<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR90-03.TXT
MARCH 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 4
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11
CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 15
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 17
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 17
NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network . page 20
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 23
WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
IAB MESSAGE
Following a recommendation of the Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG), the IAB agreed to enter Van Jacobson's compression
algorithm for low-speed serial links into the standards track, as a
Proposed Standard. The algorithm is documented in RFC-1144,
"Compressing TCP/IPHeaders for Low-Speed Serial Links", by Van
Jacobson.
The IESG also made recommendations about the future status of
protocols that had been placed into the Proposed Standard status
prior to the IAB/IETF reorganization last year. The IAB has
reached agreement on the following of these "grand-fathered"
protocols; discussion of the rest is still underway.
A. Relegate to HISTORICAL status:
STATSRV Statistics Server Elective RFC-996
POP2 Post Office Protocol, Version2 Elective RFC-937
<Note: POP2 has been obsoleted
by POP3.>
NETED Network Standard Text Editor Elective RFC-569
RJE Remote Job Entry Elective RFC-407
RTELNET Remote Telnet Service Elective RFC-818
B. Remain in PROPOSED STANDARD status:
NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol Elective RFC-977
<Note: NNTP is being revised,
with final revisions due in
about a year.>
These changes will be reflected in the next edition of the IAB
Official Protocols (to be RFC-1140).
The IAB has received but not acted on the IESG recommendations on
Routing Protocols.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
ANRG will have a teleconference in April to discuss resource
usage feedback and accounting in connectionless internets.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
No report for End-to-End this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
Privacy-Enhanced Mail implementation activities have continued
at Trusted Information Systems, and an early May beta release is
now anticipated. A mailing list for dicussion of issues
pertaining to the implmentation of privacy-enhanced mail
software has been created -- for more information on this list,
send mail to pem-dev-request@tis.com.
The Privacy and Security RG will meet April 4-6 at DEC in
Boxborough, Massachusetts. Anticipated agenda topics include:
P-E Mail implementation status review and demo, security
considerations for policy-based routing, a review of the
proposed scheme for authentication in the SNMP, and further
discussion on the labelling framework RFC currently in progress.
A report on this meeting will appear in the next monthly.
Ken Rossen (kenr@BBN.COM)
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY
------------------------
No report received.
Westine [Page 4]
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INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
IETF CHAIR'S REPORT
Chair: Phill Gross/NRI
The next IETF meeting will be at SEI and PSC on May 1-4, 1990.
Details on the meeting will be mailed to the IETF mailing list.
Send to ietf-request@isi.edu for specific questions, or to be added
to the IETF mailing list.
The IESG forwarded several recommendations to the IAB as a result
of discussion in the open IESG at FSU in February. The IAB
response to some of these recommendations is reported in the IAB
section of this Internet Monthly Report.
The IESG also made a recommendation to the IAB regarding IGP
routing protocols. That recommendation was cc'ed to the IETF
mailing list and is reproduced below. We hope to have a brief
report on the OSPF deployment activities at the upcoming IETF
meeting.
IESG Recommendation on Routing Protocols
1) General Recommendation on Standardizing Routing Protocols
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.
It is the intent that all developers of Internet routers make the
"Recommended" standard IGP available in their products. To help
ensure that this IGP is available to all users, the IETF Router
Requirements Working Group will be directed to indicate in their
document that conformint routers must implement the standard IGP.
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 with a modern high functionality
routing protocol. It is not otherwise meant to dictate what
Westine [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
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.
Reference: Please see RFC 1140, "IAB Official Standards" (replaces
RFC 1130) for a listing and status of current Internet standards.
RFC 1140 also describes the Internet standards process established
by the IAB.
2) Recommendation on Specific Intra-AS Routing Protocols
During the February 6-9 IETF meeting at Florida State University
(specifically at the IESG meetings of February 8th and 9th), the
IESG discussed the question of standardizing Intra-AS (i.e., IGP)
routing protocols for the TCP/IP protocol family. The two
protocols under discussion were the Dual IS-IS and OSPF. Both
protocols use the SPF routing algorithms.
OSPF was developed by the IETF OSPF Working Group. The OSPF
specification was published as RFC 1131 in October 1989. There is
a publicly available implementation for Berkeley Unix, and there is
at least one vendor product which is now undergoing deployment in
several regional networks.
IS-IS (ISO Draft Proposal 10589) is an OSI proposed protocol for
Intra-AS routing. IS-IS products are not widely available, but
variations of DP 10589 are being used operationally by at least two
vendors.
Dual IS-IS is an enhancement of DP 10589 to support IP in tandem
with CLNP. Dual IS-IS is being developed by the IETF IS-IS Working
Group. The current specification of the Dual IS-IS is available in
the Internet-Draft directories as file DRAFT-IETF-ISIS-SPEC-00.PS.
There are plans in progress to develop a publicly available
implementation for Berkeley Unix.
The IESG, reflecting the discussion in the IETF plenary at FSU,
decided that both protocols need substantial operational experience
before either could be made full Internet standards or recommended
to the IAB as the "Recommended" IGP for the TCP/IP protocol family.
The practice within the IETF has been to allow a protocol to begin
the standards process (i.e., be given the designation "Proposed
Standard") prior to gaining field experience, but extensive field
experience *is* required prior to advancing to either "Draft
Westine [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
Standard" or full Internet Standard.
Therefore, the IESG recommends that OSPF be designated a Proposed
Standard at this time. Further review and advancement as an
Internet standard will await the outcome of current ongoing field
trials.
The IETF and IESG have expressed interest in the integrated routing
that is promised by the Dual IS-IS, but also expressed concern
about potential complexity and side-effects. Other schemes for
running ISO and IP side-by-side have been proposed and demonstrated
in practice, and a comparison needs to be undertaken in a
systematic manner.
Such issues can only be resolved through extensive field
experience. The IESG will re-examine the issue of standardizing
Dual IS-IS when the Dual IS-IS specification matures to the point
of being published as an RFC and has had some field experience.
**************IESG Area Reports*************
APPLICATIONS AREA
Director: Russ Hobby/UCDavis
Nothing to report.
HOST AND USER SERVICES AREA
Director: Craig Partridge/BBN
Nothing to report.
INTERNET SERVICES AREA
Director: Noel Chiappa/Consultant
The PPP WG released a revised (hopefully final) draft of the PPP
specification as an Internet-Draft, and the PPP Extension WG
released the first draft of the Initial Options document
(comprising extensions to the IP support as well as a Link Quality
option), also as an Internet-Draft. Stev Knowles of FTP Software
has taken over the chair of that committee from Russ Hobby. Many
thanks to Russ and everyone in the WG who helped write for getting
these urgently needed documents out. Work is now being started to
provide specifications for use of PPP with protocols other than IP.
Westine [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
The IP over FDDI WG has finished updating the draft in line with
the discussions at the February IETF, and that draft should appear
as an Internet-Draft shortly.
Other WG's, notably Router Discovery and IP over SMDS, have had
activity on their mailing lists, but nothing substantial to report.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT AREA
Director: Dave Crocker/DEC
MSI working group is considering tradeoffs between protocol-
specific knowledge in the interface, versus using more
abstractions. If effect, this affects how quickly a final spec can
be developed, since full abstraction represents a research topic.
They further are considering details which must be deferred and/or
considered by parallel working groups.
AlertMan has released a final draft into Internet Drafts. We
anticipate lively discussion, at the next IETF, about the tradeoff
between complexity of computing events (asynchronous messages) at
the remote agent, versus the network overhead of having the
management station doing polling, in order to acquire information
which is then computed at the station.
One possibility is that the network management model should be
enhanced, to include "derived" MIB variables, with an engineering
choice as to the location of the engine which performs the
derivation. On one extreme, the engine sits in the remote agent
and therefore generates "events". On the other extreme, it sits in
the station and does polling. A middle ground might have the
engine in a separate entity, such as one per local area network
segment, doing polling over the LAN, but generating asynchronous
events over the WAN.
A new working group was formed by Chris VandenBerg
(chris@salt.acc.com) which does not yet have a charter or a name
(the "Private-MIB" seems appropriate.) Chris is interested in
facilitating the publishing of vendor-specific MIB sub-trees. This
interested in participating should send him email.
OSI INTEGRATION AREA
Directors: Ross Callon/DEC and Rob Hagens/UWisc.
Nothing to report.
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
OPERATIONS AREA
Director: Phill Gross/NRI (Interim Director)
There will be a plenary presentation at the next IETF discussing
the role of the Federal Engineering Planning Group (FEPG) in
helping to coordinate agency network planning. This will lead to a
discussion in the TEWG session on how best to coordinate network
planning in the Internet.
ROUTING AREA
Director: Robert Hinden/BBN
OSPF (John Moy)
Deployment of OSPF continued in March. Installation of OSPF
continued at SURANET, and additional installations were performed
at the University of Illinois and BARRNet. There was also a lot of
discussion on the ospf-tests mailing list concerning the
deployments, centering mainly on OSPF/RIP interoperability.
OPEN ROUTING (Martha Steenstrup)
During the month of March, the ORWG has been refining the set of
protocols for the initial version of inter-domain policy routing.
The protocols include path setup, update distribution, virtual
gateway protocol, and the route synthesis algorithm. They also
include the server query/response protocol, although this is not
part of the initial version.
The first week in April, the draft protocol specification will be
distributed to members of the open routing mailing list, for
review. At the next IETF, we will meet for two days to discuss the
protocols and to solicit improvements.
INTERCONNECTIVITY (Guy Almes)
Since the IETF meeting at Florida State, the Interconnectivity
Working Group has submitted two draft RFCs to the Internet Draft
editor and to the IESG.
The first is the revised BGP protocol document, submitted for
review and consideration as a Proposed Internet Standard. The BGP
protocol allows Autonomous Systems to learn the complete AS-level
paths being advertised to destination networks. A completely
general Inter-AS graph is supported. There has been a considerable
amount of improvement to the presentation of the document and to
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
certain details of the protocol and its state machine since
previous descriptions of BGP. The IESG is now reviewing this
document and considering our request that it be given Proposed
Internet Draft status.
The second draft RFC is a revised set of technical recommendations
on the application of the BGP protocol. A number of non-protocol
issues, such as deciding which of two viable alternate routes to a
given destination to use, are discussed in detail. This draft RFC
is not proposed as a standard, but does convey the recommendations
of the working group.
We are expecting feedback within a week or two on these drafts, and
will devote ourselves to responding to that feedback before the
Pittsburgh IETF meeting.
SECURITY AREA
Director: Steve Crocker/TIS
A new working group was formed to formulate a handbook for site
security. This is the Site Security Policy Handbook Working Group
(SSPHWG) co-chaired by Joyce Reynolds (ISI) and Paul Holbrook
(CERT/SEI).
Paul Holbrook/CERT ph@SEI.CMU.EDU
Joyce K. Reynolds/USC-ISI jkrey@ISI.EDU
General discussion: ssphwg@cert.sei.cmu.edu
To subscribe: ssphwg-request@cert.sei.cmu.edu
This group will hold its first meeting at the Pittsburgh IETF
meeting in May.
The Security Policy WG, chaired by Rich Pethia, plans to hold a one
day meeting at the NRI in Reston, VA on April 17. It will also
meet at the Pittsburgh IETF meeting.
Implementations of Privacy Enhanced Mail based on RFCs 1113, 1114,
and 1115, which came from the IRTF's Privacy and Security Research
Group, are advancing. There will be a presentation and perhaps
even a demo at the Pittsburgh IETF meeting.
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
No report received.
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
INTERNET R&D
During the month of March, we have been refining the set of
protocols for the initial version of inter-domain policy routing in
preparation for distribution of the draft protocol specification
document at the beginning of April. The protocols include:
- The virtual gateway protocol for collecting information about an
AD's policy attributes and neighbor connections.
- Domain status update protocol for distributing domain status
information collected by the virtual gateway protocol to other
domains.
- The path setup protocol for setting up policy routes between
administrative domains.
- The route synthesis algorithm for generating policy routes.
For more information about how the protocol functions, consult "An
Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy Routing", Internet Draft.
The document contains descriptions of the protocols to be used for
the initial version of inter-domain policy routing, together with
recommendations for usage. The usage recommendations have been
included to help implementors get a system up and running more
quickly. Initially, the supported policies include restrictions
based on source, destination, previous, and next administrative
domain. UCI discrimination will be added later on. This document
will be reviewed by approximately 30 members of the Internet
community during the month of April.
INTERNET GATEWAYS
Steve Blumenthal and Steve Storch attended an ICB meeting at Shape
Technical Center, The Hague, Netherlands. Butterfly Gateway
hardware for the Warrier Prep Center was assembled and shipped this
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
month. We began developing X.25 software for the upgrade of the STC
gateway, but this will not be completed until the beginning of
April. We will install the new gateway at WPC and its link to STC
as soon as the line is available.
TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK AND ST/IP GATEWAY
March was an exciting month for the ST Gateway and Terrestrial
Wideband projects. During this time, we prepared for and
successfully provided wide area connectivity for WAREX 3-90. WAREX
3-90 was a distributed wargaming exercise (SIMNET) involving
simulators at five sites and up to about 850 simulated vehicles.
The simulators were operated by the Army. The exercise was viewed
by numerous high ranking representatives from all branches of the
military. The next SIMNET exercise is scheduled for the first week
in April, it will involve the Navy, Army and Marines.
Five video conferences and one demo were supported this month by
the Terrestrial Wideband. This number was lower than usual due to
the network having been reserved for 2.5 weeks of WAREX preparation
and the actual exercise. Three of the conferences held involved
three sites, one involved two sites, and one involved four sites.
Conferences were held by the IETF steering group and the FRICC
engineering planning group. Discussions were also held involving
Mark Pullen (DARPA), Danny Cohen (ISI), Vint Cerf (NRI), and Phill
Gross (NRI).
Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM)
CERFNET
-------
Technically speaking, the connection between CERFnet and Los Nettos
at UCLA has been eratic this past month. The Ethernet port on the
Los Nettos gateway was the culprit. (CERFnet and Los Nettos are
connected via an Ethernet stub between the Los Nettos AGS cisco
gateway and the CERFnet AGS cisco gateway.) Poor ventilation in the
communications rack at UCLA may be the source of the problem.
Until this is resolved, an administrative distance was placed on
UCLA routes to and from Los Nettos. This allows traffic routed from
Caltech and across Los Nettos to route properly through UCLA.
The Arpanet IMP at the University of Southern California
Information Science Institute (USC/ISI) was disconnected.
CERFnet's access to the Internet is solely through the NSFNET NSS
at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
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Proposal Submitted
In March, CERFnet submitted a proposal to the National Science
Foundation. This proposal, CERFnet-Phase II, provides for 23 new
connections to CERFnet. Phase II proposes new connections for
three four-year colleges, two community colleges and fourteen K-12
schools and Departments of Education. This proposal asks for
additional funding to upgrade connections to support growth.
Dial-Up Service
DIAL N' CERF, the new dial-up SLIP service offered by CERFnet, will
be available to users beginning April 9. The service will be
available on a trial-basis at first . There are still some
technical problems to be resolved.
Four terminal Servers will be placed throughout the network, one at
each of the backbone nodes--UCLA, Caltech, UCI and SDSC. Users
will dial-up the nearest backbone node, log on, and from there use
telnet and ftp to access resources.
New Members
ISX Corporation of Thousand Oaks, California were brought online
March 14. ISX has a 56 kilobits-per-second (kbps) link to UCLA.
Scheduled to be installed in April is Walt Disney Imagineering
located in Glendale, California. A 56 kbps link to the California
Institute of Technology will be installed. Walt Disney is involved
in research and development, in particular in collaborative
projects with academic institutions.
Also, Science Horizons of Encinitas, California was brought online
in February. Science Horizons has a 56 kbps link to SDSC.
by Karen Armstrong, (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu)
CICNET
-------
No report received.
CORNELL
-------
No report received.
Westine [Page 13]
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ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden presented an ISI seminar on the statistical properties
of packet flows. Jain & Routhier recently developed the concept of
"packet trains"; other recent papers in this area have been
prepared by Heimlich and by Lorence and Satyanarayanan. Braden has
been using the statspy program in an attempt to verify and extend
the earlier work. This has required the construction of several
new statistical object classes in statspy, and significant
improvements in several existing classes. Braden covered three
different aspects of the topic: understanding interarrival times;
measures of locality; and psuedo-connection statistics. The
seminar left a number of open questions and other areas for future
work. Work is continuing to answer these questions.
Bob Braden also presented a talk on the open gateway testbed
T1GARNET ("tiger-net") at the National Net '90 conference in
Washington, D.C. 14-15 March 1990. T1GARNET will begin service in
the next few months.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
Three RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1146: Zweig, J., (UIUC) and C. Partridge (BBN), "TCP
Alternate Checksum Options", March 1990.
RFC 1148: Kille, S., "Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021
and RFC 822", UCL, March 1990.
RFC 1150: Malkin, G., "F.Y.I. on F.Y.I. - Introduction to the
F.Y.I. Notes", March 1990.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
We started work on a fully public domain version of BFTP, and
expect to be making it available for anonymous FTP soon.
The teleconference room at DARPA has been moved to the 12th floor
at 1400 Wilson Blvd. because the space at 1555 Wilson was lost. A
second room on the 1st floor, with lower noise and more space but
also less availability, will be set up in parallel.
Westine [Page 14]
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Steve Casner presented a paper "N-Way Conferencing with Packet
Video" at the Third International Workshop on Packet Video in
Morristown, NJ.
Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner
(deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU,
casner@ISI.EDU)
FAST PARTS
The electronic mail/FAX gateway has been completed. It runs under
GNU Emacs on a Sun 3/80 communicating with a Complete FAX card in
an IBM PC.
Although initially designed for use on the FAST project, other
projects at ISI are using it.
Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
No report received.
LOS NETTOS
----------
The Arpanet connection was taken down on March 22. Los Nettos is
now defaulting routes to the NSFNET via CERFnet. Due to the fact,
we no longer have two paths to the Internet we no longer need to
distribute all of the 1100+ NSFNET routes. This is simplifying the
routing for our ciscos. A problem with the Los Nettos cisco at
UCLA was corrected and has not reappeared. Jon Postel and Walt Prue
hosted a Calinet meeting at ISI 29 March, 1990. We have been
experiencing routing problems to networks still routed through the
Arpanet or Milnet. The routes are often looping.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/UMNET
-----------
No report received.
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MIDNET
------
No report received.
MIT-LCS
-------
No internet-related progress to report this month.
Chuck Davin (jrd@PITT.LCS.MIT.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
No report received.
MRNET
-----
Three new members installed connections to MRNet this month:
Open Systems Architects, Inc. (OSA)
Unisys
Hewlett-Packard/Apollo
Jeff Wabik and I met with ten Minnesota private colleges to discuss
plans for connecting their sites to MRNet. The Minnesota
Supercomputer Center (MSC) Communications Group will provide a
person for up to a day at each site to help install the connection.
Each of the six members of the Communications Group will be
responsible for one or two sites. My objectives for this project
are to:
Ensure the private colleges are quickly connected to MRNet
Assist the development of networking expertise on the college
campuses
Provide every member of the MSC Communications Group an
opportunity to be responsible for the complete installation of
at least one new Internet site, (from acquiring Internet
addresses, to installing lines, CSU/DSUs, and routers).
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report March 1990
The MRNet Executive Committee, Carl Henry, Jeff Wabik, and I,
continue to develop a plan to expand MRNet's mission, enhance the
services offered by MRNet, and strengthen the MRNet organization.
Suggestions and assistance are welcomed.
by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.edu)
NCAR/USAN
---------
No report received.
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
During March, Colby College, The University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, Object Management Group and FTP Software were brought on-
line. Operation of the network was stable, however the JvNCnet
connection to the Internet was interrupted by a series of problems
during the middle of the month. NEARnet's second Technical and
User Seminar was held March 19, during which Craig Partridge of BBN
gave a tutorial on the Internet Domain System and Jerry Olson of
Clark University presented ideas about user services on NEARnet.
by John Rugo (jrugo@nic.near.net)
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Karen Roubicek attended the Net'90 Conference in Washington, DC.
Corinne Carroll attended the Computers in Libraries Conference in
Washington, DC.
The NNSC Staff has been working on updating the NSFNET online
calendar available on the NSFNET portion of the Info-Server. To
receive the online calendar, send a message to info-
server@nnsc.nsf.net, in the body of the message type: REQUEST:
calendar, TOPIC: apr, TOPIC: may, (the first three letters of each
month you'd like to receive).
The NNSC distributed additions to Chapters 2 and 5 of the Internet
Resource Guide.
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
Requests to be added to, or removed from the distribution list for
the Internet Resource Guide should go to resource-guide-
request@nnsc.nsf.net. The guide is also available via anonymous
ftp at nnsc.nsf.net, cd resource-guide.
by Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net)
NORTHWESTNET
------------
One new site was added in Beaverton, Oregon. The Tektronix Visual
Systems Group connected via 56kb digital service to the Oregon
Graduate Institute. It was the second site to be added to the
NWNet community under the revised facilities management plan, in
which prospective members are asked to coordinate with the site to
which they are connecting, rather than rely upon a service
provider. Once again the site was added without problems.
An outage on the single MCI trunk connecting Seattle WA to Portland
OR again interrupted NSFNet access for NWNet constituents,
reminding us again that although we have virtual redundancy from
NSS 14, we are still without physical redundancy. The NSS was also
down for approximately 12 hours through the nightof March 16th.
The power in the building housing the NSS was shutdown for PCB
removal. There will be at least one, perhaps two more, scheduled
outages for PCB removal within the next 12 months.
by Dan Jordt (danj@nwnet.net)
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
The inbound packet count across the NSFNET Backbone totalled
2,841,083,799 for March. This 11.4% increase in traffic over
February, also includes three more days in the month of March, as
compared to February. As of 30 March 1990, 1098 networks are
announced on the backbone.
At the National Net '90 Conference held in Washington, D.C., March
14 - 16, the NSFNET partnership--The National Science Foundation,
The Merit Computer Network, IBM Corporation, MCI Communications
Corporation, and the State of Michigan--announced the establishment
of a new international high-speed data communications link and
demonstrated prototype equipment that transmitted information over
a data network running at T3 (about 45 Mbps) speed.
MCI's Fiberline Digital Service (SM) is provided via TAT-8, a
trans-Atlantic undersea digital fiber optic cable system. The
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
international link that connects the NSFNET to the European
Academic Supercomputer Initiative Network (EASInet), will operate
at T1 speed, the equivalent of 1.5 megabits per second. EASInet is
a partnership of IBM and 18 European academic and research
institutions in nine European countries. The European gateway,
which connects EASInet to the trans-Atlantic link, is at CERN, a
European Laboratory for Particle Physics, on the French-Swiss
border near Geneva. The U.S. gateway for the trans-Atlantic link
is at the Cornell National Supercomputer Facility at Cornell
University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Merit, IBM and MCI provided direct services and research expertise
for the T3 demonstration. IBM used several of its recently
announced RISC System/6000 workstations equipped with prototype
high-speed networking adapters and specially developed packet
switching software to connect conference participants at National
Net '90 in Washington, D.C., with the NSFNET Network Operations
Center at the Merit Computer Network in Ann Arbor, MI where Merit
provides operational support, and from there to the NSFNET. The
IBM prototype network adapters interfaced directly with the MCI
clear channel DS3 circuits connecting the two sites. Two RISC
System/6000 workstations were connected together locally on a Fiber
Distributed Data Interchange (FDDI) local area network, operating
at 100 Megabits per second. Demonstrations included remote access
and interactive analysis of an experimental database representing
high-energy particle collision measurements acquired at CERN.
Merit/NSFNET staff hosted Rick Adams of UUNET, Inc. in discussions
concerning the technical issues involved in NSFNET and UUNET
interaction. UUNET has a large international component.
David Wong, David Ming-Sun, Lee Manning and George Polychronis,
staff members of the University of Toronto Computer Services
involved in developing a Canadian national research network,
CA*net, met with Merit staff from the NOC, Internet Engineering and
Information Services on March 12 and 13.
Jo Ann Ward (Jo_Ann_Ward@um.cc.umich.edu)
NTA-RE and NDRE
---------------
NDRE and NTA-RE has nothing to report this month.
Anton B. Leere <leere%dione.ndre.uninett@nac.no>
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NYSERNET
--------
No report received.
OARNET
------
No report received.
PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP NETWORK (PREPNET)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Installation of the SNMP-based Overview Network Management System
was completed and is now operational in the Pittsburgh and
Philadelphia Data Network Control Center hubs.
Two new sites have signed on with PREPnet during the month. Bryn
Mawr College and Haverford College have arranged to be connected
via a T1 link through Swarthmore College. Installation is still
pending on these new sites.
Tom Cummings (tc1r@andrew.cmu.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
-------------------------------
No report received.
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeans)
---------------------------
No report received.
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
During March the Arpanet PSN at ISI was disconnected. This
necessitated immediate action since CERFnet, Los Nettos and SDSC's
cisco router, MOZART, had been pointing default at it. [The
routing at SDSC was such that the NSFnet was the default path.] Now
all point at the NSS at SDSC. With the simplification of our
routing, all of the NSFNet routes are not longer being advertised
throught CERFnet/Los Nettos, since they are no longer needed. This
reduced the memory load on DRZOG (one of the CERFnet routers at
SDSC) and the size of the routing updates that are being
propagated. MOZART, however, still receives the full update since
it passes the routes onto NOSC. (The EGP neighbor for NOSC was
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
moved from DRZOG to MOZART.)
We have established SNMP sessions to our major hosts (which support
the protocol), all routers, etc. As such items as our Fastpaths
are upgraded, they too will be monitored by SNMP.
ESnet software was installed on a test MicroVAXII. It does a
resonable job of suppling MFEnet functions (NETTY, NETOUT, etc)
over an IP network. We are using the NSFnet link to ESnet until
the CERFnet link to ESnet is installed (via the General Atomics
ESnet connection). The software will shortly be moved to a
producation VAX.
We have been testing an UltraNet connection between our Y-MP,
Alliant, and several workstations for the several weeks. Problems
remain, particularly with the TCP/IP services over the Ultra.
Several inhancements were added and bugs removed from the Centers
software which provides queued file transport (SDSC QFT).
Currently this is for the Y-MP (UNICOS) to VMS systems with
MultiNet or TWG, but support will be added for Unix hosts during
the coming year.
Our Distributed Text Editor (RVI) is in field test. It is in use
between our Y-MP and both DEC and SUN workstations.
The Center's routers for DECnet where moved to higher node
addresses within Area 27. This was done when the previously unused
portions of 27 were made available for use.
VMTP is being looked into for a VHS network project.
by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu)
SESQUINET
---------
No report received.
SRI
----
No report received.
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SURANET
-------
No report received.
TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK
------------------------------
No report received.
UCL
----
The UCL Primary Rate ISDN board is complete (wire wrapped!) and
about to be tested with our IP on ISDN circuit manager system. This
dynamically allocates multiple 64kbps basic rate channels to meet
IP traffic demand (and closes calls as traffic dies away).
To be researched: what this does to TCP!
Kirstein and Crowcroft attended the meeting at UCL to discuss the
"fat pipe" upgrade to the UK-US links, to be shared between various
agencies. Fair sharing mechanisms for resource allocation along the
pipe were looked at. The topology for the packet video path twixt
UCL and the US TWB has been mostly resolved. ETA of first UK-US
teleconference is around late summer.
Kirstein and Crowcroft attended the ICB meeting at STC, the Hague,
Netherlands. Work on other relevant high bandwidth European-US
agregated lines is progressing well.
John Crowcroft (J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Mike Davis finished and reported on a preliminary analysis of
the NSFNET Phase-II backbone data and intricately derived
statistics such as autocorrelation function and mean hop
count. He is also exploring FDDI chipsets for possible
application to our gigabit project.
2. Ken Monington has been carefully watching the timekeeping
behavior of several LORAN-C navigation systems throughout the
world, both directly using our equipment and indirectly using
U.S. Naval Observatory published data. He found interesting
phenomena, including operator errors, propagation anomalies
and measurement system peculiarities. He is also working on
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Internet Monthly Report March 1990
analysis programs and hardware interfaces useful for
timekeeping coordination. Our cesium clock was recalibrated by
USNO and found to be only 800 nanoseconds from truetick over
four months, which is mighty well behaved atoms.
3. Paul Schragger added new features to his gigabit scheduling
simulator to support random arrivals and record scheduling
data. He is also exploring the feasibility of applying the
technology to various ring, bus and star topologies, in
particular, the NASA Advanced Communication Technology
Satellite to be launched in 1992. Prototype VLSI chips
designed by Mike, Ken and Erik Perkins for a high-speed
intelligent crossbar switch have been received and are now
being evaluated.
4. A lively dialog has been opened with folk at DEC on the new
Digital Time Service (DTS) proposed for much the same kind of
application as the Network Time Protocol (NTP). The scope and
merits of both NTP and DTS were explored in lengthy memoranda
and electric mail exchange. It seems likely that both NTP and
DTS will gain from the strengths of each other.
5. A comprehensive review of the error analysis and correctness
principles in NTP was conducted, resulting in minor changes to
the specification to support correctness principles and to
provide deterministic error-bound information to users. The
NTP clock- selection procedure was changed to include an
algorithm suggested by Marzullo and used in DTS. As a class
project the NTP specification has been coded in Estelle, with
object to simulate it on a visually exciting display.
6. The Norway fuzzball is now providing stable time synchronized
to a cesium clock, with seconds numbered from the NTP
international synchronization subnet. A routing change seems
to have reduced the large delay dispersions mentioned last
month, but the transatlantic path is still rather noisy and
has surprisingly large asymmetric delays to different parts of
the U.S. Effort continues on upgrading NSFNET time servers
with donated hard disks.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET
--------------------------------------------------
No report received.
Westine [Page 23]
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WESTNET
--------
No report received.
WISCNET
-------
WiscNet is an association of the thirteen four year campuses,
Extension, and Centers of the University of Wisconsin System and
eight private colleges and universities in Wisconsin.
WiscNet has submitted a proposal to the NSF for partial funding of
a 21 node 56kbps DDS and T1 TCP/IP network connected to the
Internet through CICNet. We have received preliminary word that
this proposal will be funded starting in the current year.
Many organizational issues have already been addressed. A board of
directors has been established, bylaws have been adopted, a fee
schedule has been set, and a agreement has been reached with the
UW-Madison Academic Computing Center for engineering, construction,
and operation.
On the technical side, a Network Planning Committee has developed
RFBs (requests for bids) for routers, communication services, and
communication equipment. The router RFB has been awarded to cisco.
The other RFBs will be issued soon. Other committees are
investigating DEC Vax VMS and IBM host software and campus
infrastructure issues.
WiscNet is scheduled to start operating in October 1990.
by Michael Dorl (dorl@macc.wisc.edu)
Westine [Page 24]