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