[IMR] IMR86-10.TXT Westine [Page 1]  ~ OCTOBER 1986 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 task forces and contractors in the ARPA Internet Research Program. This report is for research use only, and is not for public distri- bution. Each task force and contractor 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 ARPANET mail to Westine@ISI.EDU. Reports are requested from BBN, LINKABIT, ISI, LL, MIT-LCS, NTA, SRI, and UCL. Other groups are invited to report newsworthy events or issues. BBN LABORATORIES AND BBN COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION --------------------------------------------------- VAX NETWORKING In the month of October, work continued on the design and implemen- tation of the Multicast Agent for 4.3 BSD Unix. The user-level part of the Agent has been completed, and about half of the kernel-level implementation has been written. Several Agent specifications issues are still pending. Westine [Page 1]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 Karen Lam spent 20-22 October at Stanford University, testing and debugging the 4.3 BSD Multicast Agent and IGMP implementations against the Stanford software. On 23-24 October, Karen Lam attended the Third Annual Berkeley Unix Workshop, held at the University of California, Berkeley. Steve Deering, of Stanford University, gave a presentation on Internet Multicast, paying some attention to the 4.3 BSD IGMP implementation. WIDEBAND NETWORK On October 22 the Wideband Network provided the long-haul communi- cation required for a multi-site demonstration of the Cronus Dis- tributed Operating System. The demonstration was given in conjunc- tion with the Rome Air Development Center's annual Distributed Sys- tem Technology Exchange meeting. A Cronus application called the C2 Internet Experiment was run on an integrated variety of computer bases which were located in two geographical "clusters", one at RADC and the other at BBN. Local communication within each cluster was provided via Ethernet; long-haul communication between the clusters was provided by the Wideband Network. Connectivity between the Ethernets, the Wideband Net, and the ARPANET was pro- vided by Butterfly Internet Gateways. After resolution of a hardware problem with the RADC Internet Gateway the demonstration worked flawlessly and was very well received. Final testing of BSAT Release 2.1 was completed and the new software was distributed to the Wideband sites on October 23. This release contains many operational enhancements as well as a number of bug fixes. The most significant of the enhancements are (1) a "Mini-NOC" facility allowing control of any arbitrary set of remote BSATs to be exercised from any local BSAT console, (2) a BSAT built-in satellite channel bit error rate testing module, and (3) a facility for fixed group (multicast) addressing. The Mini-NOC facility reduces dependence on the the C/70 computer currently used for monitoring and control of the Wideband sites. Item (2) allows for non-invasive satellite channel BER measurement, i.e., measure- ment that does not require the suspension of normal network opera- tions. Item (3) will be used to support 3- (or more) way confer- ences between Wideband sites. A change in the Wideband Butterfly Internet Gateways was initiated during the month in which the the affected gateways advertise a lower cost route for the Wideband Net than for the ARPANET. This has the effect of forcing certain LAN to LAN traffic that would have previously traversed the ARPANET to traverse the Wideband net- work, thereby alleviating some of the current ARPANET congestion problems. The Wideband Net is not exhibiting any problems in sup- porting the current level of re-routed traffic. Westine [Page 2]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 SATNET As in past months, the SATNET continued to be stable. We began looking at some of the channel 1 problems reported last month, but will have to wait for the Linkabit spares if any repairs are needed. Since channel 0 performance was fine, SATNET service to the user sites was uninterrupted. We realize that there have been interruptions in the overall ser- vice provided by SATNET, largely due to problems with the new But- terfly gateways. However, despite these problems, the SATNET itself (SIMPs, PSP terminals, satellite equipment) has continued to perform well. And as the gateways improve, the overall service should continue to improve. There were 5 scheduled outages during which the SATNET measurement taskforce conducted some experiments. Also, service was inter- rupted for about 24 hours on 10/6 and 10/7 when 2 phone lines between the SATNET and the ARPAnet failed. GATEWAYS The major event of the month was the installation of new software in the CSS Butterfly Gateway (ARPANET-Satnet). This version of the software (Rel. 3.5) includes a number of bug fixes and minor enhancements. The new software appears to much more robust and at as this report was written had been up at CSS for a week with out any crashes or restarts. This the new software was just installed at UCL and RSRE and will be installed at the other Satnet sites next. As noted in more detail in Wideband network section of this report, we reduced the routing cost advertised for the Wideband network to have some LAN to LAN traffic be routed over the Wideband network instead of the ARPANET. Bob Hinden ISI --- General Paul Mockapetris, attended the INARC/INENG Task Force meeting October 15-17 and participated in the domain system planning. Jon Postel and Bob Braden attended IAB meetings at RIACS October 13-15. Jon Postel attended the "Berkeley Unix Westine [Page 3]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 Workshop" at UC Berkeley Oct 23-24. We welcomed three new employees to ISI Division 2, Phil Dennis, Tom Hibbard and Steve Farnworth. Internet Concepts Project Paul Mockapetris released a new version of the TOPS-20 domain system JEEVES, which includes a resolver which uses aged round trip times to optimize timeouts. New, higher performance nameservers were installed at ISI and the NIC. Greg Finn con- tinued studying issues involved in large scale routing. Multimedia Conferencing Project Brian Hung is working on a program to compose multimedia mes- sages containing bitmap data on the IBM-PC AT. The goal is to combine this program with the existing document scanning pro- gram to allow multimedia messages containing bitmap data to be composed and sent to another multimedia workstation. Supercomputer and Workstation Communication Project Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon have continued the the testing of the NETBLT protocol with Mark Lambert, at MIT, over the wideband network. In addition to the testing between two IBM PCs running Mark's NETBLT implementation, we have been testing Bob's Sun version of NETBLT against the IBM PC version running at MIT. To support this testing Annette added more functions to the SpyTool, which runs in the Xerox Development Environ- ment on a Dandelion workstation. Alan Katz attended the Supercomputer workshop at the San Diego Supercomputer Center October 1 and 2. MIT-LCS ------- No internet related progress to report. Lixia Zhang NTA & NDRE ---------- No report received. Westine [Page 4]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 SRI --- No report received. UCL --- 1. The experiments on clock synchronisation have now finished, though they are not complete. We have established the condi- tions under which it is possible to synchronise clocks between the US and the UK within acceptable limits. The very large variance in round trip times requires careful filtering and monitoring of the synchronisation data before adjustments are made to the synchronised time. When we had the clocks syn- chronised, we were able to measure the one-way delay between UCL and a number of hosts in the DCN swamp. We found that the outward delay time (UK->US) has a very large variance, whereas the return delay time (US->UK) has a very low variance. This has implications for the synchronisation process, which assumes that the two one-way journey times are the same. The variance is most probably another symptom of the overloading of the ARPANET and its problems in supporting gateways. We have allowed for the one-way delay variance in our filtering technique. A paper is being prepared which describes our experiments and results. 2. Some IP-level throughput tests were conducted on the UCL- Goonhilly path during one of the SATNET reserved test periods. Hence the path was essentially idle apart from the measurement traffic. The measurement host was on a UCL ring, while the echoer was (a) the UCL PDP-11 gateway, and (b) the Goonhilly SIMP. When echoing 246-byte IP/ICMP packets off the UCL PDP gateway, total throughput was 40 kbps (20k in each direction). Beyond this rate, the UCL SAM started to drop packets because its output queue to the gateway was growing too long; the SAM and the PDP are connected by an LH/DH 1822. When echoing with the same size packets off the Goonhilly SIMP, total throughput was 17 kbps, with a 14% packet loss rate. Higher offered loads resulted in up to 50% packet loss and frequent 'source quench' messages from the PDP gateway. Keeping the packet loss rate to less than 1% restricted the total throughput to 14 kbps, i.e. 34% of the performance to the gateway. The UCL-Goonhilly line currently runs the VDH protocol. Peter Lloyd Westine [Page 5]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 UDEL ---- 1. The UDEL1 fuzzball was joined on the UDEL Etherswamp by two more fuzzballs, a radio clock and two IBM PCs. Lines are being installed to various off-campus swamps as well. We are currently reorganizing the entire UDEL swampland to install subnetting and additional gateways for SURAnet, which is one of the NSF regional nets. 2. The two DECNET fuzzballs and associated gear at Linkabit con- tinue to paddle an awesome amount of traffic for NSFnet, FORD- net, UMICHnet, UMDnet and their clients. Currently, sixteen nets scattered all over the country splash at least some of their packets across the DCnet swamp. The CMU gateway is now functioning, but only in the direction towards the core, so DCN-GATEWAY is still humping about a megapacket per week in the other direction. Obviously, almost none of the routing paths are symmetric. 3. I completed a preliminary report on the MSS routing study and presented the results at an MSS meeting at Linkabit. I also met with the Linkabit Dissimilar Gateway Protocol (DGP) pro- ject staff and made several suggestions on the architecture and protocols which might be developed. 4. My principal mailbox MILLS@D.ISI.EDU has been moved to a MIL- NET host MILLS@A.ISI.EDU, which is mostly unreachable due net- work and gateway congestion. I am requesting mail be sent instead to MILLS@HUEY.UDEL.EDU until further notice. 5. I found and fixed a couple of bugs in the new Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon for the fuzzball. Clones are running now on most fuzzballs, including those with radio clocks. Mike Petry at U Maryland is operating a Unix 4.3bsd daemon with filtering and deglitching code based on the fuzzball implemen- tation. Those swamps without radio clocks, including the NSFNET clients and UDEL fuzzies, now use NTP exclusively to synchronize with radio timetellers. 6. I attended the IAB and task-force meetings at SRI, as well as the NSF Network Program Advisory Group meeting at RIACS. Dave Mills Westine [Page 6]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 TASK FORCE REPORTS ------------------ APPLICATIONS No report received. END-TO-END SERVICES This report covers the 3 months August-October 1986. The Task Force met September 3-4 at UCL, in conjunction with a joint US/UK workshop on Protocols for Distributed Computing. The 40 attendees from the UK were selected research people actively concerned with network protocol development and implementation. There was a lively discussion in addition to the seven papers, ranging over topics including: protocols for integrated service interfaces, high-performance transport pro- tocols, the MACH and Camelot projects at CMU, Internet multi- casting, the ANSA project at Cambridge, and transaction proto- cols, especially REX (UK) and VMTP (US). MULTICAST and HOST GROUPS This work has become a cooperative effort between Stanford and BBN. Karen Lam of BBN has completed the modifications to the 4.3BSD kernel to send and receive Internet multicasts. Her code has been running several weeks on a couple of Stanford machines. Lam is now writing a multicast agent to run under 4.3BSD, hop- ing to make an initial version available for others to test before the end of 1986. The packet forwarding will be in the kernel, while the code to maintain the host-group database will execute in user mode. Meanwhile, Steve Deering is writ- ing the specification for the protocol to be used between mul- ticast agents. Steve Deering attended the 3rd Annual Berkeley UNIX Workshop October 23-24 and gave a talk on "Internet Multicast and Berkeley UNIX". Members of the Taskforce have started looking into applica- tions of Internet multicasting, with special concern for its impact on transport protocols. Applications under considera- tion include resource location and distributed binding, e.g. in MACH. Westine [Page 7]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 Discussions have been taking place with David Young of Rockwell, who has been tasked under government contract to develop a multicasting facility for SURAN. It is not yet clear whether there will be any convergence between the SURAN protocols developed independently by Rockwell and the main body of Internet protocol research, but these discussions are a hopeful sign. TRANSACTION PROTOCOLS Dave Cheriton continues to refine his VMTP protocol, and he is working on a protocol specification RFC. Implementation of VMTP under the V kernel is proceeding at Stanford, and work has begun on a UNIX kernel implementation. Dave has done some preliminary performance measurements on VMTP and plans to write them up. Cheriton's work on VMTP is also relevant to the DSAB (Distri- buted Systems Architectures Board) and to Eric Cooper's work at CMU on networking in MACH. Jon Crowcroft and others at UCL are working on an ISO-style directory service using Marshall Rose's ISODE (ISO Develope- ment Environment), and in particular they are using the ISO transaction protocol ROS for remote directory queries. ROS provides "RPC" type semantics as well as asynchronous and no- reply type communication. The UCL Sequential Exchange Protocol (called SEP, for reasons that only an Englishman could understand) has been completed, and an RFC describing it is pending publication. A kernel implementation for a SUN is available from UCL. BULK TRANSFER PROTOCOLS Experiments are continuing on NETBLT performance between MIT and ISI over the Wideband Sattelite network. ISI ported Mark Lambert' MIT version of NETBLT (for an IBM-PC) onto a SUN 3, running in user mode and sending and receiving IP datagrams using a RAW socket. Performance of the SUN version is surprisingly good; between two SUN 3's on the ISI Ethernet, we see up to 140 data packets/second ( 1.6Mbits/sec) with very little packet loss. With a few lost packets, throughput drops to 1.3 Mbits/sec. These tests are pure transport level, not sending real data. Major objectives of the experiments now include: understanding the observed 5-10% packet loss using the Wideband net, pushing Wideband net throughput nearer to the theoretical maximum, and developing timer algorithms which can effectively adapt to both the Wideband net and the Ether- net delays. Westine [Page 8]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 At the last meeting, some interest was expressed in working on multicast bulk transfer protocols, which could be used for dissemination of databases simultaneously to multiple sites. We know about the Project Admiral work in this area; we would like to hear from any other groups interested in this problem. STRONG DATA TYPING UCL is working on replicating the CMU measurements (ref. July report) of the Courier structured data representation. They hope to extend this to measure X.409 stubs (which are gen- erated by parsing Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1) specs for services) to compare these measurements in some meaningful way with Courier and UCL RPC, and with Dave Clark's measurements at MIT. NETBIOS At the TCP/IP Vendor Workshop, a vendor group was assembled to create a standard Internet mapping for the NETBIOS interface. An administrative mechanism has been created to give an offi- cial stamp to the results of this or any similar vendor stan- dardization effort: IAB task forces will perform this func- tion. In particular, the End-to-End Protocols task force was desig- nated as the approval agency for the NETBIOS effort; Lorenzo Aguilar of SRI is handling this job for the task force. NET- BIOS is also interesting to us because it provides a natural application for the Internet multicasting facility. NETWORK FILE SYSTEMS Members of the Internet community have expressed interest in the definition of an Internet standard for network file access protocols. (NB: We are talking about a protocol for ALL HOSTS, not just UNIX systems!) The task force is considering setting up a working party of people from the research and vendor communities, with some interest and experience in this area. If it is decided to proceed in this direction, an announcement will be made sometime early next year, but anyone interested could meanwhile drop a note to braden@isi.edu, out- lining their goals and interests in this effort. Bob Braden Westine [Page 9]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 INTERNET ARCHITECTURE 1. The INARC and INENG task forces held a joint meeting at SRI on 16 October. and separately on one other day. At the joint meeting several issues of common interest were discussed, including the evolution of EGP, transition to ISO and deploy- ment of the domain name system. At the private INARC meeting on 17 October ad-hoc presentations were heard from BBN, Xerox and Mitre project leaders. Phill Gross will distribute detailed minutes and presentation documents at a later date. 2. Considerable discussion was held in both the IAB and INARC on the charter and agenda of the INARC, as well as the other task forces. The discussion revealed widely separated views on the basic organization and function of these groups. The IAB chair has suggested the creation of two new groups. One of these would be committed to a near-term technology maturing in about five years and specific to the NSF networking community. The other would be committed to long-range research beyond that term. The INARC charter presently commits that group to research in advancing technology without reference to specific milestones and without obligation to specific system planning or engineering. The results of discussion indicate that a) INARC is not either of these new groups and b) an in-depth review of the INARC charter, agenda and membership needs to be conducted to determine whether and how the existing task force fits in with the new structure. 3. The special-interest group formed to study issues involved with campus networks, in particular the state and regional networks associated with the NSF community, is engaged in lively debate. Among the timely issues being discussed are testing of the ad-hoc gateway complex now in place, how to distribute the burgeoning traffic load over the ARPANET gate- ways and how to connect the many regional and campus networks operating with very different routing architectures and proto- cols to the system. Dave Mills INTERNET ENGINEERING No report received. Westine [Page 10]  Internet Monthly Report October 1986 INTEROPERABILITY No internet related progress to report. Deborah Estrin PRIVACY Limited Privacy Task Force activity took place in the month of October. The process of revising the draft Electronic Mail Privacy Enhancement RFC in response to discussion at the Sep- tember task force meeting began, as did the process of assem- bling minutes from that meeting. John Linn ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY No report received. SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING No report received. SECURITY No report received. TACTICAL INTERNET No report received. TESTING AND EVALUATION No report received. Westine [Page 11]