[IMR] IMR89-01.TXT JANUARY 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). IAB REPORT ---------- This is the first of a series of reports on those decisions and actions taken by the Internet Activities Board that should be of general interest to the Internet community. The following items are decisions made at the January 1989 meeting of the IAB. A. Private Mail For several years, the Privacy & Security Task Force chaired by Steve Kent of BBN has been developing a scheme to add privacy to SMTP-based electronic mail. RFC's to be published soon will contain the final details of the plan for encapsulating encrypted text within SMTP messages (see RFC-1040 for an earlier Westine [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 draft) and the plan for key distribution. This scheme will (optionally) provide data confidentiality, origin authentication, per-message integrity, and non-repudiation by the originator, and is based upon public-key encryption using the RSA algorithm. Public keys will be bound to individuals by means of "user certificates", which will be issued by a private company, RSA Data Security Inc. The expected cost will be $25 for a user certificate valid for two years. The IAB reviewed this plan and gave the go-ahead to proceed with implementation in the Internet. Not everyone needs private mail, of course, but for those that do, this feature should allow Internet email to take on a new importance. B. The Worm Incident The IAB joined others in the community in expressing its deep concern about the recent Internet worm incident and the resulting public reaction. The IAB released a policy statement that has been published in RFC-1087, entitled "Ethics and the Internet." The IAB plans to take future steps to make the gateway protocols more secure against subversion and to improve the facilities for network managers to selectively isolate pieces of the Internet should such problems recur. C. Draft Documents The IAB believes that the Internet community is best served if there continues to be only one archival series of documents, the RFC's. To help prevent the erosion of this singularity, the IAB has decided that the IDEA series of draft documents maintained by the IETF will be replaced by a series of "Internet drafts". The new series is crafted to minimize inappropriate citations and to ensure that these drafts move forward into RFC's as quickly as possible. Details were announced by Phill Gross, chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, at its January 1989 meeting. D. IP Security Option A vendor requested an IP Option for commercial security, where the contents of this option would be unstandardized and vendor- specific. The IAB felt strongly that IP options must be publicly defined and documented, while that proprietary or privately-structured options are a bad idea. The IAB will initiate a broad-based effort to define a (commercial) security Westine [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 option for IP. Interested parties may contact Steve Kent (Kent@BBN.COM, 617-873-3988). Report prepared by Bob Braden (Braden@isi.edu) TASK FORCE REPORTS ------------------ APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE No report received. AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS The Autonomous Networks Task Force is preparing for a three day meeting in February at ISI. We will meet with members of IETF ORWG Feb 14-15 and with members of the Privacy and Security Task Froce Feb 16. Check this space for a summary in February or March! Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES No internet-related progress to report. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET ARCHITECTURE At the recent IAB workshop and meeting in Santa Clara, it was suggested that INARC take up the issue of the limits of the Internet architecture and protocols in the light of present and projected future requirements. A meeting has been proposed for the May/June frame at a date and place to be decided. The meeting is to be organized as a workshop similar to the one held a year ago. Participants will be encouraged to present a prepared talk and/or document, but this is not a requirement for admission. While participants may be invited on the basis of their known expertise, biases and vocalities on the issues, participants outside the IAB and its dependencies are actively encouraged. Following the workshop the INARC will meet specifically to discuss issues raised and to determine future study plans and assignments. Westine [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 Suggestions for agenda items and meeting date and place, as well as intentions to attend, can be sent to the chair at (mills@huey.udel.edu). Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU) INTERNET ENGINEERING 1) The IETF met at the Balcones Research Center of the University of Texas in Austin on January 18th through January 20th. The meeting was hosted by Bill Bard and Allison Thompson (both of University of Texas). Sara Tietz and Susan Carlson (Advanced Computing Environments) helped with much of the pre-meeting (and other local) logistics. The final agenda, as conducted at the meeting is given below. 2) This meeting marks the start of several efforts to streamline the IETF meeting logistics. Karen Bowers (NRI) has tentatively scheduled the dates and locations for the next five IETF meetings and ACE will continue its role, begun at the January meeting, of organizing the actual logistics of future meetings. 3) The Proceedings for the January meeting are in progress and will be mailed out (by US mail) to all attendees prior to the next meeting. In the future, we plan to have the Proceedings available at least one month prior to the following meeting. Depending on the response, we may continue the practice of mailing the Proceedings to all attendees. (There has never been any direct charges (eg, attendance or registration fees) for IETF meetings. These new efforts to streamline IETF logistics will not change that policy.) 4) In another new development, the process by which IETF documents are submitted as RFCs has been modified and streamlined. As part of this change, the IDEA documents have been renamed to INTERNET-DRAFTS (see IAB report elsewhere in this report). I will send an announcement to the IETF mailing list when the new procedure is in place. 5) Agenda for the January 18-20 IETF Meeting Westine [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 TUESDAY, JANUARY 17th 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Pre-IETF Working Group Meetings o Internet Management Information Base (MIB) WG, Craig Partridge (BBN) o ST and Connection-Oriented IP WG, Claudio Topolcic (BBN) WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18th 9:00 am Opening Plenary and local arrangements (Gross, NRI) Working Group Sessions 9:15 am - 12:00 pm o CMIP-Over-TCP Net Management (Lee LaBarre, MITRE) 9:15 am - 5:00 pm o Performance and Congestion Control (Mankin, MITRE) o Point-Point Protocol (Perkins, CMU/ Hobby, UCDavis) o OSI/Internet Interoperability (Callon, DEC/ Hagens, UWisc) o User Services (Bowers, NRI) o ST and Connection-Oriented IP WG, Claudio Topolcic (BBN) 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm o Interconnectivity and EGP3 (Almes, Rice) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm o Domain Name System WG (Mockapetris, ISI) THURSDAY, JANUARY 19th 9:00 am Opening Plenary 9:15 am - 12:00 Working Group Sessions o Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) o TELNET Linemode (Borman, Cray) o Working Group for Joint Monitoring Access for Adjacent Networks focusing on the NSFNET Community (Hares, Merit) o Interconnectivity and EGP3 (Almes, Rice) Members only 1:15 pm IETF Plenary and Technical Sessions o Network Status Reports o Merit NSFnet Report (Hares, UMich) o Internet Report (Opalka, BBN) o DOE ESNET Report (Hain, LLL) o CSNET Report (Partridge, BBN) o Domain System Statistics (Lottor, NIC) o Report on the Interconnectivity and EGP3 WG (Almes,Rice) o Support for OSI Protocols in 4.4 BSD (Hagens, UWisc) o Report and Discussion on the Internet Worm (Karels,UCB) 5:00 pm Recess Westine [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 FRIDAY, JANUARY 20th 9:00 am Working Group Reports and Discussion o CMIP-over-TCP (CMOT) (LaBarre, MITRE) o Domain Name System (Mockapetris, ISI) o Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) o Internet MIB (Partridge, BBN) o Joint NSFNET/Regional Monitoring (Hares, Merit) o OSI Internet Interoperability (Callon, DEC/Hagens,UWisc) o Performance and CC (Mankin, MITRE) o Point-to-Point Protocol (Perkins, CMU) o ST and CO-IP (Topolcic, BBN) o TELNET Linemode (Borman, Cray) o User Services (Bowers, NRI) 12:00 Concluding Plenary Remarks and Group Discussion (Gross,NRI) 12:30 pm Adjourn Phill Gross (gross@gateway.mitre.org) INTERNET MANAGEMENT No report received. PRIVACY John Linn and Steve Kent attended the January IAB workshop in Santa Clara, CA and presented a pair of briefings on privacy- enhanced electronic mail processing procedures and on supporting key management mechanisms based on the use of public-key certificates, corresponding to the task force's RFCs currently in preparation. The concepts were well received, and the IAB approved publication of the RFCs and authorized press releases on the architecture and on RSA Data Security's involvement as certificate provider therefor. Arrangements were made for the privacy task force's February meeting at ISI, partly to be held in conjunction with the autonomous networks task force. John Linn (Linn@CCY.BBN.COM) Westine [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS The Scientific Requirements Taskforce met at ISI on January 17. Due to low attendance partially resulting from illnesses, we only met for one day instead of the planned two days. The following was discussed: 1. Review of Charter The taskforce needs to have input from a much broader base of scientists. We plan to compile a list of mailing/discussion lists to which scientists subscribe and: a) Announce the existence of the taskforce to the online scientific community b) Announce the publication of our position papers c) Solicit input and position papers from working scientists 2. Functioning of the Taskforce: Each member of the taskforce will send out a regular one paragraph summary of what they are working on. Many of us are working inthe same areas and this should be useful. 3. We should have two position papers out soon: one on High Bandwidth requirements for science, and one on the need for an Equations Representation Standard. 4. We had presentations on the results of the Telescience Testbed Pilot Project, a proposal on a Cooperative Approach to Software Advancement (CASA) by Dennis Hall of LBL, and a report of Internet performance measurements by Peter Shames of the Space Telescope Science Institute. We also saw a demo of Annette DeSchon's (ISI) BFTP program. Barry Leiner (Leiner@riacs.edu) DSAB ---- No report received. Westine [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- SATNET The SATNET has been very stable through the month of January. The new direct RSRE to BBN link is now in place and has been carrying traffic since January 18th. WIDEBAND NETWORK Wideband Network activities during the month focused primarily on BSAT software adjustments and operational support aimed at sustaining and improving the network's capability to accommodate an increasing traffic load. Increased demands for Wideband channel bandwidth are primarily attributable to a higher frequency of two- and three-site video/multimedia conferencing coupled with the "background" presence of Wideband-based ARPANET inter-switch trunk and other Internet traffic. Further improvements have been made to the Wideband Network monitoring and control capabilities in support of the network's near-term transition to a high-speed terrestrial topology. These improvements will simplify the conversion to processing the new types of monitoring data that will be generated by the terrestrial network's Butterfly switches. INTERNET R&D The new link between RSRE and BBN is now up and appears to be stable. Traffic from RSRE and UCL is being routed over the new link due to its lower delay. UCL and RSRE still have a connection to SATNET, but that is expected to be removed sometime in February. As part of bringing up the new link, Mike Brescia visited RSRE and UCL and installed new gateway software, and tools to make future software updates easier. Marianne Lepp presented a talk to the IAB on the IETF Open Routing Working Group and the EGP3 protocol. Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM) Westine [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 ISI --- INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT Greg Finn finished simulation studies on the possibility of using Source Quench to control internetwork congestion. The report on this work is in its final stages of editing. Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris attended the IAB meeting in Santa Clara, CA, 9-13 January. Paul Mockapetris attended the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Austin, Texas 17-20 January. One RFC was published this month. RFC 1087: IAB, "Ethics and the Internet", January 1989. Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU) LOS NETTOS ISI's Los Nettos gateway is forwarding about 100,000 packets per day to the gateways connected to the ARPANET. We are still trying to get all our traffic to and from the ARPANET to be forwarded through the butterfly gateway, BFGWY.ISI.EDU, to improve performance. GATEWAY.ISI.EDU is one of the most heavily loaded gateways to the ARPANET. This will soon change because of the conversion to butterfly core gateway nodes. We had two significant failures. The link to TIS and a CSU/DSU both failed at the same time. This partitioned them for one day. We also lost both links to Caltech when phone people in a manhole disrupted repeaters for both lines. Because both of these failures partitioned the network and contacting people at each site is sometimes difficult, we are trying to develop a method for remotely accessing the Cisco and Datatel console ports to speed diagnostic testing. Walt Prue presented a talk "Bringing Up Los Nettos" at a Cisco Technical Advisory Meeting Jan 17th. He discussed the technical problems that were overcome as part of bringing up Los Nettos. Of particular interest to many was how to get the Datatels to work with the Cisco AGSs with MCI interfaces. Datatel is now responsive and appears to be trying to clear all of the reported problems. A representative for Datatel has loaned two units to Cisco Systems for evaluation. This should help to expedite finding and resolving incompatabilities. Westine [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 We now have six sites that are interested in joining Los Nettos in phase 2. We have received POs from JPL, IBM Scientific Center, and RAND. Also interested are UNISYS, TRW, and NOSC. We have been having some problems with the standard wording on most POs because Los Nettos is a cooperative effort with shared risk for all members. Because no member needs Los Nettos for connectivity yet, loading the network and trying to stress it is difficult. We still need to get more of the member hosts to use the network as a default path. Walter Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT The video packet host software (PVP) was extended to allow the video data rate to vary between and during connections. Redesign of the conferencing system's multimedia control program and conferencing applications is underway, in light of developments with the Diamond multimedia Toolkit and the VMTP protocol. Steve attended the IAB Workshop in Santa Clara; also the IETF meeting in Austin to participate in the ST and Connection-Oriented IP Working Group. While in Austin, a side trip was made to VideoTelecom Corp to see a demonstration of their video codec. It might be a good alternative to the Image30, Concept Communication's codec, for future packet video use (after some adaptations are made). Several demonstrations of the teleconferencing system were given this month, including multipoint conferences for visitors from VideoTelecom Corp and Teliport of Boston, MA. Discussions about the Image30 were initiated with researchers from Olivetti who are interested in video mail applications. Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU) NSFNET PROJECT Last month we released new versions of both BFTP and NNStat. There were a number of BFTP improvements: o BFTP is now compatible with Rick Adams' new "ftpd", which will be released by Berkeley in the near future. o BFTP now supports the transfer of a directory tree. Westine [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 o In multiple transfers, BFTP continues with the next file when there is a failure that applies to a single file, such as a type mismatch. o Alternate directory capability for BFTP request files is now supported. The bftp directory can be set using the command "setenv BFTPDIR .bftp". o BFTP now runs on a Sun OS 4.0 system. o The "cancel" command now deletes ".list" files that may remain when BFTP is interrupted in the middle of a transfer attempt. The NNStat were minor bug-fixes for problems discovered in 2.2. Bob Braden organized and attended a 4-day meeting of the IAB in Santa Clara, California on Jan. 10-13. He also held a meeting of the IETF Host Requirements Working Group at the IETF meeting in Austin, Texas on Jan. 18-20. Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon (Braden@ISI.EDU, DeSchon@ISI.EDU) SUPERCOMPUTER WORKSTATION COMMUNICATIONS and FAST PROJECT ON REMOTE ACCESS OF GRAPHICS DATABASES The Supercomputer Workstation Communications (SWC) project at ISI ended on 31 August 1988. The final project report should be out "real soon now". Anyone who would like a copy should contact Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.EDU). The new project Alan is working on is an investigation into how to do remote access of an electronic parts database that has graphical information. The prototype will probably be based on the X window system. Since much of the SWC work was about remote access of Supercomputers using X or NeWS, this is somewhat a continuation of that work. Alan is currently trying to find existing on-line parts databases that have pictures in them (such as an online IC catalog with pinout diagrams) that he can use for the prototype. Alan is also trying to find out if there are any existing standards for the representation of such data (there are many proposed standards). If anyone can give further information, it would be appreciated. Over the past couple of months, Alan has been making X version 11 work on his color Sun (3/110), evaluating X toolkits, and has been Westine [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 trying to modify the X server to work under Sun overview. The FAST project at ISI is developing an automated broker for purchasing of standard electronic parts. A partially automated version of the broker is currently in operation and users can communicate with FAST via electronic mail to request technical information about parts, receive quotes, and place orders. If you are interested in using FAST, send a message to FAST@Isi.Edu or call Anna-Lena Neches at (213)822-1511. Alan Katz (Katz@ISI.Edu) MIT-LCS ------- We continue to plan for an experimental gateway testbed, using the MIT C-gateway. The goal of this testbed is a cross-country network based on gateways that can be programmed by members of the academic research community, to try out new gateway algorithms. Chuck Davin is constructing detailed plans and coordinating various sites that might participate. David Clark and Karen Sollins have orgainzed a meeting to discuss options for "White Pages" naming services for the Internet. The meeting, to be held in the beginning of February, will result in a proposal to the IAB and the FRICC for possible actions in order to construct such a service. Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- No report received. NTA-RE and NDRE --------------- No report received. SRI --- Paul McKenney completed a prototype of Transaction Transport Protocol (TTP) running as a user-level process on a Sun Workstation. A set of "boiler-plate" IP routines are used in conjunction with Sun's Network Interface Tap (NIT) facility to allow the user process access to Ethernet (the raw socket interface Westine [Page 12] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 is preferable on systems (such as SunOS 4.x) that fully implement it). Performance is currently less-than-impressive, in part due to a problem that forces polling of the NIT socket. Zaw-Sing Su (zsu@tsca.istc.sri.com) UCL --- Infrastructure: We are losing the SATNET from UCL/RSRE in exchange for RSRE leased line to US any day now/then. This may see improved performance between US and UK MoD sites, plus STC and FGAN. Academic traffic awaits the academic equivalent line. Research and Development: A great deal of work went on integrating the ODA and X.400 work (about three man months per week) for an ODA interworking demonstration in Febuary. If you thought Unix has gotten large, wait for multimedia mail with directories!! Several graduate projects have started including: Remote management for our FDDI network. Authentication and privacy (based on PKC). Integrating Load sharing with whole file cacheing. John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK) UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Our grads continue hacking these and various odd jobs. Mike Minnich brought up Sun 4.0 and new NTP versions on various machines. Paul Schragger is installing the Profile system from U Arizona. We are looking at Kerberos and plan to install it here. Paul and Jeff are also working on a paper for SIGCOMM 89. Our main campus VAXhorses were rehomed on our class-B network and gateways shuffled to match. We are also working to rehome a gateway to another ARPANET host port when our PSN goes to heaven. 2. Paul Schragger and Dave Mills attended the IAB workshop and meeting in Santa Clara. Dave presented a briefing on the activities of the INARC Task Force, while Paul served his Scribe apprenticeship. Dave also attended a meeting at DCEC on new funded work in routing protocols. Jeff Simpson is Westine [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 preparing to attend the Autonomous Networks Task Force meeting in February. 3. An experimental authentication mechanism for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) was completed and is now in test. It uses DES cipher-block chaining to produce a crypto-checksum on the NTP header. However, the Whitesmiths DES encryption routines used in the Fuzzball require about 250 milliseconds to compute the checksum, which is hardly good news for precision time servers. After reviewing code from other sources, new routines were constructed in assembly code which require only about 150 milliseconds. Rather than try to further reduce this time, the timestamping code was revised to measure the encryption times and compensate for them. The results of testing in the Fuzzballs deployed in the Internet show that NTP accuracies have not been significantly compromised. 4. In response to occasional complaints that NTP peers occasionally become unstable when connectivity becomes very flaky, the timekeeping algorithms were reviewed and a subtle problem found. The gain of the first-order (frequency) term in the phase-lock loop did not account for the time between updates, which ordinarily is fixed. The algorithms were rebuilt to do that and also to include a feature that reduces the gain after long periods of good data. The result is an improvement in frequency stability to a few parts in 10**8 after about a day of chiming with an accurate synchronizing source. Anything much better than that requires something like a cesium clock for the local oscillator. 5. My paper on the Wiretap algorithm appeared in the January CCR. While I had thought I was breaking new ground when I submitted it electronically for direct printing in PostScript format, I found that, due to a font incompatibility, it was one of two papers NOT directly printed for that issue. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) Westine [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 NSF NETWORKING -------------- NSF NETWORKING UCAR/BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC., NNSC Craig Partridge chaired the MIB Working Group session at the IETF and Karen Roubicek participated in the new User Services Working Group meeting. NNSC staff continue to give presentations about NSFNET to current and future users in the research community. Several NSFNET posters have been distributed. Please send requests for additional copies to nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net. by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET) NSFNET BACKBONE (MERIT) As of January 31, 1989, the NSFNET has completed seven months of production. Traffic and network connections have continued to increase during this period. The number of "allowed" networks began at 173 primary and 30 secondary on 7/1/88 and, as of 1/31/89, stands at 384 primary, 147 secondary, and 5 tertiary with new networks coming on line almost every day. -------------------------------------------------------------- Comparison of Packet Counts December 1988/January 1989 Packets In Packets Out December 395,580,713 419,348,204 January 467,753,653 497,787,338 % increase 15.4% 18.7% -------------------------------------------------------------- January backbone use showed a marked increase over December 1988. Usage was lower at the beginning of the month but gradually increased and peaked during the last week of the month. NNStat Development and use of a modified version of the NNStat package continued in January. With this package, the statistical tallies in each NSS are periodically retrieved by a central collector in Ann Arbor where they are then staged to the NSFNET Information Services mainframe to be merged into a database. The information in this database will aid the NSFNET partners in analysis of network usage and provide needed input for planning of network Westine [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 configuration and expansion. MCI View Also during January, utilization of MCI View(tm) began. MCI View is used to pass Extended Super Frame (ESF) information on the performance of the NSFNET backbone to the Merit NetView(tm) host. This combination provides a comprehensive look at the functioning of network communications including: 1) near real-time monitoring of voice and data communications networks; 2) transparent operation within NetView; 3) enhanced network management through the existing IBM NetView/PC interface. The most immediate benefit of MCI ESF monitoring to the NSFNET is that the performance and alarm information is centrally stored and can be accessed by MCI network management and operations personnel to help isolate and resolve circuit troubles in a timely manner. New Topology Merit and its partners, MCI and IBM, have been working on a major redesign project to improve connectivity and move NSFNET toward the higher performance required in the future. The new topology, scheduled to be deployed during the second quarter of 1989, will increase the number of T-1 circuits in the backbone to provide multiple connections for all nodes and take advantage of MCI's Digital Reconfiguration Service (DRS) to improve network management capabilities. by Patricia G. Smith (patricia_g_smith@um.cc.umich.edu) NSFNET BACKBONE SITES & MID-LEVEL NETWORK SITES BARRNET No report received. CERFNET January signified the committment of funds to CERFnet from the National Science Foundation. CERFnet will receive $2.8 million dollars, which is to be allocated over the next four years. The backbone member institutions are expected to be on-line by late March, and others will be phased in throughout 1989. A current schedule of when lines will be available is as follows: Westine [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 Site Name/Install Date University of California at San Diego (UCSD)/November Agouron Institute/April Research Institute of Scripps Clinic (RISC)/May University of California at Irvine (UCI)/March San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)/March University of San Diego (USD)/May University of California at Riverside (UCR)/June Occidental College/November California Institute of Technology (Caltech)/March University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)/March California State University (CSUNET)/Southwest Research Labs (CSU/SWRL)/April Science Application Information Systems (SAIC)/April Qualcomm Incorporated/April University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB)/March or April In addition to the list of sites and expected on-line dates, CERFnet would like to report the University of California at Santa Barbara is expected to be on-line by March, April at the latest, 1989. CERFnet presented a two day seminar, "In Depth Introduction to TCP/IP" at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on January 25th and 26th. The seminar was instructed by Dr. Douglas E. Comer of Purdue University and was successful in presenting an interesting and informative introduction to TCP/IP. The seminar was attended by approximately 70 people. This was the first of many seminars CERFnet plans to present in the future. In December, CERFnet produced its first newsletter, the CERFnet News. The News is scheduled to be produced bi-monthly and will contain interviews with researchers currently using the network, technical notes relating to the network, and CERFnet general Westine [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 "going-ons". The next issue is scheduled for release the week of February 13th. The CERFnet pilot is functioning well with four California State University (CSU) campuses, Fullerton, Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Stanislaus, and CSU's Office of the Chancellor in Los Alamitos, and SDSC, with Stanislaus being added in the later part of November. Chris Taylor of CSU's Office of the Chancellor, reports, "One known major technical problem remains unsolved. CSUNET interconnects the cisco System routers via "virtual networks" analogous to a physical point-to-point circuit between two sites. A design flaw in the cisco router requires each CSUNET site to have a separate virtual circuit to each and every other site in order for local CSU site routing information to be distributed properly. With all twenty sites and SDSC, the resulting 210 virtual circuits becomes a serious problem . . . Cisco Systems have been made aware of the problem." Technical Statistics- CERFnet reports traffic on the network to date as follows; Packets in . . . 3,248,796 (15 no input) Packets out . . . 1,414,807 by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu) CICNET The month of January has been one of implementation. A schedule was developed based upon the turn over of circuits by MCI to CICNet with a target completion date of January 30. However, by the second week of January it was evident that schedule could not be met. MCI has been turning over circuits at least one week behind schedule and for many, two and three weeks behind. MCI is having problems coordinating testing and assuring performance between local loops and their circuits, particularly in the Chicago area. At the time of this writing, three circuits are stable and are operating in test mode: Ohio State University to University of Michigan, University of Michigan to Michigan State University, and Michigan State University to University of Chicago. The circuit between University of Minnesota and University of Iowa also seems to be stable but without meaningful other connections. All other circuits have not been turned over or their operation is very problematic. Westine [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 An additional problem with MCI has been their implementation of Extended Super Frame (ESF). We were told circuits would be available with ESF but are now being told that hardware corrections are required by MCI through their equipment vendor and we should not expect ESF data until mid-March. This will require about a 30 minute outage by each node to implement. The cisco routers were also delivered with bad Rockwell chips and the temporary correction that cisco provided was to increase the voltage. We are anxiously awaiting version 7.1 of the cisco software so that we can correct this problem as well as have remote communication with the routers at 2400 baud. This software is not expected before March 1, so the initial implementation of CICNet will occur with the present software. We are not expecting to complete implementation before February 20, but this date is most dependent upon the turn over of circuits by MCI. MCI expects this to be completed the week of February 5. Two circuits in the Chicago area must be flash-cut to CICNet after all other circuits are fully operational. It is likely that user traffic can begin to be carried between Ohio State University and University of Michigan to the Merit NSS sometime during the week of February 5, with later nodes following as circuits stabilize. Merit, Inc. is the contractor to operate CICNet from the Network Operation Center that is used for NSFNet. Staff have been increased at Merit and the formal contract is expected to be signed very soon. A new Executive Director of CICNet is also about to be hired, and I expect that next month's report will be from him. by Barbara Wolfe (bbwolfe%smuvm1.bitnet@uicvm.uic.edu) CORNELL UNIVERSITY THEORY CENTER Gatedaemon Project We are glad to announce that the gatedaemon has some funding again (from NSF). At least enough to maintain status quo. This month the ARPAnet EGP update size exceeded 2K, the maximum packet size compiled into EGPUP and the BSD Unix kernel. BSD 4.2- based systems required a kernel rebuild. A version of gated was made available that automatically adjusts the kernel's buffer sizes via an ioctl. Gated is now distributed with a maximum EGP packet size of 8k. A new version of gated should be released soon, the major change being concurrent support for NYSERNet's SGMP and SNMP daemons. Westine [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 Also included are bug fixes for the previous release which was distributed in a hurry due to the EGP crisis. Top priority for gated is a prototype of the EGP3 protocol. Modifications to gated necessary to support EGP3, which will also make it easier to test additional protocols, are being incorporated now while the protocol is being finalized. These modifications. In addition we are hiring someone whose first job will be to rewrite the command parser. Network Engineering and Architecture Scott Brim has been working on interconnectivity issues, especially in the Autonomous Networks Task Force (report above), and attended the IAB workshop in Santa Clara. The connection to CNUSC (Montpellier, France) is still not used, as they are still trying to decide whether to hook it directly into the NSFNet node or not. by Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu) UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET No report received. JOHN VON NEUMANN NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER No report received. MERIT/UMNET No report received. MIDNET No report received. MRNET MRNet continues to anticipate and prepare for the arrival of CICnet. Connection of CICnet to the University of Minnesota is expected within a week or two. In general, the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Supercomputer Center will be routed through CICnet, while the rest of the MRNet members will be routed through the MRNet link to the NSFnet. Unfortunately, there will be several exceptions to this general rule. Routing difficulties will be addressed by Stuart Levy (slevy@msc.umn.edu or 612/626-0211) and Roger Gulbranson (roger@vx.acss.umn.edu or 612/626-0535). Westine [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 Efforts continue towards connecting several of the Minnesota private colleges to MRNet. This project will likely split into two efforts: connecting some of the colleges in the immediate future and assisting the remaining colleges in obtaining NSF funds for equipment and lines. The next MRNet general meeting is scheduled for March 22, 1989. by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu) NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH & UNIVERSITY SATELLITE NETWORK PROJECT Because of the increasing number of NSFNET gateways connected to the USAN backbone, a new backbone, NCAR-NSS, is being formed to serve these gateways. This new backbone will contain NSS-EGPing gateways to Los Alamos National Lab (AS #68), Westnet East (AS #209), USAN (AS # 194), and later this winter a connection to Mexico. There is also a possibility that the Boulder laboratories of the US Department of Commerce will be connected. The network will also contain a gateway to NSN (NASA/Ames) that does not EGP- peer with the NSS. The USAN gateway currently is Sun3 that has only one network connection and uses the gated software as an agent. This will be replaced in the new configuration by a cisco box so that individual USAN member sites are not gatewayed on the NCAR-NSS stub. by Don Morris (morris@windom.ucar.edu) NORTHWESTNET No report received. NYSERNET No report received. OARNET Over the past several months OARnet has been implementing the SGMP monitoring software from NYSERNET, and we are planning to install the SNMP software as it becomes available. We are also running NNSTAT and have been spending quite a bit of time writing report programs for the data emitted by both NNSTAT and SGMP. We're seeing the usual steep buildup of traffic and are now working to put together a capital budget for OARnet that will allow us to upgrade our facilities in 1990. At present OARnet is fully funded Westine [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 by the state, and there is no charge for either connection or use. This pleasant state will probably not continue in the face of rising demand, unless we are successful in making a case to the state legislature that the benefits to higher education justify the investment. We certainly plan to make this case. OARnet currently has about twenty nodes online and another six or so in various stages of being connected. All the schools in Ohio that have graduate programs are part of OARnet, and we are now starting to add the four year colleges. Both OCLC (which supplies union catalog services to most of the schools in the United States) and Chemical Abstracts are part of OARnet, and have expressed strong interest in much higher bandwidth connections. The close geographical proximity of both companies to Columbus makes this a realistic possibility. The Board of Regents, which oversees public educational facilities in Ohio, has funded a major new library intiative for a statewide library system, and they have expressed interest in using OARnet as the vehicle for their interlibrary communications. The NYSERNET/OCLC Z.39 project is key to making this technically feasible, but we expect that by the time the library system is ready to use OARnet that it will be technically possible to do so. Having Ohio libraries online would certainly strengthen the case that OARnet should be funded as an overhead item for the state educational system. We continue to be interested in recruiting good technical people who know something about TCP/IP and UNIX. Not that we are unique in that regard! by Alison Brown (alison@maverick.osc.edu) PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER No report received. SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER No report received. SESQUINET No report received. Westine [Page 22] Internet Monthly Report January 1988 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 57 sites online and 68 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) WESTNET No report received.