September 1991
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)
NSF Regional reports - Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@NNSC.NSF.NET)
Directory Services reports - Tom Tignor (TPT2@ISI.EDU)
Requests to be added or deleted from the Internet Monthly report list
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Login: anonymous guest
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ls
get IMRYY-MM.TXT
For example, JUNE 1991 is in the file IMR91-06.TXT.
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
Internet Projects
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
CSUNET (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK). . . . . . . page 17
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 18
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
MERIT/MICHNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 21
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 21
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SAIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30
WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES
DIRECTORY SERVICES MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32
FOX - FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . page 32
ISI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
PSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
SRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
SG-D MHS-MD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 37
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IAB MESSAGE
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
Since May 1991, the IAB has taken the following standards actions,
following recommendations from the IESG.
o Draft Standard state for "Concise MIB Definitions",
RFC-1212.
o Standard state for MIB-II: "Management Information Base
for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets",
RFC-1213.
o Proposed Standard state for Network Time Protocol (NTP)
Version 3, RFC in preparation.
o Proposed Standard state for ICMP Router Discovery protocol,
RFC-1256
o The IAB produced RFC 1262 on Measurement Activity Guidelines
co-ordinated by Hans-Werner Braun and with the assistance of
Michael F. Schwartz.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
IETF report for September 1991
Reported by Phillip Gross, IETF Chair
Introduction
This reports on the July IETF meeting and the period from July 1991
through September 1991. The July IETF meeting was a particularly
active one. In fact, we still have quite a backlog of actions to
get through the process.
Some actions about to emerge include 5 documents on BGP, the
ethernet MIB (in original version), the recommendation for the
"common IGP", a set of X.500 documents, 2 Frame Relay documents,
and several other MIBs. Please see sections 7-10 of this report
for completed actions between July and September 1991.
A version of this report will be included in the Proceedings for
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the July IETF meeting.
Contents
1. Thanks to Atlanta hosts -- BellSouth and Caroline Cranfill
2. IETF and IESG Status Report
3. New IETF Secretariat staffing
4. Atlanta's Open Plenary
5. Internet Society
6. Focus on international growth
7. 4 New Working Group(s) formed between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
8. 7 Working Group(s) concluded between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
9. 75 Internet Draft Actions between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
10. 12 RFC's Produced between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
1. Thanks to Atlanta hosts -- BellSouth and Caroline Cranfill
I'd like to extend my appreciation to BellSouth and Caroline
Cranfill for hosting the Atlanta IETF meeting. The facilities and
connectivity were excellent. Our hosts deserve special thanks for
the Tuesday evening social activity, which gave us a fine
introduction to Atlanta hospitality. Thanks to our hosts for
helping to make the IETF in Atlanta a successful one.
2. IETF and IESG Status Report
At the start of the Atlanta IETF meeting, there were 63 working
groups in 9 areas (one area, Standards Practices, does not have
working groups). For Atlanta, 9 working groups submitted "final"
Internet-Drafts. Some of these documents represent standards
actions, for which the IESG will be forwarding recommendations to
the IAB. Others are informational documents. Most of these
working groups will retire when their documents are published as
RFCs (either as standards or informationl RFCs).
These numbers, both the total number of working groups and the
number of working groups approaching conclusion at one meeting,
represent high-water marks (yet-again) for IETF activity. Detailed
listings and status of working groups will be provided in the
Proceedings for the July IETF meeting.
There has been some new additions to the IESG, and some minor
restructuring, since the March IETF meeting.
First, we have added a new "Transport and Services Area", led by
David Borman of Cray. Long time IETF attendees will recognize
David from his numerous reports in the past regarding his work
implementing high performance TCP for the Cray operating system,
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based Van Jacobson's enhancements. This new area will also include
activities that don't quite fall properly into either the Internet
or Application Areas (from a "layerist" perspective). The DNS
activities are an example. We used to have an area called "Host
and User Services", led by Craig Partridge. When Craig left for
his postdoctoral position at the Swedish Institute of Computer
Science (SICS) last fall, we divided the transport and other host
issues between the Internet and Application Areas and elevated User
Services as a distinct area (led by Joyce Reynolds, USC-ISI).
However, that move added additional topics to two of the largest
IETF areas (i.e., Internet and Applications). Plus, we soon
realized that we had need for specific transport level expertise on
the IESG. Therefore, we decided to form the new "Transport and
Services Area". We are very pleased that David has been able to
join the IESG to fill this new position.
Next, I am very happy to announce that the Operational Requirements
Area is now fully staffed. Bernhard Stockman (Nordunet) and Susan
Estrada (Cerfnet) have joined the IESG as co-Area Directors for
this important area. Bernhard brings a special understanding of
international networking to this task, which will help us as the
Internet, and the surrounding technical issues, expand globally.
Susan brings a perspective based on two important views -- her long
time key association with FARNET and her role as Executive Director
of a midlevel network. I had been acting as an interim Director
for this Area, and I will continue to work with Susan and Bernhard
for the near future. One of the first objectives will be to form
an Operational Requirements Area Directorate. We held an open
session in Atlanta which we hope will act as an organizational
session for the ORAD. You can read Susan's report on that meeting
later in these Proceedings.
I am also pleased to welcome Philip Almquist onto the IESG, joining
Noel Chiappa as co-Director of the Internet Area. The Internet
Area is one of the largest, and historically one of the more
important, in the IETF and it will profit from the additional
attention that Noel and Philip together will now be able to bring
to bear. Philip will bring an important perspective as the current
chair of the Router Requirements working group.
I am also sorry to have to report that Rob Hagens (University of
Wisconsin) has had to leave the IESG due to other pressing time
commitments. We will miss Rob as the co-Director for the OSI
Integration Area, with Ross Callon (DEC). Fortunately, we will not
lose Rob completely because he will remain as co-chair of the X.400
Operational working group. The OSI Integration Area is a large
area, requiring a special set of skills, and we already are looking
for someone to join Ross in leading this area. Rob, we will miss
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you on the IESG, but we look forward to your continued
contributions to the IETF as a working group chair.
With the changes above, there are now 10 IETF Areas and 13 members
of the IESG. A complete listing of the areas and members will be
provided in the Proceedings for the Atlanta IETF meeting.
3. New IETF Secretariat staffing
Over the past couple years, the IETF has grown a great deal. Most
of the technical activities of the IETF are handled by volunteers
from either academia or industry (i.e., the working group chairs,
the IESG members, and/or the many individual working group
contributors). However, with 3 yearly meetings of 350-400
attendees, the administration and logistics of the IETF can no
longer be handled solely by volunteers.
To handle the growing administrative and logistics necessities, a
professional staff has grown up at CNRI over the last few years to
support the many volunteer technical contributors. With the hiring
this summer of Steve Coya (CNRI) as IETF Executive Director,
perhaps it is now time to recognize this "IETF Secretariat" for the
important role it now plays. It is clear, at least in my mind,
that the IETF could no longer function as efficiently as it now
does without this important support.
The current full-time professional staff comprising the "IETF
Secretariat" at CNRI is:
- Steve Coya IETF Executive Director
- Greg Vaudreuil IESG Secretary
- Megan Davies Proceedings and Logistics Coordinator
- Cynthia Clark Administrative support
- Debra Legare Secretary
Please join me in thanking these folks and CNRI for the wonderful
support they have provided in the past and will continue to provide
at future meetings. If there are any questions or suggestions
regarding the Secretariat, please feel free to correspond directly
with Steve Coya (scoya@nri.reston.va.us). Either Vint Cerf (CNRI)
or myself can also answer questions, if Steve is not available.
4. Atlanta's Open Plenary
The Atlanta meeting represents the largest number of working groups
the IETF has ever sponsored in one place at one time. As a measure
of the growth and activity of the IETF, this is an exciting
statistic. However, it also raises important questions about how
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large the IETF can grow and still enjoy its present success and
utilize its present format.
These and other issues were very much on the minds of attendees
during the open plenary session on Thursday afternoon.
Specifically, this most recent growth surge has re-surfaced some
problems that we have seen, and dealt with, in the past. For
example, there is the simple logistics hassle of scheduling many
parallel WG meetings so that important groups do not overlap.
There is also the problem of bringing new players into the WG
activities without completely rehashing all the old technical
issues.
One answer is to increase our effective usage of electronic mail.
However, then we must be careful to balance the "group consensus"
reached by email versus the consensus reached by onsite attendees.
And, of course, there is the general problem of reaching closure on
technical issues in a large group, whether that group is meeting
face-to-face or by email.
These are all problems that we have seen in various degrees, and
attempted to deal with in various ways, in the past. These are all
problems that seem to re-surface at the leading edge of any new
IETF growth surge.
What's less clear, at least to me, is whether we have finally hit a
"wall", in which the basic procedures that the IETF has developed
to conduct business are no longer valid, or whether we merely need
to adapt to the new environemnt (yet-again) by evolving our
operating procedures.
One of the strengths of the IETF has always been its ability to
evolve and to adapt to new conditions. In many ways, we are still
learning lessons about how best to conduct our business. "Making
it up as we go" has been both a blessing and a curse. At times we
have seen interactions between the IAB and IESG, or between the
IESG and the working groups, suffer from lack of clarity of
"procedures". On the other hand, when conditions change around us,
we have always had the flexibilty to adapt quickly.
My personal feeling is that our ability to evolve has been one of
the major keys to our success. I think we must all recognize that
the networking world has changed in recent years in ways that very
few could have predicted, and the IETF has had the ability to learn
from any missteps and change along with it. We are still evolving,
and I'd like to think that we have a ways to go (and grow) before
we hit a "wall".
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Some excellent suggestions came out at Thursday's open plenary
sesssion. Acting on these suggestions, we will add an extra
afternoon session on Friday at the next IETF meeting. This will
allow us to add one additional WG session to the current generic
schedule and to devote both all of Monday and Tuesday to WG
sessions. We will also try to make good use of the new/old idea of
"Birds of a feather" sessions, to explore subjects before commiting
expensive (and scarce) personnel resources to starting up a full
WG. (In Atlanta, we had 5 BOFs on important subjects.) We will
make an extra effort to schedule "overview" sessions on topics of
interest, particularly as status reports on ongoing WG activities.
This will help keep general attendees and new players abreast of
activities on other areas.
Finally, we will enhance our current set of guidelines for WG
chairs to provide suggestions on how to handle new attendees who
need to be brought up to speed and how to achieve closure in the
face of questions from these new players. For example, acting on a
suggestion from the open plenary, we will ask WG chairs to do a
better job of recording the rationale for all technical decisions.
In this way, new players will have a better record of why specific
decision were made.
Some other suggestions were as simple as to make better use of
agendas and to invoke a different set of meeting guidelines as a WG
nears conclusion. For example, in Atlanta the Router Requirements
WG had a strict agenda of still-open topics, and the chair
announced beforehand that previous issues would not be re-opened in
Atlanta without very good cause.
It's also important for WG chairs to understand that they are bound
to reach consensus, not unanimity. That is, in the face of
unresolved technical opinions, it is perfectly valid for the chair
to adapt the consensus view and then move forward.
It is important to understand that the open plenary sessions have
always played an important role in guiding the IETF. (In fact, in
*very* beginning, there were no WGs, so the entire meeting was an
open plenary!) The open plenaries have included IESG reports since
the IESG formation at the Hawaii meeting (Fall 1989).
Of course, there are other ways to provide comments on IETF
activity. The main IETF mailing list is available for that purpose
(ietf@isi.edu). The IESG can be reached individually or
collectively (iesg@nri.reston.va.us). I am always available either
by phone or email (pgross@ans.net, 914-789-5335), and the IETF
Secretariat can be reached through Steve Coya, IETF Excutive
Director, (scoya@nri.reston.va.us).
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I believe it is very important to have direct interaction with
attendees and others interested in IETF activities. This makes the
IETF very much a self-guiding body, and I think that has
contributed as much to the IETF's success as any other factor.
5. Internet Society
This meeting saw the announcement of the Internet Society by Vint
Cerf (CNRI).
The Internet Society will be a professional society which we hope
will grow to encompass the activities of the IAB and IETF in a
positive way. The IAB and IESG are very supportive of the Internet
Society, and we look forward to working with Vint on developing the
specific method by which the IAB and IETF both become part of this
new important group.
Vint Cerf's presentation fooils will be included in the Proceedings
for the July IETF.
6. Focus on international growth
Another topic that received considerable attention at this meeting
was the growing focus in the IETF on global networking issues.
This emphasis is almost unavoidable as the Internet grows
internationally. (MERIT's network status report again showed that
the non-US portion continues to be the fastest growing segment of
the Internet.)
We had the largest showing of non-US attendees in Atlanta, and we
now have non-US representation on both the IAB and IESG.
This raised the possibility of holding an IETF meeting outside of
North America (we have already held an IETF in British Columbia).
I think this is a very natural and desirable outcome. However, we
have to approach it cautiously. Many US employers and US federal
agencies treat non-US travel quite differently from domestic
travel. We need to make sure that the environment has matured
properly so that we can expect to get representative participation
at any IETF meeting outside North America. As important as it is
to begin holding IETF meetings in non-US venues, it could be
damaging to our very goals of internationalization if we held a
non-US meeting that was poorly attended by US participants.
We normally schedule IETF meetings 12-18 months in advance, so the
earliest spot not yet scheduled is Fall 1992 or Winter 1993.
Fortunately, this provides time to prepare and plan for our first
meeting outside North America.
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One way to help prepare the climate for such a meeting is make the
Internet Society a strong and successful organization. One of the
principal goals of the Internet Society will be to focus on
international networking issues. So please consider joining the
Internet Society. For my part, I will work directly with Vint Cerf
and incoming IAB chair Lyman Chapin (BBN) to see that the IAB and
IETF are incorporated into the Internet Society in a positive and
natural fashion.
7. 4 New Working Group(s) formed between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
Trusted Network File Systems (tnfs)
Privacy-Enhanced Electronic Mail (pem)
Automated Internet Mailing List Services (list)
Internet K-12 Networking (k12)
8. 7 Working Group(s) concluded between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
Router Discovery (rdisc)
Management Services Interface (msi)
Topology Engineering (tewg)
OSI X.400 (osix400)
Internet Security Policy (spwg)
FDDI MIB (fddimib)
DDN Interconnectivity (ddniwg)
9. 75 Internet Draft Actions between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
(Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) )
WG I-D Title <Filename>
------ -----------------------------------------------------
(osids) o An Interim Approach to use of Network Addresses
<draft-ucl-kille-networkaddresses-04.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o A String Encoding of Presentation Address
<draft-ucl-kille-presentationaddress-03.txt, or .ps>
(idpr) o An Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy Routing
<draft-ietf-idpr-architecture-03.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Data Encryption Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-encryption-01.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Authentication Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-authentication-02.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Authentication Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-authentication-02.txt>
(rreq) o Requirements for Internet IP Routers
<draft-ietf-rreq-iprouters-02.txt>
(snmp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the SIP
Interface Type
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<draft-ietf-snmp-smdssipmib-03.txt>
(osids) o Replication and Distributed Operations Extensions to
Provide an Internet Directory using X.500
<draft-ietf-osids-replsoln-03.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema
<draft-ietf-osids-cosinex500-05.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for RS-232-like
Hardware Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-rs232like-02.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Character Stream
Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-charmib-01.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Parallel-printer-
like Hardware Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-parallelprinter-01.txt>
(osids) o Replication Requirement to Provide an Internet
Directory Using X.500
<draft-ietf-osids-replication-03.txt, or .ps>
(none) o Network Time Protocol: Version 3
<draft-mills-ntpv3-01.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o Handling QOS (Quality of service) in the Directory
<draft-ietf-osids-qos-01.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots
<draft-ietf-osids-dirpilots-02.txt, .ps>
(osids) o DSA Naming
<draft-ietf-osids-dsanaming-01.txt, or .ps>
(pem) o Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication
Procedures
<draft-ietf-pem-msgproc-01.txt>
(rdisc) o ICMP Router Discovery Messages
<draft-ietf-rdisc-icmpmessage-01.txt>
(null) o Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822
<draft-ietf-kille-x_400mapping-03.txt>
(decnetiv) o DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions
<draft-ietf-decnetiv-mibextensions-01.txt, .ps>
(iplpdn) o Inverse Address Resolution Protocol
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-inarp-03.txt>
(iplpdn) o Multiprotocol Interconnect over Frame Relay Networks
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-ipoverframerelay-03.txt>
(iplpdn) o Management Information Base for Frame Relay DTEs
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-frmib-01.txt>
(pppext) o The Point-to-Point Protocol for the Transmission of
Multi-Protocol Datagrams Over Point-to-Point Links
<draft-ietf-pppext-lcp-01.txt>
(pppext) o The PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-ipcp-01.txt>
(null) o X.400 1988 to 1984 downgrading
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<draft-ietf-kille-88to84downgrade-01.txt, .ps>
(822ext) o Mnemonic Text Format
<draft-ietf-822ext-qreadable-02.txt>
(822ext) + Character Mnemonics and Character Sets
<draft-ietf-822ext-char-00.txt>
(null) + An Approach to CO/CL Interworking -- Part II:
Specification -- Conventions for Transport-
Service Bridges
<draft-ccirn-cocl-tsspecification-00.txt>
(pppext) + Proposed Point-to-Point Procotol for AppleTalk
<draft-ietf-pppext-appletalk-00.txt>
(rmon) o Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base
<draft-ietf-rmon-mib-01.txt>
(pem) o The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-rivest-md5-01.txt>
(osids) + Directory Requirements for COSINE and Internet Pilots
(OSI-DS 18)
<draft-ietf-osids-requirements-00.txt, .ps>
(dhc) + Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
<draft-ietf-dhc-protocol-00.txt, .ps>
(none) o Mid-Level Networks; A Minimum Services Provider
<draft-aggarwal-services-01.txt, .ps>
(pem) + The MD2 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-kaliski-md2-00.txt>
(pem) + The MD4 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-rivest-md4-00.txt>
(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part IV: Notary, Co-Issuer, CRL-Storing and
CRL-Retrieving Services
<draft-ietf-pem-notary-00.txt>
(osids) + Generic Security Service Application Program
Interface Overview and C bindings
<draft-ietf-cat-secservice-00.txt>
(smtpext) + SMTP Extensions for Transport of Text-Based
Messages Containing 8-bit Characters
<draft-ietf-smtpext-8bittransport-00.txt>
(none) + International character support in SMTP
<draft-prime-ullmann-smtp-00.txt>
(none) + RFC "nroff macros"
<draft-isi-rfc_nroff_macros-00.txt>
(null) + A LaTeX Style for RFCs and Internet Drafts
<draft-droms-latexrfcstyle-00.txt>
(nisi) + Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure
<draft-ietf-nisi-infrastructure-00.txt>
(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part II: Certificate-Based Key Management
<draft-ietf-pem-keymgmt-00.txt>
(null) + RFC Document Type for Scribe
Westine [Page 13]
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<draft-trewitt-scriberfcstyle-00.txt>
(fddimib) + FDDI Management Information Base
<draft-ietf-fddimib-mib-00.txt>
(fddimib) + SNMP Trap Definitions For FDDI Management
<draft-ietf-fddimib-trapdef-00.txt>
(idpr) + Definitions of Managed Objects for the Inter-Domain
Policy Routing Protocol (Version 1)
<draft-ietf-idpr-mib-00.txt, .ps>
(tnfs) + A Specification of Trusted NFS (TNFS) Protocol
Extensions
<draft-ietf-tnfs-spec-00.txt, .ps>
(hubmib) + Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3
Repeater Devices
<draft-ietf-hubmib-mib-00.txt>
(ospf) + OSPF Version 2 Traps
<draft-ietf-ospf-trapmib-00.txt>
(iesg) + An Internet Evolution Plan for the IETF
<draft-ietf-iesg-evolutionplan-00.txt>
(rreq) + Ruminations on Route Leaking
<draft-almquist-leak-00.ps>
(rreq) + Type of Service in the Internet Protocol
<draft-almquist-tos-00.txt>
(rreq) + Some Thoughts on Multi-Domain Routing
<draft-callon-routing-00.txt>
(rreq) + Ruminations on the Next Hop
<draft-almquist-nexthop-00.ps>
(idpr) + Inter-Domain Policy Routing Configuration and Usage
<draft-ietf-idpr-configuration-00.txt>
(pppext) + The PPP OSI Network Layer Control Protocol (OSINLCP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-osinlcp-00.txt>
(mospf) + Multicast Extensions to OSPF
<draft-ietf-mospf-multicast-00.ps>
(disi) + A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations
<draft-ietf-disi-catalog-00.txt>
(pppext) + The PPP Authentication Protocols
<draft-ietf-pppext-authentication-00.txt>
(none) + A New IP Routing and Addressing Architecture
<draft-chiappa-routing-00.txt>
(iesg) + IESG Recommendation for Internet Interior Gateway
Routing Protocols
<draft-iesg-commonigp-00.txt>
(bgp) + Default Route Advertisement In The Border Gateway
Protocol
<draft-ietf-bgp-defaultroute-00.txt>
(rreq) + IP Forwarding Table MIB
<draft-ietf-rreq-forwarding-00.txt>
(null) + RIP Version 2 Addition of Subnet Masks
<draft-ietf-malkin-rip-00.txt>
Westine [Page 14]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers
<draft-ietf-pem-algorithms-00.txt>
(rmon) + SNMP Trap Definitions For Remote Network Monitoring
<draft-ietf-rmon-trap-00.txt>
(bgp) o Multicast Communications Using BGP
<draft-ietf-bgp-multicast-01.txt>
(null) + Security Information Transfer Protocol (SITP)
<draft-feil-sitp-00.txt>
(bgp) + Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the
Internet
<ietf-draft-bgp-usage-00.txt>
(osids) + An Access Control Approach for Searching and Listing
<draft-ietf-osids-accesscntrl-00.txt, .ps>
10. 12 RFC's Produced between Jul 01, 1991 and Sep 30, 1991
(Standard (S), Proposed Standard (PS), Draft Standard (DS),
Experimental (E), Informational (I) )
RFC Status WG Title
------- -- -------- ----------------------------------------
RFC1237 PS (osinsap) Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in
the Internet
RFC1242 (bmwg) Benchmarking Terminology for Network
Interconnection Devices
RFC1243 PS (appleip) AppleTalk Management Information Base
RFC1244 (ssphwg) Site Security Handbook
RFC1245 (ospf) OSPF Protocol Analysis
RFC1246 (ospf) Experience with the OSPF Protocol
RFC1247 DS (ospf) OSPF Version 2
RFC1248 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1252 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1253 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1254 (pcc) Gateway Congestion Control Survey
RFC1256 PS (rdisc) ICMP Router Discovery Messages
Standards( 7), Experimental( ), Informational( 5)
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
ST Conferencing
During September, a second independent conferencing site was added
at BBN to support the DWS project. BBN-DWS was the first
conferencing site directly connected to the TWB through a T/20
instead of a butterfly gateway. Subsequently, the WPC conferencing
gateway was also replaced with a T/20. Conferencing between sites
with T/20s and between T/20 and Butterfly gateway sites went ahead
successfully. We conducted an important demonstration between BBN
and WPC for Admiral Hess at the end of September.
With the addition of BBN-DWS, there are now nine conferencing
sites. We anticipate that a tenth will be added in October, when
the Ft. Leavenworth SIMNET and conferencing equipment is scheduled
to be reconnected to the TWB. There were a total of 19 video
conferences and demonstrations during September. Of these, two
included four sites, five included three, and the remaining 12 were
point to point. Although the BBN hublet can no longer support
four-site conferencing, we were able to accommodate one request for
a four-site conference because it included sites that also had
Concept codecs. The other four-site conference was supported by
temporarily borrowing equipment from another DARPA project after a
special request from DARPA. A third four-site conference request
was denied sue to lack of equipment. Conferences were held for
discussions in the following areas: DART, IDPR, OMG, LANL projects,
DARPA projects, the Brazilian National Packet Network, and the NOS
contract. There were no SIMNET exercises this month.
Jil Westcott (westcott@bbn.com)
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
CSUNET (The California State University Network)
-----------------------------------------------
Over the last two months, CSUnet has installed six more StrataCom IPX
multiplexers and upgraded from 56K to T-1 at these sites:
StrataCom upgraded
Site IPX/16 | cisco link | T-1 installed to | other
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CSU Bakersfield newly | frame-relay | Fresno | 2-way
installed | | | VIDEO
Sonoma State Univ newly | frame-relay | San Francisco |
CSU Northridge newly | hdlc to backbone| Los Alamitos NOC |
CalPoly Pomona newly | hdlc to backbone| Fullerton |
CSU Long Beach newly | hdlc to backbone| Los Alamitos NOC |
CSU Stanislaus newly | frame-relay | Fresno |
Other new connections/events:
- The CSU Chancellor's Office now has a cisco providing IP and
AppleTalk
- The CSUnet backbone has undergone renumbering in order to provide
symmetric IP routing over T-1 paths instead of T-1 and 56k paths
- BARRnet has fixed BARRnet's internal routing configuration (EGP
and IGRP to OSPF) to provide more reliable primary/secondary
routing for CSUnet
- CSU Sacramento and CSU Bakersfield carried on a two-way video
conference over the T-1 backbone using the IPX network with 384K
compressed-video. A demonstration was held at the quarterly
CSUnet Network Task Force meeting. The video routed over the
network from CSU Sacramento media center via CSU Fresno to CSU
Bakersfield's media center. CSU Fresno was also able to watch
as it received the video/audio directly from CSU Sacramento via
the California Owen's Valley Microwave Project media.
Plans for October:
- IPX and T-1 installs at CSU San Bernardino and Humboldt State
Mike Marcinkevicz (mdm@CSU.net)
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
ISI
---
GIGABIT NETWORKING
Infrastructure
Six RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1255: The North American Directory Forum, "A Naming
Scheme for c=US", September 1991.
RFC 1256: Deering, S., "ICMP Router Discovery Messages"
September 1991.
RFC 1257: Partridge, C., "Isochronous Applications Do Not
Require Jitter-Controlled Networks", Swedish
Institute of Computer Science, September 1991.
RFC 1258: Kantor, B., "BSD Rlogin", UCSD, September 1991.
RFC 1259: Kapor, M., "Building The Open Road: The NREN As
Test-Bed For The National Public Network",
Electronic Frontier Foundation, September 1991.
RFC 1261: Williamson, S., and L. Nobile, "Transition of
NIC Serices", Network Solutions, September 1991.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
JvNCnet
Princeton University
B6 von Neumann Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
General telephone number: 609-258-2400
Director: Sergio Heker
Compiled by Rochelle Hammer
JvNCnet contact information:
Network operations:
Email: noc@jvnc.net 609-258-1544 24 hours/7 days
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Information services:
Email: nisc@jvnc.net 609-258-2505 9:00-5:00 M-F
On-line information is available from nisc.jvnc.net. Username
is nicol and no password.
News
A new toll-free number to reach JvNCnet, 1-800-35TIGER, begins
October 21.
A JvNCnet symposium on Network Applications is being scheduled for
November. For more information, please send email to
"nisc.jvnc.net".
Meckler Publishing and JvNCnet, through a joint project, have
entered the wonderful world of electronic publishing. JvNCnet's
Network Operations Center
On-Line (NICOL) application swings open the door to Meckler's
periodical, journal, sponsored conferences, and other publications.
Meckler's service, MC2 allows the user to review the on-line
catalogue, submit an electronic publication order, or check the
list of conferences. Meckler's newest journal, MeckJournal,
concentrates on electronic publishing, and is also available on
line via NICOL. For more information, email
"meckler@tigger.jvnc.net".
JvNCnet availability for August is 99.89% and for September is
99.92%.
New JvNCnet members, in the previous thirty days are:
*National Council of Technological and Scientific
Research (CONOCIT), Caracas, Venezuela
*Educational Testing Service
*Intelecom
*United Nations Development Program
*Star Semiconductor
*Pennington Systems, Inc.
*Unix System Laboratories
*Moodys
*Osteonics
*Advanced Media Laboratory of Samsung Electronics
by Rochelle Hammer <hammer@nisc.jvnc.net>
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
LOS NETTOS
----------
OSPF testing has resumed.
A Technical Committee meeting has been scheduled for October.
PacBell has initiated a circuit review at our request to analyze a
T1 link which has had cronic problems. PacBell has been very
responsive to this request so far.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/MICHNET
-------------
August/Sept 1991
Northwestern Michigan College became a Merit affiliate in July. NMC
enrolls approximately 4,400 students at its Traverse City and
Cadillac campuses. In 1951 NMC was the first community college in
Michigan to be founded under the Community College Act. NMC is very
proud of its vocational programs which include offerings in 28
business and health-related disciplines. Installation of their
network hardware will take place in the fall.
Upgrades from 56K to T1 are in place for links between Ann Arbor
and Kalamazoo and between Detroit and Oakland University in
Rochester, MI.
Users who access MichNet using dial-up modems or hard-wired
asynchronous connections can now use the Point-to-Point Protocol
(PPP) to get direct access to TCP/IP services from a personal
computer or workstation. This new PPP support is similar to
MichNet's SLFP (Serial Line Framing Protocol) support which has
been available for nearly two years. This initial implemetation of
PPP uses header compression, which allows for faster throughput for
those using the SLFP protocol.
PPP Authorization is now available for this service. For more
information about MichNet's PPP support, see the September, 1991,
issue of the MichNet News, which is available via anonymous FTP
from the machine nic.merit.edu.)
Eric Aupperle and Ellen Hoffman attended the FARNET meeting in Big
Sky, Montana, representing MichNet and Merit, Inc.
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Chris Weider attended the first meeting of the Consortium for
School Networking, reprensenting MichNet.
Pat McGregor (patmcg@merit.edu)
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
NEARnet held a meeting with ANS and MERIT to resolve the problems
with the instability of the T3 connection. Steps that have been
taken have had a positive effect on the network. Other procedural
issues will be addressed and there will be a continual effort to
resolve these issues.
by John Rugo <jrugo@nic.near.net>
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
The NNSC Staff distributed additions to Chapter 3 of the Internet
Resource Guide.
The NNSC began distribution of the 10th issue of the NSF Network
Newsletter.
On behalf of the NNSC, John Rugo of BBN spoke to a group of
researchers at the seventh annual Scientific Computing & Automation
Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia yesterday. Dr. Michael
Duncan of NRL and John spoke about the Internet, its history,
technology and use.
Corinne Carroll <ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net>
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
ANSNET/NSFNET Backbone Engineering Report
September 30, 1991
Mark Knopper Jordan Becker
Jo Ann Ward Advanced Network & Services Inc.
Merit Network Inc.
Overview
This report is intended to provide a status report on the
ANSNET/NSFNET backbone for the month of September. There are
actually two physical backbones: the T1 NSFNET and the T3 ANSNET,
Westine [Page 21]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
each of which interconnect to NSF sponsored sites. Few changes
have been made on the T1 backbone, while further stabilization is
taking place on the T3 backbone. During the period between 5/91-
9/91 nearly 90% of all T3 backbone infrastructure was changed to
improve robustness of the network. The coming months will focus on
stabilization of the resulting infrastructure with our target being
to achieve the same or better level of reliability which the T1
backbone exhibits. Eventually as reliability of the T3 network
improves, attaching networks will be moved from primary use of the
T1 backbone to primary use of the T3 backbone. When this is
complete and a T1 backup capability is introduced on the T3
backbone, the T1 backbone will be turned off.
Merit is responsible to the NSF for the NSF sponsored network
attachments to the T1 and T3 backbones. ANS manages and expands
the T3 backbone while Merit in partnership with ANS operates and
provides engineering for the two backbones.
The month of September included a few new customer site
installations to the T3 backbone, complete replacement of T3 DSU
interface cards to prevent the DSU synchronization problem known as
"grey link", full deployment of new router software that fixes the
low level "packet loss" problem on the T3 serial line adapters, and
a change to the way NNSTAT statistics are gathered on the T1
backbone. There are still a number of outstanding problems in the
T3 router that compromise backbone reliability. In an effort to
minimize users loss of connectivity resulting fro m this
unreliability, several actions have been taken to provide
additional backup connections for some customer sites and for the
CNSS backbone nodes themselves.
Traffic Statistics
Traffic on the T1 infrastructure measured 8.47 billion inbound
packets during September 1991, an increase over the 7.77 billion
inbound packets of August. T3 infrastructure traffic increased
from 1.93 billion inbound packets in August to 2.00 billion inbound
packets in September. At the end of September, 818 networks are
configured for announcement via the T3 infrastructure of a total
3389 networks announced on the backbone.
New Backbone (CNSS) Nodes
Denver is a new T3 CNSS backbone site. The Denver CNSS is linked
to the Seattle CNSS, but is not yet linked to the St. Louis CNSS.
An additional T1 concentrator router (T1-C) node was installed at
the Hartford CNSS.
Westine [Page 22]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
New ENSS Sites
The Suranet site at College Park, MD now has a T3 ENSS connected to
the T3 backbone at Washington, DC. Boulder has a T3 ENSS connected
to the Denver CNSS. Later in the month another T3 ENSS at Salt
Lake City will be connected to the Denver CNSS. University of
Washington at Seattle is another T3 connected ENSS site, to the
Seattle CNSS.
Note: CNSS is core nodal switching subsystem, and ENSS is external
nodal switching subsystem. The CNSS's are located within the MCI
point of presence (POP) locations, and the ENSS's are at the sites
of the attached NSF sponsored regional networks or other ANS
customers. A map of the current T3 backbone network is available
in postscript format via anonymous FTP to ftp.ans.net (cd pub/info,
file=t3net.ps).
New Software Changes/Fixes
Statistics Collection
A statistical sampling technique is now employed on the T1 backbone
rather than using full statistics collection. This should improve
the reliability of the statistics without compromising accuracy. A
similar technique is being developed for the T3 backbone. Currently
T3 traffic statistics are not being collected until this software
is deployed. The traffic statistics that are collected include
packets & bytes, both in and out of the backbone(s), sorted by
network number, port number and protocol type.
Packet Loss
Users had previously reported TCP application performance
degradation when using the T3 backbone. The problem was traced to
a low level loss of packets (0.1% loss typically). To reduce the
low level "packet loss" which occurred due to a problem on the T3
router serial line driver, new firmware and router driver software,
was installed this month throughout the T3 backbone. This change
has been tested by a number of users and it seems to have
dramatically reduced the observed packet loss.
T960 T1/Ethernet Adapter
The new software deployed on the T3 backbone includes bug fixes for
the T960 ethernet and T1 interface adapters on the T3 nodes to
address a problem involving route caching which occured
infrequently.
Westine [Page 23]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
T3 Network Problems Remaining
T3 386 Adapter Black Link Problem
The most severe remaining problem on the T3 backbone is the known
as the "black link" symptom. The symptom of this problem is a hung
T3 interface which in some cases can completely hang the T3 router,
and cannot be reset without rebooting the T3 router. There are
three known problems which result in this symptom involving the T3
386 adapters and the T3 driver software.
As of the end of September, we have identified several of the
causes of this problem and are well along in testing a new driver
revision which should avoid these symptoms. We expect to have this
new driver installed throughout the network by the end of October,
which we expect will eliminate the problems caused by the black
link condition.
Network Unreachable Messages
When the IS-IS interior gateway protocol for the T3 backbone cycles
upon a link state change, there is a period of time during which
some packets may be dropped. Currently an ICMP network unreachable
packet is generated when this happens. It has been brought to our
attention that many implementations of TCP/telnet will close the
connection if they receive one of these packets. While this is not
proper behavior for telnet and should be addressed separately, we
are working on providing a software change so that backbone CNSS
routers will no longer send network unreachable packets. ENSS's
will continue to send them outside the T3 backbone. Because the
ENSS nodes maintain Internal BGP sessions which stay up during
routing changes, ICMP network unreachable messages will only be
sent to hosts when there is a real outage which results in an
unreachable condition. We are currently measuring the convergence
time for the backbone's IGP routing protocol to determine whether
we are correctly generating the ICMP packets as part of this
investigation.
T960 Ethernet Packet Delays
Occasionally (e.g. once a week) a T1/T3 ENSS ethernet interface
will be reported to have gone into a "sticky" condition where
packets are held for an inordinate amount of time. Packets aren't
dropped as seen by the ping program but the delay times are shown
to be excessive. The latest software changes do not address this
problem, although there is instrumentation installed to diagnose
the problem further. The condition can be be fixed by a manual
reset of the ethernet controller by the NOC, and a script has been
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
developed which will automatically reset the ethernet controller
thereby minimizing the effect of this problem prior to a real fix
becoming available. We have also observed that the T960 adapters
may occasionally hang after a reboot which should also be addressed
by the automatic reset. Both of these problems occur infrequently
and should be addressed in the upcoming software changes.
Congestion on T1/T3 Interconnect Gateways
Interconnect points between the T1 and T3 backbones are located at
Ann Arbor and San Diego. It is still the case that only one
interconnect can be active at a time due to problems with the
routing software. We have seen congestion on the ethernet
interface on the T1 backbone node at Ann Arbor that has caused
packet loss on the interconnect gateway. Work has begun to
establish an additional interconnect point at Houston. Also new
software available in early October will allow both the Ann Arbor
and Houston gateways to share the load for T1/T3 interconnect
traffic. San Diego will be a "cold" standby in this configuration.
We expect to deploy these changes in phases, the first of which
will be to operate the San Diego interconnect in a "hot standby"
mode, where if the Ann Arbor interconnect goes out of service the
San Diego interconnect will take over automatically.
RS/6000 Router Manual Reboot Required
It is currently the case that when a CNSS or ENSS crashes for any
reason, the machine's debugger is entered and the machine must be
rebooted from the console. This was useful in the early days of
the T3 backbone deployment in order that debugging information
could be obtained to assist developers. However we have collected
lots of information and very little new debugging information is
currently gathered during these crashes. Therefore we are
installing a change to the router software to minimize the downtime
after a router crash by automatically taking a core dump and
rebooting the router. This change is being tested and should be
deployed during the 2nd week of October.
Improvements to Backup Connectivity for the T3 Backbone
Most of the NSF sponsored midlevel networks attached to the T3
backbone have backup connections to the T1 backbone. One problem we
have struggled with during backup transitions is that the EGP
protocol takes a long time (several minutes) to switch routing over
from one network to the other. Using BGP as an exterior routing
protocol significantly reduces the transition time between the T1
and T3 networks during backup transitions. NEARnet is particularly
interested in this, and has made progress in working with Cisco to
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
improve the use of BGP support in their routers. We are also
adding a second backup connection to the T1 backbone for NEARnet,
which should improve performance when backup to the T3 backbone is
required.
T3 Core Backbone Redundancy - "Safety Net"
Recognizing that the most probable cause of failure in the T3
backbone are the T3 386 interface adapters, we have taken action to
engineer additional redundancy around these adapters. In October
we will install a set of T1 point-to-point links interconnecting
connecting the T3 backbone CNSS nodes which run in parallel with
existing T3 point-to-point links. This represents an interim
solution to improve reliablity while we continue to deploy the
other engineering changes described here. This "safety net"
includes 12 T1 point-to-point links and will be used in a "ring"
topology connecting the T3 CNSS's at all of the MCI POP sites
together. We expect that this will avoid the isolation of ENSS
sites and partitioning of the T3 backbone if multiple T3 point-to-
point links go down.
Remaining Installations to Complete Phase II of T3 Deployment
Phase II of the T3 backbone deployment should be complete in early
October. Four T3 ENSS sites remain to be interconnected to the T3
backbone: Boulder, Princeton, Salt Lake City, and Lincoln. The
Denver CNSS will be linked to the St. Louis CNSS to complete the
planned connectivity of the CNSS backbone. The Boulder site ENSS
will connect Westnet, NCAR, Los Alamos, and several Mexican
networks. The Princeton site ENSS will connect JVNCnet, NEARnet,
CA*Net, and a regional network in Singapore. The Salt Lake City
site ENSS will also connect to Westnet.
Phase III T3 Network Planning
Following stabilization of the Phase II T3 network, we will follow
with several changes now in the planning stage. Phase III of the
T3 network will consist of a technology upgrade of the T3 serial
interface adapters in the RS/6000s from the T3 386 adapters to
"RS960" adapters. This will improve both network performance and
reliability. The T3 CNSS multi-router architecture will be
redesigned around this new interface adapter technology. While
some backbone topology changes are under consideration, the final
phase III topology is not expected to introduce any significant
changes in backbone topology. ENSS backup services required to
reduce dependency on the T1 network are being planned. Improved
DS3 transmission facility monitoring using the ANSI T1.107A "c-bit
parity" standard will be supported.
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Software changes in the T3 network are expected to include support
for OSI CLNP switching services as well as migration from the
RCP_Route daemon to the Gateway Daemon (gated), which will support
a number of new routing technologies for both IP and OSI CLNP. Note
that gated uses the Dual IS-IS protocol for IP and CLNP. All of
these plans are still being developed and are contingent upon the
progress made on stabilizing the phase II T3 network.
Merit staff conference and meeting activities
Jessica Yu of Merit Internet Engineering attended the September
FEPG meeting in San Diego, CA. Susan Hares was the Internet
Engineering representative to the X3S3.3 Task Group which convened
in Boulder, CO.
Merit Network, Inc. will sponsor "Making Your NSFNET Connection
Count" at College Park, Maryland, November 11-12. This informative
seminar, intended for beginning and intermediate network users,
will focus on issues of interest to educators, librarians, campus
computing leaders, information systems and networking
administrators, educational liaisons, and others. For information,
contact seminar@merit.edu or phone 1-800-66-MERIT.
Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPER COMPUTING CENTER
---------------------------------
The PSC has completed the first step of our High School
Supercomputing Outreach program. This involved outfitting ten
regional high schools each witha 3D DecStation 5000, all generously
donated by Digital Equipment Corporation. The ten schools were
chosen from several on the merit of a research proposal each school
submitted to the PSC. We are using V.32 modems connected to a
dial-in router at our networking hub, located at Carnegie Mellon
University, asa cost effective means of TCP/IP connectivity. The
system uses SLIP/PPP software that was modified here at the PSC,
that now enables 9.6 bps. We plan to evaluate V.32 bis and V.42
bis modems using data compression techniques to push that figure up
to 38.4 bps. The schools currently have connectivity to the PSC,
PREPnet and full Internet access when logged into our front end
mainframes.
Gene Hastings of our communications group attended and participated
in last months FARNET/NSFNET workshop on inter-regional
connectivity held in Big Sky, MT.
New network connections for the month include: Lebanon Valley
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
College, WEA Manufacturing, Hershey Medical Center, Gettysburg
College, Carnegie Group, and Juniata College.
by Stephen Cunningham <cunningham@b.psc.edu>
PREPNET
-------
During September, Franklin and Marshall College, Children's
Hospital, and Lincoln University joined PREPnet. Franklin and
Marshall College will be connected to the Harrisburg hub at 56Kbps,
Children's Hospital will be connected via the University of
Pittsburgh, and Lincoln University will be connected to the
Philadelphia hub at 56Kbps.
PREPnet has been investing using the Telebit NetBlazer to provide
entry level services.
PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu)
SAIC
----
SAIC Activities for September
The first draft for the gated implementation design document was
completed. There are still some design issues that need to be
resolved before producing the final document.
Chi Chu Chung has begun modifying the original IDPR kernel module
to correct some bugs and improve efficiency. It is expected that a
radix based route lookup function similar to that in BSD 4.3 Reno
will replace the existing fixed size table routines. This is also
being chosen for compatibility with the new BSD route table. It is
expected that the new route table from BSD may have the
functionality required for IDPR that it could be used directly. In
the mean time, IDPR will have to use a separate route lookup.
An architecture for using the domain-name system for resolution of
IP addresses to Administrative Domains IDs is in an embryionic
form. It is expected that an RFC will be forthcoming describing
the additions to the DNS.
Planned activies:
Testing of the GATED implementation continues. Configuration is
very difficult and hinders progress. The new configuration parser
should alleviate some of this.
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
The kernel work is extensive and will continue through November.
Woody Woodburn (woody@sparta.com)
SRI NIC
-------
The cumulative total of all IP numbers assigned at the end of
September was 36,988. See the table below for a breakdown of these
assignments by class.
The cumulative total of assigned Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs)
was 1,384, and the cumulative total number of domains registered
was 3,450. This includes the root domain, 77 top-level domains,
3,304 second-level domains, and 67 third-level MIL subdomains.
Cumulative IP Network Statistics
Month/Year Class
A B C Total
Sep. 1991 47 6,239 30,702 36,988
Aug. 1991 45 5,908 28,977 34,930
Jul. 1991 43 5,799 25,364 31,206
Jun. 1991 43 5,654 24,449 30,146
May. 1991 43 5,026 24,797 29,866
Apr. 1991 43 4,977 25,897 30,917
Mar. 1991 41 4,520 24,572 29,133
Feb. 1991 39 4,347 22,552 26,938
Jan. 1991 39 4,246 21,731 26,016
Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152
Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382
As of 26 September, SRI International ceased its provision of
registration services to the Internet. We've devoted many exciting
and enjoyable years to serving the Internet community, but the time
has come to say farewell. Thanks for your encouragement and moral
support over the years--we shall miss you all.
Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com)
UCL
----
Ian Wakeman attended SIGCOM 91. There was an Operations Management
Videoconference about the UK-US Fat Pipe. There was a quick
Westine [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
demonstration of video from BBN to visiting VIPs.
We have now demonstrated UDP based voice from UCL to Lancaster
University and an X based Video to Cambridge University (based on
video capture from the Archimedes workstation). Voice is perfectly
usable; video is 128 pixel square, monochrome, 5 frame per second,
all in software. We are still awaiting BT CODECs delivery. (There
are now 17 UK Universities reachable by IP at 2Mbps, although
progress in their appearance in the DNS is a little complex).
James Cowan has completed a Generic MIB Browser for our OSIMIS
software, based on the X Windows Interviews C++ library and our
generic management software. Some non-ISO Managed Objects include
TCP connections and Unix Processes and Users. A paper on this and
follow on work is in progress. An SNMP version would be relatively
simple. [The size of a binary linked with interviews, X, CMIS and
ISODE does not really bear thinking about:-].
John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. A second T1 circuit has been installed from the UDel campus to
the NSFNET College Park node. This circuit normally carries
only traffic to and from our 128.4 research net, but can carry
the full campus load should the primary T1 circuit fail. The
new arrangement should improve timekeeping accuracy for those
peers chiming the UDel NTP time servers.
2. Rick Anthony completed and tested a demodulator for the
Canadian time-service station CHU. Used with a junkbox
shortwave receiver, this quite inexpensive widget provides
surprisingly good time to the low milliseconds. Neil Corman
completed and tested a computer interface for a LORAN
receiver. Work continues on the receiver itself, which should
yield accuracies comparable to GPS, but cost lots less.
3. Ken Monington is working on a rigorous mathematical analysis
of the adaptive-parameter NTP local-clock model. The goal of
this effort is to provide fast, reliable time acquisition to
the regime of a few seconds, down from about a minute in the
present design. This work is being supported by the US Navy
SAFENET program.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
Westine [Page 30]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
WISCNET
-------
The DDS circuit between Marquette Univerity and the University of
Wisconsin - Milwaukee was replaced with a T1 circuit on September
25.
Informational papers describing news and white pages service
alternatives where written and distributed.
The August '91 issue of 'NSF NETWORK NEWS' contains a description
of WiscNet and WiscNet sites have been incorporated in the map.
Michael Dorl (dorl@vms.macc.wisc.edu)
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
DIRECTORY SERVICES
------------------
This section of the Internet Monthly is devoted to efforts working to
develop directory services that are for, or effect, the Internet. We
would like to encourage any organization with news about directory
service activities to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news
items. The current reporters list includes:
o IETF OSIDS Working Group [X]
o IETF DISI Working Group [X]
o Field Operational X.500 Project
- ISI
- Merit
- PSI
- SRI
o National Institute of Standards and Technology [X]
o North American Directory Forum [X]
o OSI Implementor's Workshop [X]
o PARADISE Project [X]
o PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project
o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT
o Registration Authority Committee (ANSI USA RAC) [X]
o U.S. Department of State, Study Group D,
MHS Management Domain subcommittee (SG-D MHS-MD)
[X] indicates no report this month
Tom Tignor (tpt2@isi.edu)
DS Report Coordinator
FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT
--------------------------------------
The FOX project is a DARPA and NSF sponsored effort to provide a
basis for operational X.500 deployment in the NREN/Internet. This
work is being carried out at Merit, NSYERNet/PSI, SRI and ISI. ISI
is the main contractor and responsible for project oversight.
Three members of the FOX group along with Steve Hardcastle-Kille
will participate in a panel session at Interop about efforts to
bring X.500 into the Internet community. In addition,
demonstrations and information about FOX efforts will be available
in the display area.
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
ISI
---
ISI organized a meeting of the FOX participants who will be at
Interop. Tom Tignor has joined the ISI FOX project team. He
has been reviewing various X.500 documents, and will be
coordinating their review by the full FOX group.
Steve Hotz (hotz@isi.edu)
MERIT
-----
1. Sue Hares of Merit is managing the OSI booth at Interop '91.
Along with FTAM, X-Windows, X.400 and Virtual Terminal, one
of the applications to be demonstrated there will be X.500.
CLNP will be used at the network layer, and the demonstration
will include connectivity beyond the show floor over NSFNET
and international networks.
CDC is sponsoring the @c=US@o=Interop portion of the DIT.
Each of 12 vendors (or so) will have organizational unit
entries under this entry. Merit is also adding the Site
Contacts directory at @c=us@o=Interop@ou=Site Contacts.
Merit is also working with IBM to demonstrate directory
user agents in the NSFNET section of their Interop booth.
As part of this effort, the host FOX.MERIT.EDU is now running
SunNet OSI 7.0 which allows X.500 over TP4/CLNP.
2. Merit is participating in the activities to extend the FOX
contract for an extra two years. Merit's work for this
extension will be to finalize and create schema for network
infrastructure and information services objects, populate and
update the directory with these objects, and create user
interface tools to make them useful.
Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu)
PSI
---
The program to automatically load RFC information into X.500 was
modified to include RFC numbers as a search key so as to allow
the "x5ftp" program to search by RFC numbers, in addition to
other existing search keys.
In preparation for alignment of the White Pages Pilot Project
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
with the NADF naming scheme, the "usconfig" program was written.
The "usconfig" program performs the same function as the
existing "dsaconfig" program, except that it has knowledge of
the NADF Naming recommendations, and produces configurations
specific to the U.S.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
SRI
----
SRI provided further input to the NIST DSSIG (by fax) as they
met in September on postalAddress length constraints. The input
was gathered based on experience converting the WHOIS database
to X.500 and problems that were found due to postalAddress
length constraints. Toward the end of the month, we worked with
a DSSIG member, Russ Wright (LBL) to gather more detailed
information on failure percentages for line lengths ranging
between 31 and 50 characters.
We received and responded to 11 queries regarding the
availability of "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations"
(Internet-Draft document draft-ietf-disi-catalog-00.txt).
Ruth Lang (rlang@nisc.sri.com)
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project
---------------------------
A new draft on the naming of DSAs, now released as the Internet
Draft draft-ietf-osids-dsanaming-01.txt was reviewed, and comments
sent to the author.
The manual "PSI White Pages Project: Administrator's Guide" was
updated to reflect the upgrade to ISODE 7.0, and the upcoming
transition to the NADF's recommendations on naming.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT PROJECT
-----------------------------
The "Fruit Bat" DSA was moved to a more reliable machine to
increase general project reliability. This DSA currently provides
updates of the (root) EDB to all the DSAs in the White Pages Pilot
Project.
In preparation for alignment of the White Pages Pilot Project with
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
the NADF naming scheme, the experimental information that was used
to test the NADF naming scheme in its early stages was taken out of
the U.S. portion of the DIT.
New organizations added to the pilot this past month are:
Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
SG-D MHS-MD
-----------
The SG-D MHS-MD Subcommittee met at the US Dept of State on
September 17-18 to progress the proposal it is developing for
registration of MHS-MD names in c=US. The meeting was chaired by
Richard Jesmajian of ATT.
The proposal (at this point) tentatively involves a plan to use
ANSI c=US registered names as c=US MHS-MD names, with the added
restriction that they must meet the standard requirements for any
X.400 ADMD or PRMD name. At this meeting, after long and arduous
elliptical discussions, it was agreed that the proposal should
include a goal for all PRMD names in c=US to become unique in c=US,
in spite of the fact that some service providers are currently
under contract with certain customers to "specifically not disclose
their chosen PRMD Name to anyone." This non-disclosure contract
situation presents an interesting and frustrating conundrum for
efforts to enable a c=US National MTS Backbone interconnection
plan.
It was also agreed to include in the plan a scheme to allow "MHS-MD
Naming (Sub)Authorities to use the "Constructive Syntax" developed
last year by the NIST OIW X.400 SIG. It was noted that the US
Government (GSA) is currently using this constructive syntax
coupled with its ANSI Registered Organizational Name (GOV) to form
PRMD Names such as GOV+DOE, etc. It is understood that many
government organizations are not happy with this state of affairs,
and there is serious oposition to this schem, mostly based on
esthetic considerations such as "They are ugly!".
During the meeting, it was frequently pointed out by the Chair that
the MHS-MD subcommittee is only empowered to develop a
recommendation to SG-D, which will review it and possibly modify it
before recommending it to the US CCITT National Committee, which
has the power to adopt it. It was also pointed out (several times)
that it is possible that the MHS-MD proposal might be rejected, and
that SG-D or the US CCITT National Committee might adopt some other
Westine [Page 35]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
plan, altogether.
For example, it was suggested (several times) that the US Dept of
State just might dump the whole MHS-MD plan in favor of asking one
of the prominent service providers (ATT came to mind) who are
thought to be very good at registering names and numbers to just do
it on behalf of c=US. No criteria for this possibility were ever
provided by anyone.
Another issue discussed was that of joint administration of the new
{ joint-iso-ccitt(2) country(?) } name tree adopted by ISO and
CCITT to serve as the Alphanumeric & Numeric name tree for use by
X.500, and which would become the c=US name tree from which MHS-MD
plans to draw its MHS-MD names. It was agreed that SG-D should
negotiate with ANSI with regard to joint administration of name
registration in this new joint arc. A joint meeting of the MHS-MD
and ANSI USA RAC committees is planned for December, mostly likely
during the planned MHS-MD meeting at the US Dept of State in
December.
The next meeting is scheduled for December 5-6 at the US State
Dept.
Einar Stefferud (stef@ics.uci.edu)
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
------------------
Readers are requested to send in dates of events that are
appropriate for this calendar section.
1991 CALENDAR
Sep 29-Oct 4 5TH SDL (CCITT FDT) FORUM,
Rick Reed, GPT Coventry, UK
rick_reed@eurokom.ie
Oct 7-11 INTEROP91, San Jose, Ca
Oct 7-15 6TH WORLD TELECOM'91 SYMPOSIUM, Geneva
Oct 8-11 IFIP WORKSHOP ON OPEN DISTRIBUTED
PROCESSING -- Contact
jdm@fokus.berlin.gmd.dbp.de or
heymer@iir-adlershof.adw.dp.dd
Oct 15-17 4TH INTL. WORKSHOP ON PROTOCOL TEST SYSTEM
Leidschendam, Jan Kroon (J_Kroon@pttrnl.nl)
Nov 18-22 IETF, Santa Fe, MN
Megan Davies (mdavies@NRI.RESTON.VA.US
Nov 19-22 FORTE'91, University of Queensland
Ken Parker, Telecom Austrl (k.parker@trl.oz.au)
Dec 2-5 4TH INT. WORKSHOP ON PETRI NETS AND
PERFORMANCE MODELS, Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Billington, Telecom Austrl.
(j.billington @ trl.oz.au)
Dec 2-5 GLOBECOM'91, See IEEE Publications. Phoenic
Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1992 CALENDAR
Jan 13-21 ANSI X3T5
Jan 20-22 RIPE, Amsterdam
Jan 28-30 ANSI X3S3.3, Tucson, AZ
Feb 19-20 RARE WG1, Location unknown
Feb 20-21 RARE Manager Mtg, Location unknown
Mar 2-6 ANSI X3T5
Mar 2-6 CAIA '92 8th IEEE Conference on AI Application
Mar 3-5 ACM CSC, Kansas City, MO
Mar 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, Irvine, CA
Mar 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Mar 16-19 Info Netwrk&DataComm, Espoo, FI
Espoo, Helsinki, Finland; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Mar 16-20 IETF, San Diego, Ca
Megan Davies (mdavies@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Mar 18-20 Computers, Freedom & Privacy II,
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC
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Mar 25-27 National Net 92, Washington DC
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
Apr 6-16 CCITT SG VII Geneva, Switzerland
Apr 21-23 ANSI X3S3.3, Mountaon View, Ca.
<Spring> IETF, San Diego, CA
Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.va.us)
May 4-6 ANSI X3T5
May 4-8 DECUS '92, Atlanta, GA
May 4-8 IEEE INFOCOM'92, See IEEE Pub., Florence
May 12-14 Joint Network Conference 3, Innsbruck, Austria
(this is the RARE Networkshop - renamed)
May 18-25 INTEROP92, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
May 19-29 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 21, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 27-29 IFIP WG 6.5 Int'l Conference, Vancouver, Canada
May ??-?? Third IFIP International Workshop on
Protocols for High-Speed Networks, Stockholm
Per Gunningberg, per@sics.se
Bjorn Pehrson, bjorn@sics.se
Stephen Pink, steve@sics.se
Jun 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Jun 10-11 RARE WG1, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 11-12 RARE COSINE MHS MGR, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, IL
Jun 15-19 INET92, Kobe, Japan
Jun Murai (jun@wide.ad.jp), KEIO University
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
"North America Contact"
Jun 16-18 ANSI X3S3.3, Minneapolos, MN
Jun 22-25 PSTV-XII, Orlando
Umit Uyar (umit@honet5.att.com)
Jerry Linn or Holmdel, NIST
linnrj@ECF.NCSL.NIST.GOV
Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, See IEEE Publ..
Jul 6-10 IEEE802 Plenary, Bloomington, MN
Jul 13-17 ANSI X3T5
Jul 13-24 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, San Diego, CA
Aug 17-20 SIGCOMM, Baltimore, MD
Deepinder Sidhu, UMBC
Sep 7-11 IFIP World Congress
Madrid, Spain; Contact: IFIP
Sep 14-18 ANSI X3T5
Sep 21-25 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 22-24 ANSI X3S3.3, Boston, MA
Oct 5-8 FORTE'92, Lannion
Roland Groz (groz@lannion.cnet.fr)
Michel Diaz (diaz@droopy.laas.fr)
Oct 26-30 INTEROP92, San Francisco
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Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Nov 9-13 ANSI X3T5
Dec ANSI X3S3.3, Boulder, CO
Dec 7-11 DECUS '92, Las Vegas, NV
Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1993 CALENDAR
Mar 8-12 INTEROP93, Wasington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Mar 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
May 23-26 ICC'92, Geneva, Switzerland
May-Jun PSTV-XIII, University of Liege.
Contact: Andre Danthine,
May 23-26 ICC'93, Geneva, See IEEE Publications.
Jun 7-11 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Aug INET93, San Francisco Bay Area
Aug SIGCOMM, San Francisco
Sep 13-17 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 20-31 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, Seoul, Korea.
Oct 12-14 Conference on Network Information Processing,
Sofia, Bulgaria; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Oct 25-29 INTEROP93, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Nov 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, LaJolla, CA
Dec 6-10 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1994 CALENDAR
Apr 18-22 INTEROP94, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Aug 29-Sep 2 IFIP World Congress
Hamburg, Germany; Contact: IFIP
Sep 12-16 INTEROP94, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
1995 EVENTS
Sep 18-22 INTEROP95, San Francisco, CA
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Westine [Page 39]
________________________________________________________________
Message: 9736942, 2173 lines
Posted: 6:40pm EDT, Wed Oct 9/91, imported: 7:49pm EDT, Wed Oct 9/91
Subject: Internet Monthly Report
To: Jo Ann Ward
Cc: westine@ISI.EDU
From: westine@ISI.EDU
ReplyTo: westine@ISI.EDU
September 1991
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)
NSF Regional reports - Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@NNSC.NSF.NET)
Directory Services reports - Tom Tignor (TPT2@ISI.EDU)
Requests to be added or deleted from the Internet Monthly report list
should be sent to "westine@isi.edu".
Back issues of the Internet Monthly Report can be copied via FTP:
FTP> nis.nsf.net
Login: anonymous guest
ftp> cd imr
ls
get IMRYY-MM.TXT
For example, JUNE 1991 is in the file IMR91-06.TXT.
Westine [Page 1]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4
Internet Projects
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16
CSUNET (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK). . . . . . . page 17
ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 18
LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
MERIT/MICHNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 21
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 21
NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21
PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27
PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SAIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28
SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29
UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30
WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31
DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES
DIRECTORY SERVICES MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32
FOX - FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . page 32
ISI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
PSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
SRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
SG-D MHS-MD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 37
Westine [Page 3]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
IAB MESSAGE
INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD
Since May 1991, the IAB has taken the following standards actions,
following recommendations from the IESG.
o Draft Standard state for "Concise MIB Definitions",
RFC-1212.
o Standard state for MIB-II: "Management Information Base
for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets",
RFC-1213.
o Proposed Standard state for Network Time Protocol (NTP)
Version 3, RFC in preparation.
o Proposed Standard state for ICMP Router Discovery protocol,
RFC-1256
o The IAB produced RFC 1262 on Measurement Activity Guidelines
co-ordinated by Hans-Werner Braun and with the assistance of
Michael F. Schwartz.
Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU)
INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS
----------------------------
IETF report for September 1991
Reported by Phillip Gross, IETF Chair
Introduction
This reports on the July IETF meeting and the period from July 1991
through September 1991. The July IETF meeting was a particularly
active one. In fact, we still have quite a backlog of actions to
get through the process.
Some actions about to emerge include 5 documents on BGP, the
ethernet MIB (in original version), the recommendation for the
"common IGP", a set of X.500 documents, 2 Frame Relay documents,
and several other MIBs. Please see sections 7-10 of this report
for completed actions between July and September 1991.
A version of this report will be included in the Proceedings for
Westine [Page 4]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
the July IETF meeting.
Contents
1. Thanks to Atlanta hosts -- BellSouth and Caroline Cranfill
2. IETF and IESG Status Report
3. New IETF Secretariat staffing
4. Atlanta's Open Plenary
5. Internet Society
6. Focus on international growth
7. 4 New Working Group(s) formed between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
8. 7 Working Group(s) concluded between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
9. 75 Internet Draft Actions between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
10. 12 RFC's Produced between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
1. Thanks to Atlanta hosts -- BellSouth and Caroline Cranfill
I'd like to extend my appreciation to BellSouth and Caroline
Cranfill for hosting the Atlanta IETF meeting. The facilities and
connectivity were excellent. Our hosts deserve special thanks for
the Tuesday evening social activity, which gave us a fine
introduction to Atlanta hospitality. Thanks to our hosts for
helping to make the IETF in Atlanta a successful one.
2. IETF and IESG Status Report
At the start of the Atlanta IETF meeting, there were 63 working
groups in 9 areas (one area, Standards Practices, does not have
working groups). For Atlanta, 9 working groups submitted "final"
Internet-Drafts. Some of these documents represent standards
actions, for which the IESG will be forwarding recommendations to
the IAB. Others are informational documents. Most of these
working groups will retire when their documents are published as
RFCs (either as standards or informationl RFCs).
These numbers, both the total number of working groups and the
number of working groups approaching conclusion at one meeting,
represent high-water marks (yet-again) for IETF activity. Detailed
listings and status of working groups will be provided in the
Proceedings for the July IETF meeting.
There has been some new additions to the IESG, and some minor
restructuring, since the March IETF meeting.
First, we have added a new "Transport and Services Area", led by
David Borman of Cray. Long time IETF attendees will recognize
David from his numerous reports in the past regarding his work
implementing high performance TCP for the Cray operating system,
Westine [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
based Van Jacobson's enhancements. This new area will also include
activities that don't quite fall properly into either the Internet
or Application Areas (from a "layerist" perspective). The DNS
activities are an example. We used to have an area called "Host
and User Services", led by Craig Partridge. When Craig left for
his postdoctoral position at the Swedish Institute of Computer
Science (SICS) last fall, we divided the transport and other host
issues between the Internet and Application Areas and elevated User
Services as a distinct area (led by Joyce Reynolds, USC-ISI).
However, that move added additional topics to two of the largest
IETF areas (i.e., Internet and Applications). Plus, we soon
realized that we had need for specific transport level expertise on
the IESG. Therefore, we decided to form the new "Transport and
Services Area". We are very pleased that David has been able to
join the IESG to fill this new position.
Next, I am very happy to announce that the Operational Requirements
Area is now fully staffed. Bernhard Stockman (Nordunet) and Susan
Estrada (Cerfnet) have joined the IESG as co-Area Directors for
this important area. Bernhard brings a special understanding of
international networking to this task, which will help us as the
Internet, and the surrounding technical issues, expand globally.
Susan brings a perspective based on two important views -- her long
time key association with FARNET and her role as Executive Director
of a midlevel network. I had been acting as an interim Director
for this Area, and I will continue to work with Susan and Bernhard
for the near future. One of the first objectives will be to form
an Operational Requirements Area Directorate. We held an open
session in Atlanta which we hope will act as an organizational
session for the ORAD. You can read Susan's report on that meeting
later in these Proceedings.
I am also pleased to welcome Philip Almquist onto the IESG, joining
Noel Chiappa as co-Director of the Internet Area. The Internet
Area is one of the largest, and historically one of the more
important, in the IETF and it will profit from the additional
attention that Noel and Philip together will now be able to bring
to bear. Philip will bring an important perspective as the current
chair of the Router Requirements working group.
I am also sorry to have to report that Rob Hagens (University of
Wisconsin) has had to leave the IESG due to other pressing time
commitments. We will miss Rob as the co-Director for the OSI
Integration Area, with Ross Callon (DEC). Fortunately, we will not
lose Rob completely because he will remain as co-chair of the X.400
Operational working group. The OSI Integration Area is a large
area, requiring a special set of skills, and we already are looking
for someone to join Ross in leading this area. Rob, we will miss
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Internet Monthly Report September 1991
you on the IESG, but we look forward to your continued
contributions to the IETF as a working group chair.
With the changes above, there are now 10 IETF Areas and 13 members
of the IESG. A complete listing of the areas and members will be
provided in the Proceedings for the Atlanta IETF meeting.
3. New IETF Secretariat staffing
Over the past couple years, the IETF has grown a great deal. Most
of the technical activities of the IETF are handled by volunteers
from either academia or industry (i.e., the working group chairs,
the IESG members, and/or the many individual working group
contributors). However, with 3 yearly meetings of 350-400
attendees, the administration and logistics of the IETF can no
longer be handled solely by volunteers.
To handle the growing administrative and logistics necessities, a
professional staff has grown up at CNRI over the last few years to
support the many volunteer technical contributors. With the hiring
this summer of Steve Coya (CNRI) as IETF Executive Director,
perhaps it is now time to recognize this "IETF Secretariat" for the
important role it now plays. It is clear, at least in my mind,
that the IETF could no longer function as efficiently as it now
does without this important support.
The current full-time professional staff comprising the "IETF
Secretariat" at CNRI is:
- Steve Coya IETF Executive Director
- Greg Vaudreuil IESG Secretary
- Megan Davies Proceedings and Logistics Coordinator
- Cynthia Clark Administrative support
- Debra Legare Secretary
Please join me in thanking these folks and CNRI for the wonderful
support they have provided in the past and will continue to provide
at future meetings. If there are any questions or suggestions
regarding the Secretariat, please feel free to correspond directly
with Steve Coya (scoya@nri.reston.va.us). Either Vint Cerf (CNRI)
or myself can also answer questions, if Steve is not available.
4. Atlanta's Open Plenary
The Atlanta meeting represents the largest number of working groups
the IETF has ever sponsored in one place at one time. As a measure
of the growth and activity of the IETF, this is an exciting
statistic. However, it also raises important questions about how
Westine [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
large the IETF can grow and still enjoy its present success and
utilize its present format.
These and other issues were very much on the minds of attendees
during the open plenary session on Thursday afternoon.
Specifically, this most recent growth surge has re-surfaced some
problems that we have seen, and dealt with, in the past. For
example, there is the simple logistics hassle of scheduling many
parallel WG meetings so that important groups do not overlap.
There is also the problem of bringing new players into the WG
activities without completely rehashing all the old technical
issues.
One answer is to increase our effective usage of electronic mail.
However, then we must be careful to balance the "group consensus"
reached by email versus the consensus reached by onsite attendees.
And, of course, there is the general problem of reaching closure on
technical issues in a large group, whether that group is meeting
face-to-face or by email.
These are all problems that we have seen in various degrees, and
attempted to deal with in various ways, in the past. These are all
problems that seem to re-surface at the leading edge of any new
IETF growth surge.
What's less clear, at least to me, is whether we have finally hit a
"wall", in which the basic procedures that the IETF has developed
to conduct business are no longer valid, or whether we merely need
to adapt to the new environemnt (yet-again) by evolving our
operating procedures.
One of the strengths of the IETF has always been its ability to
evolve and to adapt to new conditions. In many ways, we are still
learning lessons about how best to conduct our business. "Making
it up as we go" has been both a blessing and a curse. At times we
have seen interactions between the IAB and IESG, or between the
IESG and the working groups, suffer from lack of clarity of
"procedures". On the other hand, when conditions change around us,
we have always had the flexibilty to adapt quickly.
My personal feeling is that our ability to evolve has been one of
the major keys to our success. I think we must all recognize that
the networking world has changed in recent years in ways that very
few could have predicted, and the IETF has had the ability to learn
from any missteps and change along with it. We are still evolving,
and I'd like to think that we have a ways to go (and grow) before
we hit a "wall".
Westine [Page 8]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Some excellent suggestions came out at Thursday's open plenary
sesssion. Acting on these suggestions, we will add an extra
afternoon session on Friday at the next IETF meeting. This will
allow us to add one additional WG session to the current generic
schedule and to devote both all of Monday and Tuesday to WG
sessions. We will also try to make good use of the new/old idea of
"Birds of a feather" sessions, to explore subjects before commiting
expensive (and scarce) personnel resources to starting up a full
WG. (In Atlanta, we had 5 BOFs on important subjects.) We will
make an extra effort to schedule "overview" sessions on topics of
interest, particularly as status reports on ongoing WG activities.
This will help keep general attendees and new players abreast of
activities on other areas.
Finally, we will enhance our current set of guidelines for WG
chairs to provide suggestions on how to handle new attendees who
need to be brought up to speed and how to achieve closure in the
face of questions from these new players. For example, acting on a
suggestion from the open plenary, we will ask WG chairs to do a
better job of recording the rationale for all technical decisions.
In this way, new players will have a better record of why specific
decision were made.
Some other suggestions were as simple as to make better use of
agendas and to invoke a different set of meeting guidelines as a WG
nears conclusion. For example, in Atlanta the Router Requirements
WG had a strict agenda of still-open topics, and the chair
announced beforehand that previous issues would not be re-opened in
Atlanta without very good cause.
It's also important for WG chairs to understand that they are bound
to reach consensus, not unanimity. That is, in the face of
unresolved technical opinions, it is perfectly valid for the chair
to adapt the consensus view and then move forward.
It is important to understand that the open plenary sessions have
always played an important role in guiding the IETF. (In fact, in
*very* beginning, there were no WGs, so the entire meeting was an
open plenary!) The open plenaries have included IESG reports since
the IESG formation at the Hawaii meeting (Fall 1989).
Of course, there are other ways to provide comments on IETF
activity. The main IETF mailing list is available for that purpose
(ietf@isi.edu). The IESG can be reached individually or
collectively (iesg@nri.reston.va.us). I am always available either
by phone or email (pgross@ans.net, 914-789-5335), and the IETF
Secretariat can be reached through Steve Coya, IETF Excutive
Director, (scoya@nri.reston.va.us).
Westine [Page 9]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
I believe it is very important to have direct interaction with
attendees and others interested in IETF activities. This makes the
IETF very much a self-guiding body, and I think that has
contributed as much to the IETF's success as any other factor.
5. Internet Society
This meeting saw the announcement of the Internet Society by Vint
Cerf (CNRI).
The Internet Society will be a professional society which we hope
will grow to encompass the activities of the IAB and IETF in a
positive way. The IAB and IESG are very supportive of the Internet
Society, and we look forward to working with Vint on developing the
specific method by which the IAB and IETF both become part of this
new important group.
Vint Cerf's presentation fooils will be included in the Proceedings
for the July IETF.
6. Focus on international growth
Another topic that received considerable attention at this meeting
was the growing focus in the IETF on global networking issues.
This emphasis is almost unavoidable as the Internet grows
internationally. (MERIT's network status report again showed that
the non-US portion continues to be the fastest growing segment of
the Internet.)
We had the largest showing of non-US attendees in Atlanta, and we
now have non-US representation on both the IAB and IESG.
This raised the possibility of holding an IETF meeting outside of
North America (we have already held an IETF in British Columbia).
I think this is a very natural and desirable outcome. However, we
have to approach it cautiously. Many US employers and US federal
agencies treat non-US travel quite differently from domestic
travel. We need to make sure that the environment has matured
properly so that we can expect to get representative participation
at any IETF meeting outside North America. As important as it is
to begin holding IETF meetings in non-US venues, it could be
damaging to our very goals of internationalization if we held a
non-US meeting that was poorly attended by US participants.
We normally schedule IETF meetings 12-18 months in advance, so the
earliest spot not yet scheduled is Fall 1992 or Winter 1993.
Fortunately, this provides time to prepare and plan for our first
meeting outside North America.
Westine [Page 10]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
One way to help prepare the climate for such a meeting is make the
Internet Society a strong and successful organization. One of the
principal goals of the Internet Society will be to focus on
international networking issues. So please consider joining the
Internet Society. For my part, I will work directly with Vint Cerf
and incoming IAB chair Lyman Chapin (BBN) to see that the IAB and
IETF are incorporated into the Internet Society in a positive and
natural fashion.
7. 4 New Working Group(s) formed between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
Trusted Network File Systems (tnfs)
Privacy-Enhanced Electronic Mail (pem)
Automated Internet Mailing List Services (list)
Internet K-12 Networking (k12)
8. 7 Working Group(s) concluded between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
Router Discovery (rdisc)
Management Services Interface (msi)
Topology Engineering (tewg)
OSI X.400 (osix400)
Internet Security Policy (spwg)
FDDI MIB (fddimib)
DDN Interconnectivity (ddniwg)
9. 75 Internet Draft Actions between Jul 01 and Sep 30, 1991
(Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) )
WG I-D Title <Filename>
------ -----------------------------------------------------
(osids) o An Interim Approach to use of Network Addresses
<draft-ucl-kille-networkaddresses-04.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o A String Encoding of Presentation Address
<draft-ucl-kille-presentationaddress-03.txt, or .ps>
(idpr) o An Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy Routing
<draft-ietf-idpr-architecture-03.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Data Encryption Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-encryption-01.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Authentication Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-authentication-02.txt>
(telnet) o Telnet Authentication Option
<draft-ietf-telnet-authentication-02.txt>
(rreq) o Requirements for Internet IP Routers
<draft-ietf-rreq-iprouters-02.txt>
(snmp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the SIP
Interface Type
Westine [Page 11]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
<draft-ietf-snmp-smdssipmib-03.txt>
(osids) o Replication and Distributed Operations Extensions to
Provide an Internet Directory using X.500
<draft-ietf-osids-replsoln-03.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema
<draft-ietf-osids-cosinex500-05.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for RS-232-like
Hardware Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-rs232like-02.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Character Stream
Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-charmib-01.txt>
(charmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Parallel-printer-
like Hardware Devices
<draft-ietf-charmib-parallelprinter-01.txt>
(osids) o Replication Requirement to Provide an Internet
Directory Using X.500
<draft-ietf-osids-replication-03.txt, or .ps>
(none) o Network Time Protocol: Version 3
<draft-mills-ntpv3-01.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o Handling QOS (Quality of service) in the Directory
<draft-ietf-osids-qos-01.txt, or .ps>
(osids) o Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots
<draft-ietf-osids-dirpilots-02.txt, .ps>
(osids) o DSA Naming
<draft-ietf-osids-dsanaming-01.txt, or .ps>
(pem) o Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication
Procedures
<draft-ietf-pem-msgproc-01.txt>
(rdisc) o ICMP Router Discovery Messages
<draft-ietf-rdisc-icmpmessage-01.txt>
(null) o Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822
<draft-ietf-kille-x_400mapping-03.txt>
(decnetiv) o DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions
<draft-ietf-decnetiv-mibextensions-01.txt, .ps>
(iplpdn) o Inverse Address Resolution Protocol
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-inarp-03.txt>
(iplpdn) o Multiprotocol Interconnect over Frame Relay Networks
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-ipoverframerelay-03.txt>
(iplpdn) o Management Information Base for Frame Relay DTEs
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-frmib-01.txt>
(pppext) o The Point-to-Point Protocol for the Transmission of
Multi-Protocol Datagrams Over Point-to-Point Links
<draft-ietf-pppext-lcp-01.txt>
(pppext) o The PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-ipcp-01.txt>
(null) o X.400 1988 to 1984 downgrading
Westine [Page 12]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
<draft-ietf-kille-88to84downgrade-01.txt, .ps>
(822ext) o Mnemonic Text Format
<draft-ietf-822ext-qreadable-02.txt>
(822ext) + Character Mnemonics and Character Sets
<draft-ietf-822ext-char-00.txt>
(null) + An Approach to CO/CL Interworking -- Part II:
Specification -- Conventions for Transport-
Service Bridges
<draft-ccirn-cocl-tsspecification-00.txt>
(pppext) + Proposed Point-to-Point Procotol for AppleTalk
<draft-ietf-pppext-appletalk-00.txt>
(rmon) o Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base
<draft-ietf-rmon-mib-01.txt>
(pem) o The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-rivest-md5-01.txt>
(osids) + Directory Requirements for COSINE and Internet Pilots
(OSI-DS 18)
<draft-ietf-osids-requirements-00.txt, .ps>
(dhc) + Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
<draft-ietf-dhc-protocol-00.txt, .ps>
(none) o Mid-Level Networks; A Minimum Services Provider
<draft-aggarwal-services-01.txt, .ps>
(pem) + The MD2 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-kaliski-md2-00.txt>
(pem) + The MD4 Message-Digest Algorithm
<draft-rsadsi-rivest-md4-00.txt>
(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part IV: Notary, Co-Issuer, CRL-Storing and
CRL-Retrieving Services
<draft-ietf-pem-notary-00.txt>
(osids) + Generic Security Service Application Program
Interface Overview and C bindings
<draft-ietf-cat-secservice-00.txt>
(smtpext) + SMTP Extensions for Transport of Text-Based
Messages Containing 8-bit Characters
<draft-ietf-smtpext-8bittransport-00.txt>
(none) + International character support in SMTP
<draft-prime-ullmann-smtp-00.txt>
(none) + RFC "nroff macros"
<draft-isi-rfc_nroff_macros-00.txt>
(null) + A LaTeX Style for RFCs and Internet Drafts
<draft-droms-latexrfcstyle-00.txt>
(nisi) + Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure
<draft-ietf-nisi-infrastructure-00.txt>
(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part II: Certificate-Based Key Management
<draft-ietf-pem-keymgmt-00.txt>
(null) + RFC Document Type for Scribe
Westine [Page 13]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
<draft-trewitt-scriberfcstyle-00.txt>
(fddimib) + FDDI Management Information Base
<draft-ietf-fddimib-mib-00.txt>
(fddimib) + SNMP Trap Definitions For FDDI Management
<draft-ietf-fddimib-trapdef-00.txt>
(idpr) + Definitions of Managed Objects for the Inter-Domain
Policy Routing Protocol (Version 1)
<draft-ietf-idpr-mib-00.txt, .ps>
(tnfs) + A Specification of Trusted NFS (TNFS) Protocol
Extensions
<draft-ietf-tnfs-spec-00.txt, .ps>
(hubmib) + Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3
Repeater Devices
<draft-ietf-hubmib-mib-00.txt>
(ospf) + OSPF Version 2 Traps
<draft-ietf-ospf-trapmib-00.txt>
(iesg) + An Internet Evolution Plan for the IETF
<draft-ietf-iesg-evolutionplan-00.txt>
(rreq) + Ruminations on Route Leaking
<draft-almquist-leak-00.ps>
(rreq) + Type of Service in the Internet Protocol
<draft-almquist-tos-00.txt>
(rreq) + Some Thoughts on Multi-Domain Routing
<draft-callon-routing-00.txt>
(rreq) + Ruminations on the Next Hop
<draft-almquist-nexthop-00.ps>
(idpr) + Inter-Domain Policy Routing Configuration and Usage
<draft-ietf-idpr-configuration-00.txt>
(pppext) + The PPP OSI Network Layer Control Protocol (OSINLCP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-osinlcp-00.txt>
(mospf) + Multicast Extensions to OSPF
<draft-ietf-mospf-multicast-00.ps>
(disi) + A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations
<draft-ietf-disi-catalog-00.txt>
(pppext) + The PPP Authentication Protocols
<draft-ietf-pppext-authentication-00.txt>
(none) + A New IP Routing and Addressing Architecture
<draft-chiappa-routing-00.txt>
(iesg) + IESG Recommendation for Internet Interior Gateway
Routing Protocols
<draft-iesg-commonigp-00.txt>
(bgp) + Default Route Advertisement In The Border Gateway
Protocol
<draft-ietf-bgp-defaultroute-00.txt>
(rreq) + IP Forwarding Table MIB
<draft-ietf-rreq-forwarding-00.txt>
(null) + RIP Version 2 Addition of Subnet Masks
<draft-ietf-malkin-rip-00.txt>
Westine [Page 14]
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(pem) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers
<draft-ietf-pem-algorithms-00.txt>
(rmon) + SNMP Trap Definitions For Remote Network Monitoring
<draft-ietf-rmon-trap-00.txt>
(bgp) o Multicast Communications Using BGP
<draft-ietf-bgp-multicast-01.txt>
(null) + Security Information Transfer Protocol (SITP)
<draft-feil-sitp-00.txt>
(bgp) + Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the
Internet
<ietf-draft-bgp-usage-00.txt>
(osids) + An Access Control Approach for Searching and Listing
<draft-ietf-osids-accesscntrl-00.txt, .ps>
10. 12 RFC's Produced between Jul 01, 1991 and Sep 30, 1991
(Standard (S), Proposed Standard (PS), Draft Standard (DS),
Experimental (E), Informational (I) )
RFC Status WG Title
------- -- -------- ----------------------------------------
RFC1237 PS (osinsap) Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in
the Internet
RFC1242 (bmwg) Benchmarking Terminology for Network
Interconnection Devices
RFC1243 PS (appleip) AppleTalk Management Information Base
RFC1244 (ssphwg) Site Security Handbook
RFC1245 (ospf) OSPF Protocol Analysis
RFC1246 (ospf) Experience with the OSPF Protocol
RFC1247 DS (ospf) OSPF Version 2
RFC1248 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1252 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1253 PS (ospf) OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base
RFC1254 (pcc) Gateway Congestion Control Survey
RFC1256 PS (rdisc) ICMP Router Discovery Messages
Standards( 7), Experimental( ), Informational( 5)
Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Westine [Page 15]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
INTERNET PROJECTS
-----------------
BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC.
----------------------------
ST Conferencing
During September, a second independent conferencing site was added
at BBN to support the DWS project. BBN-DWS was the first
conferencing site directly connected to the TWB through a T/20
instead of a butterfly gateway. Subsequently, the WPC conferencing
gateway was also replaced with a T/20. Conferencing between sites
with T/20s and between T/20 and Butterfly gateway sites went ahead
successfully. We conducted an important demonstration between BBN
and WPC for Admiral Hess at the end of September.
With the addition of BBN-DWS, there are now nine conferencing
sites. We anticipate that a tenth will be added in October, when
the Ft. Leavenworth SIMNET and conferencing equipment is scheduled
to be reconnected to the TWB. There were a total of 19 video
conferences and demonstrations during September. Of these, two
included four sites, five included three, and the remaining 12 were
point to point. Although the BBN hublet can no longer support
four-site conferencing, we were able to accommodate one request for
a four-site conference because it included sites that also had
Concept codecs. The other four-site conference was supported by
temporarily borrowing equipment from another DARPA project after a
special request from DARPA. A third four-site conference request
was denied sue to lack of equipment. Conferences were held for
discussions in the following areas: DART, IDPR, OMG, LANL projects,
DARPA projects, the Brazilian National Packet Network, and the NOS
contract. There were no SIMNET exercises this month.
Jil Westcott (westcott@bbn.com)
Westine [Page 16]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
CSUNET (The California State University Network)
-----------------------------------------------
Over the last two months, CSUnet has installed six more StrataCom IPX
multiplexers and upgraded from 56K to T-1 at these sites:
StrataCom upgraded
Site IPX/16 | cisco link | T-1 installed to | other
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CSU Bakersfield newly | frame-relay | Fresno | 2-way
installed | | | VIDEO
Sonoma State Univ newly | frame-relay | San Francisco |
CSU Northridge newly | hdlc to backbone| Los Alamitos NOC |
CalPoly Pomona newly | hdlc to backbone| Fullerton |
CSU Long Beach newly | hdlc to backbone| Los Alamitos NOC |
CSU Stanislaus newly | frame-relay | Fresno |
Other new connections/events:
- The CSU Chancellor's Office now has a cisco providing IP and
AppleTalk
- The CSUnet backbone has undergone renumbering in order to provide
symmetric IP routing over T-1 paths instead of T-1 and 56k paths
- BARRnet has fixed BARRnet's internal routing configuration (EGP
and IGRP to OSPF) to provide more reliable primary/secondary
routing for CSUnet
- CSU Sacramento and CSU Bakersfield carried on a two-way video
conference over the T-1 backbone using the IPX network with 384K
compressed-video. A demonstration was held at the quarterly
CSUnet Network Task Force meeting. The video routed over the
network from CSU Sacramento media center via CSU Fresno to CSU
Bakersfield's media center. CSU Fresno was also able to watch
as it received the video/audio directly from CSU Sacramento via
the California Owen's Valley Microwave Project media.
Plans for October:
- IPX and T-1 installs at CSU San Bernardino and Humboldt State
Mike Marcinkevicz (mdm@CSU.net)
Westine [Page 17]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
ISI
---
GIGABIT NETWORKING
Infrastructure
Six RFCs were published this month.
RFC 1255: The North American Directory Forum, "A Naming
Scheme for c=US", September 1991.
RFC 1256: Deering, S., "ICMP Router Discovery Messages"
September 1991.
RFC 1257: Partridge, C., "Isochronous Applications Do Not
Require Jitter-Controlled Networks", Swedish
Institute of Computer Science, September 1991.
RFC 1258: Kantor, B., "BSD Rlogin", UCSD, September 1991.
RFC 1259: Kapor, M., "Building The Open Road: The NREN As
Test-Bed For The National Public Network",
Electronic Frontier Foundation, September 1991.
RFC 1261: Williamson, S., and L. Nobile, "Transition of
NIC Serices", Network Solutions, September 1991.
Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU)
JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK
---------------------------------------------
JvNCnet
Princeton University
B6 von Neumann Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
General telephone number: 609-258-2400
Director: Sergio Heker
Compiled by Rochelle Hammer
JvNCnet contact information:
Network operations:
Email: noc@jvnc.net 609-258-1544 24 hours/7 days
Westine [Page 18]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Information services:
Email: nisc@jvnc.net 609-258-2505 9:00-5:00 M-F
On-line information is available from nisc.jvnc.net. Username
is nicol and no password.
News
A new toll-free number to reach JvNCnet, 1-800-35TIGER, begins
October 21.
A JvNCnet symposium on Network Applications is being scheduled for
November. For more information, please send email to
"nisc.jvnc.net".
Meckler Publishing and JvNCnet, through a joint project, have
entered the wonderful world of electronic publishing. JvNCnet's
Network Operations Center
On-Line (NICOL) application swings open the door to Meckler's
periodical, journal, sponsored conferences, and other publications.
Meckler's service, MC2 allows the user to review the on-line
catalogue, submit an electronic publication order, or check the
list of conferences. Meckler's newest journal, MeckJournal,
concentrates on electronic publishing, and is also available on
line via NICOL. For more information, email
"meckler@tigger.jvnc.net".
JvNCnet availability for August is 99.89% and for September is
99.92%.
New JvNCnet members, in the previous thirty days are:
*National Council of Technological and Scientific
Research (CONOCIT), Caracas, Venezuela
*Educational Testing Service
*Intelecom
*United Nations Development Program
*Star Semiconductor
*Pennington Systems, Inc.
*Unix System Laboratories
*Moodys
*Osteonics
*Advanced Media Laboratory of Samsung Electronics
by Rochelle Hammer <hammer@nisc.jvnc.net>
Westine [Page 19]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
LOS NETTOS
----------
OSPF testing has resumed.
A Technical Committee meeting has been scheduled for October.
PacBell has initiated a circuit review at our request to analyze a
T1 link which has had cronic problems. PacBell has been very
responsive to this request so far.
Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU)
MERIT/MICHNET
-------------
August/Sept 1991
Northwestern Michigan College became a Merit affiliate in July. NMC
enrolls approximately 4,400 students at its Traverse City and
Cadillac campuses. In 1951 NMC was the first community college in
Michigan to be founded under the Community College Act. NMC is very
proud of its vocational programs which include offerings in 28
business and health-related disciplines. Installation of their
network hardware will take place in the fall.
Upgrades from 56K to T1 are in place for links between Ann Arbor
and Kalamazoo and between Detroit and Oakland University in
Rochester, MI.
Users who access MichNet using dial-up modems or hard-wired
asynchronous connections can now use the Point-to-Point Protocol
(PPP) to get direct access to TCP/IP services from a personal
computer or workstation. This new PPP support is similar to
MichNet's SLFP (Serial Line Framing Protocol) support which has
been available for nearly two years. This initial implemetation of
PPP uses header compression, which allows for faster throughput for
those using the SLFP protocol.
PPP Authorization is now available for this service. For more
information about MichNet's PPP support, see the September, 1991,
issue of the MichNet News, which is available via anonymous FTP
from the machine nic.merit.edu.)
Eric Aupperle and Ellen Hoffman attended the FARNET meeting in Big
Sky, Montana, representing MichNet and Merit, Inc.
Westine [Page 20]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Chris Weider attended the first meeting of the Consortium for
School Networking, reprensenting MichNet.
Pat McGregor (patmcg@merit.edu)
NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK
-----------------------------------------
NEARnet held a meeting with ANS and MERIT to resolve the problems
with the instability of the T3 connection. Steps that have been
taken have had a positive effect on the network. Other procedural
issues will be addressed and there will be a continual effort to
resolve these issues.
by John Rugo <jrugo@nic.near.net>
NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC.
----------------------------------------
The NNSC Staff distributed additions to Chapter 3 of the Internet
Resource Guide.
The NNSC began distribution of the 10th issue of the NSF Network
Newsletter.
On behalf of the NNSC, John Rugo of BBN spoke to a group of
researchers at the seventh annual Scientific Computing & Automation
Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia yesterday. Dr. Michael
Duncan of NRL and John spoke about the Internet, its history,
technology and use.
Corinne Carroll <ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net>
NSF BACKBONE (Merit)
-------------------
ANSNET/NSFNET Backbone Engineering Report
September 30, 1991
Mark Knopper Jordan Becker
Jo Ann Ward Advanced Network & Services Inc.
Merit Network Inc.
Overview
This report is intended to provide a status report on the
ANSNET/NSFNET backbone for the month of September. There are
actually two physical backbones: the T1 NSFNET and the T3 ANSNET,
Westine [Page 21]
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each of which interconnect to NSF sponsored sites. Few changes
have been made on the T1 backbone, while further stabilization is
taking place on the T3 backbone. During the period between 5/91-
9/91 nearly 90% of all T3 backbone infrastructure was changed to
improve robustness of the network. The coming months will focus on
stabilization of the resulting infrastructure with our target being
to achieve the same or better level of reliability which the T1
backbone exhibits. Eventually as reliability of the T3 network
improves, attaching networks will be moved from primary use of the
T1 backbone to primary use of the T3 backbone. When this is
complete and a T1 backup capability is introduced on the T3
backbone, the T1 backbone will be turned off.
Merit is responsible to the NSF for the NSF sponsored network
attachments to the T1 and T3 backbones. ANS manages and expands
the T3 backbone while Merit in partnership with ANS operates and
provides engineering for the two backbones.
The month of September included a few new customer site
installations to the T3 backbone, complete replacement of T3 DSU
interface cards to prevent the DSU synchronization problem known as
"grey link", full deployment of new router software that fixes the
low level "packet loss" problem on the T3 serial line adapters, and
a change to the way NNSTAT statistics are gathered on the T1
backbone. There are still a number of outstanding problems in the
T3 router that compromise backbone reliability. In an effort to
minimize users loss of connectivity resulting fro m this
unreliability, several actions have been taken to provide
additional backup connections for some customer sites and for the
CNSS backbone nodes themselves.
Traffic Statistics
Traffic on the T1 infrastructure measured 8.47 billion inbound
packets during September 1991, an increase over the 7.77 billion
inbound packets of August. T3 infrastructure traffic increased
from 1.93 billion inbound packets in August to 2.00 billion inbound
packets in September. At the end of September, 818 networks are
configured for announcement via the T3 infrastructure of a total
3389 networks announced on the backbone.
New Backbone (CNSS) Nodes
Denver is a new T3 CNSS backbone site. The Denver CNSS is linked
to the Seattle CNSS, but is not yet linked to the St. Louis CNSS.
An additional T1 concentrator router (T1-C) node was installed at
the Hartford CNSS.
Westine [Page 22]
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New ENSS Sites
The Suranet site at College Park, MD now has a T3 ENSS connected to
the T3 backbone at Washington, DC. Boulder has a T3 ENSS connected
to the Denver CNSS. Later in the month another T3 ENSS at Salt
Lake City will be connected to the Denver CNSS. University of
Washington at Seattle is another T3 connected ENSS site, to the
Seattle CNSS.
Note: CNSS is core nodal switching subsystem, and ENSS is external
nodal switching subsystem. The CNSS's are located within the MCI
point of presence (POP) locations, and the ENSS's are at the sites
of the attached NSF sponsored regional networks or other ANS
customers. A map of the current T3 backbone network is available
in postscript format via anonymous FTP to ftp.ans.net (cd pub/info,
file=t3net.ps).
New Software Changes/Fixes
Statistics Collection
A statistical sampling technique is now employed on the T1 backbone
rather than using full statistics collection. This should improve
the reliability of the statistics without compromising accuracy. A
similar technique is being developed for the T3 backbone. Currently
T3 traffic statistics are not being collected until this software
is deployed. The traffic statistics that are collected include
packets & bytes, both in and out of the backbone(s), sorted by
network number, port number and protocol type.
Packet Loss
Users had previously reported TCP application performance
degradation when using the T3 backbone. The problem was traced to
a low level loss of packets (0.1% loss typically). To reduce the
low level "packet loss" which occurred due to a problem on the T3
router serial line driver, new firmware and router driver software,
was installed this month throughout the T3 backbone. This change
has been tested by a number of users and it seems to have
dramatically reduced the observed packet loss.
T960 T1/Ethernet Adapter
The new software deployed on the T3 backbone includes bug fixes for
the T960 ethernet and T1 interface adapters on the T3 nodes to
address a problem involving route caching which occured
infrequently.
Westine [Page 23]
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T3 Network Problems Remaining
T3 386 Adapter Black Link Problem
The most severe remaining problem on the T3 backbone is the known
as the "black link" symptom. The symptom of this problem is a hung
T3 interface which in some cases can completely hang the T3 router,
and cannot be reset without rebooting the T3 router. There are
three known problems which result in this symptom involving the T3
386 adapters and the T3 driver software.
As of the end of September, we have identified several of the
causes of this problem and are well along in testing a new driver
revision which should avoid these symptoms. We expect to have this
new driver installed throughout the network by the end of October,
which we expect will eliminate the problems caused by the black
link condition.
Network Unreachable Messages
When the IS-IS interior gateway protocol for the T3 backbone cycles
upon a link state change, there is a period of time during which
some packets may be dropped. Currently an ICMP network unreachable
packet is generated when this happens. It has been brought to our
attention that many implementations of TCP/telnet will close the
connection if they receive one of these packets. While this is not
proper behavior for telnet and should be addressed separately, we
are working on providing a software change so that backbone CNSS
routers will no longer send network unreachable packets. ENSS's
will continue to send them outside the T3 backbone. Because the
ENSS nodes maintain Internal BGP sessions which stay up during
routing changes, ICMP network unreachable messages will only be
sent to hosts when there is a real outage which results in an
unreachable condition. We are currently measuring the convergence
time for the backbone's IGP routing protocol to determine whether
we are correctly generating the ICMP packets as part of this
investigation.
T960 Ethernet Packet Delays
Occasionally (e.g. once a week) a T1/T3 ENSS ethernet interface
will be reported to have gone into a "sticky" condition where
packets are held for an inordinate amount of time. Packets aren't
dropped as seen by the ping program but the delay times are shown
to be excessive. The latest software changes do not address this
problem, although there is instrumentation installed to diagnose
the problem further. The condition can be be fixed by a manual
reset of the ethernet controller by the NOC, and a script has been
Westine [Page 24]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
developed which will automatically reset the ethernet controller
thereby minimizing the effect of this problem prior to a real fix
becoming available. We have also observed that the T960 adapters
may occasionally hang after a reboot which should also be addressed
by the automatic reset. Both of these problems occur infrequently
and should be addressed in the upcoming software changes.
Congestion on T1/T3 Interconnect Gateways
Interconnect points between the T1 and T3 backbones are located at
Ann Arbor and San Diego. It is still the case that only one
interconnect can be active at a time due to problems with the
routing software. We have seen congestion on the ethernet
interface on the T1 backbone node at Ann Arbor that has caused
packet loss on the interconnect gateway. Work has begun to
establish an additional interconnect point at Houston. Also new
software available in early October will allow both the Ann Arbor
and Houston gateways to share the load for T1/T3 interconnect
traffic. San Diego will be a "cold" standby in this configuration.
We expect to deploy these changes in phases, the first of which
will be to operate the San Diego interconnect in a "hot standby"
mode, where if the Ann Arbor interconnect goes out of service the
San Diego interconnect will take over automatically.
RS/6000 Router Manual Reboot Required
It is currently the case that when a CNSS or ENSS crashes for any
reason, the machine's debugger is entered and the machine must be
rebooted from the console. This was useful in the early days of
the T3 backbone deployment in order that debugging information
could be obtained to assist developers. However we have collected
lots of information and very little new debugging information is
currently gathered during these crashes. Therefore we are
installing a change to the router software to minimize the downtime
after a router crash by automatically taking a core dump and
rebooting the router. This change is being tested and should be
deployed during the 2nd week of October.
Improvements to Backup Connectivity for the T3 Backbone
Most of the NSF sponsored midlevel networks attached to the T3
backbone have backup connections to the T1 backbone. One problem we
have struggled with during backup transitions is that the EGP
protocol takes a long time (several minutes) to switch routing over
from one network to the other. Using BGP as an exterior routing
protocol significantly reduces the transition time between the T1
and T3 networks during backup transitions. NEARnet is particularly
interested in this, and has made progress in working with Cisco to
Westine [Page 25]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
improve the use of BGP support in their routers. We are also
adding a second backup connection to the T1 backbone for NEARnet,
which should improve performance when backup to the T3 backbone is
required.
T3 Core Backbone Redundancy - "Safety Net"
Recognizing that the most probable cause of failure in the T3
backbone are the T3 386 interface adapters, we have taken action to
engineer additional redundancy around these adapters. In October
we will install a set of T1 point-to-point links interconnecting
connecting the T3 backbone CNSS nodes which run in parallel with
existing T3 point-to-point links. This represents an interim
solution to improve reliablity while we continue to deploy the
other engineering changes described here. This "safety net"
includes 12 T1 point-to-point links and will be used in a "ring"
topology connecting the T3 CNSS's at all of the MCI POP sites
together. We expect that this will avoid the isolation of ENSS
sites and partitioning of the T3 backbone if multiple T3 point-to-
point links go down.
Remaining Installations to Complete Phase II of T3 Deployment
Phase II of the T3 backbone deployment should be complete in early
October. Four T3 ENSS sites remain to be interconnected to the T3
backbone: Boulder, Princeton, Salt Lake City, and Lincoln. The
Denver CNSS will be linked to the St. Louis CNSS to complete the
planned connectivity of the CNSS backbone. The Boulder site ENSS
will connect Westnet, NCAR, Los Alamos, and several Mexican
networks. The Princeton site ENSS will connect JVNCnet, NEARnet,
CA*Net, and a regional network in Singapore. The Salt Lake City
site ENSS will also connect to Westnet.
Phase III T3 Network Planning
Following stabilization of the Phase II T3 network, we will follow
with several changes now in the planning stage. Phase III of the
T3 network will consist of a technology upgrade of the T3 serial
interface adapters in the RS/6000s from the T3 386 adapters to
"RS960" adapters. This will improve both network performance and
reliability. The T3 CNSS multi-router architecture will be
redesigned around this new interface adapter technology. While
some backbone topology changes are under consideration, the final
phase III topology is not expected to introduce any significant
changes in backbone topology. ENSS backup services required to
reduce dependency on the T1 network are being planned. Improved
DS3 transmission facility monitoring using the ANSI T1.107A "c-bit
parity" standard will be supported.
Westine [Page 26]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
Software changes in the T3 network are expected to include support
for OSI CLNP switching services as well as migration from the
RCP_Route daemon to the Gateway Daemon (gated), which will support
a number of new routing technologies for both IP and OSI CLNP. Note
that gated uses the Dual IS-IS protocol for IP and CLNP. All of
these plans are still being developed and are contingent upon the
progress made on stabilizing the phase II T3 network.
Merit staff conference and meeting activities
Jessica Yu of Merit Internet Engineering attended the September
FEPG meeting in San Diego, CA. Susan Hares was the Internet
Engineering representative to the X3S3.3 Task Group which convened
in Boulder, CO.
Merit Network, Inc. will sponsor "Making Your NSFNET Connection
Count" at College Park, Maryland, November 11-12. This informative
seminar, intended for beginning and intermediate network users,
will focus on issues of interest to educators, librarians, campus
computing leaders, information systems and networking
administrators, educational liaisons, and others. For information,
contact seminar@merit.edu or phone 1-800-66-MERIT.
Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu)
PITTSBURGH SUPER COMPUTING CENTER
---------------------------------
The PSC has completed the first step of our High School
Supercomputing Outreach program. This involved outfitting ten
regional high schools each witha 3D DecStation 5000, all generously
donated by Digital Equipment Corporation. The ten schools were
chosen from several on the merit of a research proposal each school
submitted to the PSC. We are using V.32 modems connected to a
dial-in router at our networking hub, located at Carnegie Mellon
University, asa cost effective means of TCP/IP connectivity. The
system uses SLIP/PPP software that was modified here at the PSC,
that now enables 9.6 bps. We plan to evaluate V.32 bis and V.42
bis modems using data compression techniques to push that figure up
to 38.4 bps. The schools currently have connectivity to the PSC,
PREPnet and full Internet access when logged into our front end
mainframes.
Gene Hastings of our communications group attended and participated
in last months FARNET/NSFNET workshop on inter-regional
connectivity held in Big Sky, MT.
New network connections for the month include: Lebanon Valley
Westine [Page 27]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
College, WEA Manufacturing, Hershey Medical Center, Gettysburg
College, Carnegie Group, and Juniata College.
by Stephen Cunningham <cunningham@b.psc.edu>
PREPNET
-------
During September, Franklin and Marshall College, Children's
Hospital, and Lincoln University joined PREPnet. Franklin and
Marshall College will be connected to the Harrisburg hub at 56Kbps,
Children's Hospital will be connected via the University of
Pittsburgh, and Lincoln University will be connected to the
Philadelphia hub at 56Kbps.
PREPnet has been investing using the Telebit NetBlazer to provide
entry level services.
PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu)
SAIC
----
SAIC Activities for September
The first draft for the gated implementation design document was
completed. There are still some design issues that need to be
resolved before producing the final document.
Chi Chu Chung has begun modifying the original IDPR kernel module
to correct some bugs and improve efficiency. It is expected that a
radix based route lookup function similar to that in BSD 4.3 Reno
will replace the existing fixed size table routines. This is also
being chosen for compatibility with the new BSD route table. It is
expected that the new route table from BSD may have the
functionality required for IDPR that it could be used directly. In
the mean time, IDPR will have to use a separate route lookup.
An architecture for using the domain-name system for resolution of
IP addresses to Administrative Domains IDs is in an embryionic
form. It is expected that an RFC will be forthcoming describing
the additions to the DNS.
Planned activies:
Testing of the GATED implementation continues. Configuration is
very difficult and hinders progress. The new configuration parser
should alleviate some of this.
Westine [Page 28]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
The kernel work is extensive and will continue through November.
Woody Woodburn (woody@sparta.com)
SRI NIC
-------
The cumulative total of all IP numbers assigned at the end of
September was 36,988. See the table below for a breakdown of these
assignments by class.
The cumulative total of assigned Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs)
was 1,384, and the cumulative total number of domains registered
was 3,450. This includes the root domain, 77 top-level domains,
3,304 second-level domains, and 67 third-level MIL subdomains.
Cumulative IP Network Statistics
Month/Year Class
A B C Total
Sep. 1991 47 6,239 30,702 36,988
Aug. 1991 45 5,908 28,977 34,930
Jul. 1991 43 5,799 25,364 31,206
Jun. 1991 43 5,654 24,449 30,146
May. 1991 43 5,026 24,797 29,866
Apr. 1991 43 4,977 25,897 30,917
Mar. 1991 41 4,520 24,572 29,133
Feb. 1991 39 4,347 22,552 26,938
Jan. 1991 39 4,246 21,731 26,016
Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152
Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382
As of 26 September, SRI International ceased its provision of
registration services to the Internet. We've devoted many exciting
and enjoyable years to serving the Internet community, but the time
has come to say farewell. Thanks for your encouragement and moral
support over the years--we shall miss you all.
Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com)
UCL
----
Ian Wakeman attended SIGCOM 91. There was an Operations Management
Videoconference about the UK-US Fat Pipe. There was a quick
Westine [Page 29]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
demonstration of video from BBN to visiting VIPs.
We have now demonstrated UDP based voice from UCL to Lancaster
University and an X based Video to Cambridge University (based on
video capture from the Archimedes workstation). Voice is perfectly
usable; video is 128 pixel square, monochrome, 5 frame per second,
all in software. We are still awaiting BT CODECs delivery. (There
are now 17 UK Universities reachable by IP at 2Mbps, although
progress in their appearance in the DNS is a little complex).
James Cowan has completed a Generic MIB Browser for our OSIMIS
software, based on the X Windows Interviews C++ library and our
generic management software. Some non-ISO Managed Objects include
TCP connections and Unix Processes and Users. A paper on this and
follow on work is in progress. An SNMP version would be relatively
simple. [The size of a binary linked with interviews, X, CMIS and
ISODE does not really bear thinking about:-].
John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK)
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
----------------------
1. A second T1 circuit has been installed from the UDel campus to
the NSFNET College Park node. This circuit normally carries
only traffic to and from our 128.4 research net, but can carry
the full campus load should the primary T1 circuit fail. The
new arrangement should improve timekeeping accuracy for those
peers chiming the UDel NTP time servers.
2. Rick Anthony completed and tested a demodulator for the
Canadian time-service station CHU. Used with a junkbox
shortwave receiver, this quite inexpensive widget provides
surprisingly good time to the low milliseconds. Neil Corman
completed and tested a computer interface for a LORAN
receiver. Work continues on the receiver itself, which should
yield accuracies comparable to GPS, but cost lots less.
3. Ken Monington is working on a rigorous mathematical analysis
of the adaptive-parameter NTP local-clock model. The goal of
this effort is to provide fast, reliable time acquisition to
the regime of a few seconds, down from about a minute in the
present design. This work is being supported by the US Navy
SAFENET program.
Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU)
Westine [Page 30]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
WISCNET
-------
The DDS circuit between Marquette Univerity and the University of
Wisconsin - Milwaukee was replaced with a T1 circuit on September
25.
Informational papers describing news and white pages service
alternatives where written and distributed.
The August '91 issue of 'NSF NETWORK NEWS' contains a description
of WiscNet and WiscNet sites have been incorporated in the map.
Michael Dorl (dorl@vms.macc.wisc.edu)
Westine [Page 31]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
DIRECTORY SERVICES
------------------
This section of the Internet Monthly is devoted to efforts working to
develop directory services that are for, or effect, the Internet. We
would like to encourage any organization with news about directory
service activities to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news
items. The current reporters list includes:
o IETF OSIDS Working Group [X]
o IETF DISI Working Group [X]
o Field Operational X.500 Project
- ISI
- Merit
- PSI
- SRI
o National Institute of Standards and Technology [X]
o North American Directory Forum [X]
o OSI Implementor's Workshop [X]
o PARADISE Project [X]
o PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project
o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT
o Registration Authority Committee (ANSI USA RAC) [X]
o U.S. Department of State, Study Group D,
MHS Management Domain subcommittee (SG-D MHS-MD)
[X] indicates no report this month
Tom Tignor (tpt2@isi.edu)
DS Report Coordinator
FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT
--------------------------------------
The FOX project is a DARPA and NSF sponsored effort to provide a
basis for operational X.500 deployment in the NREN/Internet. This
work is being carried out at Merit, NSYERNet/PSI, SRI and ISI. ISI
is the main contractor and responsible for project oversight.
Three members of the FOX group along with Steve Hardcastle-Kille
will participate in a panel session at Interop about efforts to
bring X.500 into the Internet community. In addition,
demonstrations and information about FOX efforts will be available
in the display area.
Westine [Page 32]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
ISI
---
ISI organized a meeting of the FOX participants who will be at
Interop. Tom Tignor has joined the ISI FOX project team. He
has been reviewing various X.500 documents, and will be
coordinating their review by the full FOX group.
Steve Hotz (hotz@isi.edu)
MERIT
-----
1. Sue Hares of Merit is managing the OSI booth at Interop '91.
Along with FTAM, X-Windows, X.400 and Virtual Terminal, one
of the applications to be demonstrated there will be X.500.
CLNP will be used at the network layer, and the demonstration
will include connectivity beyond the show floor over NSFNET
and international networks.
CDC is sponsoring the @c=US@o=Interop portion of the DIT.
Each of 12 vendors (or so) will have organizational unit
entries under this entry. Merit is also adding the Site
Contacts directory at @c=us@o=Interop@ou=Site Contacts.
Merit is also working with IBM to demonstrate directory
user agents in the NSFNET section of their Interop booth.
As part of this effort, the host FOX.MERIT.EDU is now running
SunNet OSI 7.0 which allows X.500 over TP4/CLNP.
2. Merit is participating in the activities to extend the FOX
contract for an extra two years. Merit's work for this
extension will be to finalize and create schema for network
infrastructure and information services objects, populate and
update the directory with these objects, and create user
interface tools to make them useful.
Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu)
PSI
---
The program to automatically load RFC information into X.500 was
modified to include RFC numbers as a search key so as to allow
the "x5ftp" program to search by RFC numbers, in addition to
other existing search keys.
In preparation for alignment of the White Pages Pilot Project
Westine [Page 33]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
with the NADF naming scheme, the "usconfig" program was written.
The "usconfig" program performs the same function as the
existing "dsaconfig" program, except that it has knowledge of
the NADF Naming recommendations, and produces configurations
specific to the U.S.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
SRI
----
SRI provided further input to the NIST DSSIG (by fax) as they
met in September on postalAddress length constraints. The input
was gathered based on experience converting the WHOIS database
to X.500 and problems that were found due to postalAddress
length constraints. Toward the end of the month, we worked with
a DSSIG member, Russ Wright (LBL) to gather more detailed
information on failure percentages for line lengths ranging
between 31 and 50 characters.
We received and responded to 11 queries regarding the
availability of "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations"
(Internet-Draft document draft-ietf-disi-catalog-00.txt).
Ruth Lang (rlang@nisc.sri.com)
PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project
---------------------------
A new draft on the naming of DSAs, now released as the Internet
Draft draft-ietf-osids-dsanaming-01.txt was reviewed, and comments
sent to the author.
The manual "PSI White Pages Project: Administrator's Guide" was
updated to reflect the upgrade to ISODE 7.0, and the upcoming
transition to the NADF's recommendations on naming.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT PROJECT
-----------------------------
The "Fruit Bat" DSA was moved to a more reliable machine to
increase general project reliability. This DSA currently provides
updates of the (root) EDB to all the DSAs in the White Pages Pilot
Project.
In preparation for alignment of the White Pages Pilot Project with
Westine [Page 34]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
the NADF naming scheme, the experimental information that was used
to test the NADF naming scheme in its early stages was taken out of
the U.S. portion of the DIT.
New organizations added to the pilot this past month are:
Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com)
SG-D MHS-MD
-----------
The SG-D MHS-MD Subcommittee met at the US Dept of State on
September 17-18 to progress the proposal it is developing for
registration of MHS-MD names in c=US. The meeting was chaired by
Richard Jesmajian of ATT.
The proposal (at this point) tentatively involves a plan to use
ANSI c=US registered names as c=US MHS-MD names, with the added
restriction that they must meet the standard requirements for any
X.400 ADMD or PRMD name. At this meeting, after long and arduous
elliptical discussions, it was agreed that the proposal should
include a goal for all PRMD names in c=US to become unique in c=US,
in spite of the fact that some service providers are currently
under contract with certain customers to "specifically not disclose
their chosen PRMD Name to anyone." This non-disclosure contract
situation presents an interesting and frustrating conundrum for
efforts to enable a c=US National MTS Backbone interconnection
plan.
It was also agreed to include in the plan a scheme to allow "MHS-MD
Naming (Sub)Authorities to use the "Constructive Syntax" developed
last year by the NIST OIW X.400 SIG. It was noted that the US
Government (GSA) is currently using this constructive syntax
coupled with its ANSI Registered Organizational Name (GOV) to form
PRMD Names such as GOV+DOE, etc. It is understood that many
government organizations are not happy with this state of affairs,
and there is serious oposition to this schem, mostly based on
esthetic considerations such as "They are ugly!".
During the meeting, it was frequently pointed out by the Chair that
the MHS-MD subcommittee is only empowered to develop a
recommendation to SG-D, which will review it and possibly modify it
before recommending it to the US CCITT National Committee, which
has the power to adopt it. It was also pointed out (several times)
that it is possible that the MHS-MD proposal might be rejected, and
that SG-D or the US CCITT National Committee might adopt some other
Westine [Page 35]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
plan, altogether.
For example, it was suggested (several times) that the US Dept of
State just might dump the whole MHS-MD plan in favor of asking one
of the prominent service providers (ATT came to mind) who are
thought to be very good at registering names and numbers to just do
it on behalf of c=US. No criteria for this possibility were ever
provided by anyone.
Another issue discussed was that of joint administration of the new
{ joint-iso-ccitt(2) country(?) } name tree adopted by ISO and
CCITT to serve as the Alphanumeric & Numeric name tree for use by
X.500, and which would become the c=US name tree from which MHS-MD
plans to draw its MHS-MD names. It was agreed that SG-D should
negotiate with ANSI with regard to joint administration of name
registration in this new joint arc. A joint meeting of the MHS-MD
and ANSI USA RAC committees is planned for December, mostly likely
during the planned MHS-MD meeting at the US Dept of State in
December.
The next meeting is scheduled for December 5-6 at the US State
Dept.
Einar Stefferud (stef@ics.uci.edu)
Westine [Page 36]
Internet Monthly Report September 1991
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
------------------
Readers are requested to send in dates of events that are
appropriate for this calendar section.
1991 CALENDAR
Sep 29-Oct 4 5TH SDL (CCITT FDT) FORUM,
Rick Reed, GPT Coventry, UK
rick_reed@eurokom.ie
Oct 7-11 INTEROP91, San Jose, Ca
Oct 7-15 6TH WORLD TELECOM'91 SYMPOSIUM, Geneva
Oct 8-11 IFIP WORKSHOP ON OPEN DISTRIBUTED
PROCESSING -- Contact
jdm@fokus.berlin.gmd.dbp.de or
heymer@iir-adlershof.adw.dp.dd
Oct 15-17 4TH INTL. WORKSHOP ON PROTOCOL TEST SYSTEM
Leidschendam, Jan Kroon (J_Kroon@pttrnl.nl)
Nov 18-22 IETF, Santa Fe, MN
Megan Davies (mdavies@NRI.RESTON.VA.US
Nov 19-22 FORTE'91, University of Queensland
Ken Parker, Telecom Austrl (k.parker@trl.oz.au)
Dec 2-5 4TH INT. WORKSHOP ON PETRI NETS AND
PERFORMANCE MODELS, Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Billington, Telecom Austrl.
(j.billington @ trl.oz.au)
Dec 2-5 GLOBECOM'91, See IEEE Publications. Phoenic
Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1992 CALENDAR
Jan 13-21 ANSI X3T5
Jan 20-22 RIPE, Amsterdam
Jan 28-30 ANSI X3S3.3, Tucson, AZ
Feb 19-20 RARE WG1, Location unknown
Feb 20-21 RARE Manager Mtg, Location unknown
Mar 2-6 ANSI X3T5
Mar 2-6 CAIA '92 8th IEEE Conference on AI Application
Mar 3-5 ACM CSC, Kansas City, MO
Mar 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, Irvine, CA
Mar 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Mar 16-19 Info Netwrk&DataComm, Espoo, FI
Espoo, Helsinki, Finland; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Mar 16-20 IETF, San Diego, Ca
Megan Davies (mdavies@NRI.RESTON.VA.US)
Mar 18-20 Computers, Freedom & Privacy II,
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC
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Mar 25-27 National Net 92, Washington DC
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
Apr 6-16 CCITT SG VII Geneva, Switzerland
Apr 21-23 ANSI X3S3.3, Mountaon View, Ca.
<Spring> IETF, San Diego, CA
Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.va.us)
May 4-6 ANSI X3T5
May 4-8 DECUS '92, Atlanta, GA
May 4-8 IEEE INFOCOM'92, See IEEE Pub., Florence
May 12-14 Joint Network Conference 3, Innsbruck, Austria
(this is the RARE Networkshop - renamed)
May 18-25 INTEROP92, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
May 19-29 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 21, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 27-29 IFIP WG 6.5 Int'l Conference, Vancouver, Canada
May ??-?? Third IFIP International Workshop on
Protocols for High-Speed Networks, Stockholm
Per Gunningberg, per@sics.se
Bjorn Pehrson, bjorn@sics.se
Stephen Pink, steve@sics.se
Jun 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Jun 10-11 RARE WG1, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 11-12 RARE COSINE MHS MGR, tentative-Location unknown
Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, IL
Jun 15-19 INET92, Kobe, Japan
Jun Murai (jun@wide.ad.jp), KEIO University
Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu)
"North America Contact"
Jun 16-18 ANSI X3S3.3, Minneapolos, MN
Jun 22-25 PSTV-XII, Orlando
Umit Uyar (umit@honet5.att.com)
Jerry Linn or Holmdel, NIST
linnrj@ECF.NCSL.NIST.GOV
Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, See IEEE Publ..
Jul 6-10 IEEE802 Plenary, Bloomington, MN
Jul 13-17 ANSI X3T5
Jul 13-24 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, San Diego, CA
Aug 17-20 SIGCOMM, Baltimore, MD
Deepinder Sidhu, UMBC
Sep 7-11 IFIP World Congress
Madrid, Spain; Contact: IFIP
Sep 14-18 ANSI X3T5
Sep 21-25 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 22-24 ANSI X3S3.3, Boston, MA
Oct 5-8 FORTE'92, Lannion
Roland Groz (groz@lannion.cnet.fr)
Michel Diaz (diaz@droopy.laas.fr)
Oct 26-30 INTEROP92, San Francisco
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Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Nov 9-13 ANSI X3T5
Dec ANSI X3S3.3, Boulder, CO
Dec 7-11 DECUS '92, Las Vegas, NV
Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1993 CALENDAR
Mar 8-12 INTEROP93, Wasington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Mar 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
May 23-26 ICC'92, Geneva, Switzerland
May-Jun PSTV-XIII, University of Liege.
Contact: Andre Danthine,
May 23-26 ICC'93, Geneva, See IEEE Publications.
Jun 7-11 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Aug INET93, San Francisco Bay Area
Aug SIGCOMM, San Francisco
Sep 13-17 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
Sep 20-31 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, Seoul, Korea.
Oct 12-14 Conference on Network Information Processing,
Sofia, Bulgaria; Contact: IFIP-TC6
Oct 25-29 INTEROP93, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Nov 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, LaJolla, CA
Dec 6-10 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
1994 CALENDAR
Apr 18-22 INTEROP94, Washington, D.C.
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
Aug 29-Sep 2 IFIP World Congress
Hamburg, Germany; Contact: IFIP
Sep 12-16 INTEROP94, San Francisco
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
1995 EVENTS
Sep 18-22 INTEROP95, San Francisco, CA
Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com)
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