MARCH 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 (Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET). TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 Westine [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 INTERNET PROJECTS BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 7 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 FEDERATION OF AMERICAN RESEARCH NETWORKS (FARNET) . . . . page 11 HIGHER EDUCATION AUTHORITY NETWORK (HEANET) . . . . . . . page 11 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 15 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 IETF OSIDS & DISI WORKING GROUPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 FOX - FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . page 24 ISI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26 PSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27 SRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27 NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28 PARADISE PROJECT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28 PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29 Westine [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 IAB MESSAGE A. IP SECURITY OPTION The Host Requirements RFC cites RFC-1108 as a reference for the IP Security Option (PSO). Unfortunately, as a number of vendors to the US Department of Defense have discovered, RFC-1108 has never been published. [The RFC Editor has a strict policy of never assigning an RFC number until the RFC is entirely ready for publication. He made an exception at the request of the Host Requirements RFC editor, assigning the number 1108 to an IPSO draft that was (almost) completely approved. Unfortunately, that IPSO draft subsequently ran into a brick wall somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, DC] As the result of significant efforts by IAB members Steve Kent and Vint Cerf, the IPSO specification has at least been approved by all relevant parties, and has been published as an Internet Draft: Title : U.S. Department of Defense Security Options for the Internet Protocol Author(s) : Stephen Kent Filename : draft-ietf-ahwgipso-ipso-00.txt The IESG and IAB will move it into the standards track as soon as there is sufficient opportunity for community comment. AT LAST, RFC-1108 will become a reality. Completion of the IPSO specification is not the end of the road, however. For historical reasons, IPSO is oriented completely to US Department of Defense security. This is insufficient for the modern Internet, for two reasons. (1) There is a requirement to support corporate security needs. (2) The Internet is now international in scope, and a US-centric solution is no longer adequate. The IETF and the IRTF are continuing to pursue these broader issues. This work is led by the IETF Security Area Director Steve Crocker (crocker@tis.com) and by Steve Kent (kent@bbn.com), chair of the Privacy and Security Research Group. Westine [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 B. STANDARDS ACTIONS The IAB has taken the following actions on standards since February 1991, in accordance with recommendations by the IESG: * Draft Standard state for (SNMP) MIB II [RFC-1214]. * Proposed Standard state for the Concise MIB definition scheme [RFC-1212]. * Proposed Standard state for a group of link-layer MIBs: DS-1, DS-3, 802.4, and 802.5 [RFC's pending publication]. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS ------------------------- AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ------------------- I plan to call a videoconference for late May to address long term issues with inter-domain routing, particularly in the context of IDPR implementation experience and the IDRP ANSI proposal. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES ------------------- No progress to report. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- IETF report for March 1991 1. The IETF met on March 11-15 in St. Louis. Area and working group reports for this meeting are still in preparation, and will be submitted as part of the April Internet Monthly Report. Westine [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 2. New Working Groups for Mar 01, 1991 to Mar 31, 1991 Commercial Internet Protocol Security Option (cipso) Network Database (netdata) Network OSI Operations (noop) X.25 Management Information Base (x25mib) 3. Concluded Working Groups for Mar 01, 1991 to Mar 31, 1991 LAN Manager (lanman) 4. Internet Draft Activity for Mar 01, 1991 to Mar 31, 1991 (Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) ) WG I-D Title ------- ------------------------------------------------------ (osids) o X.500 and Domains (bgp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 3) (rreq) o Requirements for Internet IP Routers (osids) o The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema (osids) o Replication and Distributed Operations extensions to provide an Internet Directory using X.500 (osids) o Using the OSI Directory to achieve User Friendly Naming (osids) o Replication Requirement to Provide an Internet Directory Using X.500 (osinsap) + Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in the Internet (idpr) + Inter-Domain Policy Routing Protocol Specification and Usage: Version 1 (no wg) + U.S. Department of Defense Security Options for the Internet Protocol (appleip) + The Transmission of IP Datagrams Over AppleTalk Networks (osids) + Handling QOS (Quality of service) in the Directory Westine [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 (osids) + DSA Naming (osids) + Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots (no wg) + Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication Procedures (rdisc) + ICMP Router Discovery Messages (no wg) + The IP Addressing Issue 17 Drafts produced, 7 new this period Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US) Westine [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BARRNET ------- Two new 56 kbps connections and one dial-in connection were added in March, bringing the total number of connected members to seventy-nine. Installation was completed on a new T1 interconnection between the California State University Network and BARRNet. The new link runs between Stanford University and San Francisco State University. The connection, under a new "Midlevel Network Connection Service Agreement" that is nearing completion, will be one of two between CSUNet and BARRNet (the other is already in place between UC Davis and Sacramento State University). Plans are proceeding for the addition of new T1 backbone circuits, including a link to a new hub site at Santa Clara University, the completion of a redundantloop through San Francisco (utilizing the Stanford-SF State connection and a new line between SF State and UC San Francisco), and a circuit between Stanford and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey (replacing an existing 56k line to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute). A demonstration of the new T3 backbone was conducted between BARRNet and the National Net'91 Conference in Washington DC March 20-22. The demonstration ran an X-windows graphical database interface, called Image Query, that made use ofseveral different 24-bit color image databases located both at Stanford and at Berkeley. The Stanford database copy was accessed via the new T3 ANS/NSFNET backbone while the Berkeley database was accessed via the older T1 NSFNET backbone. The demo showed very clearly the need for at least T3 bandwidth if such applications are going to be practical. The difference in screen drawing time was at least 10 to 1 faster over the T3 link. This showed both the availability of existing applications and the ability of existing platforms to take advantage of the higher speed. by Paul Baer Westine [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- Terrestrial Wideband Network (TWBNet) and ST/IP Gateway In February, DARPA directed BBN and PSI to reconfigure the TWBNet topology to minimize line costs while maintaining site connectivity. Accordingly, during March, a T1 circuit was implemented between the Albuquerque WPS and the Los Angeles WPS, and the T1 circuit between BBN and Mobile was removed. In addition, the gateway at NCSA was removed and the one at Ft. Leavenworth was disconnected. The latter will remain at the site until it is either reconnected or needed elsewhere. The current TWBNet backbone topology is shown below (not drawn to scale): BBN / NY / LA ------------ Chicago ----- Pittsburgh ---- Wash DC \ \ \--- Albuquerque -------------Mobile In February and March there were ten video conferences. Seven were between two sites and three involved four sites. Two of the four site conferences were associated with major demonstrations of video conferencing and interactive multimedia applications over wide area networks. These conferences linked sites in Europe and the United States. The video conferencing was routed through the video "hublet" located at BBN. For the latter half of February and the beginning of March the TWBNet was used extensively for testing conferencing in preparation for these demonstrations. Included in the eight other conferences were a meeting of the Inter-Domain Policy Routing Working Group and three demonstrations of conferencing technology. Participants included Mark Pullen, Peter Kirstein, and Danny Cohen. Inter-Domain Policy Routing Throughout most of March, we devoted the majority of our time to experimenting with our IDPR prototype on DARTNET. Our experiments consisted of sending traffic between BBN and ISI over multiple paths and through domains of differing transit policies. As DARTNET has no alternate paths between nodes, we used the Terrestrial Wideband Network in conjunction with DARTNET to provide a richer network topology. Westine [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 We experimented with restrictive transit policies, changes in topology, and changes in transit policy, and observed how the routes changed accordingly. Our data traffic consisted of a TELNET session between SPARCstations at BBN and ISI. At this point, we were not concerned with high volumes of traffic, but rather with how the routes traversed by the TELNET traffic adapted to the changing policies and connectivity. Satisfied with the results of our experiments, we presented a demonstration to Ira Richer during his visit to BBN at the end of March. Currently, we are putting together a user's guide for IDPR, and we are working on a white paper describing our approach to policy- based resource allocation. Internet O&M / ICBNet Infrastructure New software was installed in all of the European ICBNet gateways and most of the TWBNet gateways during February and March. The new software relieves various CPU and memory-allocation bottlenecks in the gateways, providing the capacity to store EGP-derived routes to up to 3000 external networks. The new gateway software release also supports automatic fallback paths to the US Internet for European ICBNet sites, and includes monitoring and control improvements. The primary backup path, which became operational in March, provides a route to the US via the 256 Kbps satellite circuit connecting the WPC ICBNet site in Germany to the TWBNet POP at BBN. A secondary path, which will become operational pending routing configuration changes to be made by NTA, will provide a route to the US via the NTA ICBNet site's NORDUnet connection. The remaining TWBNet Butterfly gateways are scheduled to be upgraded with the new software in early April. A number of components associated with the 384 Kbps channel of the US-UK "fat pipe" circuit were repaired by the circuit provider in March. As of the end of the month, these repairs appear to have eliminated chronic line-timing problems which had impacted US-UK internet connectivity. 24x7 monitoring of the US-UK fat pipe connection was implemented by BBN at the end of March. Steve Storch Westine [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 CICNET ------- At a meeting held on March 27, the CICNet Board of Directors approved the appointment of E. Michael Staman as the new Chief Executive of CICNet. Mike iscurrently Associate Vice President and CIO at West Chester University, located in West Chester, PA. He will join CICNet on a part time basis in April and will be full time on July 1, 1991. CICNet Assistant Director John Hankins participated in a conference sponsored by the American College of Radiology on issues related to networking and radiological research. John also attended the National Net 91 Conference. Paul Holbrook, Manager of Technical Services, attended the March IETF meeting where he particiapted in a number of working groups dealing with security issues. by John Hankins CORNELL ------- Scott Brim and Jeff Honig participated in IETF Working Groups. The Multicast OSPF Working Group reached agreement on extensions to OSPF to support multicasting. In the BGP Working Group, we presented five alternative designs for multicast support which had various advantages and disadvantages. The group was not able to decide which one to adopt during the meeting, but through later discussions we are on the verge of choosing one (basic reverse path forwarding), after which prototype implementations can begin. At the DARPA Networking PI meeting, Scott Brim gave a short talk on the current status of multicast routing extensions to mainstream routing protocols. Gated: Pattern matching code for route filtering based on BGP ASpath is now integrated, but not tested; we are waiting for Dennis Ferguson to finish his implementation of BGP3 and plan release them together. The Gatedaemon Project has a new address. Electronic mail to the gated maintainers should be sent to gated@gated.cornell.edu (the mailing list is gated-people@gated.cornell.edu). The telephone number is +1-607-255-5510. Paper mail should be sent Westine [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 to: Gatedaemon Project Information Technologies/Network Resources 143 Caldwell Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-2602 Scott Brim and Jeffrey C Honig FEDERATION OF AMERICAN RESEARCH NETWORKS (FARNET) ------------------------------------------------- The following items were covered at a FARNET board meeting at the conclusion ofNet-91 in Washington, DC: FARNET plans to disseminate the strategic planning document to its planning committee and membership for their review, comment, and approval and that this process will be followed by public dissemination. FARNET is beginning to search for an executive director to implement the programs it adopted at the last meeting. The Spring meeting will be April 30 and May 1 in Austin, TX. Part of the meeting will be devoted to a K-12 teachers' seminar. A proposed agenda for this meeting should be forthcoming soon. The August meeting will be be held in Bozeman, Montana on August 12-13. Currently, FARNET is comprised of 28 member institutions. Carlos Robles HIGHER EDUCATION AUTHORITY NETWORK (HEANET) ------------------------------------------- This is the Higher Education Authority Network, and consists of seven university institutions in Ireland. These seven sites are connected over low speed lines to the public packet-switched network. Westine [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 In February 1991, one of the sites (University College Dublin - UCD) connected its campus network to the RIPE networks by means of an X.25 connection over IXI to NIKHEF in Amsterdam. This offers (nominal) 64K IP services between UCD and RIPE. Access to NSFNET and other networks is available from EASInet via the gateway at CERN. Mike Norris ISI --- GIGABIT NETWORKING Greg Finn, Danny Cohen, and Bob Braden, attended the DARPA Principal Investigator's meeting in Monterey, California, March 25-28, 1991 and Bob Braden chaired a session on DARTNET. Joyce Reynolds attended the IETF meeting in St. Louis IETF, March 11-15. ATOMIC Greg Finn held discussions with Dr. Seitz of Caltech and his staff on the MOSAIC processor, a VME host interface and its software prototyping environment. A substantial amount of time was spent reading the Caltech MOSAIC group's papers. Limited discussions have taken place with others at ISI concerning feasible uses for MOSAIC technology in packet filtering and possible use in video applications. INFRASTRUCTURE Seven RFCs were published this month. RFC 1208: Jacobsen, O., and D. Lynch, "A Glossary of Networking Terms", Interop, Inc., March 1991. RFC 120 the regionals). Walt presented his draft OSI routing architecture for the Network OSI Operations WG, which stirred up lots of useful discussion. Walt and Bill also attended the PSTP working group on OSI Registration to work on an NSAP structure and usage for DDN. Forrest Palmer presented a briefing to MITRE and sponsor personnel on the SNMP protocol concepts and formats. Shari, Bill, and Walt attended a demonstration and discussion of the BBN Integrated Management Workstation (IMW) commissioned by DCA. This is an SNMP and HMP based graphical net management tool for monitoring MIB I nodes and Mailbridges. The IMW is being used by the Cambridge monitoring center and the NearNet NOC. Forrest Palmer worked with SAIC staff to establish their IDPR experiments on the Internet Engineering Testbed. Forrest installed an X-kernel implementation, which has helped us expand the testbed by utilizing old Sun-3/50 workstations. Forrest is also busy planning for upgrading the 16 Sun-3s to SunOS 4.1.1 and SunNet OSI 7.0. This upgrade requires coordination with the 10 experiments running on the testbed. Mike Saintcross has been upgrading hardware at the DCA portion of the I.E. Testbed to accomwith the SNMP, Performance Systems International, March 1991. One paper was published. Westine, A., A. Deschon, J. Postel, and C. Ward, "The Intermail and the Commercial Mail Relay Project", ConneXions, Volume 5, No. 3, March 1991. Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING To enable workstation-based conferencing on a wide scale across the Internet, we need to integrate real-time services into the existing IP infrastructure. An open question is what new mechanisms must be added to provide real-time services. This question was discussed extensively in the Connection-Oriented IP Working Group at the IETF meeting in St. Louis, and on the sidelines at the DARPA Networking Principal Investigators meeting in Monterey, where Steve Casner gave a presentation on DARTnet Voice and Video. We expect the DARTnet experiments to help answer this question over the next year. One such experiment is the integration of the ST-II protocol (RFC 1190) with the ISI/BBN teleconferencing system. Work is underway to adapt the the packet voice program, VT, and the packet video program, PVP, to use the ST-II socket interface that has been implemented in the SunOS4.1 SPARCstation kernel by BBN. ST-II replaces ST-I, which had previously been built into each of these applications. On the multisite conferencing front, PVP was enhanced to handle 5- site conferences. For the Concept codec, which can simultaneously display multiple video streams in quadrants on the video monitor, Westine [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 the local site is normally displayed in one of the quadrants if the number of sites is less than five. In a five-site conference, the local image is replaced by the fourth remote site. For the PictureTel codec, only one site can be displayed at a time but multisite conferences are now possible using receiver-selected floor control. Each site can independently choose which remote site to view. We demonstrated to DARPA a conference of the three sites ISI, BBN and RIACS. Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU) LOS NETTOS ---------- The TRW network connection was moved to their new site. Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- Shari Galitzer, Bill Barns, and Walt Lazear attended the IETF meetings in St. Louis, where OSI addressing was the hot topic (for MITRE and the regionals). Walt presented his draft OSI routing architecture for the Network OSI Operations WG, which stirred up lots of useful discussion. Walt and Bill also attended the PSTP working group on OSI Registration to work on an NSAP structure and usage for DDN. Forrest Palmer presented a briefing to MITRE and sponsor personnel on the SNMP protocol concepts and formats. Shari, Bill, and Walt attended a demonstration and discussion of the BBN Integrated Management Workstation (IMW) commissioned by DCA. This is an SNMP and HMP based graphical net management tool for monitoring MIB I nodes and Mailbridges. The IMW is being used by the Cambridge monitoring center and the NearNet NOC. Forrest Palmer worked with SAIC staff to establish their IDPR experiments on the Internet Engineering Testbed. Forrest installed an X-kernel implementation, which has helped us expand the testbed by utilizing old Sun-3/50 workstations. Forrest is also busy planning for upgrading the 16 Sun-3s to SunOS 4.1.1 and SunNet OSI 7.0. This upgrade requires coordination with the 10 experiments running on the testbed. Mike Saintcross has been upgrading hardware at the DCA portion of the I.E. Testbed to accomodate running the IMW mentioned above. Westine [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 Walt and John McGuthry worked to establish CLNS routing on the Testbed's cisco routers and Sun workstations. AlterNet and NSFNET staff were involved and the month's-end result was successful pinging to CERN (Switzerland) and the NSFNET NOC. We are awaiting some fixes from cisco before OSI testing with NorduNet can proceed. John is also converting the U. Wisconsin Argo OSI code to use the GOSIP 2 NSAP format. His next task will be to port the Argo code to run over the SunNet OSI 7.0 lower stack. The Internet Management effort has obtained some much-needed demo space and are working with facilities engineers to modernize the space. We're extending the I.E. Testbed into the area with twisted-pair Ethernet and starting to refurbish the power conditioner and air conditioners. Next month we'll move systems into place. Walt Lazear (lazear@gateway.mitre.org) NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. ---------------------------------------- Karen Roubicek attended the IETF in St. Louis, Missouri. Karen participated ina workshop on Computer Networks in Radiology Research sponsored by the NationalScience Foundation, National Library of Medicine, National Cancer Institute andthe American College of Radiology. Karen also attended the National Net'91 conference held in Washington, D.C. The NNSC began distribution of the 9th issue of the NSF Network News. The NNSC distributed additions to chapters 2 and 5 of the Internet Resource Guide. The NNSC also began distribution of the NNSC Tour of the Internet. The Internet Tour is available for anonymous ftp on NNSC.NSF.NET, in the directory internet-tour, filename Internet-Tour.sit.hqx. The Internet Tour README file is attached. Tour of the Internet: The Internet Tour is a HyperCard 2 stack for Macintosh computers. (HyperCard 2 requires Macintosh system 6.0.5 or higher.) The three Internet Tour files have been compressed using StuffIt 1.5.1, and converted to binhex format. In order to use the files, you need to reverse the process. To do this you need the Macintosh application StuffIt 1.5.1. The files take up about 760k when converted to their original format. (You'll need at least twice that much space Westine [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 to do the conversion.) FTP the file Internet-Tour.sit.hqx using a text option; then transfer it to your Mac. Use StuffIt's "Decode binhex file" option (on the Other menu). Thiscreates a new file in addition to the original one: Internet-Tour.sit. Next choose "Open archive" from StuffIt's File menu. Open Internet-Tour.sit, and click the "Extract" button at the bottom. This will create three files: Internet Tour, Internet Local Info, and Internet Tour doc. by Corinne Carroll NSF BACKBONE (Merit) ------------------- The inbound packet count for March 1991 totaled 7,026,153,681 packets on the T1 infrastructure. This was an increase of 16.53% over the February 1991 total of 6,029,601,114 inbound packets. As of March, 2501 networks are announced via the NSFNET. Of that total, 757 represent foreign networks, including the newest foreign host location, the Netherlands. Production traffic continues to be phased to the T3 infrastructure. Routing for 37 nets now occurs on the T3 NSFNET. Planning continues for the deployment of T3 to NSFNET sites. FDDI interfaces deployed at Palo Alto, CA and Pittsburgh, PA were instrumental in the demonstrations presented at NET '91. Operational NSFNET traffic is routed via FDDI at Champaign-Urbana, IL and San Diego, CA as well as Palo Alto and Pittsburgh. National NET '91, "Towards a National Information Infrastructure," convened at Loews L'enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C. on March 20, 21 and 22. The NSFNET partnership provided T3 connectivity for several demonstrations of supercomputing technology: MCI installed the T3 circuit to the L'enfant Plaza and a T1 circuit between Ann Arbor and L'enfant Plaza, IBM supplied the routers, and Merit Network, Inc. was responsible for the local area network at at the conference as well as the overall coordination of the facility installation and demonstrations. Bob Stovall of the Merit Network Systems Hardware Support group deployed and managed the LAN. Eric Aupperle, President of Merit Network, Inc., Ellen Hoffman, assistant to Aupperle, Laura Kelleher and Susan Calcari, of Merit/NSFNET Information Services, and Elise Gerich of Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering attended this event on behalf of the NSFNET project. Glee Cady and Laura Kelleher represented Merit/NSFNET Information Services at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) meeting Westine [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 held in Washington, D.C. Kelleher and Cady are active in the Directories and Resource Information Services working group, which discussed questions of how to gather, store and access information. Several representatives of Merit Network, Inc. attended the spring meeting of the IETF in St. Louis, MO: Dale Johnson, manager of the Merit Network Operations Center; Susan Hares, Elise Gerich, and Dave Katz of Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering; Allan Rubens, Glenn McGregor, Chris Weider, and Bill Norton of Merit Network Engineering; Pat Smith of Merit/NSFNET Information Services and Dana Sitzler of the Merit Technical Support Group. In addition to participating on the Network Information Services Infrastructure working group, Smith attended the inaugural meeting of the User Services Area Council, chartered to promote and encourage the creative exchange of international user service needs and concepts. Gerich presented the NSFNET status report, Norton gave an overview of statistics gathering for the NSFNET, and Katz, Sitzler and Weider chaired their respective working groups. "Making Your NSFNET Connection Count" will be sponsored by Merit/NSFNET Information Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 20 and 21. This informative seminar will focus on issues of interest to campus computing leaders, information systems and networking administrators, educational liaisons, librarians, and educators who want to learn more about national networking. Among the scheduled speakers are Paul Evan Peters, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information; Carol Parkhurst, ALA/LITA; Al Rogers, The FrEd Mail Foundation; Jim Knighton, NASA; John Hankins, CICNET; Dana Sitzler, MichNet; and Douglas Van Houweling, the University of Michigan. For further information send an electronic message to seminar@merit.edu or telephone 1-800-66-MERIT. Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu) PREPNET ------- During March, four new members have joined PREPnet. Thomas Jefferson University will be connected to the Philadelphia hub at 56Kbps, HSLC (Health Sciences Libraries Consortium) will also be connected to the Philadelphia hub, but at T-1. Moravian College will be connected to the Allentown hub at 56Kbps. And, HRB Systems will be connected to the State College hub at T-1. The State College hub is scheduled to open in June 1991. PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu) Westine [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 SRI ---- Internet registry activities in March included the assignment of 2,195 IP network numbers. The cumulative total of all assigned IP numbers is now 29,133. There are now a total of 1,234 assigned Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) asssigned. There are currently a total of 2,544 domains registered with the NIC, including 61 at the top level, 2,334 at the second level, and 55 third-level MIL domains. Cumulative IP Network Statistics Month/Year Class A B C Total Mar. 1991 41 4,520 24,572 29,133 Feb. 1991 39 4,347 22,552 26,938 Jan. 1991 39 4,246 21,731 26,016 Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152 Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382 Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com) UCL ---- An experiment in remote video data retrieval was carried out between Bellcore and UCL. Michael Lesk made available a filesystem holding a recording of a talk by Dave Clark from last year. This was "played back" over the Internet to UCL. The audio was acceptable, but the "video" (actually frame by frame NFS retrieval from files) ran at about 1 per second. (Given the bandwidth of the link, this was at about the limit for 31kbyte frame sizes). The "talk" was eduacational. Jon Crowcroft gave a talk at Europarc on the UCL multi-media conferencing work (work sponsored by both DARPA and RACE). Under the chair of Steve Kille, the OSI Directory Group have now produced a number of IETF drafts: Westine [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 strategy.txt strategy.ps A proposed strategy for deploying an OSI Internet Directory S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: This document is a first cut at describing an overall strategy for deploying an OSI Directory on the Internet. This is a draft document, and does not carry any implications of agreement on policy. goals.txt goals.ps Overall plan of the IETF Working Group on OSI Directories (OSI-DS) to build an Internet Directory using X.500 S.E. Kille February 1991 Abstract: The IETF has established a Working Group on OSI Directory Services (IETF-OSI-DS). A major component of the initial work of this group is to establish a technical framework for establishing a Directory Service on the Internet, making use of the X.500 protocols and services [CCI88b]. This document summarises the plan established by the working group to achieve this, and describes a number of RFCs which the working group will write in order to establish the technical framework. This document has now been submitted as an RFC. nsap.ps nsap.txt "An Interim Approach to use of Network Addresses" S.E. Kille draft-ucl-kille-networkaddresses-02.txt, .ps January 1991 Abstract: The OSI Directory specifies an encoding of Presentation Address, which utilises OSI Network Addresses as defined in the OSI Network Layer standards [CCI88 ] [ISO87a ]. The OSI Directory, and any OSI application utilising the OSI Directory must be able to deal with these Network Addresses. Currently, most environments cannot cope with them. It is not reasonable or Westine [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 desirable for groups wishing to investigate and use OSI Applications in conjunction with the OSI Directory to have to wait for the lower layers to sort out. This note is a proposal for mechanisms to utilise Network Addresses. string.ps string.txt A String encoding of Presentation Address draft-ucl-kille-presentationaddress-02.txt, ps S.E. Kille November 1990 Abstract: There are a number of environments where a simple string encoding of Presentation Address is desirable. This specification defines such a representation. domain.ps domain.txt Domains and X.500 S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: This INTERNET--DRAFT considers X.500 in relation to Internet and UK Domains. A basic model of X.500 providing a higher level and more descriptive naming structure is emphasised. In addition, a mapping of domains onto X.500 is proposed, which gives a range of new management and user facilities over and above those currently available. This specification proposes an experimental new mechanism to access and manage domain information on the Internet and in the UK Academic Community. ufn.ps ufn.txt Using the OSI Directory to achieve User Friendly Naming S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: The OSI Directory has user friendly naming as a goal. A simple minded usage of the directory does not achieve this. Two aspects not achieved are: Westine [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 o A user oriented notation o Guessability This proposal sets out some conventions for representing names in a friendly manner, and shows how this can be used to achieve really friendly naming. This then leads to a specification of a standard format for representing names, and to procedures to resolve them. repl-req.ps repl-req.txt Replication Requirement to provide an Internet Directory using X.500 S.E. Kille March 1991 draft-ietf-osids-replication-01.txt, .ps Abstract: A companion document discussed an overall framework for deploying X.500 on the Internet [Kil90 ]. This document considers certain deficiencies of the 1988 standard, which need to be addressed before an effective open Internet Directory can be established [CCI88 ]. The only areas considered are primary problems, to which solutions must be found before a pilot can be deployed. This INTERNET--DRAFT concerns itself with deficiencies which can only be addressed by use of additional protocol or procedures for distributed operation. na.txt P. Barker S.E. Kille March 1991 The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema Abstract: This document suggests an X.500 Directory Schema, or Naming Architecture, for use in the COSINE and Internet X.500 pilots. The schema is independent of any specific implementation. As well as indicating support for the standard object classes and attributes, a large number of generally useful object classes and attributes are also defined. An appendix to this document includes a machine processable version of the schema This document also proposes a mechanism for allowing the schema to evolve in line with commonly held requirements. Proformas to support this process are included. Westine [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 It is important to note that this version of the document is a draft, and comments on the updating mechanisms are particularly welcome. Corrections and additions to the schema should now be sent the list, as described within. repl-sol.ps Replication and Distributed Operations extensions to provide an Internet Directory using X.500 S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: Some requirements on extensions to X.500 are described in the INTERNET--DRAFT [Kil90b ], in order to build an Internet Directory as described in the INTERNET--DRAFT [Kil90a ]. This document specifies a set of solutions to the problems raised. These solutions are based on some work done for the QUIPU implementation, and demonstrated to be effective in a number of directory pilots. By documenting a de facto standard, rapid progress can be made towards a full-scale pilot. These procedures are an INTERIM approach. There are known deficiencies, both in terms of manageability and scalability. Transition to standard approaches are planned when appropriate standards are available. This INTERNET--DRAFT will be obsoleted at this point. structure.ps structure.txt P. Barker S.E. Kille February 1991 Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots Abstract: Deployment of a Directory will benefit from following certain guidelines. This document defines a number of guidelines which are recommended. Conformance to these guidelines will be recommended for national pilots. Westine [Page 22] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 dsanaming.ps dsanaming.txt DSA Naming S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: This INTERNET--DRAFT describes a few problems with DSA Naming as currently deployed in pilot exercises, and suggests a new approach. This approach is suggested for use in the Internet Directory Pilot. I believe this note to be an important step forward, as it begins to evolve a clear model of a Directory Management Domain. contacts.txt Internet Network Infrastructure Information In X.500 C. Weider M. Knopper March 1991 Abstract: As the OSI Directory progresses into an operational structure which is being increasingly used as a primary resource for Directory information, it was percieved that having the Internet Site Contacts and some limited network information in the Directory would be immediately useful and would also provide the preliminary framework for some distributed NIC functions. The first section of this paper describes the schema used to contain this information; the second section describes the DIT structure built for this information. qos.ps qos.txt Handling QOS (Quality of service) in the Directory S.E. Kille March 1991 Abstract: This document describes a mechanism for specifying the Quality of Service for DSA Operations and Data in the Internet Pilot Directory Service [Kil90]. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) Westine [Page 23] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. In the light of recent discussions and further detail work, we have further refined the design of our Highball high speed, wide-area network, which is described in a recent technical report. We are gearing up to etch some silicon and carve some circuit traces and have hired some student grunts to devise interface boards. We are in process of ordering node processors (SPARCstations) and long leadtime components. 2. Charlie Boncelet, Paul Schragger and Dave Mills participated in the DARPA Principal Investigator Meeting in rainy Monterey and presented a briefing on the Highball Project. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) DIRECTORY SERVICES ACTIVITIES ----------------------------- Beginning this month, the Internet Monthly Report will contain a section on the development of directory services that are for, or effect, the Internet. We would like to encourage any organization with related news on directory services development to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news items. Current reports include: o IETF OSIDS & DISI Working Groups o Field Operational X.500 Project - ISI - Merit - PSI - SRI o North American Directory Forum o PARADISE Project o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT IETF OSIDS & DISI WORKING GROUPS -------------------------------- Refer to IETF section for the OSIDS and DISI working group reports. Westine [Page 24] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT -------------------------------------- The FOX project is a NSF and DARPA funded 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. There are two primary thrusts of the FOX project: 1. X.500 Infrastructure It is important that multiple interoperable platforms be available for deployment. FOX plans to examine and test the interoperability of the Quipu and NIST-X.500 (Custos) implementations, and DNANS- X.500 if possible. In addition, FOX will explore X.500 interfaces to conventional database systems (one target is Sybase), an alternate OS platform (VM) for X.500 servers, and X-window based user interfaces. 2. X.500 Applications A long-range goal is to facilitate the use of X.500 for real Internet applications. FOX will first focus on making network infrastructure information available through X.500. This includes network and AS site contacts, topology information, and the NIC WHOIS service. A centrally managed X.500 version will be the first phase of a WHOIS service. Providing an X.500 version of a well-known widely- used service should promote the use of X.500 by Internet users. In addition, this effort will provide experience in designing X.500 applications. However, the managability of this scheme will be short-lived, so the next step will be a design for a distributed version of WHOIS. Finally, it is critical for Internet X.500 efforts to be aligned with directory service efforts that are ongoing in other communities. FOX participants are involved in, or are otherwise tracking these efforts, and information about FOX activities will be publicly available. Steve Hotz (hotz@isi.edu) Westine [Page 25] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 ISI --- ISI has been pushing to get the subcontracts completed and in place, and has applied for a no-cost extension to the end of the year for the FOX project. A similar extension will be made to the subcontracts. A telephone conference is scheduled during the week of April 15th. Steve Hotz (hotz@ISI.EDU) MERIT ----- Several things have been happening at MERIT in conjunction with the FOX project: 1: Merit has added another person to the X.500 crew: Richard Conto, who will be working on FOX approximately 1/2 time. 2: ISODE 6.8i has been installed behind both of Merit's X.500 DSAs (directory servers). Merit operates a DSA on merit.edu for the Merit staff and for network information, and also a DSA on sprint.com for the Sprintmail X.400 gateway. 3: One Internet Draft has gone out from Merit's FOX project team: the title is "Interim Schema for Network Infrastructure Information in X.500". It contains a schema definition for the Site Contacts portion of the directory information tree (DIT - X.500's hierarchical name space). Two more IDs are in progress: one on a long term DIT structure for network information, and one on representing NSAPs in X.500. 4: Chris Weider of Merit is chairing a new X.500 related IETF working group. The working group's name is "Directory Information Services (pilot) Infra-structure Working Group" or DISI for short. This working group is concerned with developing an "Administrator's Guide" to Directory Services through X.500, and with promoting the growth of the X.500 infrastructure. 5: Merit staff are using a Macintosh X.500 client written by Mark Smith, Bryan Beecher, and Tim Howes of the University of Michigan. This client is very nice, and uses Tim Howes' lightweight "Dixie" protocol to talk to the DSA. Westine [Page 26] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 6: The X.500 directory is now used to maintain and generate the production "aliases" file for the Sprintmail X.400 gateway. Previously the aliases file was edited as a text file by Sprint staff and updated manually. Now the Sprint staff and some of their customers use an e-mail based command protocol to modify the alias entries. Chris Weider (clw@merit.edu) PSI --- Awaiting official approval/funding as of April 1, 1991. Marshall Rose (mrose@cheetah.ca.psi.com) SRI ---- In order to provide an interim capability offering network information via the Directory, SRI has begun the task of replicating a subset of the WHOIS information in the Directory. SRI has analyzed the WHOIS database and selected this subset. Review by and discussion among the FOX project, participants provided valuable feedback for finalizing the selected subset. The development of a schema to support the WHOIS information is underway and will be completed in early April. SRI developed a program to produce a QUIPU EDB load file for WHOIS individual information. It uses the pilotPerson object as a prototype, as a means to anticipate potential data conversion problems (e.g. size mismatches). Other more straightforward conversions will be required, but the following two have been identified as mismatches: - WHOIS address field maximum greater than postalAddress - reversed name ordering. Names in WHOIS are last name first, whereas commonName suggests first name first. The other WHOIS entities (e.g., computer, domain) will be analyzed in a similar manner as part of the conversion process. Ruth Lang attended the twentieth IETF held March 11-15 in St. Louis. At the kick-off meeting of the Directory Information Services (pilot) Infrastructure Working Group (DISI), two RFC/FYI documents were identified as output from this working group. Ruth, along with Russ Wright of LBL, will co-author one Westine [Page 27] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 of these, a catalogue of X.500 implementations. Work has begun to develop the survey form that will be used to gather information on the implementations. The survey itself will be initiated in early April. Ruth Lang (rlang@NISC.SRI.COM) NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM ------------------------------- The North American Directory Forum (NADF) is a collection of organizations which offer, or plan to offer, public Directory services in North America, based on the CCITT X.500 Recommendations. The NADF met in Reston, VA the week of March 18-22, 1991. Outputs from this meeting include NADF-123, "A Naming Scheme for c=US", which the NADF is widely circulating for comment prior to their next meeting in mid-July. An ASCII version of NADF-123 has been published as RFC-1218. The NADF-123 document proposes the use of existing civil infrastructure for naming objects under c=US. This has the advantage of using existing registration authorities and not establishing any new ones (the document simply maps names assigned by existing authorities into different portions of the c=US DIT). The NADF-123 document is intended as the basis for X.500 names in the US for the long-term; it is important that interested parties get a copy, review it, and return comments. A second output, which is still undergoing development, is NADF- 128, a preliminary draft on "Mapping the DIT onto Multiple ADDMDs". This describes how the c=US portion of the DIT is mapped onto DSAs and what service-providers must minimally share in order to achieve a working public directory. The next revision of this document will likely be ASCII-ized and published as an informational RFC. Marshall Rose (mrose@cheetah.ca.psi.com) PARADISE -------- This is the first report from the PARADISE project based at the Department of Computer Science, University College London (UCL). PARADISE is a sub-project of the broader COSINE project sponsored under the umbrella of EUREKA by eighteen participating countries Westine [Page 28] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 and aimed at promoting OSI to the academic, industrial and governmental research and development organisations in Europe. The countries involved are those of the EC, EFTA plus Yugoslavia; that is: Austria, Belgium, Denamark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. The partners funded by PARADISE besides UCL are: - the Networks Group at the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), which is a service-oriented organisation providing a range of facilities to the academic community in London and the entry point into the UK for IXI, the COSINE international X.25 backbone; - X-Tel Services Ltd, a software company based in Nottingham which currently provides service support to the UK Academic X.500 pilot; and - PTT Telematic Systems from the Netherlands, which in turn has subcontracted the Swiss and Finnish PTTs, and whose involvement is to create a forum for discussion on X.500 among the European carrier administrations. The project also aims to have representation from all the participating countries, which in the majority of cases are the existing X.500 national pilots. Of the 18 countries involved, 12 are registered in the tree, including Ireland and Italy whose nodes were taken up this month. Most countries are using the QUIPU implementation developed at UCL. However, a French group have developed PIZARRO, which will form the basis of the emerging French pilot and, in Italy, a Torino-based company Systems Wizards are using DirWiz, which is curently the sole representative from Italy in the tree. PARADISE recently announced an operational service providing a central configuration DSA with connectivity via IPSS, IXI, JANET (UK Joint Academic Network) and the Internet. This DSA contains the "root of the world" node and provides the glue at the top of the international DIT. By this summer a central DUA will be installed with public access via ULCC. Multilingual versions of this interface will be made available later in the project. Both these central services will be provided by ULCC, which will be offering a help desk with telephone and e-mail support. David Goodman (d.goodman@cs.ucl.ac.uk) PARADISE Project Manager Westine [Page 29] Internet Monthly Report March 1991 PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT PROJECT ----------------------------- As of 91-03-27: There are 74 sites under c=US, 66 operating as PRDMDs. New additions this month: Sun Microsystems Incorporated Steve Kille's quality-of-service object classes and attributes (defined in draft-ietf-osids-qos-00.txt) were implemented. The attributes and object classes defined in NADF-123 (RFC-1218) were implemented. Based on NADF-123 and Kille's draft-ietf-osids-dsanaming-00.txt, an initial draft of a transition scheme for the c=US DIT is being drafted. Pilot participants were informed about the upcoming transition, and will receive the next version of the transition scheme, which is nearly complete. Marshall Rose (mrose@cheetah.ca.psi.com) Westine [Page 30]