October 1991 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 Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU) NSF Regional reports - Corinne Carroll (ccarroll@NNSC.NSF.NET) Directory Services reports - Tom Tignor (TPT2@ISI.EDU) Requests to be added or deleted from the Internet Monthly report list should be sent to "cooper@isi.edu". Back issues of the Internet Monthly Report can be copied via FTP: FTP> nis.nsf.net Login: anonymous guest ftp> cd imr ls get IMRYY-MM.TXT For example, JUNE 1991 is in the file IMR91-06.TXT. Cooper [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 IRTF RESEARCH REPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8 Internet Projects ANSNET/NSFNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING REPORT . . . . . . . . page 11 BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 CIX (COMMERCIAL INTERNET EXCHANGE). . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 CONCERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 CREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 CSUNET (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK). . . . . . . page 18 FARNET (FEDERATION OF AMERICAN RESEARCH NETWORKS) . . . . page 18 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 21 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 24 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 24 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27 SAIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28 SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31 DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES DIRECTORY SERVICES MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33 IETF OSIDS & DISI WORKING GROUPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33 FOX - FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . page 35 ISI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35 MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35 PSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 35 SRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 36 Cooper [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 37 PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38 PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 38 CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39 Cooper [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 IAB MESSAGE IAB REPORT STANDARDS ACTIONS: Since September 1991, the IAB has taken the following standards actions, following recommendations of the IESG: o Draft Standard state for BGP, RFC 1267: "A Border Gateway Protocol 3 (BGP-3)" RFC 1268: "Application of the Border Gateway Protocol" o Proposed Standard state for BGP MIB, RFC 1269: "Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 3)". o Proposed Standard state for "The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema". o Proposed Standard state for "An interim approach to use of Network Addresses". This spec concerns an NSAP encoding specifically for use with RFC-1006 encapsulation of the OSI upper layers. o Proposed Standard state for "Replication and Distributed Operations Extensions to Provide an Internet Directory Using X.500". o Proposed Standard state for "Multiprotocol Interconnect over Frame Relay Networks". o Proposed Standard state for DECNET Phase IV MIB. o Proposed Standard state for Remote Monitor (RMON) MIB. o Proposed Standard state for Inverse ARP. o Proposed Standard state for Bridge MIB. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) Cooper [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ------------------- Deborah Estrin and Yakov Rekhter have been working on a unified architecture for inter-domain routing that combines the benefits of BGP/IDRP-style hop-by-hop routing and IDPR-style source- demand routing. Estrin will present their ideas at the November IETF. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES ------------------- No progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) IRTF RESEARCH REPORT -------------------- The IRTF Research Group on Resource Discovery and Directory Service held its first meeting on October 13th. We are currently focusing on defining an architectural framework to allow resource discovery related activities to interoperate, including: - advertising resources - discovering the existence of resources (advertised or not) - locating appropriate instances (e.g., a nearby file replica) - learning to use discovered resources - organizing discovered resources Our meeting considered three sets of issues: - protocols to support queries between subsystems - support for attribute-based searches - scalability of replication and distribution mechanisms We also discussed possible prototype efforts. Michael Schwartz (schwartz@cs.colorado.edu) Cooper [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 PRIVACY AND SECURITY -------------------- The PSRG met at BBN in Cambridge, MA on September 10-12, 1991. The middle day of the PSRG meeting was devoted to a PEM Working Group meeting, with additional attendees joining the PSRG members for that day. Most of the PSRG meeting was devoted to continuing discussion of Internet security architecture issues, a topic which also was the focus for the last PSRG meeting in May at University College London. The thrust of this work is a characterization of what security services are required for various classes of "applications" within the Internet and an analysis of whether these security services are provided by existing (application or lower layer) protocols. Applications being examined in the context include mail, directory services, file transfer, remote login, network file systems, interior and exterior gateway protocols, teleconferencing, time synchronization, etc. The security services considered include authentication, integrity, access control, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. This analysis will yield a set of recommendations of protocol security facilities to be used to provide security services for various applications. The analsyis also will point out gaps in the existing protocol suites, i.e., applications for which one or more security services cannot be provided effectively. We hope to be able to generalize from this analysis to make security facility recommendations for large classes of Internet applications. At the PEM WG portion of the meeting there was considerable progress on resolving issues related to the form of a certification hierarchy for the Internet, initially for use with PEM but useable by other applications as well, e.g., X.500 and X.400. The attendees agreed upon a structure in which a root, operated by the Internet Society, would certify various Policy Certification Authorities (PCAs). Each PCA would promulgate policies for certification authorities (CAs) registered under the auspices of that PCA. The policies and procedures for a PCA would be published as informational RFC. All certificates issued by CAs will have the property that the subject's X.500 distinguished name is subordinate to the issuer's distinguished name, thus causing an isomorphism between the naming and certification hierarchies below the PCA level. Cooper [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 This architecture supports a variety of policies with regard to organization and user certification. It also preserves the ability of any user to determine, unambiguously, the policy under which any certificate was issued. It is anticipated that PCAs will be established to accommodate users wanting high assurance policies (as per the RSADSI model of certification), less stringent policies (as per MIT's model for student registration), pseudononymous certification (as previously accommodated by PERSONA certificates), and residential user certification (as previously managed via NOTARY certificates). On the last day of the meetings, the PSRG discussed the newly announced DRAFT FIPS Digital Signature Standard algorithm. As a result of this discussion, the PSRG issued a memo on the possible implications of this algorithm, especially with regard to use with PEM, to the IAB. The PSRG did not recommend adoption of this algorithm, at this time, for several reaosns: - the DSS is quite new, i.e., it does not have a "track record" - the DSS is a DRAFT FIPS and thus has not yet made it through the review and comment cycle mandated for FIPS - the DSS satisfies the signature requirement of PEM, but does not address the problem of symmetric key distribution - the performance of the DSS, in the PEM, context, is appreciably worse than the RSA algorithm - use of the DSS does not ameliorate export control problems - adding new algorithms to the list for use with PEM, without grouping the algorithms into "suites" could result in lack of widespread interoperability due to the range of algorithms employed by PEM (encryption, message hash, certificate hash, message signature, certificate signature, and key encryption). Note that this recommendation is not a condemnation of the DRAFT DSS, but rather a suggestion to "wait and see" before making any decisions with regard to its adoption in the Internet. Steve Kent (kent@BBN.COM) Cooper [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- IETF PROGRESS REPORT (October, 1991) 1. Let me remind everyone that the next IETF meeting will take place from November 18th through the 22nd in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Sunday night reception will be held at the El Dorado hotel begining at 6 PM on November 17th. Complete registration and logistics information has already been mailed to the IETF mailing list. A preliminary schedule for working group meetings have also been mailed to the IETF list. For copies of this information (or for any other question about the upcoming meeting), please mail your request to ietf-rsvp@nri.reston.va.us. It should be noted that the duration of the meeting has been extended two hours to accommodate an additional WG meeting slot during the week. Friday morning will be devoted to technical presentations. The Area Director reports will be presented from 1:30 to 3:30 PM Friday afternoon, which will conclude the week's schedule. 2. There has been a great deal of standards activity during the month. The Border Gateway Protocol Version 3 (RFC1267), its MIB and supporting documentation were published in a five RFC set. With this publication, BGP was elevated to Draft Standard. In addition to the WG actions, the Internet Activities Board submitted RFC 1262, Guidelines for Internet Measurement Activities, The Internet Routing Protocol Standardization Criteria was released as RFC1264, and SNMP Communications Services was released as RFC1270. A number of other IESG protocol recommendations were approved by the IAB during the month, and these will be listed in the November monthly report. 3. As a result of discussions held during the Atlanta IETF Meeting, the minutes of IESG meetings are now available via FTP. These minutes are located in a distributed directory on the same hosts as the ietf and internet-drafts directories. Filenames are in the form "iesg.minutes.date" where date is the date of meeting (such as 91-08-15 for the August 15, 1991 minutes). To retrieve these minutes, FTP into one of the available machines with the username "anonymous" and password "guest". After logging in, type "cd iesg". "get iesg.minutes.91-10-03" Cooper [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 4. 1 New Working Group was formed: Internet School Networking (cosn) 5. 20 Internet Draft Actions between October 1, and October 31, 1991: (Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) ) WG I-D Title ------ ----------------------------------------------------- (osids) o An Interim Approach to use of Network Addresses (rreq) o Requirements for Internet IP Routers (ahwgipso) o U.S. Department of Defense Security Options for the Internet Protocol (spwg) o Guidelines for the Secure Operation of the Internet (bgp) o Border Gateway Protocol NEXT-HOP-SNPA Attribute (acct) o Internet Accounting: Background (822ext) o Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies (none) o A User Agent Configuration Mechanism For Multimedia Mail Format Information (none) o Mid-Level Networks: Potential Technical Services (none) o International character support in SMTP (rreq) o IP Forwarding Table MIB (none) o RIP Version 2 Addition of Subnet Masks (bgp) o Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the Internet (x25mib) + SNMP MIB extension for HDLC (x25mib) + SNMP MIB extension for IP over X.25 (x25mib) + SNMP MIB extension for the X.25 Packet Layer (netfax) + File Format for the Transmission of Images in the Internet Cooper [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 (iab) + The Internet Standards Process (bgp) + BGP OSPF Interaction (appleip) + Tunnelling AppleTalk through IP 6) 7 RFC's Produced between October 1 and October 31, 1991 (Standard (S), Proposed Standard (PS), Draft Standard (DS), Experimental (E), Informational (I) ) RFC Status WG Title ------- -- -------- -------------------------------------------- RFC1264 I (iesg) Internet Routing Protocol Standardization Criteria RFC1265 I (bgp) BGP Protocol Analysis RFC1266 I (bgp) Experience with the BGP Protocol RFC1267 DS (bgp) A Border Gateway Protocol 3 (BGP-3) RFC1268 PS (bgp) Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the Internet RFC1269 I (bgp) Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 3) RFC1270 I (snmpdir) SNMP Communications Services Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US) Cooper [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- ANSNET/NSFNET Backbone Engineering Report ----------------------------------------- Summary The reliability of the recently expanded T3 backbone has improved dramatically over the last month with the resolution to several outstanding problems. In recent weeks, congestion has begun to set in on the T1 backbone. An interim solution to address the T1 backbone congestion has been deployed while final reliability enhancements are being applied to the T3 backbone. New software has been installed on the T1/T3 interconnect gateways to improve reliability and performance, while a 3rd interconnect gateway has been installed in Houston. Following the remaining changes to the T3 backbone in the coming weeks, we expect to transition more networks off of the T1 backbone to the T3 backbone. T1 Backbone Update The T1 backbone network has recently begun to experience congestion. The point of congestion is at the ethernet interface on the E-PSPs. We have implemented a change at the College Park NSS and the Ithaca NSS which uses a spare RT machine on the NSS to be used as a second E-PSP. Both of these E-PSP machines are attached to the single shared ethernet which also interconnects to regional routers. The load can be split across the two E-PSP systems since different networks can be designated by the RCP_ROUTED routing software to use the two different ethernet interfaces. This has been running successfully for a few days at College Park and Ithaca. We plan to replicate this "dual E-PSP" configuration at a few additional T1 backbone sites that have experienced congestion over the next couple of weeks. Also, an additional T1 connection will be installed between Boston and Pittsburgh. T3 Backbone Update We are pleased to report that the T3 network reliability has improved dramatically over the last month. Most of the major problems which followed the installation of the phase-II network deployment have been resolved. These include the observed packet loss, the DSU synchronization problems, and most recently, the T3 interface adapter "black link" problem which has been significantly minimized with recent software fixes and hardware configuration changes in the routers. We have turned off ICMP network Cooper [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 unreachable messages which are generated from within the core CNSS interfaces which were causing end users to see TCP session disconnects. The ENSS routers continue to generate ICMP network unreachable messages on external interfaces. We hope that this "feature" will make internal topology changes less annoying to users, at worst causing momentary pauses in data transfers as link states change and routing algorithms converge. There are a few remaining minor problems involving the routing software which involve the periodic loss of internal BGP connections between routers. The fixes to these problems are being tested and will shortly be deployed on the production backbone. Once these and other changes have been deployed, we will begin to transition the remaining networks advertised over the T1 backbone to use the T3 backbone. The last remaining T3 link installation for the Phase-II plan for the T3 backbone upgrade has been completed, from Denver to St. Louis. All CNSS sites are now multiply connected. The T3 ENSS installation at Lincoln, NB has been delayed Safety Net Plan The plan to deploy 12 new T1 links on the T3 backbone to redundantly interconnect the existing T3 CNSS nodes together is in progress. Routing metrics will be established on the T3 backbone so that the T1 links would be used only in the event that multiple T3 paths become unreachable between CNSS routers, and no other alternate T3 paths are available. The links and hardware have been installed on the production nodes, but have yet not been software configured. This is pending completion of testing. The installation is scheduled for completion by mid-November. T1/T3 Interconnect Gateways A new version of the "rcp_routed" software was deployed on the Ann Arbor and San Diego T1/T3 interconnect gateways. This software allows the interconnect gateways to run as "hot standbys" for each other, so that if one fails the other will take over. It is still the case that the switchover will take 6 minutes during a full route transition. We are preparing to split the routes between Cooper [Page 12] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 multiple interconnect gateways which will improve load balancing across the interconnects, and reduce the transition time during an automatic cutover. A 3rd interconnect gateway has recently been installed at Houston. Our current plan is to use the Ann Arbor and Houston gateways as hot standbys for each other, with San Diego as a manual backup site in case of dual interconnect failure. Jordan Becker (becker@NISC.JVNC.NET), Advanced Network & Services Inc. Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu), Merit Network, Inc. BARRNET ------- The U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station became BARRNet's 100th connected member in October, joining with a 56kbps connection. Two additional sites were connected at 56kbps, bringing the total BARRNet connected membership to 102. BARRNet also provided the Internet connectivity for the Interop 91 trade show in San Jose October 7-11. Interop is the largest trade show for users and providers of internetworking equipment. BARRNet announced in October a new Port-only service, under which a member may provide their own BARRNet-approved equipment at their site to connect to a port at a BARRNet hub running PPP. Previously all equipment had to be BARRNet provided. BARRNet also announced a plan to deploy routers manufactured by Network Application Technology to member sites, to further lower the cost of connecting with BARRNet-provided equipment. by Paul Baer BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- ST Conferencing There were a total of 21 video conferences and demonstrations as well as one four-day SIMNET exercise during September. Two conferences included four sites, three included three, and the remaining 16 were point to point. The DWS project sponsored about one-third of the conferences, making good use of the second conferencing site at BBN. Conferences were held for discussions in the following areas: DWS, AWSSIMS, PSRG, and the Fatpipe OMG. The expected reconnection of Ft. Leavenworth as a TWB conferencing site did not occur in October, because the T1 tail circuit to the TWB was not yet available. Jil Westcott Cooper [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 CICNET ------ This report covers CICNet activities for both Sept. and Oct. 1991. During the month of September CICNet began the process of a bid solicitation to reengineerits backbone and develop new NOC services. A key component of this process wasa Technical Board meeting held in Reaston, Virginia on Sept. 12 & 13. This meeting included an indepth review of current CICNet operations, associated costs, and analysis and recommendations by Technical Board. The meeting also included a presentation by MCI and a visit to their East Coast Network Operations Center. During Sept. CICNet staff members met with the CIC Telcom Directors and the CIC Library Automation Directors to discuss issues of mutual interest. During October the bid solicitation process continued with presentations by four bidders to a Technical Board committee charged with making bid recommendations to the CICNet Board of Directors. CICNet also held the second meeting of the Network Information Resources Committee (NIRCOMM). This committee is charged with building an environment within CICNet which provides for effective and efficient access to the many information resources located at CICNet member sites and elsewhere. The Committee is composed of individuals from CICNet member sites working is a variety of areas, including library automation and acquisition, user support, campus wide information system development and support, and network development. At the October NIRCOMM meeting Ameritech and NOTIS Systems, Inc. gave presentations on current activities and strategic directions. by John Hankins COMMERCIAL INTERNET EXCHANGE (CIX) ---------------------------------- The following report outlines CIX-WEST usage for the month of October, 1991. CIX In Out Member Octets Packets Errors Octets Packets Errors --------- ----------------------------- ------------------------------ AlterNet 35597608609 96300940 399 13042811490 72440584 0 CERFnet 19454796525 81325425 211 26492024413 83300747 0 PSINet 19413907185 89331631 1127 34998709405 111714642 0 Starting: Sep 30 1991 at 23:53 Ending: Oct 31 1991 at 23:45 SNMP Polling Intervals: 2840 Cooper [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 SNMP Polling Frequency: 15 minutes In - traffic entering the CIX from the CIX member network Out - traffic exiting the CIX into the CIX member network At the present time, approximately 400 networks within AlterNet, CERFNet, and PSINet are using the CIX-WEST. A complete list of networks accessible via the CIX is available via anonymous FTP from cix.org in the file cix.nets. The current revision of this list is: 29-OCT-1991. Send mail to info@cix.org for information regarding the CIX. Mark Fedor (fedor@psi.com) CONCERT ------- We had one new 56kbps connection added during the past month, bringing the total number of connected institutions to 34. A proposal was submitted to the NSF for funding to connect eight additional North Carolina universities and colleges. We have recently started on a project to provide CONCERT's first production T3 link. The T3 circuit will link the FDDI backbone at the North Carolina State University with the FDDI network connecting the CONCERT NOC and the North Carolina Supercomputing Center. The transmission is via private microwave, with DSUs converting between the DS3 signal and the high-speed serial interface provided by Cisco AGS+ routers. Testing is currently underway, and the link should be operational within the next couple of months. A Spectracom Netclock/2 WWVB receiver clock was brought on-line so that CONCERT could provide a stratum 1 NTP timeserver within our mid-level network. Alan Clegg helped staff the OSI Connectivity demonstration at Interop. The CONCERT network provided end systems for the demonstration. X.400, X.500, vt and ftam were provided by two systems at CONCERT. Connectivity was excellent, limited only by the intermittent failure of the shownet. The Communications Research group is activily studying applications of a local area HiPPI network at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC). The HiPPI network interconnects a Cray Y-MP 8/464, Convex C220, IBM 3090, Maximum Strategies Disk Array, an Ultranet Cooper [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 1000 Hub, and several SUN4/470 workstations. To study the performance of this network, a HiPPI Link Data Analysis System (HILDA) has been developed. This system consists of a single board that plugs into the VME bus of a SUN4 workstation. The HILDA hardware and software provide an array of functions for measuring and testing this network including: * Real time analysis of network traffic * Real time error insertion * Statistical analysis of upper layer protocol functions * HiPPI network interface for a SUN4 * Network stress testing analysis At this point, all of the hardware and software design has been completed. We are starting to measure live traffic over the network. We are also using the HILDA system as an high speed network interface to the CRAY-YMP. When used in such applications as FTP, we have acheived data rates as fast as 160Mbps from the Cray to the SUN4 workstation. We have acheived FTP data rates as fast as 16Mbps from the workstation to the Cray. by Tom Sandoski CREN, CORPORATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL NETWORKING --------------------------------------------------------- BITNET Node and Gateway Requirements Specified Acting on the recommendations of its Technical Advisory Committee (previously BITNET Working Group), the CREN Board has established minimum requirements for BITNET nodes and for the official INTERBIT gateways between BITNET and the Internet that belong to members of CREN. This action was taken in response to increasing concerns about mail problems on the Internet caused by inconsistencies in addressing and error handling of mail gatewayed between the two networks. * All BITNET nodes must support the POSTMASTER and POSTMAST mail ID's for local delivery of messages to a human who will follow up to correct error conditions. This formalizes what has long been an unofficial requirement for BITNET participants. Support of the shorter POSTMASTER ID is necessary for those systems which are limited to eight-character user-names and mail ID's. * BITNET nodes which communicate with the Internet via the official INTERBIT gateways must use a BSMTP-compliant mailer, in order to correctly handle incoming as well as outgoing mail Cooper [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 with domain-style addresses and proper headers (see below for examples). This action was a compromise, allowing BITNET nodes which need only to communicate with other BITNET nodes to operate without a null mailer, in order not to unduly burden institutions needing such limited services, while simultaneously addressing the requirements for effective communications between networks. * INTERBIT gateways must forward mail only to and from BITNET nodes with BSMTP-compliant mailers, as soon as the software can be readied to make that possible. They will use the node's "servers" tag in BITEARN NODES and its derivative files to determine if the node has proper mailer software. * The re-writing of addresses by INTERBIT gateways must comply with the standards specified by the CREN Board (see below), as soon as modified software is available to allow that. Address rewriting is currently not done strictly according to Internet rules by most of the gateways. The definition of acceptable rules of address conversion should standardize this in a way which will also help to reduce looping and other errors. * The Board encourages unofficial gateways also to comply with the above requirements. The full text of the new standards adopted by the CREN Board is as follows: A. All BITNET nodes are required to support both POSTMASTER and POSTMAST mail ID's (case insensitive), for receipt of error messages and their local delivery to a human capable of taking whatever action may be necessary. (POSTMASTER will be truncated to POSTMAST upon receipt by nodes without mailers and must be properly delivered upon receipt by that account.) B. Every INTERBIT gateway between BITNET and the Internet operated by a CREN member or affiliate shall satisfy the following requirements, which other gateways are also strongly encouraged to meet: 1. The gateway shall not pass mail to or from BITNET nodes that do not use a BSMTP-compliant mailer. Mail from the Internet addressed to a BITNET node without such a mailer shall be returned with an error message; any file from a BITNET node without a compliant mailer, and any file without proper Internet mail headers, even if sent from a node with a compliant mailer, shall be returned with error message. For reference, the following are known to be BSMTP compliant: for VM/CMS systems, the combination of VM Network Mailer, Release 2, and Rice Mail; for MVS systems, UCLA/Mail; for VAX/VMS systems, Jnet plus PMDF; for Unix, UREP. 2. Cooper [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 The conversion of addresses in the mail headers shall: a. not modify apparent Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) addresses in gatewaying mail from BITNET to the Internet or from the Internet to BITNET; b. convert BITNET addresses of the form user@FOO or user @FOO.BITNET into Internet addresses of the form user%FOO.BITNET@gateway.domain, when sending mail from BITNET onto the Internet; c. convert Internet addresses of the form user%FOO.BITNET@gateway.domain into BITNET addresses of the form user@FOO.BITNET, when sending mail from the Internet onto BITNET; d. not convert or pass into the Internet any mail with BITNET addresses containing exclamation marks in the "user" field, as these are ill-defined upon conversion. The significance of the word "apparent" in B.2.a is that gateways are not expected to verify the actual address, but only its form. CREN, the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking, is the parent corporate structure for BITNET, the United States part of the global network consisting of BITNET and its Cooperating Networks. by Jim Conklin CSUNET (The California State University Network) ----------------------------------------------- We upgraded CSU San Bernardino to T-1 and installed a StrataCom IPX multiplexer for instructional video and data. Two-way instructional video is now productional between CSU Sacramento, CSU Fresno, and CSU Bakersfield. This week CSU San Bernardino begins live video production. The Los Angeles Community College District has been added to CSUnet. LACCD will use CSUnet to gain access to the CSU campuses educational resources and to the Internet. Mike Marcinkevicz (mdm@CSU.net) FARNET ------ CSUnet (the California State University Network) and CONCERT (Communications for NC Education, Research and Technology) are the newest members of FARNET. FARNET now has 30 members, including: Cooper [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 State networks 14 Regional (multi-state) networks 7 National nets 3 Supercomputer nets 3 Canadian provincial nets 1 University campuses 1 Local networks 1 FARNET delivered its recommendations regarding inter-regional connectivity in the next generation of the NSFNET to NSF on November 1. Copies of the text are publicly available for FTP from host nic.cerf.net, directory farnet, subdirectory farnet_docs, filename nsf-backbone-rec. The next meeting of FARNET will be held in Santa Fe, NM, on Nov. 18-19. The topic is "Improving End-to-End Reliability in the Internet: Hardening the Network." The winter meeting is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 11-12 in Orlando, FL. Topic: Commercialization of the Internet. Laura Breeden (breeden@NIC.NEAR.NET ISI --- GIGABIT NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE Presentation: "User Services Planning in the Internet". RARE WG3 (Association of European Research Networks) Meetings Directory Services and User Services. September 28th - October 3rd, 1991 - Zurich, Switzerland. Provided demonstrations on BBN's "Tour of the Internet" and UCDavis' "Mining the Internet". Session Leader: "Internet User Services Session" (10/9/91) Session Leader: "Internet User Services Birds of a Feather" (10/10/91) Interop '91, October 7th - 11th 1991 - San Jose, California. Presentation on: "Internet School Networking". California Internet Federation Meeting. October 21st, 1991. San Ramon, California. Joyce Reynolds (jkrey@ISI.EDU) Cooper [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Eight RFCs were published this month. RFC 1262: Vinton G. Cerf, "Guidelines for Internet Measurement Activities", CNRI, October 1991. RFC 1263: O'Malley, S., and L. Peterson, "TCP Extensions Considered Harmful", University of Arizona, October 1991. RFC 1264: Hinden, R., "Internet Engineering Task Force Internet Routing Protocol Standardization Criteria", BBN, October 1991. RFC 1265: Y. Rekhter, (IBM) Hinden, R., (BBN), "BGP Protocol Analysis", October 1, 1991. RFC 1266: Y, Rekhter, "Experience with the BGP Protocol", (IBM), October 1, 1991. RFC 1267: Lougheed, K., (CISCO), Y. Rekhter (IBM), "A Border Gateway Protocol 3 (BGP-3)", October 1991. RFC 1268: Rekhter, Y., (IBM), P. Gross, (ANS), "Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the Internet", October 1991. RFC 1269: Willis, S., and J. Burruss, "Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 3)", October 1991. Ann Westine Cooper (COOPER@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING We have enhanced the SPARCstation implementation of our real-time Packet Video Program (PVP) from the older ST protocol to ST-II (RFC 1190), and tested it by transmitting packet video across DARTnet between ISI and BBN. PVP uses the socket API provided by BBN's kernel implementation of ST-II. Upcoming will be performance tests of the ST kernel under a mixed load of packet audio and video plus IP. ISI has received from SunLabs two prototype S-bus boards that perform frame buffer, video image capture, video window, and video codec functions. These boards, called "DIME", will be used for experiments with "personal conferencing" between workstations. The TWBnet conferencing system was employed for the first time to Cooper [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 teach a graduate computer science class between USC/ISI and UCL. As an aid for this lecture, the Multimedia Conference Control program was extended to allow the lecturer to select display of the local image on the video monitor instead of the remote image. This is useful for sharing overhead slides on a copystand camera with students participating both locally and remotely. Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU) JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK --------------------------------------------- I. General information A. How to reach us: *1-800-35-TIGER (from anywhere in the United States) *by e-mail: NOC: noc@jvnc.net Service desk: service@jvnc.net *by mail: U.S. mail address: Princeton University B6 von Neumann Hall Princeton, NJ 08544 (Director: Sergio Heker) B. Hours *NOC: 24 hours/day, seven days a week Service desk: 9:00 to 5:00 pm, M - F (except holidays) C. Other info available on-line from NICOL Telnet to nicol.jvnc.net. Login ID is nicol and no password. II. New Information A. RFCs on-line To obtain RFCs from the official JvNCnet repository (two methods) *ftp nicol.jvnc.net; username: nicol; password: *RFC automailer. Send email to sendrfc@jvnc.net. Subject line is RFCxxxx. xxxx represents the RFC number. RFCs with three digits only need three digits in the request. Cooper [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 B. Operational Information JvNCnet availability for September is 99.92%. JvNCnet traffic (input and output packets combined) Aug. 1991 : 1,592,886,470 Sept. 1991: 1,982,000,376 September's figure represents an increase of 24%. C. New On-line Members Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, NJ Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ Rider College, Lawrenceville, NJ D. JvNCnet Symposium Series An opportunity for novice and Internet-experienced users to learn more about Internet-reachable applications may be just what you are looking for. The JvNCnet Symposium, NETWORK APPLICATIONS, will place Friday, January 24, 1992 at Princeton University. Program speakers will describe useful and interesting applications and resources accessible over the Internet. Send inquiries to nisc@jvnc.net. E. K-12 Program JvNCnet recently initiated a K-12 educational program using dial-up connectivity in the State of New Jersey. The program was developed because students and teachers in pre-college stand to receive numerous direct benefits including: electronic communication with other students, educators, other educational professionals, academicians and corporate scientists worldwide, improvement and enrichment of cognitive skills, ability to perform independent research and knowledge acquisition, and building computer/technical literacy. We are interested in hearing your views and comments about the K-12 network matrix. Send email to K-12-interest@jvnc.net. by Rochelle Hammer (hammer@jvnc.net) Cooper [Page 22] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 LOS NETTOS ---------- A technical committee meeting was held on the 30th. This meeting was used to discuss technical issues only. Routing upgrades, software upgrades, and hardware upgrades were discussed. Technical policies and procedures were also discussed. The meeting proved to be quite valuable because many new technical representatives supporting Los Nettos have joined the network. GTE has given us an OK to test, use of a FAX to report T1 outages. They are willing to try this method after the beginning of the year. We hope to automate sending of the T1 outaged FAX's with our network monitoring system and our e-mail FAX server. OSPF routing tests continue. Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- Walt Lazear and John McGuthry participated in the OSI Infrastructure booth at Interop '91. We had X.500 and FTAM available on the Internet for access from the booth. The interoperability testing and routing problems before the show were exciting. The OSI networking at the show, however, is better left for war story time. In addition to Walt and John, Rick Wilder, Ron Bennis, Dave Wood, Forrest Palmer, and Chris O'Donnell attended Interop. Bill Barns, Walt, Forrest, Susan Symington, and Kit Leuder presented a briefing and demonstration of managing an internetwork to Defense Information Systems Agency managers. The emphasis was on cooperation among operations centers to identify and resolve internetwork problems. Walt and Mike Fidler are heavily occupied with planning, coordinating, and executing a move of 700 people in December to a new building. New lab layouts, operating strategies, and comm issues make life interesting these days. Walt Lazear (lazear@gateway.mitre.org) Cooper [Page 23] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK ----------------------------------------- NEARnet has grown to 99 members. The OSI CLNS routing over the NEARnet backbone during INTEROP was successful. NEARnet continues deployment of DECNET for ESNET. The fifth NEARnet Technical and User Seminar will be held on December 12, 1991 at the Brandeis University Events Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. The fall issue of the NEARnet Newsletter has been published and distributed. The ninth issue of the electronic bulletin "NEARnet This Month" has been distributed. Past issues of the bulletin are available via anonymous FTP at nic.near.net, in the directory /newsletters/nearnet_this_month. by John Rugo NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. ---------------------------------------- Change in NNSC.NSF.NET IP Address Please note that the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for the NNSC.NSF.NET system have been changed. In the past, there were two addresses: 192.31.103.6 128.89.1.178 The 192.31.103.6 address is no longer valid. Please remove it from any configuration files as appropriate. The NNSC.NSF.NET system provides provides ftp access to ietf documents, internet-drafts, and a variety of related information for NSFNET users. DDN NIC Root Server Files available at NNSC.NSF.NET Due to connectivity problems experienced between Internet sites and the new DDNNIC, we have made copies of the updated DDN NIC root server files available viaanonymous FTP at nnsc.nsf.net. INTEROP '91 Cooper [Page 24] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 John Curran of the NNSC Staff participated in the Internet User Services Session at INTEROP 91. The NNSC "Tour of the Internet" HyperCard2 Stack was demonstrated at a related BOF session. Internet Resource Guide The NNSC Staff distributed additions to Chapters 1, 3, and 5 of the Internet Resource Guide. The Internet: A World of Connections The NNSC has published a short introduction and overview of the Internet, called "The Internet: A World of Connections". This document is available via anonymous FTP from nnsc.nsf.net, in the directory nsfnet. The document may also be retrieved through electronic mail via the NNSC Info-Server. To receive the file send a mail message to: info-server@nnsc.nsf.net, in the body of the message type, request: nsfnet, topic: internet-overview. Update on NNSC "Tour of the Internet" Distribution The NNSC "Tour of the Internet" HyperCard2 stack has been accepted into to the Hypermedia and Instructional Software Clearinghouse catalogue published at the University of Colorado. The next issue of the catalogue is due to be released next month. Updating NSF Network Newsletter Map Site List The NNSC Staff began collecting site list information for the upcoming issue ofthe NSF Network Newsletter map. Network managers should send their updated list of sites to Alanna MacDonald at macdonal@nnsc.nsf.net. Corinne Carroll NSF BACKBONE (Merit) ------------------- Total traffic on the NSFNET T1 and T3 infrastructures measured 11,267,961,959 inbound packets, representing all inbound traffic during October 1991 and a 19% increase over September's volume. NSFNET T1 infrastructure inbound traffic totaled 10,394,213,694 packets during October. This total includes packet traffic entering the T1 network from the T3 network. As of the end of October, 3556 networks are announced to the T1 NSFNET, with 1214 of this total foreign networks. Cooper [Page 25] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 T3 infrastructure inbound traffic totaled 1,447,985,015 packets during October, including packet traffic entering the T3 network from the T1 network. Networks with announcement to the T3 infrastructure now number 869. Merit Network, Inc., Advanced Network & Services (ANS) and some 30 networking technology vendors worked in collaboration to provide ISO Open Systems Interconnection infrastructure demonstrations at InterOp to some 30 networks including five European sites. The Merit/NSFNET partnership, which includes the Merit Network, Inc., Advanced Network & Services (ANS), IBM, and MCI, gave the first public demonstration of a prototype implementation of the OSI Inter-Domain Routing Protocol (IDRP). The prototype exchanged OSI routing information between three Routing Domains located at the InterOp show floor, Merit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and ANS in Elmsford, New York. IDRP is the final protocol needed to complete the OSI Network Layer. It is currently undergoing Committee Draft ballot review in the International Standards Organization. Susan Hares and Dave Katz, both of Merit Internet Engineering, worked to define the IDRP protocol and participated in the cooperative effort which resulted in OSI demonstrations at InterOp The OSI Demonstration Booth also featured X.500 infrastructure and interoperability demonstrations. The Field Operational X.500 (FOX) project is a joint endeavor of Merit, ISI, SRI and PSI. Mark Knopper, manager of Merit Internet Engineering, described Merit's efforts in the Field Operational X.500 Directory Services session and Chris Weider, also of Merit, exhibited Merit's FOX activity on the demonstration floor. Several other Merit staff attended InterOp in various roles: Glee Harrah Cady offered insights from the NSFNET experience in the Internet User Services conference session; Cady and Susan Calcari participated in the Internet User Services BOF; Bill Norton, John Vollbrecht, Brian Cashman, as well as Cady, Calcari and Weider, provided discussion at the IBM booth for a new network management tool. EDUCOM '91 in San Diego was another forum for NSFNET project endeavors. In the "Live Exploration of NSFNET Resources" pre- conference session, Susan Calcari of Merit/NSFNET Information Services demonstrated online resources of the NSFNET and gave an overview of the project and possibilities to twice the expected audience. Calcari also participated in the concurrent session "Enhancing Education with NSFNET." "From NSFNET to the NREN: Computer Networking Today and Tomorrow" was the concurrent session topic for Steve Wolff, Director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Networking and Communications Research Cooper [Page 26] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Infrastructure, and Ellen Hoffman, manager of Merit/NSFNET Information Services. Jane Caviness, NSF, Mike Roberts, EDUCOM, and Doug Van Houweling, Vice-Provost for Information Technology at the University of Michigan, were the featured panelists for a SIG review of "Merit's National Activities." Laura Kelleher and Ken Horning of Merit/NSFNET Information Services attended the proceedings. Information services and network resources were topics for discussion in other conferences: Kelleher spoke at the University of Maine about the NSFNET and its resources, and Horning traveled to Pasco, Washington for the NorthWestNet Annual Meeting to present an overview of the NSFNET and Internet Tour. The November 11-12 Merit Networking Seminar hosted by SURAnet at the University of Maryland University Center and sponsored by Merit Network, Inc. has been filled to capacity. Speakers will include Jim Knighton, NASA; Donna Cox, NCSA; Ron Larsen, University of Maryland; Jim Fulton, UNC; Jonathan Wilkenfeld, University of Maryland; Tom Grundner, NPTN/Cleveland Freenet; and John Clement, EDUCOM. Stephen Wolff, NSF, will give the keynote address, and Mike Nelson, US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, will close the session. Information on the next Merit Networking Seminar, scheduled for April 13-14, 1992 in Las Vegas, Nevada, is available from 1-800-66-MERIT or seminar@merit.edu. Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu) PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------- Interop '91, held in San Jose California earlier this month, was attended by Gene Hastings, Ken Goodwin and Stephen Cunningham of our networking staff. Ken and Gene participated in a customer presentation where both spoke about our experiences with the implementation of FDDI. Members of our group are also currently working on the network design and implementation that will be part of Supercomputing '91, to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 18 - 22. New network connections to the PSC and the Internet for the month of October include: The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Franklin and Marshall College, Munin Systems, Allegheny College, twelve temporary networks to be used at Supercomputing '91, and six PREPnet service networks. by Stephen Cunningham Cooper [Page 27] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 SAIC ---- SAIC Activities for October An experiment was attempted with with MITRE and UDEL to participate in DARTNET audio conferences using IDPR. Unfortunately configuration problems with SAIC's nameserver prevented us from getting started. The problem has since been fixed and we will try again as soon as possible. A new parser for reading address to AD mapping files is nearly finished. This is significant because it uses the BSD4.3 reno routing code. This was seen as a simple way of learning about the radix based routing softwre and seeing if it can be easily integrated with the IDPR kernel code. It also makes the mapping files more flexible. Work continues on modifying the IDPR kernel for the addition of 4.3 reno routing. Planned activies: Completion of the IDPR configuration parser and first cut at radix based searches in the kernel code. Woody Woodburn (woody@sparta.com) SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ The NSC HIPPI crossbar switch was delivered to the Center last month. Additional interface cards, plus the requisite cables are still awaited. As mentioned last month, we linked the UCSD campus FDDI ring to SDSC with a CERFnet supplied FDDI "stub" and a Cisco double FDDI router. This connected the rest of campus to the NSC supplied FDDI/T3 routers via our production ring and thence to the EDUCOM '91 conference the San Diego Convention Center (Oct 16-19.) On 16 October, Hans-Werner Braun attended an EDUCOM NTTF meeting, held during the conference. On October 17, Braun and Kim Claffy attended a breakfast meeting to further discuss NREN objectives with Bob Aiken, George Strawn and Steve Wolff of NSF and Peter Ford of LANL. Braun met with Steve Wolff on October 17 to further discuss general networking issues, and met with George Strawn on October 18 on Cooper [Page 28] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 matters related to the NSFNET. During the month the Sequoia network researchers at UCSD conducted studies of the Internet response time between various sites in Calif. Gerard Newman & Tom Hutton of SDSC assisted them with routing modifications, etc. as needed. Braun particpated in two IAB conference calls on October 2 and October 24, as well as attending the IAB meeting in San Jose on October 10, during the Interop conference (October 7-10). On October 9, also during InterOp, Braun and Claffy met with Bob Aiken, NSF Programming Director for NREN, and Peter Ford (LANL), to discuss NREN-related objectives. On October 15, SDSC hosted a visit from Don Albares of the Naval Ocean Systems Center to discuss the possibility of applying Albares' gigabit research to projects that SDSC is involved in. On October 21, UCSD and SDSC hosted a visit from Gurudatta Parulkar of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Parulkar gave presentations at both UCSD and SDSC on his research interests in high performance networks. Braun participated in a panel presentation at the Visualization '91 conference in San Diego, on October 24, focusing on Networking Infrastructure, in particular as it applies to visualization requirements. Active involvement in the Casa Gigabit Testbed effort continues. On October 21, Braun participated in a Casa Executive Committee conference call. Dan Massey of SDSC continues to collaborate with LANL on HIPPI network simulation efforts. SDSC hosted a visit from Dan Stevenson of NCNC on October 25. Gerard Newman, Hans-Werner Braun, and Dan Massey met with him, focusing on issues related to the gigabit projects and other networking efforts at SDSC. SDSC is also maintaining active communication with the rest of the UCSD campus community. On October 28, Braun gave a presentation on the NSFNET in a meeting of a research group at the UCSD Computer Science Department. SDSC has also gained considerable momentum in its network performance testing efforts. Working toward project goals of network performance analysis has resulted in a set of initial data to explore the traffic domain, and is now focusing on establishing Cooper [Page 29] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 a systematic methodology for testing a variety of networking environments composed of multiple link, intermediate router, and end system architectures. An effort between Claffy and colleagues in Japan is focusing on traffic characteristics between Japan and the United States, as measured by Toshiya Asaba of Recruit, Inc. at the WIDE network interface point to PACCOM in Japan. Paul Love (loveep@sdsc.edu) SURANET ------- MCI/SURAnet Agreement SURAnet and MCI completed an agreement which will deliver significant benefits to all SURAnet members. SURAnet is beginning immediately to convert the existing SURAnet network. Access to T-3 Backbone Two new external gateways were introduced, ENSS #138 at Georgia Tech and ENSS #136 at College park, MD. These two nodes provide SURAnet sites access to the new T-3 NSFnet backbone. Archie An Archie server is now installed and running at the SURAnet NIC. This should provide much faster service to SURAnet members and others on the Internet who want to access this very popular service. SURAnet Review A high level Committee, formed for the purpose of assuring that SURAnet is and remains a program of excellence and of merit in meeting the communications needs of the higher education and research community, held its first visit on November 11th. It is anticipated that the Committee will visit SURAnet on an annual basis. Cooper [Page 30] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 SURAnet Technical Meeting Plans are being finalized for the SURAnet 2nd Annual Technical Meeting to be held at the University of Maryland from 12th - 15th November. The Meeting will cover a variety of topics including OSPF/Routing; Internetworking with OSI; SMDS; T1 Date Circuits and others. by Peter Liebscher UCL ---- We have been conducting packet voice and video experiments across the 2Mbps IP service on JANET, paralleling the DARTNET activities. Using UDP for voice, we are now able to run mini-conferences with perfectly adequate audio quality, and using DPCM, about 50% of the 64kbps required for sparc audio. Using X over TCP, or UDP based simple transport to carry XImages, we get 6-7 frames per second of mono 128 pixel video London-Cambridge, which is usable for video telephony. We still await delivery of H.261 CODECs from a certain telecom company. We are investigating the use of the Eschkol-Wachmann movement notation for automatic gesture recognition in stored digital video conference logs. If we can make this quick enough, it may be used to automate some aspects of floor control (e.g. switching camera sources), but it can certainly be effectively employed to compare the non-verbal communication that is able to be used in different bandwith conferences. At the moment, a prototype is in use for studying mammal behaviour at 5 frames per second. This work is in conjunction with our neurophysiology department. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Thanks to Lars Mathieson of the University of Copenhagen, we now have a Unix version of the NTP Version 3 time- synchronization protocol up and running. It was derived from Dennis Fergusson's xntpd distribution now in use at lots of places. In addition, Erik Perkins of our lab fixed the kernel and radio interface code to work with SunOS streams, so we now have a functional stratum-1 primary server online. A fair amount of work remains to certify the protocol machinery and Cooper [Page 31] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 local-clock algorithms. 2. Ken Monington has been carefully monitoring precision time differences (low nanoseconds) between our burgeoning crop of radio and atomic time references and finding some of them not as truly well disciplined as previously supposed. Glitches several times the claimed specification have been observed in all the radios, although the incidence of these is infrequent. This reinforces the conventional wisdom that no single clock can be trusted all the time. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) Cooper [Page 32] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 DIRECTORY SERVICES ------------------ This section of the Internet Monthly is devoted to efforts working to develop directory services that are for, or effect, the Internet. We would like to encourage any organization with news about directory service activities to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news items. The current reporters list includes: o IETF OSIDS Working Group o IETF DISI Working Group o Field Operational X.500 Project - ISI - Merit - PSI - SRI o National Institute of Standards and Technology [X] o North American Directory Forum o OSI Implementor's Workshop [X] o PARADISE Project [X] o PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT o Registration Authority Committee (ANSI USA RAC) [X] o U.S. Department of State, Study Group D, [X] MHS Management Domain subcommittee (SG-D MHS-MD) [X] indicates no report this month Tom Tignor (tpt2@isi.edu) DS Report Coordinator IETF OSIDS WORKING GROUP ------------------------ The OSI-DS Group met at Interop on 8th October. Full details will be available in the soon to be published minutes. The meeting was well attended, with representatives from Australia and France. The following I-Ds of the group have been recommended for progress to RFC by the IESG: - An Interim Approach to use of Network Addresses (OSI-DS 5) - A String encoding of Presentation Address (OSI-DS 6) - Domains and X.500 (OSI-DS 7) - Using the OSI Directory to achieve User Friendly Naming (OSI-DS 8) - Replication Requirement to provide an Internet Directory using X.500 (OSI-DS 9) Cooper [Page 33] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 - The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema (OSI-DS 10) - Replication and Distributed Operations extensions to provide an Internet Directory using X.500 (OSI-DS 11) The document "Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots (OSI-DS 12)" was discussed briefly, and pending minor edits is ready to be submitted as an RFC. The document "DSA Naming (OSI-DS 13)" was discussed. It is intended to attempt to progress this document prior to the next meeting, as it is important for the next stage of expansion. Pilot experiments on "Handling QOS (Quality of service) in the Directory (OSI-DS 15)" are ongoing, and recommendatios on this I-D will be deferred until we have some practical experience. The document "An Access Control approach for Searching and Listing (OSI-DS 21)" was presented. It was agreed that this should be submitted privately by the authors as an informational RFC. The area was of interest, and this function should be considered later for Internet standardization. If done, this should probably be based on the 92 access control. It was agreed that following successful experiments (Russ Wright, Tim Howes et al) that pictures in the directory should migrate for G3Fax to JPEG. Definitions would be added to the schema to allow for this. A draft document "A Strategic Plan for deploying an Internet Directory Service" was discussed. The next version of this document will be an I-D. This WG will take on active review of the document. There were many comments, but broad concensus on the direction proposed. A lengthy discussion on postal addresses was avoided by scheduling this item at 18:00. Steve Hardcastle-Kille (s.kille@cs.ucl.ac.uk) IETF DISI WORKING GROUP ----------------------- The DISI group is currently reviewing their draft, "An Executive Introduction to Directory Services Using the X.500 Protocol." As stated in the draft abstract, this document is an overview of the X.500 standard for people not familiar with the technology. It compares and contrasts Directory Services based on X.500 with several of the other Directory services currently in use in the Internet. The paper also describes the status of the standard and Cooper [Page 34] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 provides references for further information on X.500 implementations and technical information. Chris Weider (clw@merit.edu) FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT -------------------------------------- The FOX project is a DARPA and NSF sponsored effort to provide a basis for operational X.500 deployment in the NREN/Internet. This work is being carried out at Merit, NSYERNet/PSI, SRI and ISI. ISI is the main contractor and responsible for project oversight. ISI --- ISI recently compiled and submitted the U.S./Internet component of the PARADISE report. The submission included updates on the activities of X.500-oriented organizations over the past half year. Directory Services activities were emphasized, and much of the submission consists of the most central elements of previous DSARs. Look for this information when the PARADISE report is released. Tom Tignor (tpt2@ISI.EDU) MERIT ----- Merit's FOX activities for the month of October consisted mainly of presentations: 1: Merit presented an overview of the FOX project to the RARE Working Group 3 meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in early October. 2: Merit participated in the Fielding Operational X.500 seminar at Interop in San Jose, CA in mid October. Chris Weider (clw@merit.edu) PSI --- A first draft of a document describing the schema supporting the x5ftp application was prepared and distributed to FOX participants. It will be submitted for review by the IETF OSI-DS group in the near future. Cooper [Page 35] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 A script to generate EDB files in accordance to the schema described above was written, and a new DIT subtree { o=Internet, ou=FTP Archives } was brought online. Discussions were begun with other interested parties on the specification of a lightweight alternative to the X.500 DAP. The form of the mechanism, as well as the functionality to be provided are both currently under discussion. PSI attended the FOX meeting at Interop '91. Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com) SRI ---- Ruth Lang participated in the "Field Operational X.500 Directory Services" panel session at Interop 91. Her talk gave an overview of the DISI Working Group, the creation of the DISI Internet-Draft entitled "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations," and work performed to make WHOIS information available through X.500. Jose Garcia-Luna and Ruth Lang attended a FOX project meeting that occurred on Friday, October 11 at 7:30a at Interop 91. A prototype of X5WHOIS was demonstrated on Friday, October 11 at Interop 91 in the SRI booth. The intent of X5WHOIS is to provide a facility as similar as possible to the existing NIC WHOIS service, using X.500 instead of the NIC database software. In order to provide reasonable response time, a total of 12 indices are used to access the WHOIS information being offered by the QUIPU DSA "Northern Swift Fox." The additional memory required to support these indices has required that we temporarily reduce the data set available; specifically, only a token set of individual entries are available. System reconfiguration work will be performed in the near future to remedy the problem. You can experiment with X5WHOIS now; we will keep a current copy accessible while development continues. There are two methods, remote-WHOIS and TELNET: [1] Remote-WHOIS: Assuming your site runs the BSD "whois" program: % whois -h inic.nisc.sri.com [2a] Telnet to inic.nisc.sri.com, port 43. Cooper [Page 36] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Type a one-line argument. [2b] Telnet normally to inic.nisc.sri.com. Login as "x5whois", which needs no password. Type one-line arguments. Ruth Lang met with Bob McCollum and Mark Kosters of Network Solutions on October 18. They discussed technical options of how GSI/Network Solutions could make a copy of the WHOIS information available to FOX for keeping the X.500 information up to date. A description of viable technical options was submitted to Network Solutions for their review. Input for the PARADISE report highlighting SRI's activities over the last 8 months was submitted to the DSAR Editor. An effort to obtain updated implementation descriptions and new submissions for the DISI Internet-Draft, "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations," occurred. Directed email describing additions and clarifications was sent to authors of existing catalog entries. A "last chance to submit" message was sent to the IETF OSI-oriented mailing lists. Russ Wright (LBL) and Ruth Lang (SRI) are in the process of compiling the updates to create a revised version of Internet-Draft document. We received and responded to 9 queries regarding the availability of "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations" (Internet-Draft document draft-ietf-disi-catalog-00.txt); 5 of these resulted from contacts made at Interop 91. Ruth Lang (rlang@nisc.sri.com) NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM ------------------------------- At the last meeting of the NADF in Bethesda, the NADF began examining security and privacy issues related to the offering of directory services, with a new subgroup being formed that will focus on such issues. NADF-175, the revised version of NADF-123, has been released as an informational RFC (RFC 1255.) Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com) Cooper [Page 37] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project --------------------------- A script was written to remotely poll DSAs. This script will be used to check the reliability of DSAs under PSI control, including the master and official slaves for c=US. Some bugs in the quipu 7.0 code affecting the use of the Directory Assistance Service were fixed and fed back to the maintainers of the ISODE distribution. PSI speakers participated in the Interop '91 panels on "X.500 Directory Services" and "Fielding Operational X.500". Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com) PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT PROJECT ----------------------------- The transition of the PSI White Pages Pilot Project to the naming scheme proposed by the NADF was begun. New organizations added to the pilot this past month are: Control Data Washington University Stanford University Digital Equipment Corporation Wengyik Yeong (yeongw@psi.com) Cooper [Page 38] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 CALENDAR OF EVENTS ------------------ Readers are requested to send in dates of events that are appropriate for this calendar section. 1991 CALENDAR Sep 29-Oct 4 5TH SDL (CCITT FDT) FORUM, Rick Reed, GPT Coventry, UK rick_reed@eurokom.ie Oct 7-11 INTEROP91, San Jose, Ca Oct 7-15 6TH WORLD TELECOM'91 SYMPOSIUM, Geneva Oct 8-11 IFIP WORKSHOP ON OPEN DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING -- Contact jdm@fokus.berlin.gmd.dbp.de or heymer@iir-adlershof.adw.dp.dd Oct 15-17 4TH INTL. WORKSHOP ON PROTOCOL TEST SYSTEM Leidschendam, Jan Kroon (J_Kroon@pttrnl.nl) Nov 4 T1S1: Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame Relay, Broadband ATM), Dallas, TX MCI/DSD Nov 10 T1E1, Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1, Broadband, etc.), Florida, Siemens Nov 17 T1M1, Management and Maintenance (ISDN, Broadband, Frame Relay, etc.) Nashville, TN, Northern Telecom Nov 18-22 IETF, Santa Fe, MN Megan Davies (mdavies@NRI.RESTON.VA.US Nov 19-22 FORTE'91, University of Queensland Ken Parker, Telecom Austrl (k.parker@trl.oz.au) Dec 2-5 4TH INT. WORKSHOP ON PETRI NETS AND PERFORMANCE MODELS, Melbourne, Australia Jonathan Billington, Telecom Austrl. (j.billington @ trl.oz.au) Dec 2-5 GLOBECOM'91, See IEEE Publications. Phoenic Dec 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 1992 CALENDAR Jan 13-21 ANSI X3T5 Jan 19 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame Relay, Broadband ATM) Jan 20-22 RIPE, Amsterdam Jan 28-30 ANSI X3S3.3, Tucson, AZ Feb 9 T1E1, Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1, Broadband, etc.) Fish Camp, CA Verilink Cooper [Page 39] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Feb 19-20 RARE WG1, Location unknown Feb 20-21 RARE Manager Mtg, Location unknown Mar 2 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame Relay, Broadband ATM) Mar 2-6 ANSI X3T5 Mar 2-6 CAIA '92 8th IEEE Conference on AI Application Mar 3-5 ACM CSC, Kansas City, MO Mar 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, Irvine, CA Mar 9-13 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Mar 16-19 Info Netwrk&DataComm, Espoo, FI Espoo, Helsinki, Finland; Contact: IFIP-TC6 Mar 18-20 Computers, Freedom & Privacy II, Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC Mar 23 T1M1, Management and Maintenance (ISDN, Broadband, Frame Relay, etc.), Raleigh, NC, Fujitsu Mar 25-27 National Net 92, Washington DC Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu) Apr 6-16 CCITT SG VII Geneva, Switzerland Apr 21-23 ANSI X3S3.3, Mountaon View, Ca. IETF, San Diego, CA Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.va.us) May 4-6 ANSI X3T5 May 4-8 DECUS '92, Atlanta, GA May 4-8 IEEE INFOCOM'92, See IEEE Pub., Florence May 11 T1E1, Physical Layer Interfaces (ISDN, T1, Broadband, etc.) Williamsburg, VA, Bell Atlantic May 12-14 Joint Network Conference 3, Innsbruck, Austria (this is the RARE Networkshop - renamed) May 13-15 IFIP International Workshop on Protocols for High Speed Networks, Stockholm, Sweden Contact: May 18-25 INTEROP92, Washington, D.C. Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) May 19-29 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 21, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada May 27-29 IFIP WG 6.5 Int'l Conference, Vancouver, Canada May ??-?? Third IFIP International Workshop on Protocols for High-Speed Networks, Stockholm Per Gunningberg, per@sics.se Bjorn Pehrson, bjorn@sics.se Stephen Pink, steve@sics.se Jun 8 T1M1, Management and Maintenance (ISDN, Broadband, Frame Relay, etc.) Minneapolis, MN, ADC TElecom Jun 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Jun 10-11 RARE WG1, tentative-Location unknown Jun 11-12 RARE COSINE MHS MGR, tentative-Location unknown Cooper [Page 40] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, IL Jun 15-19 INET92, Kobe, Japan Jun Murai (jun@wide.ad.jp), KEIO University Elizabeth Barnhart (barnhart@educom.edu) "North America Contact" Jun 16-18 ANSI X3S3.3, Minneapolos, MN Jun 22-25 PSTV-XII, Orlando Umit Uyar (umit@honet5.att.com) Jerry Linn or Holmdel, NIST linnrj@ECF.NCSL.NIST.GOV Jun 14-17 ICC-SUPERCOMM'92, Chicago, See IEEE Publ.. Jul 6-10 IEEE802 Plenary, Bloomington, MN Jul 13-17 ANSI X3T5 Jul 13-24 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, San Diego, CA Aug 2 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame Relay, Broadband ATM) Aug 16 T1S1, Call Control and Signaling (ISDN, Frame Relay, Broadband ATM) Aug 17-20 SIGCOMM, Baltimore, MD Deepinder Sidhu, UMBC Sep 7-11 IFIP World Congress Madrid, Spain; Contact: IFIP Sep 14-18 ANSI X3T5 Sep 21-25 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Sep 22-24 ANSI X3S3.3, Boston, MA Oct 5-8 FORTE'92, Lannion Roland Groz (groz@lannion.cnet.fr) Michel Diaz (diaz@droopy.laas.fr) Oct 26-30 INTEROP92, San Francisco Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Nov 9-13 ANSI X3T5 Dec ANSI X3S3.3, Boulder, CO Dec 7-11 DECUS '92, Las Vegas, NV Dec 14-18 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 1993 CALENDAR Mar 8-12 INTEROP93, Wasington, D.C. Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Mar 8-12 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD May 23-26 ICC'92, Geneva, Switzerland May-Jun PSTV-XIII, University of Liege. Contact: Andre Danthine, May 23-26 ICC'93, Geneva, See IEEE Publications. Jun 7-11 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Aug INET93, San Francisco Bay Area Aug SIGCOMM, San Francisco Cooper [Page 41] Internet Monthly Report October 1991 Sep 13-17 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Sep 20-31 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, Seoul, Korea. Oct 12-14 Conference on Network Information Processing, Sofia, Bulgaria; Contact: IFIP-TC6 Oct 25-29 INTEROP93, San Francisco Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Nov 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, LaJolla, CA Dec 6-10 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 1994 CALENDAR Apr 18-22 INTEROP94, Washington, D.C. Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Aug 29-Sep 2 IFIP World Congress Hamburg, Germany; Contact: IFIP Sep 12-16 INTEROP94, San Francisco Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) 1995 EVENTS Sep 18-22 INTEROP95, San Francisco, CA Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Cooper [Page 42]