[IMR] IMR89-05.TXT MAY 1989 INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS ------------------------ The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations. This report is for research use only, and is not for public distribution. Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's activities. These reports should be submitted via network mail to Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET). TABLE OF CONTENTS IAB Task Forces APPLICATIONS - USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET ARCHITECTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET ENGINEEERING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 PRIVACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7 DSAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7 Westine [Page 1]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 Internet Projects BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8 CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11 CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 14 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 17 NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 NSFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 NTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., NNSC . . . . . . . . page 23 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 25 WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 Westine [Page 2]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 IAB TASK FORCE REPORTS ---------------------- APPLICATIONS -- USER INTERFACE As promised in the last Internet Monthly, here are the (abbreviated) charters of the newly-constituted connection architecture and testbed working groups. Both groups will be meeting informally coincident with the meeting of the full task force, at Bellcore, June 13-15. CONNECTION ARCHITECTURE WORKING GROUP (Dan Swinehart, Chair) The purpose of this group is to discover or develop an architecture that captures, at a sufficiently high level, the notions of voice [and video] connections and of the services that use them. The members of the User Interface Task Force build voice and video applications whose requirements cannot be met fully either by existing telephone systems or by proposed ISDN-based systems. The shortfalls are primarily in the area of flexible, fast control of connections, not in the underlying transmission and switching technologies. Like ISDN, a satisfactory architecture must provide interfaces that a variety of vendors can implement using a variety of methods. The group will examine existing standards, architectures, and research prototypes in order to develop a position on how an adequate connection architecture might be developed. TESTBED WORKING GROUP (Lester Ludwig, Chair) The charter of the Testbed Working Group is to expedite the development of an international, inter-organizational broadband testbed for experimentation in multimedia communications and computer-supported cooperative work. The working group will perform the following tasks: - Identify which sites would be willing to participate, under what conditions. - Identify the baseline hardware and applications suite to use to bootstrap the testbed. - Identify the value of this applications suite outside the testbed. - Identify how the applications will be used in any necessary trials. Westine [Page 3]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 - Identify any measurements, requirements specifications, etc., that should be provided. - Track relevant developments, including other testbeds. - Share the load of getting associated proposals accepted and deployed. Keith Lantz (LANTZ@ORC.OLIVETTI.COM) AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ANTF will have its next meeting in July. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES No progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET ARCHITECTURE The Workshop on the Future of the Internet System Architecture and TCP/IP Protocols was held 1-2 June 1989 at the University of Delaware. About 77 souls attended the workshop, which included a day of individual presentations and a day of panel discussions. Several formal papers resulted from the presentations, which will be combined with panel summaries and an executive overview for early publication in a special issue of the ACM Computer Communications Review. Dave Mills (Mills@HUEY.UDEL.EDU) INTERNET ENGINEERING 1) Two new groups were organized and met during May. These are both sub-groups under the auspices of the User Services WG. The new groups are the Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI) and the User Documents groups. Meeting reports are available from USWG chair Karen Bowers (bowers@nri.reston.va.us). 2) The MIB WG met at Proteon on May 18th. Issues included a common format for network interface objects and the Lan Manager MIB. Results are available from MIB WG chair Craig Partridge (craig@nnsc.net.com). During the meeting it was noted that any Westine [Page 4]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 decisions to include the Lan Manager MIB in the Internet core MIB rested finally with the IAB. 3) There is an IAB Network Management meeting planned for June 12th. The meeting will be chaired by Vint Cerf (NRI). This meeting is an (approximate) one year follow-up to the meeting that produced RFC 1052. The rough agenda is to examine the status of Internet NM resulting from the decisions of the RFC 1052 meeting and to review future directions (including interaction with other efforts like the NIST NM SIG). 4) Several working group meetings were postponed until the DARPA video teleconferencing sytstem is available again. 5) I am chairing a FRICC sponsored workshop in June on OSI migration and related Directory Services issues. The IETF OSI WG chairs have been invited to insure coordination of these efforts. Phill Gross (gross@SCCGATE.SCC.COM) INTERNET MANAGEMENT No report received. PRIVACY The Privacy Task Force held a productive meeting 23-25 May 1989 at University College London (UCL), England. The next meeting of the PTF is planned for 24-26 October 1989 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. At the meeting the following draft RFCs were distributed for review and comment: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part II Certificate-Based Key Management and RFC 1040, Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I: Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures. Steve Wilber distributed his article on "MAC Layer Security Measures in LANs". The task force discussed Kerberos authentication and key distribution protocols in light of various concerns raised over the last several months. At the request of Dave Mills, proposed security mechanisms for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) were reviewed, but the task force was unable to evaluate the mechanisms in the absence of a more thorough security requirements description. The task force began exploration of security mechanisms for gateway-gateway protocols, e.g., EGP3. Westine [Page 5]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 Use of the CCITT X.509 authentication framework with certificates representing both gateways and networks was discussed. The task force initiated work on defining standard cryptographic algorithm interfaces for use with protocols in order to promote use of such algorithms in widely distributed protocol implementations. Steve Wilber discussed the UCL environment, its computing services, and projects. Michael Roe of UCL presented Authentication Strategies for OSI Applications. Steve Kille of UCL presented and demonstrated a UCL prototype of an X.500 directory server agent (Quipu) and an interactive directory user agent. TIS reports that their MH-Mail based implementation of RFC 1040 with key management will soon be ready for limited release. TIS plans to make its Mach-based implementation available to PTF members protocols in light of various concerns raised over the last several months. At the request of Dave Mills, proposed security mechanisms for the Network Time Protocol (NTP) were reviewed, but the task force was unable to evaluate the mechanisms in the absence of a more thorough security requirements description. The task force began exploration of security mechanisms for gateway-gateway protocols, e.g., EGP3. Use of the CCITT X.509 authentication framework with certificates representing both gateways and networks was discussed. The task force initiated work on defining standard cryptographic algorithm interfaces for use with protocols in order to promote use of such algorithms in widely distributed protocol implementations. Steve Wilber discussed the UCL environment, its computing services, and projects. Michael Roe of UCL presented Authentication Strategies for OSI Applications. Steve Kille of UCL presented and demonstrated a UCL prototype of an X.500 directory server agent (Quipu) and an interactive directory user agent. TIS reports that their MH-Mail based implementation of RFC 1040 with key management will soon be ready for limited release. TIS plans to make its Mach-based implementation available to PTF members for beta testing at the end of June. Plans are to make a Unix-based version of the implementation available to a wider range of Internet users in September. Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM) Westine [Page 6]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS No report received. DSAB ---- Nothing to report this month. Charlotte Tubis (Tubis@Purdue.Edu) Westine [Page 7]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BARRNET ------- No report received. BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- SATNET After over 10 years of faithful service, the SATNET was officially turned off on May 12, 1989 at 20:00 GMT. Up until that time, SATNET performance continued to be excellent. Statistics collected by ISI showed an average of 100% uptime for the remaining SIMPs -- Fucino, Italy and Roaring Creek, USA. In place of the SATNET, there will be two point-to-point circuits from the US to Europe. The first, an IBS circuit to RSRE, has been in place since January 1989. NTA and UCL are reachable via RSRE. The second, an IBS circuit to CNUCE, is expected to be in place in mid to late June. In the meantime, CNUCE can be reached via BITNET and the VAN Gateway at BBN. TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK During May, we continued the shakedown of the switches and links installed so far. After some initial problems in the first part of the month, the network has remained very stable with minimal software or hardware problems. Next month, we will be continuing to install Wideband Packet Switches (WPSs) as power at the POPs and tail circuits between the backbone and the gateways become available. Current sites: BBN, (BBN WPS) -- installed ISI, (LA WPS) -- installed DARPA, (Washington WPS) -- installed Future installation work will include: RADC, Ft. Monmouth (NY WPS) -- Power at the POP was delayed, so in June we plan to install a WPS at the NY POP and transition the Wideband gateway at RADC to the new network. The site at Ft. Monmouth will be connected to this WPS as soon as the tail Westine [Page 8]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 circuit is available. We do not yet have a confirmed date for the on-site wiring. This could take approximately 30-60 more days as of the end of May. SRI, Stanford (SRI WPS) -- In the first week of June, we plan to upgrade the SRI BSAT to be used as the SRI WPS. As soon as that machine is installed, we will transition the SRI IP and ST gateways and the Stanford IP gateway to the new network. CMU (Pittsburgh WPS) -- We have been informed that work on power and wiring at the POP was begun on 4/28. However, we do not yet have a confirmed date for on campus wiring for CMU. During June, we will upgrade a Wideband BSAT for use as the CMU WPS. NRL (Washington WPS) -- Work began during May for adding a gateway at this site and connecting it to the already installed Washington WPS. The tail circuit is confirmed for July 1, but may occur sooner. Installation of the gateway and connection will take place shortly after the circuit becomes available. NCSA (Chicago WPS) -- Work began during May for connecting NCSA to the Terrestrial Wideband. This will involve both a gateway and a WPS. Plans will be finalized for this installation in June. INTERNET R&D We shipped two SURAN Butterfly Gateways, one to SRI and one to Ft. Monmouth and plan to install them this month. The second Ft. Monmouth system will be shipped and installed after the first machine is up and running. The Butterfly VAN gateway has been running successfully for the month. We are currently working with CNUCE to get EGP to run over Telenet. Marianne Lepp has written a draft of an extended architecture for policy routing which for the Open Routing Working Group. The next ORWG meeting is scheduled to coincide with the July IETF. ISO/OSI MIGRATION In support of the International Cooperation Board (used to be called SATNET, but that's gone) Mike Brescia has met with Jon Wilkes and others from the Shape Technical Center (STC), Den Haag, the Netherlands, to work toward demonstrations of protocol translations between ISO and TCP/IP. Westine [Page 9]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 Application level protocol translations, supported by ISODE on a Sun system, are planned come up as a first step, running on a machine at STC where there will be many ISO protocol hosts able to connect in. Transport level protocol translation was being developed for a while by people at STC, and the next level of effort will be for Mike Brescia and Jon Wilkes to complete this and port the code to a Butterfly gateway that will be running at STC. Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM) CERFNET ------- Throughout the month of May, CERFnet received the remainder of its equipment from vendors. Shortages in parts at the cisco Systems manufacturing facility delayed the arrival of CERFnet equipment. The new memory chip which is utilized in the CGS cisco boxes had to undergo testing before it could be utilized in the boxes, therefore, temporarily delaying delivery. Similar problems occurred with AGS cisco boxes which are and will be utilized throughout the CERFnet Backbone. The new 4S communications board in the AGS boxes also had to undergo certain testing before being released for use. The installation of the CERFnet Backbone is underway. California Institute of Technology (Caltech) was brought on line on May 23rd. Susie Arnold, Associate Staff Programmer for CERFnet, traveled to Caltech to assist in the installation. Case Datatel representatives were also on-hand during the installation to ensure the CSU/DSUs worked correctly. Routing problems occurred initially between Caltech and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), with the problems stemming from the SDSC end, however, these problems were resolved by the end of the day. The remaining CERFnet Backbone sites, will be turned up as follows. University of California, Irvine (UCI) is expected to be turned-up the week of May 29th. University of California, Los Angeles, is now scheduled to be turned up the week of June 5th. Westine [Page 10]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 The remaining CERFnet sites are tentatively scheduled to be brought up as follows: University of California, Santa Barbara - end of June 1989 University of San Diego (USD) - end of June 1989 University of California, Riverside - early July 1989 California State University/SWRL Facility (and campuses) - early July 1989 Claremont Colleges- early August 1989 Occidental College- November 1989 Turn-up of the Agouron Institute connection is pending. Notice of a due date of August 1st, for installation of the 56 kilobit circuit between Claremont and Caltech was received. The 1.544 megabit (T1) circuit between the CSU SWRL facility and UC Irvine is due to be installed July 1st. The 56 kilobit line between University of San Diego and SDSC has been installed. On March 8th, the San Diego Supercomputer Center ( a backbone site on CERFnet) was unavailable for several hours due to a power outage at the center. Among other activity to report, the CERFnet newsletter, CERFnet News, was distributed to over 300 people both state and nationwide. The distribution of the newsletter has also expanded to electronic distribution. Contact Karen Armstrong at armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu if you would like to receive CERFnet News. by Karen Armstrong (armstrongk@Luac.Sdsc.Edu) CICNET ------- No report received. CORNELL ------- Gated now has a working prototype of the Border Gateway Protocol, which can currently exchange routing information with implementations by cisco and IBM. At this point we still have not linked in the usual gated configuration controls. Since BGP is based on TCP, some extensions have been required to gated's "core" facilities. The gated routing table has been modified to support multiple routes per destination net in the routing table. Multiple routes Westine [Page 11]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 can now be maintained on a per protocol, per AS basis. This change required a selection of routes based on the "preference" of the protocol (or protocol and AS for exterior protocols) modeled after cisco's "administrative distance". The route used (installed in the kernel, passed to other ASs) is the one with the highest (lowest numeric) preference. Gated's interface to the kernel's routing table has been isolated into a separate source file to allow for modularity. The ultimate goal is to provide the "core" facilities to treat the kernel routing table as just another routing protocol module instead of the special treatment it currently receives. Gated attempts to determine if it's host system is functioning as a gateway and if so, undoes the effects of ICMP redirects to the kernel's routing table. This option may be manually configured in the configuration file. Jeff Honig and Scott Brim attended the IETF at Cocoa Beach with a primary focus on the Interconnectivity and OIGP working groups. Scott Brim (swb@chumley.tn.cornell.edu) ISI --- INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT Bob Braden split the Host Requirements RFC into two RFC's, one covering the link layer through the transport layer, and the other covering the application and support protocols. This was necessary because the total size had become unmanageable, nearly 200 pages. however, we will continue to speak of the pair as "THE Host Requirements RFC". The latest version of the RFC, incorporating a number of changes, was made available for anonymous FTP on May 17. Bob also helped to produce the study on Policy-Based Routing for the NNT. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) Greg Finn continued to study possible UNIX kernel modifications for insertion of Source Quench congestion control into the IP protocol. Greg Finn (Finn@ISI.EDU) A series of questions were formulated to focus on various issues of the Domain Name System performance. A new DNS query tool was implemented to gather the necessary data. This tool, DiG (domain Westine [Page 12]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 information groper), is a command line tool which queries DNS servers in either an interactive or a batch mode. It was developed to be more convenient/flexible than nslookup for gathering performance data and testing DNS servers. It's features and options include most of those provided by nslookup, and several others. It is available via anonymous ftp from VENERA.ISI.EDU in "pub/dig.1.0.tar.Z". Currently, an asynchronous version is being implemented so data can be collected in a more timely fashion. Steve Hotz (hotz@ISI.EDU) Jon Postel participated in NSFNET's status review 16-18 May 1989. One RFCs was published this month. RFC 1102: Clark, D., "Policy Routing in Internet Protocols", MIT, Laboratory for Computer Science, May 1989. Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT Work has continued on making the multimedia conferencing system better integrated and more operationally robust. PVP, the packet video host, was modified to run as a background process started from a script for automatic rebooting from diskette. This change allows technicians to telnet to the Butterfly and run a separate program to act as a "terminal" for the PVP process when manual intervention is required to correct problems. A race condition between PVP and VT, the packet voice host, was discovered in testing ST connections over the new and faster terrestrial wideband net. This problem has been fixed. The workstation conferencing environment is composed of MMCC, the conference control program, MBFTPTOOL, a program for background distribution of files among conference sites, and BBN's MMConf shared workspace. The layout of both MMCC and MBFTPTOOL have been changed to allow them to fit on the screen with MMConf. MMCC now communicates conference id and site list to MBFTPTOOL through several mediating files. These files are created and dynamically maintained in a directory specified by the BFTPDIR environment variable. MBFTPTOOL now displays destination hosts in a tabular format including a status for each transfer in progress. Detailed status for a particular transfer may also be displayed in a separate subwindow. To make MBFTPTOOL easier for novice conference participants to use, the middle mouse button now brings up a help subwindow for each command/parameter. Westine [Page 13]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 We held a teleconference with DARPA this month to demonstrate packet video using Widcom codecs and the Terrestrial WBnet. While the static resolution of the Widcom is better than the Concept codec we use for multi-site video, motion quality is low at 56Kb/s. We will explore higher rates with the Widcom and other codecs to get improved video quality. Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU) FAST PARTS Alan Katz continued to learn C++, GNU G++, and the Interviews X toolkit. Alan Katz (CARUSO@ISI.EDU, Katz@ISI.EDU) JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK --------------------------------------------- No report received. LOS NETTOS ---------- Most member sites are sending all of their internet traffic over Los Nettos now. IMP connections were decommissioned for USC, Caltech, Rand and JPL. TIS, and UCLA lost their connections earlier. We experienced routing problems when all of these sites started sending all of their data over Los Nettos. Site routing had to be changed to allow the site hosts to adapt to the new routing. We also needed to make sure that all of the Los Nettos member networks were authorized to be advertised to the NSFNet core. We have a June 14 due date for the T1 line to TRW. The due date for the IBM lines is July 3. The lines connecting IBM will close a loop for TIS IBM, and Rand providing better reliability for the three sites. We have received the last of 5 Datatels returned for repair. I now suspect the change of shipping companies may have something to do with the high Datatel failure rate this last delivery. We are working on getting a signed agreement from NOSC and UNISYS (in Camarillo) to become new members of Los Nettos. We can't order equipment until we have some assurance that we will be reimbursed. Westine [Page 14]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 CERFNet's link from UCLA to SDSC and the NSFNet was upgraded from 56K to 512K. Both before and after the upgrade it was discovered that there is about 15 ms. delay each way on this fractional T1 link. This delay is over and above the delay caused by the length of a packet. The delays come from a pair of modems, a pair of IDNX muxes, a pair of CSUs, cisco processing time, a pair of cisco interfaces, and the long distance phone company facility. In contrast, a full T1 with only a pair of cisco interfaces, a pair of CSU/DSUs, and a short-distance T1 facility has only 1 to 2 ms. delay each way. The figures were determined by graphing different size ping packets vs. round trip time and extending the graph to zero byte packet sizes. The zero byte delay figures include the link layer protocol overhead which was not counted in the packet sizes. CERFNet has also installed a cisco at Caltech connected to SDSC with a T1 line. We are working with CERFNet and Caltech to optimize the routes and provide backup/alternate routing in case of a link failure. Cooperation between CERFNet and Los Nettos continues to be good. Walt Prue (prue@ISI.EDU) MERIT/UMNET ----------- No report received. MIDNET ------ Over the last few months there has been a lot of activity at MIDnet. We have accepted 5 new members, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, U of Missouri at Rolla, the U of Missouri at St. Louis, EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the University of South Dakota at Vermillion. The lines to connect all of these sites as well as carry out an extensive reconfiguration of MIDnet are scheduled to be delivered on or about July 1st. At the same meeting we also adopted an acceptable use policy and a fee schedule for new corporate and non-corporate members. Anyone interested in seeing these should contact me. I have been traveling in the region quite extensively of late, talking to smaller universities and colleges. We are getting some favorable responses and expect to enroll several such institutions in the coming months. We are also planning to have a user services meeting this summer at Westine [Page 15]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 which we hope to make some progress on deciding what sort of services we should offer. We need to expand the types of services we at MIDnet provide as well as making people aware of the servies available from Merit and NNSC. We are also in the process of developing a job description for a user services staff person. Lastly we are working with a couple of Universities to give them access to MIDnet via slip lines. We think that this will provide us a means to connect some places that otherwise would not be able to get a connection to the national networks. by Dale Finkelson (dmf@westie.unl.edu) MIT-LCS ------- We are continuing our effort on studying the effectiveness of using fair queueing algorithm and random drop strategy in IP networks. Further results will be reported in a month or so. Lixia Zhang (lixia@LCS.MIT.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- No report received. MRNET ----- The MRNet general meeting previously scheduled for June 14 has been deferred. The Executive Committee intends to meet for several half-day sessions to prepare recommendations for the future of MRNet prior to the next general meeting. Discussions continued with and about CICnet concerning whether MRNet should receive its Internet access through CICnet. Jeff Wabik, Chair of the MRNet Technical Committee, joined the Minnesota Supercomputer Center where he will be able to continue his contribution to MRNet. Jeff was previously at CDC. The Mayo Foundation ordered a Cisco Router and plans to retire its Bridge GS/3s (the current MRnet link hardware) by August. Mayo received approval from the University of Minnesota to link to their Cisco AGS box. Cray Research's link to MRNet continues to move towards a standard Westine [Page 16]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 IP connection. During May Cray (128.162) was added to the necessary autonomous systems so the Internet now knows about 128.162. Numeric addresses will work if domain names fail to reach Cray. Honeywell interconnected two more divisions, Space and Strategic Avionics Systems Division and Solid State Electronics Center, this month to the Honeywell Hub. They are in the process of installing a link to Defense Systems Division. It should be operational in early June. MRNet has received inquiries on connection from: o Minneapolis VA Hospital o Minnesota State University Network o Management Graphics by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu) NCAR/USAN --------- The annual USAN site administrators meeting was held in Denver. Current USAN members are Oregon State University, the Universities of Wisconsin, Maryland, and Miami, the Naval Research Labs, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Institute of Naval Oceanography, and a new member which will begin transmitting in June - Penn State University. Maryland and Wisconsin are withdrawing from USAN at the start of the next fiscal year in October. Besides bugetary matters, the meeting participants expressed a great interest in statistical gathering facilities (mainly the Braden/DeSchon NNStat code) and in the proposed products of the IETF User Services Working Group. by Don Morris (morris@ncar.ucar.edu) NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK ----------------------------------------- MIT Lincoln Laboratory and BBN were added to NEARnet during May. There are now seven operational sites, six of which are connected using 10 Mb microwave technology. The connection to Lincoln Laboratory involves a two-hop system, one leg of which stretches an Ethernet over an eight mile microwave shot. A network operations center has been established at BBN to remotely monitor and control NEARnet. A problem reporting and tracking Westine [Page 17]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 system was implemented using the Informix database during the month to help with NEARnet operations. The NEARnet Planning Committee, which includes representatives from fourteen New England institutions, met in April to begin planning for the second-stage expansion of NEARnet. It is anticipated that a microwave connection to DEC will be added during June which will complete Phase 1. The first Phase 2 sites are also planned to join during June, including an extension of the NEARnet backbone to M2C in Westboro, Massachusetts. by John Rugo (jrugo@bbn.com) NORTHWESTNET ------------ After continued negotiations with our network manager, BCS, we have reaffirmed our decision to go ahead with a reengineered network featuring a mostly-tree topology replacing the current mostly-ring. We are also experimenting with automated dialup SLIP links as a way to repair partitions to the network. Some observations on the reengineering process: our commercial network manager tends to have quite different objectives from the typical academic site, being much more focussed on achieving high availability and easy maintenance by using proven technology; also, having a commercial network manager seems to guarantee that the process of getting a change in topology takes forever. The network experienced a number of circuit-related outages plus a failure of the NSS hardware. Upgrade of the Proteon routers to release 8.1 of the Proteon software is now almost complete. by JQ Johnson (jqj@hogg.cc.uoregon.edu) NSFNET BACKBONE (Merit) ----------------------- NSFNET Reconfiguration Update In March of this year, Merit, IBM, and MCI announced a major redesign project which would upgrade the network topology and increase the number of T-1 circuits in the NSFNET, thereby improving connectivity to spur sites and increasing network capacity as a whole. Phase A of this redesign has been moving along well; as of this writing, several of the new circuits are in place and are routing production traffic at T-1 rates. This Westine [Page 18]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 configuration is providing redundancy for what were previously four single-tail circuits. The nodes which now have redundancy are: BARRNet (NSS 13), Westnet (NSS 15), MIDnet (NSS 16), and NorthWestNet (NSS 14). The redesign project will also result in increased end-to-end bandwidth. NSF Review On May 16, a panel of 10 reviewers plus 3 representatives from the National Science Foundation arrived in Ann Arbor to undertake the 18-month review of the Merit/IBM/MCI NSFNET project as had been requested in the initial NSF solicitation. Comments reflecting the reviewers' positive impressions were conveyed in their final recommendation: The Panel has reviewed the performance of MERIT- IBM-MCI for the first 18 months after Award, and has found the performance in general to be excellent, ranging in specific evaluations from "Meets Expectations" to "Exceeds Expectations" based on outstanding examples of engineering implementation and resource management. Everyone at Merit/NSFNET looks forward to continued success with the network. July Internetworking Seminar -- Update "From the Campus to National Networking: Connecting to the Rest of the World" is the title of the Internetworking Seminar to be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel-Tech Center South in Denver on July 27 and 28. Agenda topics include National Networking Perspectives, Centralized Network Services, and Internet Access and Electronic Mail. The focus of this seminar will be on issues of interest to campus networking leaders, campus liaisons, and to those who help end users. Those interested in learning more about internetworking, NSFNET, and the potential benefits of connecting their campus to national networking may want to attend. To obtain additional information, telephone 1-800-66-MERIT or send electronic mail to: julyseminar@merit.edu June Seminar Postponed The June internetworking seminar announced in last month's report has been postponed until Fall 1989. Details will be published as they become available. by Particia G. Smith (PGS@nis.nsf.net) Westine [Page 19]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 NTA-RE and NDRE --------------- No report received. NYSERNET -------- No report received. OARNET ------ No report received. PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------- No report received. SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ The University of Nevada is now being advertised to the NSFnet backbone via the SDSC cisco box. This is making use of the 56k link between Las Vegas and San Diego. A revised terminal gateway for our CTSS systems (CTSS_gate) is in production use. It replaces the VMS element Loginout and results in a single gateway for all terminal traffic regardless of communications method used; IP, DECnet, LAT dial-in lines, X.25, etc. by Paul Love (loveep@sds.sdsc.edu) SESQUINET --------- No report received. SRI ---- Michelle Belmonte and Mary Stahl attended a meeting at the University of Michigan to discuss the transfer of administrative authority over the EDU top-level domain to the NSFNET project. Preliminary plans for the transfer were made. The plans call for NSFNET personnel to familiarize with the administrative domain Westine [Page 20]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 registration and data handling procedures, to maintain the EDU domain data in parallel with the NIC for a period of time, to generate EDU zone files and eventually offload the EDU domain from the root domain name servers. The elimination of ARPA hostnames from the host tables and domain servers is proceeding on schedule, with the affected hosts being in various stages of transition. As you may recall, DDN Management Bulletin #42 specified a transition plan which entailed assigning new domain-style nicknames to all ARPA hosts, and then after a short adjustment period switching the primary ARPA names with the newly-assigned nicknames. To date, a total of 1,594 numbers have been assigned to connected IP networks, 284 autonomous system numbers have been assigned, 40 top-level and 868 2nd-level domains have been registered with the NIC Hostmaster. Mary Stahl (STAHL@SRI-NIC.ARPA) 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 62 sites online and 86 networks are being advertised to the NSFnet. The current list of sites and networks can be obtained via anonymous FTP from noc.sura.net, password guest, cd pub. File name is "online". by Jack Hahn (hahn@umd5.umd.edu) TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK ------------------------------ In April 1989, THEnet was officially designated an NSF regional network, gaining access to the NSFNET backbone through the NSS located at Rice University. On April 5, 1989, representatives from THEnet, SesquiNet and NSF's DNCRI met to brief the NSF on the activities of SesquiNet and THEnet and to discuss the outline of a cooperation agreement between the two Texas networks. The salient points of this agreement are: Westine [Page 21]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 * The NSF has agreed to recognize both THEnet and Sesquinet as certified regional mid-level networks. SesquiNet and THEnet will both have primary access to the NSFNET backbone via the Texas NSS located at Rice University. * THEnet and SesquiNet will share the costs of an inter-city communication topology that they jointly use. Initially this shared topology will consist of a T1 triangle connecting Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Texas at Dallas. This topology will be extended to hubs in other cities in the future. The THEnet manager's meeting was held on May 24. Approximately 120 people attended, representing the 58 member organizations. Organization of THEnet, (charter and bylaws), current and future network services and fees, user and directory services and OSI plans were discussed. This was an open meeting; attendance from all interested parties was encouraged. On May 31, 1989, THEnet was voted in as a member of the Federation of American Research Network (FARNET) at its meeting at JVNC. THEnet General Information Covering the state of Texas, with a link to the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, THEnet is totally member-funded, receiving no external or governmental financial support. Network information and operations management is handled on a cost-recovery basis by the University of Texas System Office of Telecommunication Services. THEnet's stated goal is to provide and advance the electronic exchange of information in support of the teaching, research, development and related collaborative activities of the Texas higher education and research communities. THEnet is a network of physical connections between and within organizations making various use of IP, DECnet, SNA, RSCS/NJE, OSI and compressed digital video to provide researchers, faculty and students the networking "tools" that they need for their particular situations. THEnet currently consists of approximately 1200 DECnet nodes, over 3500 IP hosts, 128 BITNET hosts, 10 IBM mainframe hosts connected over SNA, and 6 OSI hosts. Westine [Page 22]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 Queries about membership or additional information should be directed to: Texas Higher Education Network Information Center Commons Building Room 1.156A Balcones Research Center 10100 Burnet Road Austin, TX 78758-4497 (512) 471-2444 or one of the electronic mail addresses: THEnet (DECnet): THENIC::INFO BITNET: INFO@THENIC Internet: info@nic.the.net SPAN: UTSPAN::THENIC::INFO by Tracy LaQuey (tracy@sirius.cc.utexas.edu) UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., NNSC ---------------------------------------- The NNSC is soliciting contributions to the Internet Resource Guide. The guide will describe facilities such as supercomputers, databases, and libraries that are accessible from the Internet. For more information, send a message to resource-guide- request@nnsc.nsf.net. Craig Partridge gave a presentation at the IFIP conference and chaired a meeting of the MIB Working Group at Proteon. Karen Roubicek attended the FARnet meeting at JvNC. by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net) UCL ---- Steve Wilbur presented a paper on MAC level Security Measures in Local Area Networks at a workshop at EISS. UCL hosted the Privacy Task Force meeting. Presentations on Directory Services, X400 E-Mail and Key Distribution mechnaisms were made by UCL research staff. Westine [Page 23]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 Work has started on building a primary rate ISDN interface for IP gatewaying. We are looking at some of the channel allocation algorithms that might be employed to control cost/performance tradeoff, and there are some interesting n-ISDN-hop routing issues similar to those met in PDN routing. John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK) UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. The Workshop on the Future of the Internet System Architecture and TCP/IP Protocols was held 1-2 June 1989 at the University of Delaware. Paul Schragger and Mike Davis scrupulously recorded the workshop proceedings and are now transcribing thier notes for early distribution. See the INARC report for further information. 2. Chuck Cranor and Alden Jackson investigated the performance of our campus domain-name server and found several areas in which substantial improvements could be made. Among the interesting results are that the cache hit ratio is only about sixty percent and eighty percent of the misses are due to data remaining in the cache but marked for deletion because the time-to-live (TTL) has expired. This rather dismal performance can be explained, at least in part, by the observation that the initial cache transient is in the order of forty hours, but the mean TTL is only eighteen hours. Chuck presented these results at the INARC Workshop. 3. Effort continued on improving and testing the new NTP Version 2 beta implementations for Fuzzball and Unix systems. A revised authentication scheme is now in design which includes provisions for authority and algorithm selection. Robert Cole of HP Labs announced plans to propose an OSI version of NTP for international standardization, while Julian Onions demonstrated a prototype running over ISODE which actually synchronize two OSI hosts over an Ethernet. 4. Our campus network-support unit is working the problem of limiting licensed software access to the UDel Internet campus community. Several local and regional network failures occured during the month which backup routes did not work properly. Our UDel PSN will shortly be retired, along with ARPANET connectivity. Such is network life in Delaware. Westine [Page 24]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989 5. Dave Mills attended a three-day RARE meeting in Trieste, Italy, which discussed status and plans for European research networking. Davy also attended a one-day TARPON meeting in Rosily, VA, to discuss issues and plans for the Research Interned Gateway program. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET -------------------------------------------------- No report received. WESTNET -------- 1. The next Westnet Steering Committee meeting will be held at the University of Colorado at Denver on August 11, 1989, beginning at 10:30 AM 2. Version 7.1 has been ordered for all cisco routers within Westnet. 3. The University of Utah has a machine they are dedicating totally to networking. Now, both the University of Utah and the University of Colorado can/will supply nameserver services to other Westnet sites. Contact Carol ward for information. 4. The New Mexico State University has applied for SPAN membership. 5. Carol Ward has just processed 3 months of network traffic data for Westnet sites. She will be mailing to each site hardcopy of their site traffic statistics. Contact Carol if you wish additional information. by Pat Burns, (pburns@super.org), Carol Ward, cward@spot.colorado.edu Westine [Page 25]  Internet Monthly Report May 1989