[IMR] IMR89-07.TXT JULY 1989 INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS ------------------------ The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations. This report is for research use only, and is not for public distribution. Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's activities. These reports should be submitted via network mail to Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) or Karen Roubicek (Roubicek@NNSC.NSF.NET). TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ACTIVITIES BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET RESEARCH STEERING GROUP REPORTS. . . . . . . . . page 4 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 USER INTERFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 INTERNET ENGINEERING STEERING GROUP REPORTS . . . . . . . page 5 Westine [Page 1]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 Internet Projects BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 9 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 CERFNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 CICNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 14 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 MERIT/UMNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MIDNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 MRNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 15 NCAR/USAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK . . . . . . . . page 18 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. . . . . . . . . page 18 NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 NTA-RE/NDRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 NYSERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 OARNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 SURANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET . . . page 26 WESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26 Westine [Page 2]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 IAB MESSAGE Chairman's Message: At the July IAB meeting in Boston, the IAB was restructured into three major parts: the IAB itself, an Internet Research Task Force and the existing Internet Engineering Task Force. This restructuring was initiated by Dr. David Clark who has served the Internet with great distinction as the IAB chairman and Internet Architect since 1981. Dr. Clark proposed to head the newly-formed IRTF, recommended a reduction in size of the IAB, and chaired the committee which ultimately drafted a new chairman for the IAB. I am sure I speak for all of the Internet community in acknowledging the great debt we owe to Dr. Clark for his past work and our great pleasure that he will continue to serve as chairman of IRTF. The Internet is embarking on some major development work. In particular, the IAB will be emphasizing network stability and operability over the next two years. This means more attention to network management and the ability of multiple vendor systems to work together. We will introduce a private mail system design and will make available through Trusted Information Systems, public domain implementations. In a major policy change, the Internet will stretch to accommodate coexistence WITHIN THE INTERNET of OSI and DECNET protocols. This means that we will be experimenting with multiprotocol routers. Testbeds for the development and evaluation of new gateway/router capabilities, for experimentation with multi-media conferencing and collaboration and for development of Internet Protocol level enhancements are in development with the support of the FRICC. Links to commercial services are being actively pursued, especially with electronic mail systems such as Telemail, MCI Mail, ATTMAIL, Dialcom, On-Tyme, Quik-Comm and Easylink. Attention to the security and integrity of the Internet has been increased and efforts are underway to develop means to enforce access and transit policies of the subnets that make up the Internet. Research on policy-based resource allocation is in progress. Westine [Page 3]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 The IAB has a number of policy actions on its agenda including establishment of links with European groups such as RARE (Association of European Research Networks) and the EUREKA program; links with ANSI and NIST; consideration of DES export restrictions (which affect our ability to field the private electronic mail standard); and interworking of X.400 and SMTP address spaces. On the latter point, the IAB will be working to foster rapid development of white pages services in the Internet. Comments, suggestions and complaints are welcome: my emailbox is always open: VCERF@nri.reston.va.us (or CERF@ISI.EDU). Vint Cerf INTERNET RESEARCH STEERING GROUP REPORTS ---------------------------------------- AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ANTF met jointly with ORWG during the July IETF meeting. A summary of the meeting will be available at a later date. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@OBERON.USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES No progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) PRIVACY AND SECURITY The following RFCs were submitted to Jon Postel for editing and release: Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I: Message Encipherment and Authentication Procedures, Part II: Certificate-Based Key Management, and Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers. The next meeting of the PSRG is scheduled for October 24-26, 1989 in Hanover, NH hosted by Matt Bishop of Dartmouth College. Topics for the meeting include gateway and network time protocol security issues and interface standards for DES and RSA algorithms. Lyndalee Korn (lkorn@BBN.COM ) Westine [Page 4]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 SCIENTIFIC REQUIREMENTS No progress to report this month. Barry Leiner (Leiner@ICARUS.RIACS.EDU) USER INTERFACE No report received. INTERNET ENGINEERING STEERING GROUP REPORTS ------------------------------------------- 1) The IETF met at Stanford University on July 25-28, 1989. The meeting was hosted by Paul Baer. Eighteen of the 22 active Working Groups met and reported. The agenda is given below. The Proceedings are being compiled and will be mailed to all attendees. For copies for non-attendees, send to ietf-request@isi.edu for ordering information. 2) Some highpoints from the meeting: o 12 WGs have documents at an early draft stage (ie, soon to be installed in the INTERNET-DRAFT directory). o There are 4 New INTERNET-DRAFTS.* o There have been 5 recent RFCs from IETF activity.** * See INTERNET-DRAFT directory at DDN.NIC.MIL for more information on recent draft documents ** See IETF directory at DDN.NIC.MIL for more detailed Working Group status The Point-Point WG has scheduled a video teleconference for early August as a final editing session. There are several unresolved higher functionality issues (eg, IP address assignment, authentication). Therefore, the current draft will be an upwardly compatible version of PPP that will allow the next release to address those remaining issues. 3) A reorganization of both the IETF and IAB was announced at this meeting. Dave Clark (MIT) addressed the opening Plenary on the IAB reorganization. Vint Cerf (NRI), chair of the reorganized IAB for the next two years, was unable to attend, but recorded a video tape for the Plenary. In his talk, Dr. Cerf reviewed the revised structure of the IAB, and presented the IAB's priorities for his tenure as Chair. Westine [Page 5]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 4) The IETF is being reorganized to have a Steering Group and functional areas. The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) will set technical direction for IETF, and will be composed of one Technical Director for each Area, plus at-large members. Each Director oversees Working Group activity in an Area and carries out an agenda set in conjunction with the IESG. The current areas are: o Host-based Services o Internet-based Services o Routing o Network Management o OSI Interoperability o User Services Other areas may be added in the future. The IESG will hold its initial meeting in early September. Some immediate goals are the development of the following documents: o Five Year Plan for Protocol and Operational Evolution of the Internet o Internet Routing Architecture o User Services Infrastructure Definition o Gateway Requirements Definition o Host Requirements Definition o OSI Interoperability and Implementation Plan A more detailed report on the IESG will be made in the September Internet Monthly Report, after the scheduled meeting. 5) The current Working Groups align with the above six areas as follows: o HOST-BASED SERVICES and ISSUES: Topics spanning the protocol suite, but with greater emphasis above IP (except Network Management) - Dynamic Configuration (Droms, Bucknell, and Gross, NRI) - Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) - Telnet (Borman, Cray) - Domain Name System (DNS) Enhancements (Mockapetris, ISI) o INTERNET-BASED SERVICES and ISSUES: Topics focused at IP and below, (except Routing) - Authentication (Schiller, MIT) - Performance and Congestion Control (Mankin, Mitre) - Point-Point Protocol (Hobby, UCDavis, and Perkins, CMU) Westine [Page 6]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 - ST and Connection IP (Topolcic, BBN) - [ Gateway Requirement ( chair TBD) ] o NETWORK MANAGEMENT: Topics in defining and extending the standard Internet MIB, NM protocols, and NM applications requirements - CMIP-Over-TCP (LaBarre, Mitre) - LAN Manager MIB (Amatzia, 3Com) - Alert Management MIB (Steinberg, IBM) o OSI INTEROPERABILITY: Topics in introducing OSI protocols into the Internet, including interoperation with Internet applications and services - [ OSI WG Charter contains numerous objectives that will become individual WGs ] o ROUTING: Topics in routing protocols and routing operations in the Internet - Interconnectivity (Almes, Rice) - Open SPF IGP (Petrt, UMd, and Moy, Proteon) - Open Routing (Lepp, BBN) - PDN Routing (Rokitanski, Fern Uni-Hagen) o USER SERVICES: Topics in defining and providing user-oriented information, and other, services to network managers and end-users - Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI) (Bowers, NRI, and Gross, NRI) - NOC Tools Catalogue (Stine, Sparta, and Enger, Contel) - Joint Monitoring Access for NSFnet/Regionals (Jomaan) (Hares, Merit) - [ Several WGs in various stages of formation ] 6) Agenda of the July IETF meeting at Stanford University: MONDAY, JULY 24TH OSI: Review of GOSIP V2 (Hagens, UWisc and Callon, DEC) TUESDAY, JULY 25TH (STANFORD) 9:00 am Opening Plenary, Introductions and Local Arrangements Phill Gross (NRI) 9:15 am Morning Working Group Sessions Westine [Page 7]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 * CO-IP (Topolcic, BBN) * Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) * OSI: Inter Domain Routing (Hagens,UWisc and Callon,DEC) * PT-PT Protocol (Hobby, Davis and Perkins, CMU) * User Services (Bowers, NRI) 10:45 am * USER-DOC WG (Roubicek, BBN and LaQuey, UTexas) 12:00 pm LUNCH 1:00 pm Afternoon Working Group Sessions * Authentication (Schiller, MIT and Rochlis, MIT) * CO-IP (Topolcic, BBN) * Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) * Interconnectivity (Almes, Rice) * OSI: Intra Domain Routing (Hagens,UWisc and Callon,DEC) * USER-DOC WG (Roubicek, BBN and LaQuey, UTexas) 4:15 pm Technical Presentations and Network Status Reports * Fair Queuing Revisited (Scott Shenkar, XEROX PARC) 1 hr. * NSFnet Status Report (TBD) 15 min. 5:45 Recess 6:00 pm Demonstration of a 16th Century Machine (Jacobsen,ACE) 7:30 pm JOMANN (Hares, MERIT) 7:30 pm Interconnectivity (Almes, Rice) WEDNESDAY, JULY 26TH (STANFORD) 9:00 am Opening Plenary 9:15 am Morning Working Group Sessions * Alertman (Steinberg, IBM) (15) * Autonomous Network TF (Invitation Only) (Estrin/USC) * Interconnectivity (Almes, Rice) * NISI (For members only) (Bowers and Gross, NRI) * OSI: General Meeting (Hagens, UWisc and Callon, DEC) * Perf and CC (Mankin, MITRE) * PT-PT Protocol (Hobby, Davis and Perkins, CMU) (20-25) * ST (Topolocic, BBN) 12:00 LUNCH 1:00 pm Afternoon Working Group Sessions * Autonomous Network TF (Invitation Only) (Estrin/USC) * Dynamic Configuration (Droms, Bucknell) * NOC-Tools (Stine, SPARTA and Enger, Contel) * Open Systems Routing (Lepp, BBN)(For Members Only) * OSI: X.500 and DEC DNS (Hagens, UWisc and Callon, DEC) * Perf and CC (Mankin, MITRE) * ST (Topolcic, BBN) 4:15 pm Technical Presentations and Network Status Reports * Giga Speeds for Datagrams (Craig Partridge, BBN) 45 min. * Pt-Pt Protocol Specs (Russ Hobby, UCDavis) 30 min. 5:45 pm RECESS 7:30 pm OSI OR (Hagens, UWisc) Westine [Page 8]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 THURSDAY, JULY 27TH 9:00 am Opening Plenary and Working Groups * Domain Name System (Mockapetris, USC-ISI) * Open Systems Routing (Lepp, BBN) (For Members Only) * OSPF (Petry, UMD and Moy, Proteon) (12) * TELNET (Borman, Cray) 12:00 LUNCH 1:00 pm Technical Presentations and Network Status Reports * Gateway Congestion Control (Allison Mankin, MITRE) * Network Performance Impact of X Window System Protocol (Ralph Droms, NRI) 45 min. * Adapting the Wideband Satellite Protocols to a Terrestrial T1 Link (Claudio Topolcic, BBN) * IP Option for Crypto Summing (Jeff Schiller, MIT) * High Speed Networking using OSI Protocols (Bob Beach, Ames) 30 min. * Domain Name Status Report (Jose Garcia-Luna or Mary Stahl, SRI) 10 min * Internet Status Report (Zbigniew Opalka, BBN) 10 min. * IP Networking in Europe (Ruediger Volk, Dormund) 5:45 pm RECESS FRIDAY, 28TH JULY 9:00 am Opening Plenary 9:15 am Working Group Reports * User Services (Bowers, NRI) * NISI (Bowers and Gross, NRI) * NOC-Tools (Enger, Contel and Stine, SPARTA) * USER-DOC (LaQuey, UTexas and Roubicek, BBN) * Dynamic Host Configuration (Droms, NRI) * Alert Management (Steinberg, IBM) * Authentication (Rochlis and Schiller, MIT) * Open SPF-Based IGP (Moy, Proteon and Petry, UMD) * Open Systems Routing (Lepp, BBN) * ST and Connection IP (Toplocic, BBN) * PT-PT Protocol (Hobby, Davis and Perkins, CMU) * OSI Interoperability (Callon,DEC and Hagens,UWisc) * JOMANN (Hares, Merit) * Telnet (Borman, Cray) * Interconnectivity (Almes, Rice) * Domain Name System (Mockapetris, USC-ISI) * Host Requirements (Braden, ISI) 12:00 pm Adjourn Phill Gross (PGross@NRI.Reston.VA.US) Westine [Page 9]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BARRNET ------- No report received. BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- SATNET This will be the last report for the SATNET as our last site now has connectivity again. The last Satnet site CNUCE has been reconnected to the INTERNET via a direct 64 kbit link to the DARPA gateway. TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND NETWORK In early July, we connected the Butterfly gateway at RADC to the New York Wideband Packet Switch (WPS). Throughout the summer, we will continue to install WPSs and connect up gateways at user sites as power at the POPs and tail circuits between the backbone and the gateways become available. Throughout the month, the backbone was reasonably stable with the most notable outages caused by a power outage at NY during a storm, and a failure at LA of the switch box used with the dialup modem. There were also a couple of problems on the links to the user sites. There was an outage at the DARPA site due to hardware problems. And the link between RADC and the NY WPS was down with a CSU/line problem for the last two weeks of the month. Current sites (going from east to west): BBN BBN WPS RADC NY WPS DARPA, NRL Washington WPS ISI LA WPS SRI SRI WPS Future installation work will include: Ft. Monmouth (NY WPS) -- The site at Ft. Monmouth will be connected to the NY WPS as soon as the tail circuit is available. We do not yet have a confirmed date for the on-site Westine [Page 10]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 wiring but the current estimate is for some time in August. CMU (Pittsburgh WPS) -- Negotiations concerning on campus wiring are proceeding, but we do not yet have a confirmed date. POP equipment installation and wiring will be scheduled once the CMU circuit is available. NCSA (Chicago WPS) -- A T1 circuit from the Chicago POP to NCSA, Urbana was ordered 6/13. Circuit and Chicago POP facility upgrade are expected to be available in August. WPS and gateway installation plans will be finalized as soon as there is a confirmed date for the circuit. TERRESTRIAL WIDEBAND TELECONFERENCING SYSTEM There were several impromptu meetings using the Terrestrial Wideband TELECONFERENCING system. Claudio Topolcic, Philippe Park and Charles Lynn attended the IETF meeting at Stanford at the end of July. ISO/OSI MIGRATION Hardware was delivered and installed at the RSRE gateway (U.K.) to connect to a fourth modem line which will support the SHAPE Technical Centre Site (Netherlands). The modem line is expected to be operational around the middle of August, 89. A lightning storm in the RSRE area caused damage to the local phone and data system which extended out to 2 of the gateway interfaces. The newly installed interface was used along with another spare in storage at RSRE to restore service. Replacements are being sent. Plans for hardware and connections to a Butterfly gateway at SHAPE Technical Centre are proceeding. The gateway hardware is scheduled to be in place before the end of August, ready to connect on the modem line to RSRE, and provide Internet access for hosts on a local ethernet. Discussions were held with representatives of TNO-FEL in Holland, a lab which is physically next door to SHAPE Technical Centre. The gateway may have a second ethernet interface added to provide Internet access to researchers in that lab. ISODE 5.0 was brought up on two systems at SHAPE Technical Centre, so that they may provide some service for interoperation between TCP/IP and ISO protocols. One system may be able to connect from the local ethernet to an X.25 public data network. Westine [Page 11]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 The protocol description language Estelle is being investigated as a means of recoding a transport layer converter between TP4 and TCP/IP which had been worked out at STC. A compiler system for Estelle was obtained from the NIST. Bob Hinden (Hinden@BBN.COM) CERFNET ------- No report received. CICNET ------- No report received. CORNELL ------- No report received. ISI --- INTERNET CONCEPTS PROJECT Jon Postel attended the Internet Activities Board meeting in Boston, MA, 10-13, July, 1989. Paul Mockapetris attended the Stanford IETF July 25-28, chairing the Domain WG and participating in the Host Requirements WG. On July 28, Paul Mockapetris made a presentation on the DNS to the Merit/NSFNET Internetworking Seminar in Denver. Joyce Reynolds attended the IETF meeting at Stanford, July 24-28, 1989. One RFC was published this month. RFC 1107: Sollins, K., "A Plan for Internet Directory Services", MIT, July 1989. One article was published: Gurfield, B., "The Automated Broker a Demonstration of Computerized Commerce", The uSystem Educator, Menlo Park, CA, July 1989. Ann Westine (Westine.ISI.EDU) Westine [Page 12]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT The first official teleconference since declaring service open again on the Terrestrial WBnet was held by Lewis Johnson of ISI and colleagues at BBN. Voice, video and MMConf all worked smoothly. Requests to use the facility should be sent to video-conf- requests@bbn.com. PVP, the packet video host, was enhanced to allow a second console program to "steal" control. This will be useful in cases where no one is available at the local site to help with a malfunction or with debugging. MMCC, the multimedia conference control program, now allows users to control whether or not other sites are allowed to join a conference and to restrict remote control of cameras. It also underwent a good degree of surgery this month to integrate it more closely with Mbftptool and BBN's MMConf. MMConf connections may now be brought up and shut down automatically as voice and video connections come and go. Likewise, we implemented interprocess communication between MMCC and Mbftptool to provide automatic coordination of the parameters displayed by the various windows used in a conference. Each time the conference identifier or participant list is changed by MMCC, Mbftptool is signalled to re-read the appropriate initialization files. Other features added to Mbftptool include specialized distribution modes, default password entry, and improved error checking of parameters. Steve Casner attended the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting at Stanford. Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden, Eve Schooler, Steve Casner (deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU) FAST PARTS The FAST project at ISI, an automated broker for the acquisition of standard electronic components, has just completed an automated connection from its' ORACLE database to a supplier. A message, such as a quote request or order, is received from a user via E-Mail on the INTERNET. The message is read automatically into ORACLE. A new message is formulated and sent to a supplier in this case utilizing MCI mail. Westine [Page 13]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 Currently a person choses the suppliers. In the near future the database will be able to select the suppliers based on the lines they handle. Paula Caruso (caruso@isi.edu) Alan Katz gave a talk entitled "Supercomputer Workstation Interaction, X is a Good Beginning" at the Fifth Annual Workshop on Networking and Supercomputers hosted by the San Diego Supercomputer Center in San Diego, CA on July 11-13. Alan distributed copies of the newly released Supercomputer Workstation Communications project report which is now available from ISI. Alan has been studying the CALS data representations and have found a source of CALS raster test data (from the CALS Test Network people). Alan Katz (katz@isi.edu) JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK --------------------------------------------- No report received. LOS NETTOS ---------- ISI has received several queries about back door connectivity to Los Nettos through ISI. We encourage any site considering a back door connection, to consider any Los Nettos member as a way to become connected. Danny Cohen and Walt Prue gave a talk on monitoring Los Nettos at the San Diego Supercomputer conference July 12. There seemed to be much interest in the subject. Many networks have a similar need. A simple SNMP based route tracing tool was built which works in areas with a common community read access to the monitoring data. It has the ability to show routes in both directions and show default routes. Thanks go to the folks at MIT who developed, and made available, the MIT SNMP development kit. IBM LA Scientific Center will be installed in August. Westine [Page 14]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 Next month we will work on developing methods for automatically monitoring proper routing within and at the boundries of Los Nettos/CERFNet using SNMP tools. Walt Prue (Prue@isi.edu) MERIT/UMNET ----------- No report received. MIDNET ------ No report received. MIT-LCS ------- Dave Clark planned and executed the reorganization of the Internet Activity Board. Chuck Davin and Andrew Heybey completed a study of fair-queueing gateway algorithm. A first draft report is now available. Lixia Zhang completed a PhD thesis arguing the utility of rate- based flow control in supporting multiple classes of service and controlling congestion. A technical report based on the thesis will be available in a month or so. Lixia Zhang (Lixia@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU) MITRE Corporation ----------------- No report received. MRNET ----- June Events MRNet continues to provide Internet service to the domestic supercomputer industry. MRNet looks forward to welcoming IBM, HP/Apollo, a large piece of Minnesota's Academia, and others to the ranks of MRNet in the very near future! Westine [Page 15]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 The MRNet Executive Committee met in June to discuss the future of MRNet. MRNet continues to expand and prosper, and it is clear that some reorganization of MRNet is required to continue to provide our traditionally high quality of Internet service. More discussions are needed. The June MRNet general meeting was postponed in order to resolve issues involving reorganization before presenting them to the body. The next general meeting will be held in August. MRNet was pleased to assist the Minnesota Private College Foundation with their proposal to the NSF for funding NSFNet connectivity. The nine private colleges involved in this proposal are key educational institutions in the region. We look forward to a favorable response from the NSF. The MRNet Technical Committee continues to plan and organize for TCP/IP Networking Seminars to be held starting late summer. These seminars are planned to be open to all, and reinforce MRNet's place in the Minnesota community as an educational resource and forum for computer networking. Control Data Corporation successfully moved their end of their MRNet attachment to a new facility. The move caused no concerns for other MRNet members. MRNet has received membership inquires from several organizations including: * Secure Computing Technologies Corporation * Management Graphics Inc. * Minnesota State Universities * NCR/Comten * IBM-Rochester by Jeff Wabik (jwabik@msc.umn.edu) MRNET July Events The next MRNet General Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 31. The MRNet Technical Committee will offer an introduction to networking with TCP/IP on the same day. The proposal by the Minnesota Private College Council to connect ten private colleges to MRNet will receive NSF funding. MRNet looks forward to providing regional networking and Internet services to the private colleges. The MRNet Technical Committee will work with the private colleges to develop TCP/IP expertise. Westine [Page 16]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 The upcoming networking with TCP/IP seminar is part of this effort. Negotiations with the University of Minnesota for MRNet to use CICnet for Internet access continued. The U of M is reluctant to provide Internet service through CICnet if the separate MRNet line to the NSFnet backbone can still be funded through the NSF. CICnet has apparently discussed at length providing Internet access to the smaller regional networks such as MRNet. Neither the U of M nor CICnet have estimated the cost to MRNet for Internet access through CICnet. Work continues on hosting the September FARnet meeting in Minneapolis. Control Data Corporation is now using Cisco routers to connect to MRNet. CDC also changed its network address to 129.179. by Tim Salo (tjs@msc.umn.edu) NCAR/USAN --------- NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC REASEARCH AND USAN NCAR has now isolated all gateways on a stub network (192.43.244) The current configuration is as follows: NSFnet NSS LANL WESTNET East NSN Dept of Commerce Mexico | | | | | | -------------------------------------------------------------- 192.43.244 | 128.117 (UCARnet) --- gateway --- 128.116 (all USAN sites) A satellite link to Mexico is now operational. This link gateways nets 132.247 (Red-Academeca de Mexico) and 132.248 (Univesidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) to the NSFnet backbone. The bandwidth is 56Kbits over Vitacom supplied services. The Penn State Meteorology Department is now a USAN member. They have their own net number (192.5.157). This net is announced to the NSFnet via JVNC, but all traffic to NCAR is routed over the satellite link. Only when the satellite link is down will traffic be routed over the NSFnet. by Don Morris (morris@ncar.ucar.edu) Westine [Page 17]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK ----------------------------------------- NEARnet added three new members during July: Xerox Advanced Information Technology, Digital Equipment Corporation and the University of New Hampshire. The link to the Massachusetts Microelectronics Center (M2C) was upgraded to T1,making them available as a branch site for organizations located in central Massachusetts. Operation of the network continued to be stable. by John Rugo (jrugo@bbn.com) NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. ---------------------------------------- The NNSC began distributing the Internet Resource Guide during the first week of July. Requests to be on the distribution list should go to resource-guide-request@nnsc.nsf.net. The sixth issue of the NSF Network News was published at the end of the month and will be distributed through August. Craig Partridge and Karen Roubicek attended the IETF. by Karen Roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net) NORTHWESTNET ------------ No report received. NSF BACKBONE (Merit) -------------------- NSFNET COMPLETES FIRST YEAR OF OPERATION July 1989 marked the first anniversary of the re-engineered National Science Foundation Network backbone. Just one year ago Merit, IBM, MCI, and the NSFNET mid-level networks were working to bring up the new thirteen node, cross-country T1 backbone. Within a month of the NSFNET becoming operational, packet counts increased from 95 million (June 1988 on the previous six-node backbone) to 195 million in August 1989. Less than one year later (June 1989), NSFNET marked another first with a billion-packet month which signalled an increase of over 500% in the first year. Continued growth is assured with the National Science Board's June approval of Merit's expansion proposal which will increase NSF funding authorization for the backbone by approximately $6 million over the remaining years of the agreement and make possible new Westine [Page 18]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 nodes in the coming year. "We are proud of the accomplishments of our first year of cooperation," said Eric Aupperle, President of Merit. "Our successes have only been possible because of the cooperative efforts of everyone involved. With the committed staffs and ongoing research programs of Merit, IBM, and MCI, we expect the coming years to be equally exciting". NSFNET REDESIGN UPDATE With the completion of the NSFNET redesign, traffic is moving at T1 rates and the maximum diameter of the network is three (no more than three "hops" between any two nodes). Additionally, each node now has multiple T1 circuits that feed into an MCI Digital Cross Connect (DXC) site which has been configured to take advantage of MCI's Digital Reconfiguration Service (DRS). The redesign project has resulted in an even more robust network which stands ready to respond to increased demands for bandwidth and transmission speeds. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS During July Merit/NSFNET staff gave several presentations: Bilal Chinoy attended the 5th Annual Conference on Networking and Supercomputing in San Diego and spoke on "Performance Benchmarking". At IETF, Elise Gerich co-chaired the Joint Monitoring Access for Adjacent Networks meeting with Gene Hastings of PSC and also spoke about "State of the NSFNET Backbone". Jessica Yu gave a presentation on Border Gateway Protocol at the Pacific Networking Workshop and, at the same conference, Hans- Werner Braun presented an overview of the NSFNET to an audience representing the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. by Patricia G. Smith (patricia_g._smith@um.cc.umich.edu) NTA-RE and NDRE --------------- 1. NDRE Tor Gjertsen from NDRE attended for the first time an ICB meeting, at Malvern. Participations in future meetings will probably alternate between Tor Gjertsen and Anton Leere (possibly also a third person), all working in data communications area. Westine [Page 19]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 They have among other things assisted in the specification and procurement of the Norwegian Defence Digital Network, NDDN, which is under implementation, and partly operational. NDDN includes voice and data services (X.21 & X.25) in addition to an X.400-based military message system. 2. The requirements for a tactical communications network, based on packet radios in the VHF-band, has been worked out for the Norwegian army. This has led to the specifications for a new generation of radios. Examinations of existing radioes have shown that frequence hoppers are not suitable for data transmissions. NDRE developed a prototype radio system and performed a set of successful field trials with it. The radio system utilizes narrow band direct sequence spread spectrum and can handle both voice and data. Based on the experiences from this project, the Norwegian army has prepared a request for quotation for the next generation of a unified tactical communication system. The tactical system will be interfaced with the digital backbone network of the defence (NDDN). 3. Studies and testbed activities on distributed databases have been initiated recently, for application in military command and control systems. 4. NDRE takes active part in the standardisation work within NATO to adapt the OSI-architecture to military applications. Tor Gjertsen (sg9%dione.ndre.uninett@tor.nta.no) NRA-RD 5. A packet-switched satellite network project is finally under way. The primary purpose is to establish an experimental testbed with three ground stations to interconnect local area networks. It will utilize Norwegian-made antennas and RF- parts, butterfly equipment for the nodes and gateways and burst modems from SPL in Cambridge England. The FEC interface between the butterfly node and the modem will be developed in Norweay, later also burst modems. The maximum bandwidth will be 2 Mb/s. BBN will assist us in the necessary modifications of the butterfly equipment, both software and hardware, to fit our needs. We are aiming at having the testbed operational in the beginning of next year. Westine [Page 20]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 The testbed will be used for demonstrations in cooperation with potential future customers and for optimization. The optimization will include studies of traffic patterns and access methods, development of a suitable network interface and a network management facility. After a reasonable test period the network will hopefully go commercial. 6. Three alternative path are now operational between the Nordic countries and the US: - 64 kb/s line from NORSAR, Kjeller Norway, to CSS, Washington DC - 9.6 kb/s line from NTA-RD to RSRE - 64 kb/s line from Stockholm to JvNC, Princeton The line from Stockholm to JvNC is accessible for academic traffic from all Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, later probably also Iceland) This explosion in the utilization of TCP/IP in the Nordic countries is causing headache among the academic communications research people, since they all have been working along the ISO-line. 7. A time server is under development. It will utilize a Cecium clock and the Loran-C system to maintain UTC time. Part of the work will be performed in cooperation with Dave Mills. 8. My working situation has changed since April 1. From having a part-time teaching job at the university department at Kjeller (part of the University of Oslo), I am now fully employed there with a part-time job at NTA-RD. This will last for a few years, during which I have absence of leave from NTA-RD. Paal Spilling (paal@tor.nta.no) NYSERNET -------- No report received. Westine [Page 21]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 OARNET ------ No report received. PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------- PSC now has fully redundant internal and external network connectivity. No single gateway or router failure will compromise access to PSC's production systems from the national Internet. Only media failures immediately adjacent to systems or remote campuses will still cause loss-of-service. Mellon Institute, where PSC communications equipment is located, suffered a major air conditioning outage the week of July 4. To reduce heat load all redundant connectivity was shutdown, reducing PSCnet to a simple spanning tree. There were only transient disruption to PSC users. PSC now carries almost none of the NSF to ARPA traffic, now that the direct NSFnet to ARPAnet gateway at NASA Ames is up. New campuses connected via PREPnet and PSCnet include Swarthmore, UNISYS (Paoli PA), Transarc and NASA Lewis CRAYNET. Penn State University is now using PREPnet as their primary path to the NSFnet. Matt Mathis (mathis@fornax.ece.cmu.edu) SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ SDSC experienced 3 power failures in the span of 4 days during the month of July. The failures occurred on Jul 15, 16, and 18. SDSC was unavailable on July15th from 17:00 PDT to 19:00 PDT. Also, on July 16th SDSC was unavailable from8:00 PDT to approximately 10:00 PDT. Both of these outages were attributed to squirrels climbing on the SDG&E power lines. On July 18th, SDSC was unavailablefrom 12:30 PDT until 14:15 PDT. The outage was caused by crane knocking down SDG&E power lines in the vicinity of SDSC. The EN641 from Network Systems was installed on the SDSC Ethernet and has been used in the testing UNICOS on the CRAY XMP. It is currently using a subnet of SDSC's Class B address - 132.249. SDSC is now provide primary domain name service for AGI.ORG - Agouron Institute and USD.EDU - University of San Diego. Both of Westine [Page 22]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 these sites are connected to SDSC via CERFnet. by Susie Arnold (susie@sds.sdsc.edu) SESQUINET --------- No report received. SRI ---- DDN NIC Our staff members participated in several working groups of the IETF at Stanford this month. At an afternoon technical session of the IETF, Mark Lottor and Mary Stahl presented statistics on the domain name system. Information about entities registered with the DDN NIC as well as statistics gathered by querying all known cooperating domain servers was discussed. There are now a total of 1,725 government-sponsored connected IP networks and 377 Autonomous Systems registered. For domain registration, we've reached a milestone. There are now a total of 1,025 domains registered; 41 of these are top-level domains and 984 are registered at the second-level. As announced in DDN Management Bulletin 61, issued in July, the hostname SRI-NIC.ARPA will be changed on August 6th, 1989 to NIC.DDN.MIL. The old hostname will be retained as a nickname for at least one year in the host tables and domain name system. We have also a correction for our last month's report. The first item of that report somehow got garbled. It should read: > The ARPA -> MIL name transition is proceeding on schedule. So far > we have completed the process for renaming more than 1,100 hosts > on net 26 to the MIL domain". Mary Stahl (Stahl@NIC.DDN.MIL) Westine [Page 23]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 Internet Research Our effort in the design and development of the Research Internet Gateway (RIG) continues this month. A design review took place at RADC on July 18th. Taking advantage of its neighboring location, a number of us attended IETF at Stanford. Zaw-Sing Su (ZSu@sri.com) SURANET ------- No report received. TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK ------------------------------ No report received. UCL ---- Infrastructure: A lot of time was spent this month looking at the interesting routes that are evolving in the outer reaches of the Internet, such as Canada, Australia, France and Japan. A Unix Device Driver for our primary rate ISDN board has been written, and is being tested. Some on board call control/routing code has also been written. John Crowcroft (jon@CS.UCL.AC.UK) UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Paul Schragger is working on schemes to reduce the mean routing reservation delay for our gigabit network effort. Mike Minnich is experimenting with modifications to the Jain- Ramakrishnan (fair share) algorithm for distributed control. Mike Davis is working on network monitoring issues with the goal of applying expert-system techniques to existing monitoring tools. Dave Mills is working on routing, authentication and high-speed routing. Paul Schragger and Dave Mills attended the IAB meeting at BBN on 11-13 July. Westine [Page 24]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 2. Incidents of wild route thrashing in the Internet continue to occur at the level of several a week. The evidence is from a few to several dozen ICMP time-exceeded messages received in response to Network Time Protocol (NTP) transmissions lasting from minutes to hours. The interesting fact is that so many different networks, gateways and systems are involved and suggests that interdomain routes are oscillating wildly as various EGP gateways "count to infinity" following a gateway failure. Here are two typical samples involving ARPANET, BBN, DEC, JvNC, MILNET, NSF, SURA, UNIMLB and WIDEBAND facilities. They were reported by a UDel Fuzzball and show the destination, times and gateways which returned ICMP time- exceeded messages. 16.1.0.4 (DEC-INTERNET Palo Alto): 6 August 11:25:15-15:48:06 (23 messages) 10.2.0.5, 10.3.0.111, 10.3.0.5, 10.4.0.51, 10.4.0.51, 10.4.0.51, 128.89.0.1, 131.186.18.0, 131.186.18.0, 131.186.47.0, 192.41.177.90, 192.52.195.7, 192.52.71.2, 26.20.0.17, 46.0.0.6, 46.4.0.13. 128.250.1.21 (UNIMLB Australia): 6 August 12:58:27-14:35:20 (52 messages) 10.1.0.28, 10.3.0.111, 10.3.0.5, 10.4.0.51, 10.6.0.20, 128.121.54.72, 128.89.0.1, 131.186.23.0, 192.52.71.3, 26.1.0.16, 26.1.0.49, 26.20.0.16, 26.20.0.17, 46.0.0.6, 46.1.0.3, 46.3.0.8, 46.4.0.13. It is not the intent of this report to call attention to these particular events, but rather to observe that these kinds of events are difficult to detect using separate intradomain monitoring facilities and suggest that continuous, non- intrusive, interdomain soundings such as NTP may be one of the most effective early- warning detectors. 3. New NTP sites have come online in Finland, Sweden and United Kingdom. New features were added to the Fuzzball code to provide detailed performance reports for use in network monitoring and path analysis. The new NTP control-message facility was debugged in implementations at U Toronto, MIT and the Fuzzballs. Construction of two precision frequency standards is nearing completion. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) Westine [Page 25]  Internet Monthly Report March 1989 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/NCSANET -------------------------------------------------- Purdue University has installed a T1 connection to NCSAnet which will replace their current ARPANET connectivity. by Charlie Catlett (catlett@ncsa.uiuc.edu) WESTNET -------- 1. The Westnet Steering Committee Meeting will be held August 11, 1989, from 10:30 AM until 4:30 PM at the University of Denver. Detailed directions have been electronically mailed to all Westnet Steering Committee Members. The main topic to be addresses will be the plan for the decommissioning of Westnet after government FY '90, and the partitioning of xirxuit costs among Westnet participating institutions. 2. Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho to become connected during the month of July. This has resulted in a minor topological change in the circuits in Idaho. by Pat Burns (pburns@csupwb.colostate.edu) Carol Ward (cward@spot.colorado.edu)