[IMR] IMR90-12.TXT DECEMBER 1990 INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS ------------------------ The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations. This report is for Internet information purposes only, and is not to be quoted in other publications without permission from the submitter. Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's activities. These reports should be submitted via network mail to Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET). TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 Westine [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 Internet Projects BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 CREN/CSNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 FARNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 18 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 19 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 NTA-RD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 Westine [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 IAB MESSAGE A. Welcome to a New Member The IAB and the IETF are endeavoring to respond to the new reality of a world-wide Internet, by promoting and faciliting international participation in our work. As reported previously (see the October 1990 IAB Report), the IAB has therefore determined to expand its membership to include technical experts from other countries. We are pleased to announce that Christian Huitema of INRIA, France, has become an IAB member. B. Meeting The IAB held a two-day meeting at ISI on January 8-9, 1990. The members of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) were also in attendance, as was Ira Richer representing the Federal Neworking Council. A report on this meeting will be presented next month, and the minutes will be made available for anonymous FTP. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS ------------------------- AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ------------------- No activities to report this month. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES ------------------- No progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) Westine [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 PRIVACY AND SECURITY -------------------- The PSRG has been mostly occupied with matters pertaining to Internet Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM). In fact, participating in voluminous public discussion on the "PEM-Dev@TIS.COM" mailing list has left us almost too whacked out do much else. Nonetheless, there has been progress on the front of beta testing PEM implementations (TIS and participants) and development of ancillary software for certificate-issuing organizations and a Certificate Postage Meter (BBN). The development schedule, which is now revisited (sort of) biweekly, calls for spring general availability of the reference implementation, and an end-of-January re-issue (as drafts) of revised PEM RFCs (1113-15 plus a couple others -- editors are Balenson, Kaliski, Kent, Linn and Rossen). We have also not been quite so exhausted that we couldn't plan a next meeting of the RG. It will be at Xerox in Pasadena, CA, February 12-15. Ken Rossen (kenr@BBN.COM) INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- 1. User Services Area Report (Joyce K. Reynolds) User-Doc WG - RFC Publication - August 1990 Chaired by Karen Roubicek and Tracy LaQuey The User-Doc Bibliography was published as RFC 1175, FYI 3, last August 1990. User-Doc Bibliography revisions will begin in the Summer, 1991. NOCTOOLS - "Son of RFC 1147" Chaired by Bob Stine Bob Stine has announced the start up of the revision of the NOCTools document, and is actively collecting submissions for a "Son of RFC 1147". Westine [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 NISI - Reassessment of NISI - direction and focus Chaired by Dana Sitzler NISI's members reassessed its intent and focus, and decided that the first step in defining a network information services infrastructure is to define what a NIC is and the function it performs. This ensures some minimum level of service from NICs in the community. The next procedure is to establish some guidelines for sharing information between NICs. The group agreed to take the current, existing draft guidelines document and expand it to more accurately define and describe a NIC. The information about existing NICs (discussed at NISI's first meeting) will also be incorporated. This includes defining the audience. The stated audience will include existing NICs, people wanting to start NICs, NOCs, and funding agencies. The stated purpose of the document is to establish a base set of requirements for establishing services and to assist those considering implementing a new NIC. The ultimate goal is to make it easier for users to get information from NICs. SSPHWG - Security Area/User Services Area combined efforts Chaired by J. Paul Holbrook and Joyce K. Reynolds This session of the SSPHWG was fully devoted to going through the current draft of the Handbook, with the intent of finalizing the document in preparation for submission to the IETF Internet-Drafts process. Discussion also focused on ways to "beta test" the document (i.e., who can we give it to, who can review that is actually in the position of having to implement site security policies). USWG - running at its peak Chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds Agenda items included: QUAIL - presented by Gary Malkin "FYI on Questions and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked "New Internet User" Questions" was published as RFC 1177, FYI 4, last August 1990. This RFC FYI is the first in a Westine [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 collection of FYI's called, "Questions and Answers" (Q/A) produced by the User Services Area of the IETF. The goal of this series is to document the most commonly asked questions and answers in the Internet. An update to this memo was produced and discussed on the User Services mailing list, and at this User Services session last Tuesday, December 4th. An additional FYI Q/A draft entitled, "FYI on Questions and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked "Experienced Internet User" Questions" was produced and discussed, that deal with intermediate and advanced Q/A topics. Installation Checklist - presented by Bob Enger An installation checklist for the Internet is being written by the User Services Area that is intended to be of use to people of all levels; new, intermediate, and advanced. It is general in nature for new and intermediate users, yet advanced users should find it an effective compilation of important information for the Internet community. An outline and sketchy rough draft was presented by Bob Enger at the UBC IETF, with discussions and suggestions for the checklist noted. Research and discussions have taken place, with additional writing to continue, and the next pass draft of the checklist will be presented at the next IETF in St. Louis. New Working Group - Internet User Glossary Working Group (userglos) A new working group was announced at this IETF, User-Gloss, with Karen Roubicek as its Chair. The User-Gloss Working Group is chartered to create an Internet glossary of networking terms and acronyms for the Internet community. 2. Network Management Area (J. Davin) Area Summary Among the items of outstanding business in the Network Management area, a number were resolved at the December IETF meeting. Uncertainty about the possible disposition of the Lan Manager MIB was resolved by a consensus within the IESG that standardization of Westine [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 some version of its work is a legitimate option for the IETF Lan Manager Working Group to consider. Accordingly, the working group may now proceed to identify a final version of its work and assess the need for its standardization. The SNMP MIB 2 effort took a major step forward with the unanimous recommendation of the SNMP Working Group that MIB 2 be advanced to Draft Standard status. IESG recommendation for this advancement was announced during the meeting. The experience of the Alert Management Working Group will be captured by publication of two RFC documents describing the theory, methods, and observations that resulted from its study of both architectural and congestive problems. Minor editing of the final document text by the working group chair will conclude this effort. Among the new business at the December meeting was the organization of the SNMP Network Management Directorate. The Directorate is the board that oversees the evolution of the Internet Standard management framework and functions as a ``custodian of the architecture.'' It assures that the activities of the various MIB Working Groups within the NM Area are in concert both with one another and with the requirements of the management architecture. To this end, it reviews the output of MIB WGs for quality and consistency. The Directorate is also charged with formulating and deliberating all changes or extensions to the standard management framework as these may be required. Its membership (appointed jointly by the Director and the IETF Chair) is as follows: T. Brunner, Bellcore J. Case, UTK J. Davin, MIT F. Kastenholz, Racal-Interlan K. McCloghrie, HLS D. Perkins, 3Com M. Rose, PSI S. Waldbusser, CMU S. Willis, Wellfleet Communications In connection with its first meeting, the Directorate addressed a range of concerns. Owing to limitations of time and the large backlog of pending MIB specifications, not all issues warranting Directorate attention could be conclusively discussed at this meeting. Westine [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 - The Directorate discussed its own administrative procedures. - The Directorate spent considerable time reviewing a number of pending MIB documents and architectural issues related thereto. - In discussion of the process by which MIBs are developed, the Directorate drew two conclusions that were reported to the IESG: o The community could draw greater benefit than it now does from MIB implementation experience if OBJECT IDENTIFIERs in the standard MIB portion of the registration hierarchy were assigned earlier in the standardization process than they now are. o Because the process of MIB development outlined in the IAB policy statement of RFC 1109 has served the community extremely well in meeting its operational needs, that process should be pursued without major change for the forseeable future. As part of the ongoing business of the the Network Management area, a number of currently active working groups met. Some highlights of these working group efforts are presented below. More detailed accounts of working group activities are presented in the the minutes of the relevant working group meeting. The Remote LAN Monitoring MIB and Internet Accounting Working Groups both met during the meeting. The chairs of these working groups have undertaken to coordinate their efforts with the Operational Statistics effort, so that instrumentation needed in any of these contexts is provided in a non-redundant manner. In a similar vein, the efforts of the DECNet Phase IV MIB Working Group will be coordinated with the development of transmission layer MIBs in other working groups so as to preclude duplicate instrumentation. The OIM Working Group discussed three issues at its recent meeting. First, the working group reviewed the text of RFC 1189 and realized near consensus on a proposal to replace the definition of the protocol stack over which the CMIP operates. Second, the working group discussed the text of the OIM MIB 2 specification. Third, the working group concluded that the current IAB policy on the alignment of MIB development efforts (RFC 1109) may need revisiting in order to minimize effort expended by cognate MIB development. Significant progress was made in discussions in the Character MIB and Bridge MIB Working Groups. In the former, three new internet drafts were considered; in the latter, multiple document drafts have converged to a single version, and spirited discussion of technical issues continues. Discussion in the FDDI MIB Working Westine [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 group neared closure: alignment of the FDDI MIB with certain aspects of the Interface Extensions MIB is the principal remaining issue, and the working group opted for its resolution in mailing list discussion. The SNMP Working Group meeting resulted in unanimous working group recommendations on the disposition of a number of outstanding MIB efforts. As mentioned above, the SNMP MIB 2 was recommended for advancement to Draft Standard status. The 802.4 MIB, 802.5 MIB, DS1 MIB, DS3 MIB, and Concise MIB Definitions documents were all recommended for advancement to Proposed Standard Status. Owing to the conclusion of much of the work for which the Transmission MIB Working Group was orginally chartered, this group is now disbanded. Any outstanding issues or subsequent discussion of these MIBs will be conducted within the SNMP Working Group. 3. Internet Services (Nel Chiappa) Most of the activity to report in this area happened at the IETF meeting in Boulder. Eight working groups met, and have a fair amount to report. The IP over Appletalk WG had a final reading of the 'IP over Appletalk' and 'Appletalk MIB' documents. (The latter is for use by Appletalk native devices as well as IP/Appletalk routers.) It also held a technical review of the latest version of the 'Appletalk over IP Tunneling' document, which has also been discussed at two meetings since the last IETF meeting. One more meeting to discusss the latter document is planned before the next IETF. The Point to Point WG met briefly and reviewed the status of all in progress documents. Little has happened since the last IETF in this area, so an activity will be organized to get these documents completed and out. The issue of Frame Relay was also discussed, but due the lack of participation from the Frame Relay community nothing could be achieved. The IP over SMDS WG met and reviewed the final draft of their RFC, making wording and presentation but no substantive changes. It also reviewed the presentation for the IETF Plenary. Since the RFC completely handles small deployments, and since the problems of large WAN networks have been centralized in the IP over Large PDN WG, this WG has no further tasks and wound up. The IP over FDDI WG met and reviewed a presentation on the lastest version of EARP. (This is for use on dual rings with dual MAC stations. Single MAC stations are done.) A new version of the EARP document was also available, but it was not reviewed in detail. The Westine [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 companion document, which details the various operating models that exist, and discussses the pros and cons of each, and why EARP is necessary, is in progress but not completed yet. The Router Requirements WG went through the latest draft in detail, reviewing the technical content of the draft text, (over 100 pages at this point) prepared by legions of dedicated authors. A few missing sections were identified, and volunteers to prepare them all were found. The chair met with the Security AD to commence a review from that angle. The Link Layer document (which is split off from this and Host Requirements as a common document) is on hold until the main document is done. A separate document on the subject of routing pruning, prepared by the chair, was also reviewed. Routing pruning (i.e. which route to prefer when two routes are available which are superior in two orthagonal ways) turned out to be a difficult subject at the last meeting, and although the problem is better described now, no final choice as to the preferred algorithm has been made. A single algorithm must be operating all across each routing domain, otherwise routing loops may develop. Finally, discussion was held on a number of technical hot spots. Among them were fragmentation (should the smallest fragment be required to be first, for hosts with poor network interface hardware), routing protocols (should one be required, and if so, which; for more details see the section on IESG actions, below), operation features (should management controls be part of an interoperation specification), broadcast forwarding controls, and TOS (would the routing protocols allow more than one bit to be on at once, and if so, what did it mean). Finally, in the TOS discussion, it was suggested that an extra TOS bit, 'cost', be allocated. The Multi-Media Bridges WG held its organizational meeting. It discussed the charter, and also the issue of interactions with the 802.1(D) group. A presentation was given on the architecture of the 802.1(D) bridge, for those who were not familiar with it, as well as the relevant RFC's (1042, 1188, 1191, etc) for those who were not familiar with them. Finally, it reviewed the solutions to the problems of multi-media bridges already put forth in the market, and the problems caused by those solutions. The Dynamic Host WG narrowed its scope in order to make progress. The problem has now been defined in two parts, host to server communtication and coordination among replicated servers. The first part was discussed, and protocols and algorithms agreed to. These will be written up, and an Internet Draft will be available by the Westine [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 next IETF. Also, volunteers to implement them for experimentation were found. Some proposals were reviewed for the second part, but further study is needed. The Connection Oriented IP WG met, and as the ST2 specification is finished and out (as an Experiment Protocol, RFC 1190), discussed longer term technical issues such as resource management. It was agreed to coordinate work on ST2 with other applicable work such as Lixia Zhang's Flow Protocol and also McHip. At the IESG meeting in Boulder, a number of topics relevant to this area were reviewed, and results are available. Interaction between the MMB WG and 802.1(D) was deemed very useful. The proposal of the IP-FDDI WG to have an Extended ARP to handle multi-rail and multi-interface situations was mentioned, to alert the community that this action was being contemplated. The issue of authentication for the Router Discovery mechanism was discussed. No mechanism is currently proposed (although the packet format allows for one to be added), and it is a difficult technical problem since the transaction is so short. It was decided that as long as the text contained some discussion of authentication, and pointed out that no authentication is currently included, the document can go to Proposed Standard. The Security AD will investigate, and a mechanism should be available before the document progresses further. Two new WG's, IP over Frame Relay and IP over ISDN, will be organized. Both will concentrate on designing the framing for use of IP over these media, as well as specifying operation on small networks. The IPLPDN WG will be handling operation on large networks. A FR group is being set up since the consensus of the people with detail knowledge of FR was that the entire PPP protocol (which was proposed as a potential method for use of FR) was unnecessarily duplicative of mechanisms already present in the basic FR. The RR WG had requested that an extra TOS bit be allocated to use as a cost bit. (The Host Requirements document calls for a 5 bit TOS field, but only three bits are actually defined.) It was agreed that this sounded good, but a more detailed proposal, with a complete TOS mechanism, was needed before final action could be taken. The RR WG had also, after some acrimonious debate, referred the problem of chosing a standard IGP to the IESG, where further acrimonious debate ensued. Westine [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 Some felt that sufficient experience had been gained with OSPF to make a decision (as called for by the IETF at the Florida IETF). People with OSPF experience unanimously felt that enough experience had been gained; the majority of the WG did not have enough knowledge to have an opinion, however. Concerns were expressed that the existing experience was deficient in three ways; there was no very large deployment (hundreds of routers), there was no multi- vendor experience, and no experience with large numbers of areas. As to the actual protocol, the majority of attendees did want to make a recommendation to the IESG, in an attempt to get a decision made. There was general agreement that the only two viable alternatives were OSPF and Dual IS-IS. By a bare majority, OSPF was preferred, although the second preference was to require both. Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US) Westine [Page 12] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BARRNET ------- Three new 56 kbps connections were made in December. The first trial of BARRNet's new SLIP service offering 38.4 kbps over a 56 kbps digital ADN circuit was also implemented in December, with evaluation taking place over the coming weeks before the service is offered on a production basis. The total number of connected members is now 65, with at least eight new connections expected in January. Installation of the new T3 microwave equipment and NSS at Stanford has been completed, and the microwave link connecting Stanford to MCI's Hayward POP is operational, but the BARRNet Ethernet has not yet been connected to the new NSS and no packets are passing over the link. The new NSS is expected to become fully operational in the coming month. Paul Baer (baer@jessica.stanford.edu) BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- Terrestrial Wideband Network (TWBNet) and ST/IP Gateway Work progressed steadily on the new "southern loop" to be added to the TWBNet. A Wideband Packet Switch (WPS) was installed in Mobile and connected to the Boston WPS. Then the Ft. Rucker site was rehomed to this new node. The next steps will be to install a WPS at Albuquerque, connect up a gateway at Los Alamos National Lab, and set up a circuit between the Albuquerque WPS and the Los Angeles WPS. The addition of this southern path will provide added robustness in the form of an alternate route between the east and west coasts and will also allow shorter tail circuits to Southern sites. Allowing for the holiday season, video conferencing usage was reasonably high. There were a total of seven video conferences and demonstrations in December. Of these, two were 3-site connections and five were 2-site conferences. Conferences were held for discussions in the following areas: IETF Autonomous Networks Research Group, Dartnet experimenters, and Discussions of a plan for personal conferencing. Conferees included Ira Richer, Jon Postel, and Danny Cohen. Westine [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 A video conference suite was installed at Ft. Leavenworth and the ST gateway, previously used only for Simnet exercises, was upgraded to handle video conferencing as well. Also, an ST gateway was installed at ETL, in Ft. Belvoir, VA. This will be used for Simnet support. Both of these new installations were tested successfully. Inter-Domain Policy Routing The IDPR working group met for three days during the December IETF. The first day consisted of a tutorial on the architecture, protocols, and prototype implementation. During the next two days, we discussed the work we would pursue for the new year. This included work that must be done to prepare the prototype for introduction into the IETF standards process, as well as research-oriented extensions of and enhancements to the existing IDPR protocols, for example, adding multicast and multipath facilities. For a complete list of the activities, please subscribe to the IDPR mailing list, idpr- wg@bbn.com. During December, the IDPR developers did some work on the prototype, but with people away on holiday or sitting for exams, we didn't really have a full month. It appears that BBN's participation in DARTNET will become active in January. We can then start our experiments in earnest. INTERNET O&M / ICBNET INFRASTRUCTURE The TWBNet gateways at Ft. Monmouth and CMU were upgraded with new software configurations to handle the increased number of buffers needed to hold an EGP NR update. The last phase of lab testing was completed for new software which would allow the Butterfly gateways to handle a wider range of EGP routing update sizes for different Butterfly configurations. Testing of dial-in capability for the standard Internet Butterfly gateway was completed. Preparations were made to join DARTNET to the TWBNet at BBN. ESNET is now peering with the TWBNet. The routing is set up so that the primary path to the TWBnet networks is via UMD and the secondary path to the TWBnet networks is via AMES. The secondary path will be used if the primary path is unavailable. This scheme provides ESnet sites better connectivity to the UK and other Westine [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 foreign networks imported by TWBnet, without seriously impacting the connectivity to TWBnet's US networks. ESnet is accepting 22 networks from TWBnet, 17 of them are foreign networks. Jil Westcott (Westcott@BBN.COM) CICNET ------- During December, 1990 Pennsylvania State University became CICNet's newest affiliate member. Also, effective Dec. 1 John Hankins was appointed by the CICNet Board of Directors to the position of Interim Executive Director. A national search for a permanent director is expected to get underway soon. CICNet's transition from Merit, Inc. to an AT&T/Ohio State University team for NOC services continued on schedule. Active network monitoring and support was transferred from Merit to OSU on Dec. 17. CICNet also began the reconfiguration of several of its T-1 circuits which terminate in the Chicago area. The reconfiguration takes advantage of the new NSFNET node soon to come on line at Argonne National Laboratory and reduces the primary and secondary hop counts to NSFNET for several CICNet nodes. by John I. Hankins (John_L._Hankins@um.cc.umich.edu) CREN/CSNET ---------- CSNET relocated its West Coast Cluster Hub from Olivetti Research Center in Menlo Park to CERFnet's Backbone node in the Bay Area. That CERFnet connection provides cluster members with access to NSFNET on the west coast, and on December 31 the T1 line from the cluster to SDSC was decommissioned. CSNET's cross-country link (Cambridge-West Coast) will be rehomed to Oakland during the second week in January. Karen Roubicek (roubicek@bbn.com) FARNET ------- FARNET has hired a consulting firm to work with it to plan its strategic direction. The firm, Northeast Consulting Resources of Boston, MA, is developing several future scenarios or "endstates" for consideration and debate at the next FARNET meeting, to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada January 14-15. Westine [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 FARNET has also incorporated, following up on a decision made at the last membership meeting in September, and the new Board of Directors held its first meeting in Washington, DC on December 17. Additional directors will be elected at the Las Vegas meeting. The officers, previously elected by the membership, are Glenn Ricart (President), Thomas Bajzek (Secretary) and Bill Yundt (Treasurer). Also present were Richard Mandelbaum (NYSERNET), Laura Breeden (BBN), Guy Almes (Sesquinet) and Brian Kahin (counsel). Mandelbaum and Almes were named interim directors. At their first meeting, the directors finalized the agenda for the January meeting and considered a number of revisions to the bylaws to clarify the types of membership and the responsibilities of delegates to FARNET. FARNET representatives also met with others from the networking community at the offices of ANS (Advanced Networks and Services) in Elmsford, NY on Dec. 13-14 to work in depth on issues raised at a preliminary meeting in September. The issues were: 1) identification of potentially beneficial relationships between ANS and the regional networks; 2) structure for a fair qualification process for regional networks wishing to become resellers of ANS services; 3) determination of technical, financial and process issues related to reimbursements for services across regional-ANS boundaries; 4) recommendation of organizational relationships between the regionals and ANS. Item 4 was deferred so that the group could concentrate on items 1-3. Discussion of these questions took place in two groups and was lively and intense. A more detailed report will be available following the January FARNET meeting. Laura Breeden (breeden@bbn.com) Member, FARNET Executive Committee ISI --- INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT Bob Braden and Joyce Reynolds, attended the IETF meetings in Boulder, Colorado, 5-7 December. Eve Schooler attended the IEEE SMC Conference in Universal City, December 5, 1990. Three RFCs were published this month. RFC 1195: Callon, R., "Use of OSI IS-IS for Routing in TCP/IP and Dual Environments", Digital Equipment Corporation, December 1990. Westine [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 RFC 1196: Zimmerman, D., "The Finger User Information Protocol", Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, December 1990. RFC 1197: Sherman, M., "Using ODA for Translating Multimedia Information", CMU, December 1990. Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT No progress to report this month. Steve Casner (casner@isi.edu) LOS NETTOS ---------- Scripts are being written using the expect program written by Don Libes of NIST to help with maintenence of the network. Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- The Internet Engineering project at MITRE this year is exploring the subject of Internet Management for the Defense Communications Agency. Our effort is looking beyond the pretty graphical interfaces to the administrative and procedural side of management. This includes inter-NOC behavior and relationships, customer agreements, tool-aided problem solving, span of control and monitoring, and concepts of operations. The use of interactive tools has not been ignored, because they can open up new ways of dealing with issues that might have been impractical without the proper tool. Walt Lazear, Shari Galitzer, Forrest Palmer, and Mike Saintcross are evaluating and testing tools such as BBN's MMCONF and Slate, Matrix' EtherView, Sun's SunNet Manager, cisco's Net Central, DEC's Director, EXPECT, Internet Rover, RoboDoc, Xmap, and personal video conferencing. Forrest Palmer continued to support the Internet Engineering Testbed. The project requirements for FY91 have been collected and are being coordinated. Westine [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 Walt Lazear and Judy Messing attended the December IETF meeting in Boulder, to contribute to the User Connectivity, Operational Statistics, CMOT, Net Joint Management, Password Security, X.400, X.500, and OSI General working groups. Walt Lazear (lazear@mitre.gateway.org) NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK ----------------------------------------- As of December 15, 1990 NEARnet had 60 members in five New England states. NEARnet has announced the availability of SLIP-based Dial-up Internet service at prices as low as $150/month plus membership dues. NEARnet service is now available at speeds from 9.6 Kb/sto 10 Mb/s, including T1 and fractional T1 rates. A direct T1 connection from NEARnet to the Princeton NSS was installed in mid-November. The connection is operated by NEARnet and features redundant equipment at the Princeton end. NEARnet's connection to the NSFNET no longer traverses the five routers, three T1 lines and two Ethernets that were formerly in the path to the backbone. NEARnet has also installed a direct connection to ESnet, the Energy Sciences Network, at MIT. This will provide improved service to ESnet sites such as SLAC, Argonne National Labs, and Fermilab. The link currently allows "tunneling" for routing DECNET over NEARnet (with DECNET packets encapsulated in IP). We plan to provide an application-level gateway at MIT to support ESnet users on NEARnet whose hosts cannot use the tunneling approach. The T3 NSFNET NSS is being installed at MIT and is scheduled to become operational by January 31. The 45 MB/s microwave radio equipment connecting MIT to the Prudential Center (MCI's Boston POP) has already been installed and tested. NEARnet now has branch nodes in western and central Massachusetts, southern Maine, northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. A workshop on the impact of networking for librarians and information technology staff in New England is being planned for early March. John Rugo (jrugo@nic.near.net) Westine [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. ---------------------------------------- Karen Roubicek attended the IETF in Boulder, Colorado. The NNSC began the distribution of the Internet Manager's Phonebook. The initial distribution was sent to the 3,600 network managers listed in the directory. Additional copies of the phonebook may be purchased at cost. For more details and pricing information, please send your request to . The updated NSFNET site list is now available through the NSFNET portion of the Info-Server. To receive this listing, send a message to: info-server@nnsc.nsf.net, in the body of the message type: request: nsfnet, topic: sites. This is the site list we plan to include in the updated map for the next issue of the NSF Network News. Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@nnsc.nsf.net) NSFNET BACKBONE (Merit) ----------------------- NSFNET Backbone Project The NSFNET Backbone had a total of 4,812,968,474 incoming packets during the month of December 1990. This total represents a decrease from the November inbound packet count of 4,857,386,823 packets by 0.91%. Networks configured for announcement on the NSFNET backbone total 2190 as of December 28th. Routing on the T3 backbone between San Diego, Urbana-Champaign and Ann Arbor has begun, as production traffic is phased in. The T3 end nodes currently installed are located in San Diego, Urbana- Champaign, Ann Arbor, and Palo Alto, and represent half of the planned T3 NSFNET backbone. An eight node T3 backbone designed by the NSFNET partner- ship to complement the T1 NSFNET backbone will be implemented, with the installed end nodes ready for operational traffic and the remaining nodes to become operational in the coming weeks. Work continues on the FDDI interface, with Dave Katz, of Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering, beginning interoperability testing on the T3 nodes. Internal Border Gateway Protocol (I-BGP) is also being integrated into the T1 and T3 NSFNET backbone. OSI applications which originate at regional network locations or their member organizations can now be tested over the NSFNET Westine [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 backbone. The first OSI applications to run over NSFNET will be considered experimental prototypes. During implementation of these applications, members of the Internet Engineering group at Merit will work closely with regional network engineers and end users in order to protect the integrity of the production backbone. If you have an OSI Layer 7 application you would like to have included in this phase of testing, contact your campus or regional network representative, who can in turn contact Susan Hares, an Internet Engineer at Merit Network, Inc. The Merit/NSFNET project was represented at the Boulder, CO, IETF meeting by Dale Johnson, Manager of the Network Operations Center, Pat Smith, Merit/NSFNET Information Services, and Susan Hares, Merit/ NSFNET Internet Engineering. Jessica Yu and Elise Gerich, also of Internet Engineering, attended the FEPG meeting in Boulder. Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu) NDRE and NTA-RD --------------- No progress to report this month. Anton B. Leere (leere@ndre.no) PREPNET ------- During December, Indiana University of Pennsylvania joined PREPnet. IUP will be connected to the Pittsburgh hub at 56Kbps. PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu) SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ During the month, the most significant item was the use of the new NSFnet T3 circuit for initially test data and then production data. The initial testing was a [nearly] coast-to-coast link from SDSC to Ann Arbor and on to Milford, CT. The link from Ann Arbor to Milford was via the Test Network that Merit, IBM, and MCI use for experimentation. The production link was from SDSC to Ann Arbor and then to NCSA. We have setup the production link such that the routing will fail over to the T1 net when the T3 is not available. The T1 link from SDSC to the Bay Area which provided CSnet with a West Coast access point to NSFnet was turned off on 31 Dec. CSnet net now uses CERFnet for this access via CERFnet's Backbone node in Westine [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 the Bay Area. The gated software on VIP has been updated to v2.2. Several patches supplied by NOSC have also been installed. We have installed the latest and best MultiNet (v 3.0) from TGV. We plan to use its much improved NFS to support our workstations from the VMS cluster. Paul Love (loveep@sdsc.edu) SRI ---- DDN NIC In December, we assigned 770 numbers to new IP networks. The total of all IP numbers assigned is now 26,152. The total number of assigned Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) is now 1,207. There are currently a total of 2,235 registered domains which includes 57 at the top level, 2,126 at the second level, and 52 third-level MIL domains. Cumulative Statistics Month/Year Class A B C Total Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152 Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382 Oct. 1990 36 3,846 19,386 23,268 Douglas MacGowan (macgown@nisc.sri.com) Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com) UCL ---- No progress to report this month. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) Westine [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report December 1990 UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Minor configuration changes were made to our DARTNET router and various SPARCstations and timekeeping paraphernalia. Fuzzball time servers at ISI and UDel now provide service to various DARTers without giving away routing secrets. 2. Various upgrades and tuning adjustments were made to several Fuzzball time servers in order to prepare for the leap second scheduled as the last second of this year. Hopefully, the servers will survive the leap absent the bumps and grinds that occurred at the last such epoch. 3. Ken Monington attended the Precision Time and Time Interval meeting in Tysons Corner, VA. On behalf of the U.N. Development Program, Dave Mills visited the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay to assist in Internet technology transfer, review satellite plans and promote good time. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) WISCNET ------- All routers, DSUs, and T1 multiplexor equipment are now onsite. Other equipment such as racks and UPS have been shipped. Compatibility tests between the T1 multiplexors and the cisco routers were successfully performed. All routers have been configured and shipped to sites. They will be installed by site staff and tested with the local network configuration before network startup. T1 backbone site lines will be installed about 1/15/91 followed shortly by end node DDS lines. All lines will be installed by 2/9/91. Michael Dorl (dorl@macc.wisc.edu) Westine [Page 22]