the groundwork for a coordinated
plan for CO experiments on the DRI Testbed. He also attended the
Collaboration Technology RG meeting in Palo Alto, CA, presenting
seminars beforehand at NASA Ames and afterwards at Xerox PARC on
"N-Way Conferencing with Packet Video". Dave Walden attended the
Electronic Imaging Conference in Pasadena to learn about the latest
developments in graphic and video imaging products.
Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler
(casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU,
schooler@ISI.EDU)
Westine [Page 35]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
FAST PARTS
Stockton Gaines and Anna-Lena Neches attended the ASC X12/DISA
seminar "EDI: LETTERS OF THE LAW" in Dallas, Texas. This seminar
addressed various audit, legal and security issues in Electronic
Data Interchange.
Anna-Lena Neches (ALNeches@ISI.EDU)
Alan Katz finished the electronic mail based FAX server and have
started testing. Since it is a mail based server, Alan wants to
make really sure that it does not generate lots of junk mail
accidently. The manual version of our electronic FAX system has
been used somewhat within FAST for the last month.
Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
We have developed a method for accessing the console ports of the
cisco router and CSU/DSU's at remote member sites. A single dial
up line is attached to a low cost any-to-any port selector. We
also connect the local console terminal and the cisco auxillary
"connect out" port to the port selector. This allows us to replace
the A-B switch the console terminal previously used and it allows
telnet access to the CSU/DSU T1 line statistics. We can power
cycle the routers and CSU/DSU's to initiate a power reset by
selecting a specific port on the port selector. One node is
operational, and we will install more sites soon.
Walt Prue (Prue@isi.edu)
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
The eight-member Merit Board of Directors met in a two day
strategic planning retreat at the end of February to consider
membership, governance, the kinds of networking services and types
of affiliated organizations to which such services are offered,
router and link upgrade plans for the Merit Michigan intra-state
network, fee structures, etc. The directors represent the eight
Merit member universities. They were joined by additional staff
Westine [Page 36]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
from their universities, the President of Merit, and several of the
Merit staff.
The Merit Network News, Merit's newsletter, is now available in an
eletronic form: as a mailing list; via anonymous FTP from the
NIC.Merit.Edu machine; and via an automated mail query server. For
a subscription to the electronic version, send to MNN-
Request@merit.edu. For information on accessing this and other
online documentation from the NIC machine, send to info@merit.edu
Merit staff has completed implementation and deployment of software
within the Merit intra-state network in Michigan which allows
asynchronous and X.25 users to Telnet to machines on the Internet
without the need to go through an intermediate host or terminal
server. In order to comply with NSF guidelines and pending
completion of the Merit authorization server, users connected via
dial-in lines or from public microcomputer labs at Merit member
universities are not allowed to initiate connections which traverse
the NSFNET. When the authorization server is deployed, this
administrative restriction will be removed for users who are able
to provide a valid id and password. Although there are
approximately 1,500 of these "public" ports on Merit, there are
10,000 other private ports whose users are not subject to this
restriction.
Reciprocally, Internet users can now Telnet to hosts on the Merit
Michigan network via hermes.merit.edu. This connects to a software
gateway which provides the standard Which Host? prompt used on the
intra-state network.
Merit has agreed to provide a mail gateway service for SprintMail
(formerly TeleMail), similar to the one already provided for
MCIMail. The new gateway is undergoing testing and should be
operational within the next month.
Planning is continuing for the upgrade of the router technology and
link topology used on the Merit intra-state network. The upgrade
will greatly increase the packet switching capacity, provide a path
to OSI standards, and make the network easier to maintain. At the
same time, the new design will make it possible to maintain the
existing X.25, IBM direct channel attachment, asynchronous, and
bi-sync services currently provided.
Pat McGregor (patmcg@merit.edu)
Westine [Page 37]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
MIDNET
------
No report received.
MIT-LCS
-------
No progress to report this month.
Chuck Davin (jrd@PITT.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
MRNET
-----
Two new networks connected to MRNet in February:
The Minnesota State University System network completed their
connection to MRNet. Through this connection, the seven MSUS
schools now have Internet connectivity:
Bemidji State University
Mankato State University
Metropolitan State University
Moorhead State University
St. Cloud State University
Southwest State University
Winona State University
The Army Supercomputer Network (ASnet) also connected to MRNet.
The ASnet connection will enable Army High Performance Computing
Research Center (AHPCRC) users to communicate with AHPCRC
facilities at the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota
Supercomputer Center. MRNet will also provide NSFnet connectivity
to some ASnet sites. Jeff Wabik is working with the Army to figure
out how this will work.
Westine [Page 38]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
The MRNet Executive Committee is about to start working on finding
a Chair. Feel free to send suggestions or offers of assistance to
any member of the MRNet Executive Committee:
Carl F. Henry chenry@carleton.edu
Timothy J. Salo tjs@msc.umn.edu
Jeff A. Wabik jwabik@msc.umn.edu
by Timothy J. Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu)
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
During February, The University of Maine System and Samsung
Software America were connected to NEARnet as T1 branch node sites.
From these locations NEARnet will be extending service to
northeastern Massachusetts and the state of Maine. In addition
Stratus Computer, Horizon Research, Process Software and Proteon
were brought on-line. Operation of the network was stable during
the month. The Technical and User Seminar is planned for March 19.
by John Rugo (jrugo@nic.near.net)
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Craig Partridge and Karen Roubicek attended the IETF. The User
Documents Working Group bibliography is expected to be in the
Internet Drafts Directory at the end of March.
The NNSC distributed additions to Chapters 1 and 2 of the Internet
resource Guide.
by Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net)
NORTHWESTNET
------------
No report received.
Westine [Page 39]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
Packet counts across the NSFNET Backbone totalled 2,551,049,352,
increasing 3.46% in February over January. The overall average
uptime exceeded 99.98%, with only three class one outages logged
for the month. The networks announced on the backbone as of
February 28 number 1038.
Statistics representing network traffic which traversed the NSFNET
backbone during one-month reporting periods (TRAFFIC) are now
available for anonymous ftp from the directory STATS on NIS.NSF.NET
(35.1.1.48). Inpacket count totals (INPKTS) and one-way delay
times (PING) are also available in STATS.
Dennis Ferguson of CA*Net met with Merit/NSFNET staff on February
27 and 28 to discuss the technical aspects of international routing
between CA*Net and the NSFNET as well as issues of network
performance.
Some regional networks began to explore the use of BGP to the
NSFNET backbone, with additional regionals expressing interest in
partici- pating in this endeavor.
Elise Gerich participated in the FRICC Engineering Planning
Committee meeting as well as presented a technical report on the
current state of the NSFNET backbone at the IETF meeting hosted by
Florida State University. Cathy Aronson, Dave Katz and Pat Smith
also represented Merit/NSFNET in various working groups which
convened during IETF.
The IP over FDDI working group of the Internet Engineering Task
Force, chaired by Dave Katz, approved the draft specification of IP
over FDDI. This specification will be published as an Internet
Proposed Standard, the first step in the new Internet standards
process. It is likely to be a full Internet standard in ten
months.
by Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu)
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
- Regarding direct connection to the Internet from NDRE.
NDRE is now in the process of purchasing the nessecary equipment,
for an Ethernet connection into the NORSAR Cisco machine.
Hopefully, this will be installed by the end of March.
Westine [Page 40]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
- Regarding Norwegian Army Packet Radio System.
Army Material Command Norway has now finished contracts
negotiations for its new multi role radio system, and a contract
may be signed in the near future. This multi role radio system, is
utilizing the same basic radio unit for CNR netts, single channel
radio access to trunk systems, and X.25 packet nettworks including
X.25 access to the packet switch in the trunk nettwork. This packet
radio system was briefly described in an earlier IRM.
Anton B. Leere (leere%dione.ndre.uninett@nac.no)
NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP NETWORK
------------------------------------------------------
During the month some changes have been implemented regarding the
network hubs. A direct or dial-up asynchronous connection to a
terminal server at the Phildelphia hub has been established. This
16 port cisco Systems equipment will allow access to the network at
9.6 Kbps. Also, a new hub has been installed in Scranton, which
will offer 56 Kbps connections to the northeast part of the state.
Bucknell University has signed on as a new member of the network.
The first issue of PREPnet News was circulated during the month by
the PREPnet NIC with Bonnie Moore as editor. Our newsletter this
month features a statement of PREPnet's mission and enumerates our
future goals and plans. Also included is a listing of some of the
information resources now available on the network.
High-tech commercial and academic representatives from within the
state attended the Pennsylvania Technology Conference held in
Philadelphia during the month. During the two day proceedings,
PREPnet was mentioned frequently as the state's burgeoning
"electronic highway to the future" by notable individuals in
attendance including Governor Robert Casey.
Tom Cummings (tc1r@andrew.cmu.edu)
Westine [Page 41]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
The T-1 connecting the Cleveland router to Ohio State University
was removed 2/26/90. OARnet networks are now connected to the
NSFnet exclusively through CICnet. Case Western Reserve, the Lewis
Engineering Research Center and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation
will continue to be connected to the NSFnet via PSCnet.
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is currently installing an
Ultranet link to the Westinghouse Energy Center (approximately 20
miles away) where it's Cray Y-MP is located. When the installation
is completed it will provide gigabit speeds between the Cray,
various local nets within PSC and NSS#5 and will be used for
experiments in high-speed graphics, file service and distributed
processes.
by Greg Dobrich (dobrich@a.psc.edu)
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans)
---------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
No report received.
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
DDN NIC
In February, 52 new numbers have been assigned to government-
sponsored (previously called "connected") IP networks. In
addition, this month we assigned 75 numbers to independent
(i.e., not sponsored by the government, previously called
"unconnected") IP networks. The total number of all assigned IP
numbers is now 4,060 which includes 2,298 sponsored networks and
1,762 independent networks. The total number of assigned
Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) is now 591.
Westine [Page 42]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
There are currently a total of 1,402 registered domains which
includes 46 at the top level, 1,311 at the second level, and 45
third-level MIL domains.
Two people participated IETF in Tallahassee.
Mary Stahl <Stahl@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 95 sites online and 154 networks are being
advertised to the NSFnet.
The current list of sites and networks can be obtained via
anonymous FTP fromnoc.sura.net, password guest, cd pub. File name
is "online".
The installation of the SURAnet T-1 backbone is in progress. The
report below indicates the status of the lines being installed.
Interim Report on SURAnet T-1 Backbone Lines
UMD to U of Delaware; Installed and Working
Umd to Johns Hopkins U; Installed and Working
UMD to U of Florida; Installed and Working
UMD to CEBAF; Installed and Working
UMD to U of Tennessee; Installed and Working
UMD to CONCERT Net (MCNC); Scheduled for Installation 3/8/90
CONCERT Net (MCNC) to Clemson U.; Scheduled for Installation 3/8/90
U of Tennessee to U of Alabama(Birmingham); Scheduled for
Installation 3/8/90
Georgia Tech to Florida State U; Scheduled for Installation 3/8/90
U of Florida to Florida State U; Scheduled for Installation 3/8/90
U of Alabama(Birmingham) to Georgia Tech; Scheduled for
Installation 3/8/90
U of Alabama(Birmingham) to Louisiana State U; Scheduled for
Installation 3/21/90
Clemson to Georgia Tech; Scheduled for Installation 3/23/90
U of Florida to Florida Institute of Technology;
Scheduled for Installation on 4/3/90
U of Florida to Florida Institute of Technology;
Scheduled for Installation on 4/3/90
Jackson State U to Mississippi State U; Scheduled for
Installation on 4/25/90
Westine [Page 43]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
Florida Institute of Technology to NOVA U; Not yet determined
U of Alabama(Birmingham) to Jackson State U; Not yet determined
by Jack Hahn (hahn@umd5.umd.edu)
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK
------------------------------
No report received.
UCL
----
Research:
Steve Kille submitted 3 (yes 3) documents to the RFC editor. They
were on OSI Addressing and Encoding of addresses and mapping
between DNS and X.500.
Peter Kirstein attended the IETF meeting.
A report on floor control mechanisms for multi-media real tiem
conferences was completed by a PhD student with Jon Crowcroft.
Infrastructure:
The UCL Butterfly upgrade was completed.
John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Mike Davis is collecting and analyzing measurement data from
our burgeoning campus network goo, including SURA regional
gateways. He has found an alarming amount of traffic due to
RIP routing updates, presently equal to the entirety of all
NTP traffic for 250-plus time servers. Ken Monington found an
interesting correlation between atomic time and LORAN time
during local rainfall which suggests a new application for the
Network time Protocol (NTP) as a raingauge.
2. Paul Schragger has completed a reservation-protocol simulator
for our gigabit project and demonstrated it using the NSFNET
Phase-II backbone topology with imaginative, gigabit links.
Westine [Page 44]
Internet Monthly Report February 1990
3. Dave Mills attended a SIMNET review at IDA.
4. Bugs in ancient NTP Version-0 implementations have
occasionally caused destructive packet oscillations clearly
visible in Mike Davis' data. As new Version-1 and Version-2
implementations have been available for over two years,
support for Version-0 has been withdrawn. An updated NTP
specification fixing minor bugs in text and diagrams and
including new local-clock and clock-combining algorithms is
now available.
5. A pair of fuzzballs have crawled from the woodwork at
Norwegian Telecommunications Administration, one of which is
now chiming NTP from a atomic (cesium) clock. It is now
possible to precisely calibrate the asymmetric delays on
transatlantic paths, which now measure a surprisingly high 90
milliseconds. Considerable tuning of NTP implementation
parameters was necessary to cope with the present poor
performance of Internet paths to Norway. The behavior on these
paths is quite similar to that reported by me many times over
the last several months, where routes flail constantly over
many gateways and networks, including ARPANET, MILNET and
WIDEBAND.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
WESTNET
--------
No report received.
Westine [Page 45]