~ JANUARY 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 3 AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 END-TO-END SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 Westine [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 Internet Projects BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11 CSUNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 FARNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK . . . . . . page 15 LOS NETTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MERIT/MICHNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MIT-LCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18 MITRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . page 20 NSFNET BACKBONE, MERIT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 NTA-RD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22 SESQUINET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 SRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 UDEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 WISCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26 Westine [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 IAB MESSAGE No Internet progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS ------------------------- AUTONOMOUS NETWORKS ------------------- No activities to report this month. Deborah Estrin (Estrin@USC.EDU) END-TO-END SERVICES ------------------- No Internet progress to report this month. Bob Braden (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- IETF Report for January 1991 Contents: 1. IETF Meeting (March 11-15 in St. Louis) 2. Area Reports 3. New IETF Working Groups and Documents for January 1991 4. "At-A-Glance" Logistics Information for the St. Louis Meeting 5. Registration form for St. Louis IETF meeting 1. IETF Meeting (March 11-15 in St. Louis) The IETF will hold its next meeting in St. Louis (March 11-15, 1991). "At-A-Glance" logistics information is included below. For more information, please contact Megan Davies (mdavies@nri.reston.va.us). I want to take this opportunity to remind prospective attendees of one change in our normal planning for this (and future) meetings -- we will be asking for an attendance fee to help offset some costs Westine [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 of the meeting. The IETF is an open technical meeting, not a "conference". Local expenses for all past IETF meetings have been been paid for either by the local host or through U.S. government funding. When the IETF meetings were smaller this was workable, but as the meetings grew in size, the U.S. government expressed a desire for IETF participants to share a portion of the meeting costs. Therefore, beginning with this IETF meeting, we are asking attendees to defray some IETF meeting costs directly. It is our sincere hope that this new policy does not affect attendance at IETF meetings. Please contact Phill GrosS or Megan Davies (703-620-8990, mdavies@nri.reston.va.us), if you encounter any difficulties. Regular IETF attendees will recall that we have discussed this issue as early as the February 1990 open plenary at FSU. At the December 1990 meeting in Boulder, we announced that this new policy would start with the St. Louis meeting. Further details will be provided in announcements to the IETF mailing list (send to ietf-request@isi.edu to join). However, there are a few more important issues to mention here. - IMPORTANCE OF EARLY HOTEL AND IETF REGISTRATION: It will be important for folks to send their reistration forms and checks to CNRI (and to make their room reservations with the hotel) by February 22nd. There are 3 reasons for this. 1) The hotel offers discounted rates for both the hotel rooms and the meeting rooms, but it is based on filling an early hotel "block". The "block" closes on Feb 22nd. Therefore, you can help reduce your costs and the overall meeting costs if you make your hotel room reservation and your attendance reservation by Feb 22nd. It turns out the IETF has not had a good record in the past of filling early hotel "blocks". It will help to keep costs down if we can establish a better record of early hotel registrations. 2) It is very helpful for the logistics planning (eg, refreshments, setting up meeting rooms in "classroom" or "theatre" style, etc) if we have a good idea of the number of attendees in advance. 3) It will help reduce the onsite registration hassles and delays if most of the stuff is taken care of for most attendees before the meeting. Since this is the first meeting in which fees will be required, we have no experience with how this might increase onsite registration delays. Note: Make your hotel room reservation directly with the hotel. Make your attendance reservation by returning the registration form to CNRI. Westine [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 All these requirements will be satisfied if prospective attendees have booked the hotel room by the Feb 22nd cutoff date, and if they have returned a completed registration form to CNRI by the Feb 22nd cutoff date. Therefore, under these conditions, we will be happy to accept the regular attendance fee onsite. - REFUND POLICY: We will give a full refund for cancellations or no-shows. Those who cancel or no-show would not receive Proceedings, of course, but can arrange to purchase separately if they wish. - CREDIT CARDS: We do not yet have the final arrangements in place to accept credit cards. Therefore, for this first meeting, I must ask that attendees arrange for payment by check. We fully expect to be able to accept credit cards by the July IETF meeting in Atlanta. The IETF has come a long way since our initial 15 person meeting five years ago. Its growth and successes have come from the support of a wide community of network operators, users, vendors, and researchers. This special blend of attendees makes the IETF a unique development group. I intend to make every effort to maintain that important and distinctive blend of contributors. 2. Area Reports --- User Services Area Report (January 1991) - Joyce K. Reynolds New Working Group Announcements - Internet User Glossary Working Group (userglos) Chaired by Karen Roubicek and Tracy LaQuey Parker A new working group was announced this month via the IETF mailing list. The User-Gloss Working Group is chartered to create an Internet glossary of networking terms and acronyms for the Internet community. We are also pleased to announce that Tracy LaQuey Parker will be joining Karen Roubicek as co-chair of this working group. This group will meet at the IETF in St. Louis. NOC-Tool Catalogue Revisions Working Group (noctool2) Chaired by Robert Enger and Gary Malkin The start up of the this working group was announced at the IETF in Boulder. A new charter is in place, and the "Son of NOCTools" was announced this month via the IETF mailing list. Unfortunately, Bob Stine has announced he would be unable to Westine [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 carry on with the NOCTools project as he previously intended. On behalf of the IETF, we thank Bob for his time, dedication, and efforts on the NOCTools catalogue. We are pleased to announce Bob Enger will continue as chair of NOCTools, with Gary Malkin joining Bob as co-chair in this effort. The first meeting of this group will be at the IETF in St. Louis. Working Group Reports - NISI - Chaired by Dana Sitzler The "Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure" draft document was expanded to more accurately define and describe a NIC, with the ultimate goal intended to make it easier for users to get information from NICs. SSPHWG - Chaired by J. Paul Holbrook and Joyce K. Reynolds The draft document is in the hands of the SSPHWG editors and is undergoing rework per the corrections/suggestions provided at the SSPHWG session in Boulder. USWG - Chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds The Quail documents, "FYI on Questions and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked "New Internet User" Questions", and "FYI on Questions and Answers - Answers to Commonly asked "Experienced Internet User" Questions", are continuing to undergo rework per the corrections/suggestions provided at the USWG session in Boulder. Additional writing is continuing on the installation checklist, based on input from IETF members at Boulder. --- Applications Area (January 1991) - Russ Hobby The Resource Location Working Group now has a chair, John Veizades (Apple). John is writing the WG charter and is getting the group into operation. Two new Working Groups, SMTP and Network Calendaring (Chronos), have started have been seen a lot of activity. The SMTP WG, chaired by Greg Vaudreuil (CNRI), has had extensive discussion on what direction to take in improving SMTP and RFC 822 formatting. There needs to be a balance between simple goals that can be done quickly and goals that will meet all needs for the near future. Another concern is convergence with X.400. The Distributed Scheduling WG, chaired by Paul Lindner (UMN) has made a lot of progress in defining the Chronos Protocol used for Westine [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 remote calendar scheduling. Paul has had several revisions of the document based on the discussion on the mail list. Another area of interest is standard formatting of text, images, and audio to be used in documents and general information exchange. This is critical for multimedia in email and other applications. A working groups has been started in the OSI Area to look at Office Document Architecture (ODA) on the Internet. Will ODA meet all the needs for multimedia applications? 3. New Working Groups and Documents for January 1991 New Working Groups Distributed Scheduling Protocol (chronos) Internet Draft Activity (o = Revised draft, + = New Draft) o o o o o o o o o o o o + + 4. "At-A-Glance" Logistics Information for the St. Louis Meeting 20TH INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE Mailing Date : 2/07/91 AT-A-GLANCE Mailing Number: 2 DATE: March 11-15, 1991 HOST(S): Gurudatta Parulkar Washington University - St. Louis HOTEL/MEETING SITE: Clayton Plaza Holiday Inn 7730 Bonhomme Avenue St. Louis, MO 63105 (314) 863-0400 {fax:(314) 863-8513} 150 Rooms reserved until February 22, 1991 $60.50/single or double Westine [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 Specify: IETF GROUP ALTERNATE ACCOM: Radisson Hotel Clayton 7750 Carondelet Avenue St. Louis, MO 63105 (314) 726-5400 {fax:(314) 726-6105} 15 Rooms reserved until March 10, 1991 $69.00/single or double Specify: IETF Group 1/2 block from Clayton Plaza MESSAGES: Taken by the Hotel Operator between 8am-5pm 314-863-0400 Reference: "IETF" PRE-REGISTRATION: Sunday, March 10, 1991 6pm - 8pm (reception during) Clayton Plaza Holiday Inn Room: Grand Salon REGISTRATION: Monday, March 11, 1991 8am - 9am Clayton Plaza Holiday Inn Room: Gallery Foyer ATTENDANCE FEE: PAYMENT BY CHECK ONLY: (see Registration Form) $130.00 if received BY February 22nd $190.00 if received AFTER February 22nd AIRLINE: Trans World Airlines (special rate roundtrip only) (800) 325-4933 (US/Hawaii reservations) Specify: IETF GROUP #CV10963 We regret that discounted fares are not available for international flights. CAR RENTAL: Budget Rent-a-Car Discounts available through TWA AIRPORT: Lambert St. Louis International SHUTTLE: Both the Clayton Plaza and the Radisson provide complimentary shuttle service to and from the St. Louis International Airport. Both shuttles pick up near the baggage claim area (street level). Call the Clayton Plaza at (314) 863-0400. The Radisson has a courtesy phone near the door tram. ~ 15 minutes from Hotels to Airport. PARKING: Ample FREE parking at Hotel Westine [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 CLIMATE: Moderate temperatures between 50-60 degrees. "finger weather-stl@stormy.atmos.washington.edu" 5. Registration form for St. Louis IETF meeting REGISTRATION FORM Mailing Date : 2/07/91 Mailing Number: 2 20th Internet Engineering Task Force March 11-15, 1991 St. Louis, MO _______ Yes, I plan to attend the IETF Meeting in St. Louis. (Registration includes a copy of the Proceedings of the Meeting) Name(Mr/Dr/Ms):_______________________________________________ Title: _______________________________________________ Organization: _______________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________ City: _______________________________________________ State: _______________________ Zip Code: __________ Phone: _______________________________________________ Fax: _______________________________________________ E-Mail: _______________________________________________ Please let us know who you are. Check one entry per category. Organization ___HW/SW Vendor, ___Government, ___Network Provider, Type: ___University, ___Other (_______________) Your interest ___Network Operator, ___Network User, in IETF: ___Product Developer, ___Researcher, ___Other (______) Attendance Fee: CHECK ONLY ---- Sorry, facilities for using credit cards not yet available! (We fully expect to be able to accept credit cards by the July IETF Meeting). Westine [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 ______ $130.00 if RECEIVED BY Feburary 22, 1991 ______ $190.00 AFTER February 22, 1991 Make Checks payable to: Corporation for National Research Initiatives Mail this form with your check to: Ms. Candice Moshos Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100 Reston, Virginia 22091 If you require additional information or assistance, please contact Candice Moshos at (703) 620-8990, or cmoshos@nri.reston.va.us. Phill Gross (pgross@NRI.RESTON.VA.US) Westine [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- Terrestrial Wideband Network (TWBNet) and ST/IP Gateway ------------------------------------------------------- During January, work continued on the new "southern loop" to be added to the TWBNet. A Wideband Packet Switch (WPS) was installed in Albuquerque and connected to the Mobile WPS. The next steps will be to connect up a gateway at Los Alamos National Lab, and set up a circuit between the Albuquerque WPS and the Los Angeles WPS. The addition of this southern path will provide added robustness in the form of an alternate route between the east and west coasts and will also allow shorter tail circuits to Southern sites. A new ST/IP gateway was installed at the Warrior Preparation Center (WPC, Ramstein AFB, Germany). The WPC-ST gateway is connected to the TWBNet node at BBN via a 256 Kbps circuit, and supports multimedia video conferencing between WPC and other DARPA conferencing sites. There were eleven video conferences and three demos. There were eight point-to-point conferences, two 3-site conferences, and one 4-site conference. The demos were all point-to-point. Of note, UCL participated in five of the connections. Conferences were held for the following areas: DARPA Planning and Scheduling Program, DWSNET, and the ICB meeting. Participants included, Mark Pullen, Ira Richer, Paul Mockapetris, Peter Kirstein, Danny Cohen, Jon Postel and Bob Braden. This month, a new conferencing gateway was added at BBN. This gateway is being used to support 4-way conferencing with the high quality PictureTel codec. Since the PictureTel is designed to support two way, point-to-point conferences, this new gateway was needed to serve as a hub for supporting multi-site conferences using this codec. Video and audio traffic comes in from 4 sites via 4 point-to-point connections. The gateway then mixes the video and audio from these 4 sources and sends the mixed data back out on the point-to-point connections. Two 3-way conferences were supported by this new gateway. Westine [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 Inter-Domain Policy Routing --------------------------- During January, work on IDPR continued on at least three different fronts. At this time, one of the most important actions for the IDPR working group is to complete several small tasks in preparation for submitting the IDPR protocols into the IETF standards process. Some working group members have already taken on some of these tasks; however, several tasks are still outstanding. We plan to hold a video conference in February to determine who will do the as yet unclaimed tasks. The IDPR development team with members from SAIC, USC, and BBN has done a great job with the prototype. Each of the development team member sites is pursuing experiments on their own networks. We are also planning experiments over the Internet among the three sites. This will give us the ability to construct non-trivial interconnections between administrative domains. It is exciting to see the protocols operate in "real" networks. Now that BBN has become a fully operational DARTNET site, thanks to the efforts of Walt Prue of ISI and the BBN group led by Karen Seo, we can now proceed with the DARTNET experiments that we have been alluding to over the past several months. BBN is also pursuing the "research" topic of policy-based resource allocation: a combination of policy-based routing, resource reservation, and flow control. Currently, we are surveying what has been done previously in this area, including the work of the COIP working group of the IETF. Jil Westcott (Westcott@bbn.com) CSUNET ------ CSUnet (The California State University network) interconnects all of the twenty CSU campuses across the State of California and supports their special instructional and administrative needs. CSUnet is established to benefit the State of California educational arena. With that in mind, the upper level management has ongoing talks with the State of California Department of Education (K-12) (DOE) to establish projects that allow students and administrative bodies to utilize the resources and connectivity of CSUnet. That activity has brought about some projects with DOE that now use CSUnet. In addition, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office and the CSU have begun a joint venture to connect some of the Westine [Page 12] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 California Community Colleges. Currently, X.25, TCP/IP, DECnet, AppleTalk, and SNA are supported across CSUnet. We cooperatively working together with Calinet (California Internet Federation) to provide backup routing for the BARRnet, CERFnet, and Los Nettos regional networks. The original funding for the IP routers (cisco systems routers) in CSUnet came from NSF through CERFnet. All of the operating costs are paid by State of California funds controlled by the California State University Chancellor's Office. CSUnet is conducting an upgrade of the entire network spanning over the next one to two years. The backbone will shortly be upgraded (1st and 2nd quarter 1991) to T-1 speeds (1544Mbps) with upgrades to existing links following in by groups thereafter. Michael Marcinkevicz (mdm@NOC.CSU.NET) FARNET ------- On January 14-15, 1991 FARNET members attended the quarterly meeting held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss what role FARNET should play in the networking community. Representatives of the consulting firm hired by FARNET, Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc., attended the meeting. The counsulting service was hired by FARNET to assist the organization to develop avision for the future of FARNET and a strategic plan for attaining that vision.Final report is to be submitted to the Strategic Planning Committee in February. Elections for Vice President were held to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Joel Maloff. A Board of Directors was also voted in. The complete FARNET Board is as follows: President-Glenn Ricart Vice President-Susan Estrada Treasurer-Bill Yundt Secretary-Tom Bajzek Director-Eric Hood Director-Ken Klingenstein Director-Guy Almes The proceedings for the Boulder meeting were completed and distributed to the membership in Las Vegas. FARNET members who did Westine [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 not receive a copy may send a request to carlos@cerf.net. As of January 15 the FARNET Membership consisted of 28 networks. by Carlos Robles ISI --- GIGABIT This month was partially spent looking into issues that involve FDDI, in preparation for the ordering of hardware and subsequent installation of a small FDDI network at ISI. This involved discussions with SUN salesman, pricing, reading related FDDI papers, and so on. Another subject of study was an investigation of ATOMIC for the new GIGA contract. In particular, gathering and reading papers related to MOSAIC. Greg Finn (finn@isi.edu) Jon Postel hosted the IAB, IESG meetings and Bob Braden hosted the FEPG (Federal Engineering Planning Group) meeting at ISI, January 7-10, 1991. Three RFCs were published this month. RFC 1170: Fougner, R., "Public Key Standards and Licenses", Public Key Partners, January 1991. RFC 1180: Socolofsky T., C. Kale, "A TCP/IP Tutorial", Spider Systems Limited, January 1991. RFC 1198: Scheifler, B., "FYI on the X Window System", MIT, January, 1991. Ann Westine (Westine@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING PROJECT This month we successfully interoperated both packet voice and packet video between the SPARC and the Butterfly implementations of the VT (voice) and PVP (video) programs. The Butterflies are part of the existing multimedia conferencing system and the SPARC is the first of several new platforms to be used for workstation conferencing. The enabling event was the installation of an ST gateway with IP encapsulation capability on the Butterfly at ISI. Westine [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 The VT test included a 3-way connection with two Butterfly VTs at RIACS and BBN to test sound mixing in the SPARC VT at ISI. The PVP test was with PictureTel codecs between ISI and BBN. Both programs implemented software byte-swapping of the data to compensate for the swapping done by the I/O interface on the Butterfly. We still need to measure performance quantitatively, but the basic functionality looks good. We are making the VT program available to other researchers who want to experiment with packet voice. The VT source code is available via anonymous FTP; "vt.101.tar.Z" is located on "venera.isi.edu" in the "pub" directory. The version number, e.g. "101", will be updated as changes and additions are made. A new release of the Butterfly version of PVP, the video packet host, was made which incorporates a number of previously mentioned enhancements plus: the ability to select data streams for display on the video monitor of sites specified in HCP (Host Control Protocol) messages; response to ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) inquiries; multiple PVPs in the same Butterfly machine; and a safety mechanism to prevent packet congestion in case of codec malfunction. In the future, we plan to scale up packet video to high-definition images. Steve Casner made a presentation on this topic at the Information Exchange Conference on High-Definition Systems at DARPA. Scaling up the number of sites is another challenge: As an aside to the IESG meeting at ISI, that group was given a demo of BBN's MMConf shared worskpace, and the members expressed the desire to hold teleconference meetings with as many as 15 participants all running MMConf. Eve Schooler attended the 24th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences where she presented the invited paper, "Multimedia Conferencing: Has it come of age?", by Schooler, Casner and Postel. Eve Schooler, Steve Casner, Annette DeSchon, Dave Walden (schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, deschon@ISI.EDU, djwalden@ISI.EDU) JVNCNET, NORTH EAST RESEARCH REGIONAL NETWORK --------------------------------------------- JvNCnet report for NOVEMBER 1990 and DECEMBER 1990 JvNCnet Princeton University B6 von Neumann Hall Westine [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 Princeton, N.J. 08544 Director: Sergio Heker Compiled by Rochelle Hammer General telephone number 609-258-2400 Network operations 609-258-1544 The first issue of Megabytes has been published and distributed to our mailing list. Send email to megabytes-request@jvnc.net to place your name on our list. We are interested in having our readers express their views, comments, and suggestions about Megabytes. The JvNCnet Regional Meeting took place on January 25, 1991 at Princeton University. Dr. Jane Caviness, NSF Deputy Director, Dr. Anthony Villasenor, Director of the NASA Science Internet, John Clement, Educational Consultant at EDUCOM, Ann Robertson, Director of Computing at Mitchell College, New London, Connecticut, and John Hagan, Senior Network Engineer at the University of Pennsylvania formed our panel of guest speakers. The meeting's focus concentrated on why and how the pre-college curriculum may derive significant benefit by incorporating the regional and national computer network matrix. Utilizing computer networks may raise students' scholarship and revitalize and strengthen all disciplines in the curriculum. Advanced data communications technology may be the unconventional instrument to focus or sharpen a student's interest in learning and for recognizing the value of intellectual challenges. Speakers also addressed the potential that networking may provide such as accessing and collecting information and references, launching novel educational and instructional opportunities, forging and maintaining electronic partnerships and communication internally and with outside elementary and secondary schools, colleges and industry. The broad issues of how networking appears to be a compatible fit into the NREN big picture was another highlight. Some specific enhancements and innovative programs developed using networking and its spectrum of resources were detailed. JvNCnet group leaders conducted parallel work sessions to elicit dialog among members about operations, information services, engineering, and installation. Participants collaborated on specific subjects which may lead to networking enhancements for members and their end-users. Rounding off the meeting, attendees listened to a descriptive Westine [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 account of networking at the University of Pennsylvania campus. Throughout the day, we had the developer of a new Hypertext application for locating and reviewing RFCs, their corrections and updates, present a demonstration. Currently the software operates on a PC386 with Microsoft Windows 3 and a Macintosh- compatible version is planned. JvNCnet statistics and other operational data are available from the monthly reports via anonymous ftp on nisc.jvnc.net. Engineering reconfigurations have improved the performance of the BNSs located in New Haven, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, and Newark. Each BNS was consolidated from three routers to one router. One router is configured to attach to both backbone links. Overflow from the backbone router will transfer to another router. Currently there are five DS1 circuits and six DS0 circuits going into the Newark BNS. JvNCnet's backbone upgrade is currently in progress. Its purpose is three-fold: To reduce the diameter (number of hops) of the JvNCnet backbone by reconfiguring the links on the routers; to improve switching performance by upgrading the routers to CSC3 processors; and to minimize operating costs by relocating POPs based on geographic location. NEARnet now uses a shared network segment at Princeton consisting of an Ethernet multiport provided by JvNCnet. It allows direct peering with a separate E-PSP. This is an interim measure until the Boston NSS becomes operational. The result has reduced the traffic load to the JvNCnet backbone. Traffic between JvNCnet and NEARnet does not go through the E-PSP but rather through one of JvNCnet routers bridging JvNCnet and the shared segment. A filter has been placed on all JvNCnet border gateways to ensure that JvNCnet traffic will not flow through an announced peer NSFnet route with a very low metric. JvNCnet is currently offering a very exciting new access option for dial up users. Dialin'Tiger provides terminal access, SLIP connectivity, up to 19.2kbps bandwidth, access to the Internet from the cities of Philadelphia, Trenton, Princeton, New York, New Haven, Newark, Providence, and Boston. A Dialin'Tiger user receives an account on tigger.jvnc.net, a dedicated platform for additional applications. For further information send email to nisc@nisc.jvnc.net. Rochelle Hammer Westine [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 LOS NETTOS ---------- No changes have occured in Los Nettos in the last month. The network remains stable. Walt Prue (Prue@ISI.EDU) MERIT/MICHNET ------------- At the January Board meeting, revised By-laws reflecting the name change from Merit Computer Network to Merit Network, Inc., and MichNet (for the statewide network) were distributed. Copies of Merit's Acceptable Use policy with final changes were also distributed; this policy is available for anonymous FTP on the machine NIC.Merit.edu, or by mail inquiry to nis-info@NIC.Merit.edu (type HELP as the message text to receive instructions). At this same board meeting, new officers were elected: Dr. Morteza Rahimi of Wayne State University as chair, Dr. Paul Hunt of Michigan State as vice chair,Dr. Robert DeBruin of Central Michigan University as secretary, and Harvey Behmof Western Michigan University as treasurer. In January Merit/MichNet released user authentication software called the Authorization Server. When a user attempts to telnet out of the MichNet mid-level network, the Authorization Server asks for a user ID and password on a trusted host, so that MichNet can track which user connected to which Internet host. This was needed because MichNet users, including thousands of users who dial in to the network, can connect to telnet and other services without having to first log in to a host. In a future enhancement, the Authorization Server will allow MichNet to charge for services that don't have any charging facilities of their own. by Pat McGregor MIT-LCS ------- This month MIT connectivity to Dartnet was established. Chuck Davin (jrd@PITT.LCS.MIT.EDU) Westine [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 MITRE Corporation ----------------- Shari Galitzer and Walt Lazear visited GTE Spacenet's net monitoring center on 29 January, where they received detailed briefings on GTE's network design techniques, satellite management center, and communications services management center. Judy Messing, Shari, and Walt attended a demo of Compression Labs' videoconferencing product line to identify the state of the art in low cost videoconferencing. Their approach to multipoint conferencing is to have sites call a central hub (using switched 56kb) that coordinates the conference (who sees whom) at about $40-50k per site. However, their point to point videophone (made for ATT) that will give full motion color over home phone lines will go for $1500. This product is due out later this year. Several MITRE staff participated in a detailed tour of the DCA Net Management Center. Ray Butler and Dan O'Brien gave a thorough tour of the DSNET, MILNET, help desk, and computer room facilities. This tour was highly instructive and showed how DCA is upgrading their facilities, while battling with older technologies. Several demonstrations were given during the month: Forrest Palmer and Walt demonstrated SunNet Manager and Cisco NetCentral software to DCA operations, engineering, and program personnel. The demo was well received and resulted in direct impact on selection of a monitoring package for the T1 pilot network. Shari demonstrated the BBN- developed MultiMedia Conferencing software to DCEC sponsor personnel. The result of our interest to apply MMCONF to network problem-solving has resulted in renewed BBN support. Another MITRE group presented a briefing about the DCA Pacific demo of ATT's Accumaster net management integration product. The demo is showing how a graphic user interface can be used to monitor (but not control) existing proprietary systems (circuit switches and transmission media). Walt and Forrest began to work out the allocation of Testbed resources. Experiments being scheduled for use of the Testbed include JTC3A (MITRE multicast simulation), DCEC (SAIC IDPR testing), IETF (MITRE congestion avoidance and X.400 Pilot), DCEC (net management), DIA (MITRE net simulation), and JDSSC (MITRE NICS OSI transition). Walt Lazear (lazear@gateway.mitre.org) Westine [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 NNSC, UCAR/BOLT BERANEK and NEWMAN, INC. ---------------------------------------- The NNSC has received an overwhelming response to the Internet Manager's Phonebook. We have now placed the ASCII database file for the phonebook online. The file, "phonebook.txt", is available through anonymous FTP at in the directory "phonebook". Please note that the online version does not contain postal addresses for the managers listed within the phonebook. For more detailed information, retrieve the README file from nnsc.nsf.net, in the "phonebook" directory. Printed copies of the phonebook may be purchased, at cost, for $15.00 per copy. Check or money orders should be made payable to Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. The order should be sent to: The NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., 10 Moulton Street, Mail Stop 6/3B, Cambridge, MA 02138. Please be sure to include the following account number on your check: 06480 and specify that this is for payment of the phonebook. The NNSC distributed additions to Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the Internet Resource Guide. by Corinne Carroll NSF BACKBONE (Merit) ------------------- The inbound packet count for the T1 NSFNET backbone during January 1991 totaled 5,867,911,410 packets, an increase of 21.92% over the December 1990 total of 4,812,968,474 packets. As of January 29th, 2331 networks are configured for announcement on the NSFNET backbone. With the continued growth in traffic, the partnership has been monitoring the effects of increasing loads on each of the T1 backbone nodes. A change was made to the external interface of the T1 backbone node at College Park, MD to improve performance and split the traffic load. Additionally, external interfaces at Ithaca, NY and Palo Alto, CA have been upgraded to improve performance at those sites. T3 hardware and circuit installations are complete at six nodes: Ann Arbor, MI; Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; San Diego, CA and Urbana-Champaign, IL. During January, plans to increase production traffic on the T3 backbone were delayed due to problems encountered during deployment. Westine [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 A new award from the National Science Foundation to Merit Network, Inc. will allow for the expansion of T3 service to all of the current NSFNET backbone sites not already part of the first T3 phase. The eight additional T3 sites are Atlanta, GA; Boulder, CO; College Park, MD; Houston, TX; Lincoln, NE; Princeton, NJ; Salt Lake City, UT and Seattle, WA. Successful interoperability testing of an FDDI interface for the T3 technology with Proteon routers and DEC DS 5000s has taken place. FDDI will allow for a 100 Mbps lan interface. As the NSFNET matures, becoming a largely operational environment, Hans-Werner Braun decided to leave his position at Merit to focus on networking issues of a more advanced research nature. In mid- January, he moved to SDSC to initially work on the CASA very-high- speed communications network research project, part of the CNRI gigabit testbed initiative, as a Co-PI. Eric Aupperle, President of Merit Network, Inc., has temporarily assumed administrative responsibility for the Internet Engineering group at Merit, formerly managed by Braun. Guests at the Merit Network Operations Center included representatives from U.S. Sprint and Cornell University, who will be jointly managing the international connections to INRIA and NORDUnet. Eric Aupperle represented the NSFNET project at the FARNET meeting held in Los Vegas, Nevada. Elise Gerich of Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering, was its representative to a meeting of the FEPG in Los Angeles. Another in the series of Merit Networking Seminars presented by Merit/NSFNET Information Services is being planned for mid-May in Ann Arbor, MI. Continuing the commitment to provide current information on national networking, the program 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. Program details will be available soon; electronic inquiries may be made to seminar@merit.edu or phone 1-800-66-MERIT. Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu) Westine [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 NDRE and NTA-RD --------------- NDRE and NTA-RD has nothing to report this month. Anton B. Leere PREPNET ------- No progress to report this month. PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu) SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER ------------------------------ During the month, the most significant item was the installation of 2 FDDI rings. A production ring created by upgrading our Network Systems HyperChannel100 equipment to FDDI interfaces. A new, third box was added to provided FDDI connections for systems with existing NSC low speed connections (PI-xxx cards).Thus our production FDDI ring connects to our Cray, our IBM, and 4 VME/VAX typeconnections via NSC equipment. The second ring was completed by connecting the FDDI card in out NSFnet T3 router with cards in two of our larger SUN's. These later cards were loaned to SDSC by the local SUN office to assist with the testing of the T-3 FDDI interface. At this time, testing continues. A FDDI concentrator from DEC is awaited any day. This will be used in our expanded ring. A long ordered NSC VME interface was received and connected into a SUN which will be used as a FTP gateway to DataTree. Our NCUBE's frontend SUN has also been connected to a low speed port into the FDDI ring via a NSC interface card loaned by CRI. During Jan we gatewayed over 150,000 mail messages through our SoftwareTools mail software. by Paul Love Westine [Page 22] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 SESQUINET --------- January saw several technical and operational developments in Sesquinet. Firstwas the bringing up of our connection to the NASA Science Internet. There is now a (Proteon) NSI router on the same ethernet that includes the Houston NSFnet Backbone router (NSS-11) and several Sesquinet routers. This NSI routeris connected to a neighboring NSI router at the Johnson Space Center via a T1 circuit. This connection will both provide a direct connection between Sesquinet and NSI and will improve the performance of access to the NSFnet Backbone by NASA users at JSC. A second development was the upgrading of our hub routers at Dallas and Houstonto cisco AGS+ configurations. Recent connections to Sesquinet include Teledyne Geotech, Mobil, and Clear LakeHigh School. One notable transient this month was our one-week support for T1 connections from both the Uniforum and Usenix conferences in Dallas. Circuits and equipment all performed well and came up smoothly. by Guy Almes SRI ---- SRI NIC During the month of January, the Internet Registry (IR) at SRI assigned 385 IP network numbers. The total of all IP numbers assigned is now 26,537. The total number of assigned Autonomous System numbers (ASNs) is now 1,217. We have been working closely with NSF and Merit personnel to ensure uninterrupted service for those networks that may have been negatively affected by DDN Management Bulletin #80. Although they no longer recognize the concept of "connected" versus "unconnected" status IP numbers and the notion that U.S. Government sponsorship is necessary for networks, NSF has agreed to grant sponsorship to all IP networks that were assigned during the period of time that RFC 1174 procedural changes were in effect. There are currently a total of 2,322 registered domains which includes 59 at the top level, 2,244 at the second level, and 19 third-level MIL domains. Westine [Page 23] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 Cumulative Statistics Month/Year Class A B C Total Jan. 1991 39 4,247 22,251 26,537 Dec. 1990 36 4,305 21,811 26,152 Nov. 1990 35 4,198 21,149 25,382 Oct. 1990 36 3,846 19,386 23,268 Douglas MacGowan (macgown@nisc.sri.com) Mary Stahl (stahl@nisc.sri.com) FOX Project As a precursor to interoperability experimentation, we obtained and installed prerequisite software on various Sun Workstations at SRI. ISODE 6.0 and QUIPU were installed. A DSA representing SRI and the Network Information Systems Center was created. This DSA, named San Joaquin Kit Fox, has joined the White Pages Pilot Project. NIST's X.500 implementation (Custos) was also installed. SRI is the first group outside of the NIST to compile and run Custos, hence, thanks are due to the folks at NIST for their support while working through a few difficulties. We are creating a DSA that stores SRI and NISC information. These two DSAs will form the basis for initial interoperability tests. SRI will host the third meeting of the IETF Directory Services Working Group on February 12-13. Ruth Lang (rlang@nisc.sri.com) UCL ---- UCL hosted 4 video conferences in January including a CCIRN meeting, a demonstration of BBN's shared map planning tool, and the ICB meeting. These were beteen London, and either Boston or Washington. A new researcher has started work on analysing traffic patterns on the UK-US "Fat Pipe" link in the presence and absence of video Westine [Page 24] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 traffic. Prelimary results show the bandwidth sharing scheme on the link works well and that we are lucky that most contemporary TCP implementations are "well behaved". Almost all retransmissions are at the beginning of connnections due to default initial timers being low for the path. The sooner the RTT estimate is cached in the routing table, the better. [Last month we ommitted to report that S. Kille; had attended the IETF and attended an OSI Directory Working Group meeting - this group is now very active]. We are currently measuring IP performance over JANET links from London to other UK sites, with a view to extending the conferencing facility. This will, of course, take some time. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ---------------------- 1. Usage of the Fuzzball NTP primary time servers has been escalating to the point that the claimed millisecond accuracy has recently been degrading. A number of changes were made to the fuzzware encryption and queueing code in hopes of reversing that trend. Happily, the result is that the pristine millisecond tick has been restored. 2. The recent fuzzware changes do not necessarily bring joy in future, since every indication is that the load on the NSFnet-centric fuzzballs and probably the other primary time servers will continue to increase. To offset some of that trend, the fuzzware was further amended to restrict access in certain cases. Details are provided in a message sent to the NTP interest group. 3. A preliminary investigation into the timekeeping accuracy and stability of clocks synchronized over T1 facilities such as DARTnet has been completed. The results, distributed to the DARTnet interest group, confirm that time transfer using IP over such facilities, at least for low to moderate traffic loads, can provide accuracy to a millisecond and stability to a millisecond per day. 4. Erik Perkins, Mike Davis and Dave Mills attended a DARTnet teleconference in deprived-video mode. Dave Mills (Mills@UDEL.EDU) Westine [Page 25] Internet Monthly Report January 1991 WISCNET ------- Circuit installation started on 1/15/91 with T1 lines from the five backbone sites to the State of Wisconsin Department of Administration T1 network. The first backbone sites were running on 1/17/91 while the whole backbone was up on 1/22/91. Installation of the 16 end node 56k DDS sites started on 1/17 with the first site operational 1/17. The remaining sites were installed during the rest of January (as of 1/29/91 two sites are not yet operational). All sites now have Internet access through UW-Madison's CICNet connection. Work for next month includes moving connectivity for UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside, and Marquette University from the current 56K DDS link to NCSA to WiscNet. Current dedicated BITNet links will be dropped and moved to JNet DECNet sessions. All sites are busy installing name servers, mail routing, and mail user agents. The user services committee is well along with development of model documentation and plans to distribute it next month. A series of meetings with site user consulting staff are planned. Draft information aimed at possible new members and a draft membership agreement have been written. Michael Dorl (dorl@vms.macc.wisc.edu) Westine [Page 26]