<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR90-12.TXT
DECEMBER 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 Internet information purposes only, and is not
to be quoted in other publications without permission from the
submitter.
Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first
business day of the month describing the previous month's activities.
These reports should be submitted via network mail to Ann Westine
(Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3
PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
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Internet Projects
BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13
CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
CREN/CSNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
FARNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 18
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 19
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19
NTA-RD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22
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IAB MESSAGE
A. Welcome to a New Member
The IAB and the IETF are endeavoring to respond to the new
reality of a world-wide Internet, by promoting and faciliting
international participation in our work. As reported previously
(see the October 1990 IAB Report), the IAB has therefore
determined to expand its membership to include technical experts
from other countries. We are pleased to announce that Christian
Huitema of INRIA, France, has become an IAB member.
B. Meeting
The IAB held a two-day meeting at ISI on January 8-9, 1990. The
members of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) were
also in attendance, as was Ira Richer representing the Federal
Neworking Council. A report on this meeting will be presented
next month, and the minutes will be made available for anonymous
FTP.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS
-------------------------
AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS
-------------------
No activities to report this month.
Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU)
END-TO-END SERVICES
-------------------
No progress to report this month.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
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PRIVACY AND SECURITY
--------------------
The PSRG has been mostly occupied with matters pertaining to
Internet Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM). In fact, participating in
voluminous public discussion on the "PEM-Dev@TIS.COM" mailing
list has left us almost too whacked out do much else.
Nonetheless, there has been progress on the front of beta
testing PEM implementations (TIS and participants) and
development of ancillary software for certificate-issuing
organizations and a Certificate Postage Meter (BBN). The
development schedule, which is now revisited (sort of) biweekly,
calls for spring general availability of the reference
implementation, and an end-of-January re-issue (as drafts) of
revised PEM RFCs (1113-15 plus a couple others -- editors are
Balenson, Kaliski, Kent, Linn and Rossen).
We have also not been quite so exhausted that we couldn't plan a
next meeting of the RG. It will be at Xerox in Pasadena, CA,
February 12-15.
Ken Rossen (kenr@BBN.COM)
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
1. User Services Area Report (Joyce K. Reynolds)
User-Doc WG - RFC Publication - August 1990
Chaired by Karen Roubicek and Tracy LaQuey
The User-Doc Bibliography was published as RFC 1175, FYI 3,
last August 1990. User-Doc Bibliography revisions will begin
in the Summer, 1991.
NOCTOOLS - "Son of RFC 1147"
Chaired by Bob Stine
Bob Stine has announced the start up of the revision of the
NOCTools document, and is actively collecting submissions for
a "Son of RFC 1147".
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NISI - Reassessment of NISI - direction and focus
Chaired by Dana Sitzler
NISI's members reassessed its intent and focus, and decided
that the first step in defining a network information services
infrastructure is to define what a NIC is and the function it
performs. This ensures some minimum level of service from
NICs in the community. The next procedure is to establish
some guidelines for sharing information between NICs.
The group agreed to take the current, existing draft
guidelines document and expand it to more accurately define
and describe a NIC. The information about existing NICs
(discussed at NISI's first meeting) will also be incorporated.
This includes defining the audience. The stated audience will
include existing NICs, people wanting to start NICs, NOCs, and
funding agencies. The stated purpose of the document is to
establish a base set of requirements for establishing services
and to assist those considering implementing a new NIC. The
ultimate goal is to make it easier for users to get
information from NICs.
SSPHWG - Security Area/User Services Area combined efforts
Chaired by J. Paul Holbrook and Joyce K. Reynolds
This session of the SSPHWG was fully devoted to going through
the current draft of the Handbook, with the intent of
finalizing the document in preparation for submission to the
IETF Internet-Drafts process.
Discussion also focused on ways to "beta test" the document
(i.e., who can we give it to, who can review that is actually
in the position of having to implement site security
policies).
USWG - running at its peak
Chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds
Agenda items included:
QUAIL - presented by Gary Malkin
"FYI on Questions and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked
"New Internet User" Questions" was published as RFC 1177,
FYI 4, last August 1990. This RFC FYI is the first in a
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collection of FYI's called, "Questions and Answers" (Q/A)
produced by the User Services Area of the IETF. The goal
of this series is to document the most commonly asked
questions and answers in the Internet.
An update to this memo was produced and discussed on the
User Services mailing list, and at this User Services
session last Tuesday, December 4th.
An additional FYI Q/A draft entitled, "FYI on Questions
and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked "Experienced
Internet User" Questions" was produced and discussed, that
deal with intermediate and advanced Q/A topics.
Installation Checklist - presented by Bob Enger
An installation checklist for the Internet is being
written by the User Services Area that is intended to be
of use to people of all levels; new, intermediate, and
advanced. It is general in nature for new and
intermediate users, yet advanced users should find it an
effective compilation of important information for the
Internet community.
An outline and sketchy rough draft was presented by Bob
Enger at the UBC IETF, with discussions and suggestions
for the checklist noted. Research and discussions have
taken place, with additional writing to continue, and the
next pass draft of the checklist will be presented at the
next IETF in St. Louis.
New Working Group - Internet User Glossary Working
Group (userglos)
A new working group was announced at this IETF, User-Gloss,
with Karen Roubicek as its Chair. The User-Gloss Working
Group is chartered to create an Internet glossary of
networking terms and acronyms for the Internet community.
2. Network Management Area (J. Davin)
Area Summary
Among the items of outstanding business in the Network Management
area, a number were resolved at the December IETF meeting.
Uncertainty about the possible disposition of the Lan Manager MIB
was resolved by a consensus within the IESG that standardization of
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some version of its work is a legitimate option for the IETF Lan
Manager Working Group to consider. Accordingly, the working group
may now proceed to identify a final version of its work and assess
the need for its standardization.
The SNMP MIB 2 effort took a major step forward with the unanimous
recommendation of the SNMP Working Group that MIB 2 be advanced to
Draft Standard status. IESG recommendation for this advancement
was announced during the meeting.
The experience of the Alert Management Working Group will be
captured by publication of two RFC documents describing the theory,
methods, and observations that resulted from its study of both
architectural and congestive problems. Minor editing of the final
document text by the working group chair will conclude this effort.
Among the new business at the December meeting was the organization
of the SNMP Network Management Directorate. The Directorate is the
board that oversees the evolution of the Internet Standard
management framework and functions as a ``custodian of the
architecture.'' It assures that the activities of the various MIB
Working Groups within the NM Area are in concert both with one
another and with the requirements of the management architecture.
To this end, it reviews the output of MIB WGs for quality and
consistency. The Directorate is also charged with formulating and
deliberating all changes or extensions to the standard management
framework as these may be required. Its membership (appointed
jointly by the Director and the IETF Chair) is as follows:
T. Brunner, Bellcore
J. Case, UTK
J. Davin, MIT
F. Kastenholz, Racal-Interlan
K. McCloghrie, HLS
D. Perkins, 3Com
M. Rose, PSI
S. Waldbusser, CMU
S. Willis, Wellfleet Communications
In connection with its first meeting, the Directorate addressed a
range of concerns. Owing to limitations of time and the large
backlog of pending MIB specifications, not all issues warranting
Directorate attention could be conclusively discussed at this
meeting.
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- The Directorate discussed its own administrative procedures.
- The Directorate spent considerable time reviewing a number of
pending MIB documents and architectural issues related thereto.
- In discussion of the process by which MIBs are developed, the
Directorate drew two conclusions that were reported to the IESG:
o The community could draw greater benefit than it now does from
MIB implementation experience if OBJECT IDENTIFIERs in the
standard MIB portion of the registration hierarchy were assigned
earlier in the standardization process than they now are.
o Because the process of MIB development outlined in the IAB
policy statement of RFC 1109 has served the community extremely
well in meeting its operational needs, that process should be
pursued without major change for the forseeable future.
As part of the ongoing business of the the Network Management area,
a number of currently active working groups met. Some highlights
of these working group efforts are presented below. More detailed
accounts of working group activities are presented in the the
minutes of the relevant working group meeting.
The Remote LAN Monitoring MIB and Internet Accounting Working
Groups both met during the meeting. The chairs of these working
groups have undertaken to coordinate their efforts with the
Operational Statistics effort, so that instrumentation needed in
any of these contexts is provided in a non-redundant manner. In a
similar vein, the efforts of the DECNet Phase IV MIB Working Group
will be coordinated with the development of transmission layer MIBs
in other working groups so as to preclude duplicate
instrumentation.
The OIM Working Group discussed three issues at its recent meeting.
First, the working group reviewed the text of RFC 1189 and realized
near consensus on a proposal to replace the definition of the
protocol stack over which the CMIP operates. Second, the working
group discussed the text of the OIM MIB 2 specification. Third,
the working group concluded that the current IAB policy on the
alignment of MIB development efforts (RFC 1109) may need revisiting
in order to minimize effort expended by cognate MIB development.
Significant progress was made in discussions in the Character MIB
and Bridge MIB Working Groups. In the former, three new internet
drafts were considered; in the latter, multiple document drafts
have converged to a single version, and spirited discussion of
technical issues continues. Discussion in the FDDI MIB Working
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group neared closure: alignment of the FDDI MIB with certain
aspects of the Interface Extensions MIB is the principal remaining
issue, and the working group opted for its resolution in mailing
list discussion.
The SNMP Working Group meeting resulted in unanimous working group
recommendations on the disposition of a number of outstanding MIB
efforts. As mentioned above, the SNMP MIB 2 was recommended for
advancement to Draft Standard status. The 802.4 MIB, 802.5 MIB,
DS1 MIB, DS3 MIB, and Concise MIB Definitions documents were all
recommended for advancement to Proposed Standard Status. Owing to
the conclusion of much of the work for which the Transmission MIB
Working Group was orginally chartered, this group is now disbanded.
Any outstanding issues or subsequent discussion of these MIBs will
be conducted within the SNMP Working Group.
3. Internet Services (Nel Chiappa)
Most of the activity to report in this area happened at the IETF
meeting in Boulder. Eight working groups met, and have a fair
amount to report.
The IP over Appletalk WG had a final reading of the 'IP over
Appletalk' and 'Appletalk MIB' documents. (The latter is for use by
Appletalk native devices as well as IP/Appletalk routers.) It also
held a technical review of the latest version of the 'Appletalk
over IP Tunneling' document, which has also been discussed at two
meetings since the last IETF meeting. One more meeting to discusss
the latter document is planned before the next IETF.
The Point to Point WG met briefly and reviewed the status of all in
progress documents. Little has happened since the last IETF in this
area, so an activity will be organized to get these documents
completed and out. The issue of Frame Relay was also discussed, but
due the lack of participation from the Frame Relay community
nothing could be achieved.
The IP over SMDS WG met and reviewed the final draft of their RFC,
making wording and presentation but no substantive changes. It also
reviewed the presentation for the IETF Plenary. Since the RFC
completely handles small deployments, and since the problems of
large WAN networks have been centralized in the IP over Large PDN
WG, this WG has no further tasks and wound up.
The IP over FDDI WG met and reviewed a presentation on the lastest
version of EARP. (This is for use on dual rings with dual MAC
stations. Single MAC stations are done.) A new version of the EARP
document was also available, but it was not reviewed in detail. The
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companion document, which details the various operating models that
exist, and discussses the pros and cons of each, and why EARP is
necessary, is in progress but not completed yet.
The Router Requirements WG went through the latest draft in detail,
reviewing the technical content of the draft text, (over 100 pages
at this point) prepared by legions of dedicated authors. A few
missing sections were identified, and volunteers to prepare them
all were found. The chair met with the Security AD to commence a
review from that angle. The Link Layer document (which is split off
from this and Host Requirements as a common document) is on hold
until the main document is done.
A separate document on the subject of routing pruning, prepared by
the chair, was also reviewed. Routing pruning (i.e. which route to
prefer when two routes are available which are superior in two
orthagonal ways) turned out to be a difficult subject at the last
meeting, and although the problem is better described now, no final
choice as to the preferred algorithm has been made. A single
algorithm must be operating all across each routing domain,
otherwise routing loops may develop.
Finally, discussion was held on a number of technical hot spots.
Among them were fragmentation (should the smallest fragment be
required to be first, for hosts with poor network interface
hardware), routing protocols (should one be required, and if so,
which; for more details see the section on IESG actions, below),
operation features (should management controls be part of an
interoperation specification), broadcast forwarding controls, and
TOS (would the routing protocols allow more than one bit to be on
at once, and if so, what did it mean). Finally, in the TOS
discussion, it was suggested that an extra TOS bit, 'cost', be
allocated.
The Multi-Media Bridges WG held its organizational meeting. It
discussed the charter, and also the issue of interactions with the
802.1(D) group. A presentation was given on the architecture of the
802.1(D) bridge, for those who were not familiar with it, as well
as the relevant RFC's (1042, 1188, 1191, etc) for those who were
not familiar with them. Finally, it reviewed the solutions to the
problems of multi-media bridges already put forth in the market,
and the problems caused by those solutions.
The Dynamic Host WG narrowed its scope in order to make progress.
The problem has now been defined in two parts, host to server
communtication and coordination among replicated servers. The first
part was discussed, and protocols and algorithms agreed to. These
will be written up, and an Internet Draft will be available by the
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next IETF. Also, volunteers to implement them for experimentation
were found. Some proposals were reviewed for the second part, but
further study is needed.
The Connection Oriented IP WG met, and as the ST2 specification is
finished and out (as an Experiment Protocol, RFC 1190), discussed
longer term technical issues such as resource management. It was
agreed to coordinate work on ST2 with other applicable work such as
Lixia Zhang's Flow Protocol and also McHip.
At the IESG meeting in Boulder, a number of topics relevant to this
area were reviewed, and results are available.
Interaction between the MMB WG and 802.1(D) was deemed very useful.
The proposal of the IP-FDDI WG to have an Extended ARP to handle
multi-rail and multi-interface situations was mentioned, to alert
the community that this action was being contemplated.
The issue of authentication for the Router Discovery mechanism was
discussed. No mechanism is currently proposed (although the packet
format allows for one to be added), and it is a difficult technical
problem since the transaction is so short. It was decided that as
long as the text contained some discussion of authentication, and
pointed out that no authentication is currently included, the
document can go to Proposed Standard. The Security AD will
investigate, and a mechanism should be available before the
document progresses further.
Two new WG's, IP over Frame Relay and IP over ISDN, will be
organized. Both will concentrate on designing the framing for use
of IP over these media, as well as specifying operation on small
networks. The IPLPDN WG will be handling operation on large
networks. A FR group is being set up since the consensus of the
people with detail knowledge of FR was that the entire PPP protocol
(which was proposed as a potential method for use of FR) was
unnecessarily duplicative of mechanisms already present in the
basic FR.
The RR WG had requested that an extra TOS bit be allocated to use
as a cost bit. (The Host Requirements document calls for a 5 bit
TOS field, but only three bits are actually defined.) It was agreed
that this sounded good, but a more detailed proposal, with a
complete TOS mechanism, was needed before final action could be
taken.
The RR WG had also, after some acrimonious debate, referred the
problem of chosing a standard IGP to the IESG, where further
acrimonious debate ensued.
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Some felt that sufficient experience had been gained with OSPF to
make a decision (as called for by the IETF at the Florida IETF).
People with OSPF experience unanimously felt that enough experience
had been gained; the majority of the WG did not have enough
knowledge to have an opinion, however. Concerns were expressed that
the existing experience was deficient in three ways; there was no
very large deployment (hundreds of routers), there was no multi-
vendor experience, and no experience with large numbers of areas.
As to the actual protocol, the majority of attendees did want to
make a recommendation to the IESG, in an attempt to get a decision
made. There was general agreement that the only two viable
alternatives were OSPF and Dual IS-IS. By a bare majority, OSPF was
preferred, although the second preference was to require both.
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
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INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BARRNET
-------
Three new 56 kbps connections were made in December. The first
trial of BARRNet's new SLIP service offering 38.4 kbps over a 56
kbps digital ADN circuit was also implemented in December, with
evaluation taking place over the coming weeks before the service is
offered on a production basis. The total number of connected
members is now 65, with at least eight new connections expected in
January.
Installation of the new T3 microwave equipment and NSS at Stanford
has been completed, and the microwave link connecting Stanford to
MCI's Hayward POP is operational, but the BARRNet Ethernet has not
yet been connected to the new NSS and no packets are passing over
the link. The new NSS is expected to become fully operational in
the coming month.
Paul Baer (baer@jessica.stanford.edu)
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
Terrestrial Wideband Network (TWBNet) and ST/IP Gateway
Work progressed steadily on the new "southern loop" to be added to
the TWBNet. A Wideband Packet Switch (WPS) was installed in Mobile
and connected to the Boston WPS. Then the Ft. Rucker site was
rehomed to this new node. The next steps will be to install a WPS
at Albuquerque, connect up a gateway at Los Alamos National Lab,
and set up a circuit between the Albuquerque WPS and the Los
Angeles WPS. The addition of this southern path will provide added
robustness in the form of an alternate route between the east and
west coasts and will also allow shorter tail circuits to Southern
sites.
Allowing for the holiday season, video conferencing usage was
reasonably high. There were a total of seven video conferences and
demonstrations in December. Of these, two were 3-site connections
and five were 2-site conferences. Conferences were held for
discussions in the following areas: IETF Autonomous Networks
Research Group, Dartnet experimenters, and Discussions of a plan
for personal conferencing. Conferees included Ira Richer, Jon
Postel, and Danny Cohen.
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A video conference suite was installed at Ft. Leavenworth and the
ST gateway, previously used only for Simnet exercises, was upgraded
to handle video conferencing as well. Also, an ST gateway was
installed at ETL, in Ft. Belvoir, VA. This will be used for Simnet
support. Both of these new installations were tested successfully.
Inter-Domain Policy Routing
The IDPR working group met for three days during the December IETF.
The first day consisted of a tutorial on the architecture,
protocols, and prototype implementation. During the next two days,
we discussed
the work we would pursue for the new year. This included work that
must be done to prepare the prototype for introduction into the
IETF standards process, as well as research-oriented extensions of
and enhancements to the existing IDPR protocols, for example,
adding multicast and multipath facilities. For a complete list of
the activities, please subscribe to the IDPR mailing list, idpr-
wg@bbn.com.
During December, the IDPR developers did some work on the
prototype, but with people away on holiday or sitting for exams, we
didn't really have a full month. It appears that BBN's
participation in DARTNET will become active in January. We can
then start our experiments in earnest.
INTERNET O&M / ICBNET INFRASTRUCTURE
The TWBNet gateways at Ft. Monmouth and CMU were upgraded with new
software configurations to handle the increased number of buffers
needed to hold an EGP NR update. The last phase of lab testing was
completed for new software which would allow the Butterfly gateways
to handle a wider range of EGP routing update sizes for different
Butterfly configurations.
Testing of dial-in capability for the standard Internet Butterfly
gateway was completed.
Preparations were made to join DARTNET to the TWBNet at BBN.
ESNET is now peering with the TWBNet. The routing is set up so that
the primary path to the TWBnet networks is via UMD and the
secondary path to the TWBnet networks is via AMES. The secondary
path will be used if the primary path is unavailable. This scheme
provides ESnet sites better connectivity to the UK and other
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foreign networks imported by TWBnet, without seriously impacting
the connectivity to TWBnet's US networks. ESnet is accepting 22
networks from TWBnet, 17 of them are foreign networks.
Jil Westcott (Westcott@BBN.COM)
CICNET
-------
During December, 1990 Pennsylvania State University became CICNet's
newest affiliate member. Also, effective Dec. 1 John Hankins was
appointed by the CICNet Board of Directors to the position of
Interim Executive Director. A national search for a permanent
director is expected to get underway soon.
CICNet's transition from Merit, Inc. to an AT&T/Ohio State
University team for NOC services continued on schedule. Active
network monitoring and support was transferred from Merit to OSU on
Dec. 17. CICNet also began the reconfiguration of several of its
T-1 circuits which terminate in the Chicago area. The
reconfiguration takes advantage of the new NSFNET node soon to come
on line at Argonne National Laboratory and reduces the primary and
secondary hop counts to NSFNET for several CICNet nodes.
by John I. Hankins (John_L._Hankins@um.cc.umich.edu)
CREN/CSNET
----------
CSNET relocated its West Coast Cluster Hub from Olivetti Research
Center in Menlo Park to CERFnet's Backbone node in the Bay Area.
That CERFnet connection provides cluster members with access to
NSFNET on the west coast, and on December 31 the T1 line from the
cluster to SDSC was decommissioned. CSNET's cross-country link
(Cambridge-West Coast) will be rehomed to Oakland during the second
week in January.
Karen Roubicek (roubicek@bbn.com)
FARNET
-------
FARNET has hired a consulting firm to work with it to plan its
strategic direction. The firm, Northeast Consulting Resources of
Boston, MA, is developing several future scenarios or "endstates"
for consideration and debate at the next FARNET meeting, to be held
in Las Vegas, Nevada January 14-15.
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FARNET has also incorporated, following up on a decision made at
the last membership meeting in September, and the new Board of
Directors held its first meeting in Washington, DC on December 17.
Additional directors will be elected at the Las Vegas meeting. The
officers, previously elected by the membership, are Glenn Ricart
(President), Thomas Bajzek (Secretary) and Bill Yundt (Treasurer).
Also present were Richard Mandelbaum (NYSERNET), Laura Breeden
(BBN), Guy Almes (Sesquinet) and Brian Kahin (counsel). Mandelbaum
and Almes were named interim directors. At their first meeting,
the directors finalized the agenda for the January meeting and
considered a number of revisions to the bylaws to clarify the types
of membership and the responsibilities of delegates to FARNET.
FARNET representatives also met with others from the networking
community at the offices of ANS (Advanced Networks and Services) in
Elmsford, NY on Dec. 13-14 to work in depth on issues raised at a
preliminary meeting in September. The issues were: 1)
identification of potentially beneficial relationships between ANS
and the regional networks; 2) structure for a fair qualification
process for regional networks wishing to become resellers of ANS
services; 3) determination of technical, financial and process
issues related to reimbursements for services across regional-ANS
boundaries; 4) recommendation of organizational relationships
between the regionals and ANS. Item 4 was deferred so that the
group could concentrate on items 1-3. Discussion of these
questions took place in two groups and was lively and intense. A
more detailed report will be available following the January FARNET
meeting.
Laura Breeden (breeden@bbn.com)
Member, FARNET Executive Committee
ISI
---
INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT
Bob Braden and Joyce Reynolds, attended the IETF meetings in
Boulder, Colorado, 5-7 December. Eve Schooler attended the
IEEE SMC Conference in Universal City, December 5, 1990.
Three RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1195: Callon, R., "Use of OSI IS-IS for Routing in TCP/IP
and Dual Environments", Digital Equipment Corporation,
December 1990.
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report December 1990
RFC 1196: Zimmerman, D., "The Finger User Information Protocol",
Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer
Science, December 1990.
RFC 1197: Sherman, M., "Using ODA for Translating Multimedia
Information", CMU, December 1990.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT
No progress to report this month.
Steve Casner (casner@isi.edu)
LOS NETTOS
----------
Scripts are being written using the expect program written by Don
Libes of NIST to help with maintenence of the network.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MITRE Corporation
-----------------
The Internet Engineering project at MITRE this year is exploring
the subject of Internet Management for the Defense Communications
Agency. Our effort is looking beyond the pretty graphical
interfaces to the administrative and procedural side of management.
This includes inter-NOC behavior and relationships, customer
agreements, tool-aided problem solving, span of control and
monitoring, and concepts of operations.
The use of interactive tools has not been ignored, because they can
open up new ways of dealing with issues that might have been
impractical without the proper tool. Walt Lazear, Shari Galitzer,
Forrest Palmer, and Mike Saintcross are evaluating and testing
tools such as BBN's MMCONF and Slate, Matrix' EtherView, Sun's
SunNet Manager, cisco's Net Central, DEC's Director, EXPECT,
Internet Rover, RoboDoc, Xmap, and personal video conferencing.
Forrest Palmer continued to support the Internet Engineering
Testbed. The project requirements for FY91 have been collected and
are being coordinated.
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report December 1990
Walt Lazear and Judy Messing attended the December IETF meeting in
Boulder, to contribute to the User Connectivity, Operational
Statistics, CMOT, Net Joint Management, Password Security, X.400,
X.500, and OSI General working groups.
Walt Lazear (lazear@mitre.gateway.org)
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
As of December 15, 1990 NEARnet had 60 members in five New England
states. NEARnet has announced the availability of SLIP-based
Dial-up Internet service at prices as low as $150/month plus
membership dues. NEARnet service is now available at speeds from
9.6 Kb/sto 10 Mb/s, including T1 and fractional T1 rates.
A direct T1 connection from NEARnet to the Princeton NSS was
installed in mid-November. The connection is operated by NEARnet
and features redundant equipment at the Princeton end. NEARnet's
connection to the NSFNET no longer traverses the five routers,
three T1 lines and two Ethernets that were formerly in the path to
the backbone.
NEARnet has also installed a direct connection to ESnet, the Energy
Sciences Network, at MIT. This will provide improved service to
ESnet sites such as SLAC, Argonne National Labs, and Fermilab. The
link currently allows "tunneling" for routing DECNET over NEARnet
(with DECNET packets encapsulated in IP). We plan to provide an
application-level gateway at MIT to support ESnet users on NEARnet
whose hosts cannot use the tunneling approach.
The T3 NSFNET NSS is being installed at MIT and is scheduled to
become operational by January 31. The 45 MB/s microwave radio
equipment connecting MIT to the Prudential Center (MCI's Boston
POP) has already been installed and tested.
NEARnet now has branch nodes in western and central Massachusetts,
southern Maine, northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
A workshop on the impact of networking for librarians and
information technology staff in New England is being planned for
early March.
John Rugo (jrugo@nic.near.net)
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Internet Monthly Report December 1990
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
Karen Roubicek attended the IETF in Boulder, Colorado.
The NNSC began the distribution of the Internet Manager's
Phonebook. The initial distribution was sent to the 3,600 network
managers listed in the directory. Additional copies of the
phonebook may be purchased at cost. For more details and pricing
information, please send your request to <nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net>.
The updated NSFNET site list is now available through the NSFNET
portion of the Info-Server. To receive this listing, send a
message to: info-server@nnsc.nsf.net, in the body of the message
type: request: nsfnet, topic: sites. This is the site list we plan
to include in the updated map for the next issue of the NSF Network
News.
Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net)
NSFNET BACKBONE (Merit)
-----------------------
NSFNET Backbone Project
The NSFNET Backbone had a total of 4,812,968,474 incoming packets
during the month of December 1990. This total represents a
decrease from the November inbound packet count of 4,857,386,823
packets by 0.91%. Networks configured for announcement on the
NSFNET backbone total 2190 as of December 28th.
Routing on the T3 backbone between San Diego, Urbana-Champaign and
Ann Arbor has begun, as production traffic is phased in. The T3
end nodes currently installed are located in San Diego, Urbana-
Champaign, Ann Arbor, and Palo Alto, and represent half of the
planned T3 NSFNET backbone. An eight node T3 backbone designed by
the NSFNET partner- ship to complement the T1 NSFNET backbone will
be implemented, with the installed end nodes ready for operational
traffic and the remaining nodes to become operational in the coming
weeks.
Work continues on the FDDI interface, with Dave Katz, of
Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering, beginning interoperability
testing on the T3 nodes. Internal Border Gateway Protocol (I-BGP)
is also being integrated into the T1 and T3 NSFNET backbone.
OSI applications which originate at regional network locations or
their member organizations can now be tested over the NSFNET
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Internet Monthly Report December 1990
backbone. The first OSI applications to run over NSFNET will be
considered experimental prototypes. During implementation of these
applications, members of the Internet Engineering group at Merit
will work closely with regional network engineers and end users in
order to protect the integrity of the production backbone. If you
have an OSI Layer 7 application you would like to have included in
this phase of testing, contact your campus or regional network
representative, who can in turn contact Susan Hares, an Internet
Engineer at Merit Network, Inc.
The Merit/NSFNET project was represented at the Boulder, CO, IETF
meeting by Dale Johnson, Manager of the Network Operations Center,
Pat Smith, Merit/NSFNET Information Services, and Susan Hares,
Merit/ NSFNET Internet Engineering. Jessica Yu and Elise Gerich,
also of Internet Engineering, attended the FEPG meeting in Boulder.
Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu)
NDRE and NTA-RD
---------------
No progress to report this month.
Anton B. Leere (leere@ndre.no)
PREPNET
-------
During December, Indiana University of Pennsylvania joined PREPnet.
IUP will be connected to the Pittsburgh hub at 56Kbps.
PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu)
SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER
------------------------------
During the month, the most significant item was the use of the new
NSFnet T3 circuit for initially test data and then production data.
The initial testing was a [nearly] coast-to-coast link from SDSC to
Ann Arbor and on to Milford, CT. The link from Ann Arbor to
Milford was via the Test Network that Merit, IBM, and MCI use for
experimentation. The production link was from SDSC to Ann Arbor
and then to NCSA. We have setup the production link such that the
routing will fail over to the T1 net when the T3 is not available.
The T1 link from SDSC to the Bay Area which provided CSnet with a
West Coast access point to NSFnet was turned off on 31 Dec. CSnet
net now uses CERFnet for this access via CERFnet's Backbone node in
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report December 1990
the Bay Area.
The gated software on VIP has been updated to v2.2. Several
patches supplied by NOSC have also been installed.
We have installed the latest and best MultiNet (v 3.0) from TGV.
We plan to use its much improved NFS to support our workstations
from the VMS cluster.
Paul Love (loveep@sdsc.edu)
SRI
----
DDN NIC
In December, we assigned 770 numbers to new IP networks. The total
of all IP numbers assigned is now 26,152. The total number of
assigned Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) is now 1,207.
There are currently a total of 2,235 registered domains which
includes 57 at the top level, 2,126 at the second level, and 52
third-level MIL domains.
Cumulative Statistics
Month/Year Class
A B C Total
Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152
Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382
Oct. 1990 36 3,846 19,386 23,268
Douglas MacGowan (macgown@nisc.sri.com)
Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com)
UCL
----
No progress to report this month.
John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report December 1990
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. Minor configuration changes were made to our DARTNET router
and various SPARCstations and timekeeping paraphernalia.
Fuzzball time servers at ISI and UDel now provide service to
various DARTers without giving away routing secrets.
2. Various upgrades and tuning adjustments were made to several
Fuzzball time servers in order to prepare for the leap second
scheduled as the last second of this year. Hopefully, the
servers will survive the leap absent the bumps and grinds that
occurred at the last such epoch.
3. Ken Monington attended the Precision Time and Time Interval
meeting in Tysons Corner, VA. On behalf of the U.N.
Development Program, Dave Mills visited the Indian Institute
of Technology in Bombay to assist in Internet technology
transfer, review satellite plans and promote good time.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
WISCNET
-------
All routers, DSUs, and T1 multiplexor equipment are now onsite.
Other equipment such as racks and UPS have been shipped.
Compatibility tests between the T1 multiplexors and the cisco
routers were successfully performed.
All routers have been configured and shipped to sites. They will
be installed by site staff and tested with the local network
configuration before network startup.
T1 backbone site lines will be installed about 1/15/91 followed
shortly by end node DDS lines. All lines will be installed by
2/9/91.
Michael Dorl (dorl@macc.wisc.edu)
Westine [Page 22]