[IMR] IMR89-08.TXT AUGUST 1989 INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS ------------------------ The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations. This report is for research use only, and is not for public distribution. Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's activities. These reports should be submitted via network mail to Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET). TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7 Westine [Page 1]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 Internet Projects BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 17 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 19 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC, . . . . . . . . page 20 NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP NETWORK . page 23 PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 27 WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27 Westine [Page 2]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 IAB MESSAGE This is a report to the Internet community of recent decisions and initiatives taken by the Internet Activities Board (IAB). A. REORGANIZATION At its July 1989 meeting, the IAB reorganized itself and its task forces, with the aim of providing more effective and responsive leadership for the evolution of the Internet and its protocols. A.1 The IAB The Internet Activities Board (IAB) functions as a Board of Directors for the Internet. The IAB itself sets technical policy and standards for the Internet protocols and architecture, and the work of its two major task forces: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). In more detail, the IAB performs the following functions: * Sets Internet Standards. * Manages the RFC publication process. * Reviews the operation of the IETF and IRTF. * Performs strategic planning for the Internet, identifying long-range problems and opportunities. * Acts as external policy representative for the Internet community. * Resolves technical issues which cannot be treated within the IETF or IRTF frameworks. The IAB is an independent committee whose members generally share a long-term involvement in, and responsibility for, Internet design, engineering, and management. The IAB members were chosen for the specific roles they play ( e.g., the chairs of the IETF and IRTF), to reflect major interests in the Internet community (e.g, national network, vendor, government, and international groups), and for specific areas of expertise (e.g., security). They are deeply committed to making the Internet function effectively and to evolving the Internet to meet a large scale, high speed future. All IAB members are required to have at least one other major role in the Internet community in addition to their Westine [Page 3]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 IAB membership. The IAB chair serves for a period of two years. The current IAB chair is Vint Cerf of NRI (vcerf@NRI.Reston.VA.US). A.2 The IETF To help coordinate the operation and management of the Internet, the IAB established the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), with general responsibility for short- and mid-range architectural evolution and issues resolution required to make the Internet function effectively. IETF is a large open community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the Internet and the Internet protocol suite. The work of the IETF is governed by a board known as the Internet Engineering Steering Group, or IESG. The chairman of the IETF and of the IESG is Phill Gross of NRI (pgross@NRI.Reston.VA.US). A.3 The IRTF The previous research task forces have been renamed Research Groups (RG's), that collectively form the Internet Research Task Force or IRTF. The IRTF is a community of network researchers, generally with an Internet focus. The RG's typically have 10 to 20 members, and each covers a broad area of research, pursuing specific topics, determined at least in part by the interests of the members as well as recommendations from the IAB and IETF. The work of the IRTF is governed by the Internet Research Steering Group or IRSG. The chair of the IRTF and of the IRSG is Dave Clark of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (ddc@LCS.MIT.EDU). B. PROTOCOL STANDARDS B.1 IP Multicasting The IP multicasting architecture and the host/gateway interface defined in RFC-1054 were advanced to the state of a full Internet Standard with status Recommended. Vendors are urged to implement this interface in hosts as Westine [Page 4]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 soon as possible, in order to get the advantages of local network multicasting. Gateway-gateway routing protocols for Internet multicasting are still under development; when they are mature, the IAB intends to make them Recommended for gateways. B.2 Network Time Protocol (NTP) NTP has been advanced to the state of a full Internet standard, status Elective. An updated RFC replacing RFC- 1059 will be forthcoming. B.3 Common Management Information Protocol over TCP/IP (CMOT) CMOT, defined in RFC-1095, was advanced to the state of a Draft Internet Standard in April, 1989. C. Network Management For the past several years, a high priority IAB concern has been the development of protocols and tools for management of the Internet, especially fault diagnosis and performance monitoring. An ad hoc Network Management Review Committee met in February 1988, and its report led the IAB to adopt a strategy of SNMP as a short-term solution, CMOT as a long-term solution, and a common MIB to ease the transition from one to the other (see RFC-1052). When a second ad hoc Network Management Review Committee met recently to review progress (see RFC-1109), the situation had changed significantly. Commercial realities had forced the IAB to modify its strategy, accepting the long-term coexistence of SNMP and CMOT; in the end, we will have to let the market decide. Furthermore, the enforcement of a common MIB was constraining CMOT development from fully exploiting the capability of CMIP, and reducing the effectiveness of the Internet as a testbed for CMIP. Therefore, the IAB (reluctantly) agreed to relax the common-MIB requirement. While it is recognized that the resulting loss of uniformity may make life harder for network managers in the short term we believe that unconstrained development of management protocols and tools today will result in better management facilities in the future. D. Directory Services At the request of the FRICC for an initiative in the area of an Internet White Pages service, the IAB caused an hoc meeting Westine [Page 5]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 to be convened to "review current requirements and solutions for directory services" (RFC-1107). The conclusions from this meeting, which were published in RFC-1107, formed the basis for the strategy that the IAB adopted at its July 1989 meeting. The IAB's plan will be published soon. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS ------------------------- AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ------------------- No progress to report this month. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES ------------------- No progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) PRIVACY AND SECURITY -------------------- Due to the reorganization of the IAB and its task forces our group has been renamed the Privacy and Security Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force. Our charter has not changed as a result of this reorganization. The following New Request for Comments authored by members of this task force are now available in the online library at NIC.DDN.MIL. RFC 1113: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures; This RFC suggests a draft standard elective protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. This memo obsoletes RFC 989 and RFC 1040. Authored by John Linn. RFC 1114: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part II Certificate-Based Key Management; This RFC suggests a draft standard elective protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Westine [Page 6]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 Authored by Seve Kent and John Linn. RFC 1115: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part III Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers; This RFC suggests a draft standard elective protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvement. Definitions, references, and citations are provided for algorithms, usage modes, and associated identifiers used in RFC-1113 and RFC-1114 in support of privacy-enhanced electronic mail. Authored by John Linn. The workshop on the commercial version of the IP security option (IPSO) is chaired by Steve Kent and is held in conjunction with Interop 89 at Santa Clara, CA on October 6, 1989. Approximately ten participants have submitted position papers for distribution at the workshop. Several task force members are attending. The next meeting of the Privacy and Security Research Group will be at Hanover, NH this 24-26 October 1989 hosted by Matt Bishop of Dartmouth College. Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM) USER INTERFACE -------------- No report received. INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- 1. On Sept 6-8, the IETF Steering Group (IESG) held its initial meeting. The members of the IESG are: Phill Gross, NRI Craig Partridge, BBN Noel Chiappa, Consultant/Proteon Robert Hinden, BBN David Crocker, DEC Rob Hagens, University of Wisconsin Ross Callon, DEC Vint Cerf, NRI (IAB Chair, ex officio) Westine [Page 7]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 The goal was to begin planning a coordinated IETF agenda for protocol evolution in the Internet. Topics included: - Reviewing the IAB reorganization and the list of priority issues for Internet Evolution proposed during the July IAB meeting. - Discuss and agree on IETF charter, IETF Areas, and IESG organization (e.g., are other Areas needed?) - Take a critical view of how the Internet may evolve in 3-5 years based on: - Technology (faster local and metropolitan networks, more economic carrier tariffs, faster hosts and gateways) - New Service Requirements - Continued growth in attached networks - Agency Programs (e.g., FRICC activities and their impact on the Internet and IETF, particularly FRICC planning for the National Research and Education Network (NREN)) - Define specific tasks for IESG and Area directors (e.g. Plan for Internet evolution, OSI implementation plan, routing architecture, etc) - Begin defining IETF agenda and tasks for new Working Groups 2. The IESG and the IAB chair refined the IETF charter as follows: - Responsible for short- and mid-term evolution of Internet protocol architecture, with explicit role in Internet standards process - Focus for Internet operational stability - Technology Transfer from Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) - Forum for interchange between vendors, users, agency contractors, network managers, and researchers 3. It was decided that the proposed organization of topics and six technical areas be realigned into eight areas. Three new areas were added (see below) and the topics under the former User Services area were folded into Host Services. The new alignment, with the IESG members responsible for each area, is as follows: Westine [Page 8]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 - Technical Areas o Host-based Services (Transport and application infrastructure), Craig Partridge, BBN o Internet-based Services (IP and Internet infrastructure), Noel Chiappa, Consultant/Proteon o Routing (Internet routing protocols and routing architecture),Robert Hinden, BBN o Network Management (NM protocols, NM applications, NOC services), David Crocker, DEC o OSI Interoperability (Coexistance of OSI in Internet) Rob Hagens, University of Wisconsin,Ross Callon, DEC (New) o Applications (eg, Email, file transfer, directory services, etc), TBD o Security Services (eg, Authentication, access control, secure config. mgt.), TBD o Operations (at large position), TBD 4. Additional details from the meeting will be reported next month. 5. The Point-Point Protocol (PPP) WG held two video conferences in August. The document is now complete, and will be submitted to the RFC editor. There are already four implementations in progress (BSD unix, MS-DOS under the Karn package, 2 vendor). 6. The 2 Host Requirements documents have been submitted to the RFC editor. Phill Gross (pgross@nri.reston.va.us) Westine [Page 9]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BARRNET ------- No report received. BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK August was a busy month. Although the WPSs were very stable with only one minor problem with a hung interface, there were 4 line/modem outages, 1 gateway hardware failure, and 1 power outage. In addition, there were scheduled outages of the SRI and BBN gateways for upgrades, the RADC gateway for electrical work at RADC, and the overall network for a hardware and software upgrade to enhance performance. Current sites (going from east to west): BBN BBN WPS RADC NY WPS DARPA, NRL Washington WPS ISI LA WPS SRI SRI WPS Future installation work will include: Ft. Monmouth (NY WPS) -- The site at Ft. Monmouth will be connected to the NY WPS as soon as the tail circuit is available. The availability of on-site wiring is uncertain due to the telephone company strike. CMU (Pittsburgh WPS) -- Negotiations concerning on campus wiring at CMU are complete. POP wiring and tail circuit are estimated for September. POP equipment installation and wiring are being scheduled accordingly. NCSA (Chicago WPS) -- On 8/24-25, the gateway and the WPS were installed and the WPS was briefly checked out on the cross- country trunks. The Chicago WPS was then placed in failsafe loop to await completion of the tail circuit to NCSA. As of 8/31, the tail circuit has reportedly been finished, but we are awaiting installation of the dial-up phone line that will allow us to remotely control the WPS and check out the tail circuit. Westine [Page 10]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 The IETF Point-Point working group held two all-day meetings, on August 9 and August 31, using the terrestrial wideband video teleconferencing system. Both meetings were three-site conferences between BBN, DARPA, and SRI. The Open SPF IGP working group of the IETF held one all-day video teleconference meeting on August 14. This meeting was also a three-site conference held between BBN, DARPA and SRI. INTERNET R&D The Open Routing working group met jointly with ANTF and some guest members at the Stanford IETF. The meeting focused on points in the draft architecture that need to be elaborated and on useful experiments that can be started now. Also discussed were what needs to be done to bring this work before ANSI this fall. Marianne Lepp presented the architecture to the OSI working group. Work continues on fleshing out the architecture and the next level of the protocol. REAL-TIME MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING SYSTEM As part of the Real-time Multimedia Conferencing System project, BBN has developed a set of multimedia conferencing tools that include the basic conference daemon (which waits for requests to start a conference from some remote workstation), the conference manager (which manages multiple applications running on the workstation and handles all communication between workstations in the conference) and two initial applications. The first two applications released were "presenter" and "viewfile". Presenter is a tool that allows someone to create a computer controlled "slide show", where each slide is an arbitrary window-based application. Presenter controls switching between slides and provides an "overlay" mechanism that allows sketching over any application. Progress continues on Version 2 of the conferencing tools, scheduled for release in mid-September. Version 2 contains a number of enhancements to the existing conferencing tools as well as significant extensions to the set of tools that work under conferencing (and under presenter). Enhancements include: 1. Floor switching has been speeded up significantly. 2. Presenter has been extended to serve as a talk preparation as well as a talk presentation tool. Westine [Page 11]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 3. We have also demonstrated a version of conferencing working under the X window system. This includes X to X conferencing as well as X to Suntools conferencing. The X version is still in prototype form and will not be part of the 2.0 release. Version 2.0 will include a suite of new conferencing tools. These tools include: 1. Viewshell: a shared UNIX shelltool. 2. Sketch: a tool allowing the conferees to simultaneously develop a drawing at the same time, sending the drawing updates back and forth to each workstation rather than the primitive input events (mouse motions and keyboard input). 3. Xnavigate: an X-based application that runs on the Sun workstation but displays its screen on an associated Amiga personal computer with a videodisk player. The videodisk contains maps at various levels of detail and Xnavigate allows the user to click on the map to zoom in and out and move around the map. It also provides simple sketching facilities. 4. Vdp. Vdp is a videodisk controller that provides a window-based interface for controlling multiple videodisk players which are part of a conference. 5. Maptool. Maptool provides a graphical interface to the World Database II and allows the user to specify various types of projections and viewing locations and then generates the map as it would appear from that view. 6. Various other video-based tools. In addition, work continued this month on the Video Information Server and a suite of video tools for providing an application environment for accessing and manipulating video for presentation in a conference. We currently have an environment that includes several videodisk players, a optical videodisk recorder, a computer-controlled VCR, a framestore, cable TV tuners, as well as a 16 by 16 video switch. Access to the hardware is provided through an RPC-based switch that controls the various devices in an application-transparent manner, handling issues like access control, routing, and providing a transparent interface to accessing a particular device. Westine [Page 12]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 For more information about this project, please contact Terry Crowley (TCrowley@BBN.COM, 617-873-2677) Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM) CERFNET ------- Installations: During August three new sites were turned-up on CERFnet. The Claremont Colleges (Claremont Men's, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Pomona), the University of California Riverside (UCR) and the California State University SWRL facility. On August 14, the Claremont Colleges were turned-up on CERFnet at a speed of 56kilobits per second. Claremont are connected to CERFnet through the California Institute of Technology. Technical difficulties with a connector on the cisco gateway were encountered during the install but this did not delay Claremont's turn-up. On August 22, UCR was turned-up at a speed of 56 kilobits per second. UCR is connected to CERFnet through the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). UCR test equipment caused a few minor difficulties during the installation, but did not delay the turn- up. On August 30, the SWRL facility's 1.544 Megabit per second link to the University of California Irvine was turned-up. The install of this link was delayed for one month due to circuit troubles. The SWRL facility will provide the 19 California State University (CSU) campuses with high-speed access to CERFnet. The CSU campuses and Chancellor's Office are linked together via a X.25 wide area network. Network Performance: Throughput on the network is higher than July with the largest growth from University of California Los Angeles. Total throughput for July and August exceeded one hundred million packets. July/August Comparison of Packet Counts July August Packets In 25,804,071 101,839,672 Packets Out 20,665,739 76,831,293 Westine [Page 13]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 The University of California Irvine's cisco gateway is showing repeated errors on its Ethernet port. Testing is currently underway with the gateway to determine the problem. Two versions of the Simple Network Management Protocol were implemented on VETTE, a local Vaxstation running ULTRIX. One version is from CMU and the other from MIT. The MIT version is currently being used to monitor CERFnet. Scripts were written and are being used to simplify collection of statistics for biweekly and monthly reports. Other Activity: On August 22, CERFnet sponsored a seminar, "Network Security: What About It?" at SDSC. The seminar was instructed by Russell Brand of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. This seminar dealt with the issue of network security and how to prevent breeches of security as well how to deal with them. This seminar was rated by 80% of its participant as excellent, and good by the remaining 20%. The California Internet Federation meeting was attended by a CERFnet representative. Among the agenda items discussed was the possibility of a 1.544 Megabit DWR circuit between BARRnet of the Bay Area and CERFnet/Los Nettos. The August-September issue of "CERFnet News" was published and distributed. Electronic copies are available via anonymous ftp at sds.sdsc.edu in the sub-directory cerfnet_news. The filename is Aug-Sept89.txt. Hard copies are available by request to armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu. by Karen Armstrong CICNET ------- CICNet has been active in a variety of areas during the past month. These include the implementation of our formal Business Plan (Approved July 20, 1989), the turn-up of DECnet traffic over CICNet, the physical reconfiguartion of our backbone network to ensure greater facility survivability, and the establishment of a Video Applications Study Group. The Business Plan details the mission, strategies, tactics, and timetables for implementing CICNet as an effective midlevel network organization. Copies are available. Westine [Page 14]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 Due to CICNet proximity to several Department of Energy national laboratories, the accomodation of DECnet traffic, as well as TCP/IP, was thought to be important. Cathy Aronson, CICNet/MERIT has been primarily responsible for the successful turn-up of DECnet traffic over our backbone. The project is nearing completion with good results so far. MCI has agreed to reconfigure the CICNet backbone facilities, making them more geographically independent, and therefore less likely to be compromised by a single point of failure. The complete reconfiguration will be accomplished by fourth quarter, 1989. CICNet has formed a group to evaluate the various types of video applications and solutions that might be appropriate over our network. Participants from end users, networking groups, and vendors are expected. by Joel Maloff CORNELL ------- No progress to report this month. Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu) ISI --- INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT Bob Braden finished editing the two Host Requirements RFC's and submitted them to Jon Postel for publication. One RFC covers the transport layer and below, and the other covers application and support protocols; they are respectivey 115 and 97 pages in length. Jon Postel participated in ACT ONE at UCLA, 17-18 August. Jon Postel hosted a Calinet meeting at ISI, August 16. Nine RFCs were published this month. RFC 1109: Cerf, V., "Report of the Second Ad Hoc Network Management Review Group", NRI, August 1989. RFC 1110: McKenzie, A., "A Problem with the TCP Big Window Option", BBN STC, August 1989. Westine [Page 15]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 RFC 1111: Postel, J., "Request for Comments on Request for Comments, Instructions to RFC Authors", ISI, August 1989. RFC 1112: Deering, S., "Host Extensions for IP Multicasting", Stanford University, August 1989. RFC 1113: Linn, J. (DEC), IAB Privacy Task Force, "Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I -- Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures", August 1989. RFC 1114: Kent, S. (BBNCC), J. Linn (DEC), IAB Privacy Task Force, "Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part II -- Certificate-Based Key Management", August 1989. RFC 1115: Linn, J. (DEC), IAB Privacy Task Force, "Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part III-- Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers", August 1989. RFC 1116: Borman, D. (Cray), Internet Engineering Task Force, "Telnet Linemode Option", August 1989. RFC 1117: Romano, S., M. Stahl, M. Recker, "Internet Numbers", SRI-NIC, August 1989. Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT We are enhancing the packet video system to accommodate video codecs other than the Concept Communications Image 30 which has been used until now. In September we will conduct a parallel demonstration of CLI, PictureTel and VideoTelecom codecs between the ISI and DARPA sites. To accommodate these codecs, we have developed serial line protocol conversion software on a coprocessor board for the PC with four high-speed ports, and have adapted the packet video program, PVP, to handle the various frame (packet) sizes for the different codecs. PVP now automatically refreshes the images of all conference participants upon the addition of each new participant to the conference. This is to "paint" a complete image of new participants rather than have images "build" as motion occurs in parts of the scene. Similarly, PVP requests refreshes if it Westine [Page 16]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 detects any missing video segments. This is to remove any image anomalies which may occur due to the missing data. Testing of MBFTPTOOL in the conferencing environment continued. A mechanism for submitting file transfers to take place at a later time, as in BFTPTOOL, was added to the MBFTPTOOL. This feature allows the user to specify the maximum number of transfer attempts that will be made and the results message be sent to a user other than the user currently logged on. A new version of the BFTP source code, including the MBFTPTOOL, is now available via anonymous FTP. The compressed tar-file, "BFTP.210.tar.Z", may be found in the "pub/" directory on "venera.isi.edu". Eve Schooler attended the Groupware Technology Workshop at Xerox PARC. Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler (casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU) FAST PARTS No progress to report this month. Paula Caruso and Alan Katz (CARUSO@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU) JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK --------------------------------------------- No report received. LOS NETTOS ---------- IBM LA Scientific Center was brought online August 21st. A line from Rand to IBM and one from TIS to IBM were brought up. This completed a second loop in Los Nettos and adds a second connection for both TIS and Rand. Our design goal is to keep stub network connections to a minimum. We have had a few outages recently due to link failures and configuration changes. No one has noticed the outage because of the robust topology. We have reached 50 entries in our cisco routing filter list. This is the maximum cisco supports with 7.1 firmware. This filter list is used to explicitly restrict the routes advertised to the ARPANET. We must now come up with a new scheme to make sure only Westine [Page 17]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 Los Nettos and CERFnet routes are advertised to the ARPANET core. ISI hosted the Calinet meeting on August 16. Discussion was based on how a north/south link could be used. Sophisticated routing technology must be used at both ends of this link, in order to effectively and safely use this backdoor link between BARRnet and Los Nettos/CERFnet. Current and future routing technology was also discussed as possible solution to this routing challenge. CALREN, a proposed California wide network, and how it would serve as an educational and research network was also discussed. Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MERIT/UMNET ----------- No report received. MIDNET ------ No report received. MIT-LCS ------- No report received. MITRE Corporation ----------------- No report received. MRNET ----- The first MRNet "Internetworking with TCP/IP" seminar was delivered August 31. The seminar was a tremendous success. Over 120 people from throughout the state attended. Jeff Wabik, MRNet Technical Committee Chair, coordinated the seminar. Craig Finseth, Minnesota Supercomputer Center, and Stuart Levy, University of Minnesota, worked with Jeff to develop and deliver the seminar. Jeff, Craig, and Stuart deserve commendation for the tremendous effort they put forth to create this seminar. An MRNet General Meeting was held August 31. During the meeting three new members were accepted: Westine [Page 18]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 o Supercomputer Systems Engineering and Services Co (SSESCO) - a company founded by Neil Lincoln to provide supercomputer services. o Unified Communications, Inc (UCI) - a Minnesota company providing data communications solutions for system interconnectivity. UCI is active in CCITT, ISO, and COS standards activities. They are also bidding on OSI migration contracts. o Apollo Computer - the Minneapolis sales office of Apollo Computer MRNet annual dues were doubled to $1,000/year. Nonetheless, it was generally recognized that this increase is only a partial step towards fully funding MRNet. MRNet and MSC look forward to hosting FARnet September 11 and 12. by Tim Salo NCAR/USAN --------- No report received. NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK ----------------------------------------- NEARnet added Worcester Polytechnic Institute during August. Equipment upgrades significantly improved performance of the JVNCnet T-1 link, making the connection to the NSFNET much more stable. The first NEARnet newsletter was distributed during the month. NEARnet's first user conference will be held September 21 at BBN in Cambridge, MA. Both technical and user information sessions will follow a general information session. If you would like copies of the newsletter or information regarding the user conference please send a note to ddoyle@bbn.com. by John Rugo Westine [Page 19]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., ---------------------------------------- The NNSC distributed the 6th issue of the NSF Network News and published Chapters 5 and 6 of the Internet Resource Guide. Requests for copies or information about publications should be directed to nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net. by Karen Roubicek NORTHWESTNET ------------ The NorthWestNet 2nd annual meeting will be held in Boulder, Colorado October 30 through September 1. The meeting will be focused on the theme "Building An NSF Regional Network with Capacity: The Delivery of Value Added Services". It will provide tracks for vice-presidents, technical support, user services, and researchers. Contact Eric Hood (ocdeh@mtsunix1.bitnet) for details. Membership policies are being reviewed and revised. University nodes are encouraged to connect research affiliates or research parks to NorthWestNet via their LAN's, universisty nodes may and connect other institutions to NorthWestNet via their LANs, and finally, a subcommittee of the Directors is working on a revised membership fee schedule to better accommodate small colleges and small businesses. There has been some discussion about trying to charge connection fees on the basis of anticipated volume of traffic. Western Washington University, and Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory have been accepted as new members. We anticipate several new members in the near future. The technical committee elected Eric Hood of Montana State University as chair and Lynn Cannon of Washington State University as vice-chair. An DECnet outage of long duration occured on the NorthWestNet backbone. Normal operational procedures by Boeing failed to correct this problem until approximately 24 hours after it was reported. by Dale Smith Westine [Page 20]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 NSF BACKBONE (Merit) ------------------- Development of Border Gateway Protocol During August work continued on testing Border Gateway Protocol implementations between gated, Cisco and NSS routers on the NSFNET research network. A BGP workshop was held in Ann Arbor on August 21 and those attending represented a subset of the IETF Interconnectivity Working Group. Remaining BGP issues on the agenda included a follow-up RFC on BGP applications. Additionally, work is going on to develop deployment plans for BGP. RFP for New NSFNET Nodes Now Available The National Science Foundation has issued a solicitation for proposals from organizations interested in becoming nodes on the NSFNET backbone. These proposals are due to NSF by October 2, 1989, with implementation expected to begin in early 1990. The NSF expects to add up to eight new nodes to the T1 backbone under this program. The new sites will augment the existing thirteen backbone nodes which connect mid-level (regional or super-consortium) networks to the NSFNET backbone and, in turn, to the Internet. The third-level (campus or local) networks, connect to the mid-levels and range in size from a statewide network serving multiple organizations to a local-area network within a single university's engineering department. Organizations which are eligible for access to the NSFNET through the mid-level networks include colleges and universities, as well as government, not-for-profit, and for-profit research and educational institutions. Because of the critical role mid-level sites play in assuring a highly reliable service to users, several operational requirements must be met for a proposed site to be considered as a new node location. Qualified technical and engineering staff are also needed at node sites to coordinate installation and operation as well as to provide support for the local organizations connecting to the Internet through the node. Details of these requirements are described in the solicitation as is information on associated costs. The proposals submitted will be evaluated under the administration of the Division of Networking and Communications Research (DNCRI) Westine [Page 21]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 of the National Science Foundation. Awards are expected to be announced around December 31, 1989. Copies of the complete solicitation are available from the National Science Foundation; contact Jane Caviness, Acting NSFNET Program Director, or Daniel J. VanBelleghem, Associate NSFNET Program Director, at (202) 357-9717 or by electronic mail (jcavines@nsf.gov or dvanbell@nsf.gov) for additional information. "Connecting to the Rest of the World" Seminar held in Denver Denver, Colorado was the site of "From the Campus to National Networking: Connecting to the Rest of the World," on July 27th and 28th. Presented by Merit/NSFNET staff and national and regional experts in networking, this seminar was part of Merit's continuing outreach to representatives from diverse computing backgrounds and facilities which would benefit from a national networking initiative. Presentations included a down-to-earth discussion of Internet technology and protocols, architecture and current statistics of the NSFNET backbone, getting connected through mid- level networks, and personnel and technical issues of maintaining a network operations center. Other informative topics were "National Science Foundation Perspectives" which included the How-to's of proposals and funding. In addition, Ginger Caldwell and NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) staff conducted a tour of their supercomputer facility at the Mesa Laboratory. Future seminars on internetworking to be presented by Merit/ NSFNET will be announced in this publication. Advanced Topics Seminar Merit/NSFNET sponsored a second Advanced Topics seminar for regional/technical representatives of the 13 backbone nodes on August 22 and 23 in Ann Arbor. Attendees participated in discussions of current networking issues and heard a number of presentations: Albert Ng, NSFNET Project Manager at MCI, spoke on Telecommunications (T1, Digital Reconfiguration Service); Dave Piscitello of Bellcore spoke on Switched Multi-Megabit Data Service (SMDS), and Jacob Rekter (IBM-Yorktown) and Jessica Yu (Merit/NSFNET) gave a joint presentation on Border Gateway Protocol. by Patricia G. Smith (patricia_g._smith@um.cc.umich.edu) Westine [Page 22]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 NTA-RE and NDRE --------------- No report received. NYSERNET -------- No report received. OARNET ------ No report received. Pennsylvania Research and Economic Partnership Network ------------------------------------------------------ The University of Pennsylvania library catalog is now accessible via PREPnet. To use it, emulate a VT100 terminal and telnet to PENNLIB.UPENN.EDU. The Pennsylvania State University is now providing Internet access to its library's on-line card catalog system (LIAS), a database of agricultural information (PENpages), an electronic bulletin board about Penn State (EBB), and a database of statistical information about Pennsylvania (EDIN). These applications are all available through PREPnet. To telnet to them, use the following: LIAS - LIAS.PSU.EDU EBB - (includes EDIN) PSUVM.PSU.EDU (3270 emulation) CAC3270.PSU.EDU (VT100 emulation) PENpages - PSUPEN.PSU.EDU (The required emulation is VT100. After the telnet session is established you will be prompted for a username. Enter PNONPA in response to this prompt). Tom Cummings (tc1r@andrew.cmu.edu) Westine [Page 23]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------- No report received. SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ No report received. SESQUINET --------- No report received. SRI ---- DDN NIC The NIC assigned 88 new government-sponsored (connected) IP network numbers in August, which brings the total number up to 1,813. The grand total of all network assignments, including both connected and nonconnected, is now 3,019. Also, in August we assigned 138 new Autonomous System numbers (ASNs); the total number of ASNs currently assigned is 515. Over the past 6 months, the NIC has been registering an average of 50 domains per month. There are currently a total of 1,074 domains registered including 43 top-level domains, 999 second-level domains, and 32 third-level MIL domains. Mary Stahl (Stahl@NISC.SRI.COM) Internet Research J.J. Garcia-Luna published an article on loop-free internet routing in ConneXions (Vol. 3, No. 8) entitled "Loop-Free Internet Routing and Related Issues." The article presents an approach for the dynamic computation of shortest paths that is applicable to both distance vectors and link states. A distributed algorithm that provides loop-free paths at every instant is briefly described. The approach described in the article treats the problem of distributed shortest-path routing as one of diffusing computations, which was first proposed by Dijkstra and Scholten. Jose Garcia-Luna (Joaquin@NISC.SRI.COM) Westine [Page 24]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 SURANET ------- SURAnet continues to increase in the number of sites connected and in the number of networks advertised to the NSFnet. At present there are 65 sites online and 88 networks are being advertised to the NSFnet. The current list of sites and networks can be obtained via anonymous FTP from noc.sura.net, password guest, cd pub. File name is "online". by Jack Hahn (hahn@umd5.umd.edu) TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK ------------------------------ No report received. UCL ---- 1. UCL presented a paper at a RACE workshop in August on the application of Neural Computing techniques to network topology and routing optimization problems. 2. A large scale parallel network simulation, monitoring and control system has been completed. Currently, we are using it to study real time traffic correllation problems. The system runs on a number of IBM RT/PCs and Sun workstations, and includes a low level node simulation, a network simulator and an Analysis and Response process, coordinated by a central pacemaker (logical clocking) process. It is written in Objective C and Pascal. Results have been obtained for correlated video streams in an 8 node 300 Mbps broadband network. [Detailed simlation of 100 msecs of real time takes approximately 8 minutes on 1 RT plus 1 Sun). John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK) Westine [Page 25]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Paul Schragger is working on a scheduling simulator tool for our gigabit network effort. The tool now produces candidate route schedules and soon is to produce link schedules. Mike Minnich continues to experiment with the Jain-Ramakrishnan and other fair-queueing algorithms modified for distributed control. Mike Davis is nearing completion of a wire-walker program which synthesizes routing tables using SNMP data. Mark Shaw and Stefan Levie completed a preliminary hardware and software design for a PC-based implementation of NTP. Ken Monington completed construction of two precision oven- compensated quartz timebases for the fuzzballs. Dave Mills is working on time transfer, authentication and high-speed routing. 2. A massive two-week experiment involving over 100,000 hosts, as revealed in Mark Lottor's domain-name file and other information, was conducted to evaluate the penetration of synchronized clock service in the Internet and to determine accuracy using three time protocols, ICMP Timestamp, UDP/TIME and UDP/NTP. This experiment is an update of others conducted in early 1988 and in 1986. The results show that, of the 94,260 distinct hosts surveyed, 8455 support at least one of these protocols and 946 are synchronized to national time standards by NTP. Probability distribution functions obtained with all three protocols reveal disappointing accuracies for ICMP and TIME, with 10% of the total responses off more than an hour and 1% off more than a day. NTP accuracies over all paths ranging from Australia to Norway was within 50 ms for all but 10% percent of the responses and five seconds for all but a few apparently broken hosts. NTP accuracies between radio-synchronized primary servers was usually within a few milliseconds and always within 50 ms for all responses on selected paths involving the NSF backbone and regional nets. Further details will appear in a report now in preparation. 3. A precision timebase has been connected to the Backroom fuzzball. Preliminary tests confirm our previous suspicion that the limitations in timekeeping accuracy with NTP are the radio clock, not the timebase. Sources of error up to two milliseconds, as determined by ionospheric ray-tracing methods, include variations in ionospheric height and ray mode on various frequencies throughout the day, and were confirmed using an oscilloscope and communications receiver. The results show room for minor improvement in the local-oscillator design Westine [Page 26]  Internet Monthly Report August 1989 suggested for use in NTP. 4. After an extensive investigation, it appears that the curious 90-ms time offset noted in Scandinavian clocks has been traced to a previously unsuspected asymmetric path under the Atlantic. Another curiosity involving low-level packet duplication on NSF backbone paths was confirmed using fuzzballs co-located at the NSS sites and appears to originate within the NSS itself. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET -------------------------------------------------- No report received. WESTNET -------- 1. Carol Ward attended the NSFNET Advanced Topics Seminar of MERIT. 2. The Westnet Steering Committee met on August 11, 1989 at the University of Denver. Plans were covered for operation during FY'90. A subcommittee was appointed to address the partitioning of expenses to the nodes upon devolution of NSF funding upon the region. 3. We have been experiencing trouble on our only T-1 line, between the University of Colorado at Boulder and NCAR. We see frequent rebooting of the cisco's, and a wide variety of error diagnostics. We are using Dowty CSU's and the "old" cisco T-1 cards. We would appreciate hearing if anyone else has experienced similar problems. by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu) Carol Ward (cward@spot.colorado.edu)