~ August 1993 INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS ------------------------ The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations. This report is for Internet information purposes only, and is not to be quoted in other publications without permission from the submitter. Each organization is expected to submit a 1/2 page report on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's activities. These reports should be submitted via network mail to: Ann Westine Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU) NSF Regional reports - To obtain the procedure describing how to submit information for the Internet Monthly Report, send an email message to mailserv@is.internic.net and put "send imr-procedure" in the body of the message (add only that one line; do not put a signature). Requests to be added or deleted from the Internet Monthly report list should be sent to "imr-request@isi.edu". Details on obtaining the current IMR, or back issues, via FTP or EMAIL may be obtained by sending an EMAIL message to "rfc- info@ISI.EDU" with the message body "help: ways_to_get_imrs". For example: To: rfc-info@ISI.EDU Subject: getting imrs help: ways_to_get_imrs TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 Internet Projects ANSNET/NSFNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING . . . . . . . . . . . page 8 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 11 CONCERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12 INTERNIC INFORMATION SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 JVNCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 20 MERIT/MICHNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 23 MERIT/NSFNET INFORMATION SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . page 24 NORTHWESTNET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25 PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 26 RIPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 27 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 30 CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- IETF MONTHLY REPORT 1. The next meeting of the IETF will be held in Houston, Texas from November 1-5, 1993. This meeting is being co-hosted by SESQUINET and Rice University. Following that, arrangements for the first meeting of the IETF in 1994 have been made. That meeting will be held in Seattle, Washington from March 29 through April 1,1994. This meeting is being hosted by NorthWestNet. Note that information on future IETF meetings can be always be found in the file 0mtg-sites.txt which is located on the IETF shadow directories. 2. The IESG approved or recommended the following 10 Protocol Actions during the month of August, 1993: o X.400 use of extended character sets as a Proposed Standard. o Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol as a Proposed Standard. o DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions as a Proposed Standard. o Interoperation Between DHCP and BOOTP as a Proposed Standard. o Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap Protocol as a Proposed Standard. o The PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP) as a Proposed Standard. o Compressing IPX Headers Over WAN Media (CIPX) as a Proposed Standard. o FDDI Management Information Base as a Proposed Standard. o Interactive Mail Access Protocol - Version 3 with a change of status to Historic. o Token Ring Extensions to the Remote Network Monitoring MIB as a Proposed Standard. 3. The IESG issued 15 Last Calls to the IETF during the month of August, 1993: o Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (Proposed Standard) o DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions (Proposed Standard) o Interoperation Between DHCP and BOOTP (Proposed Standard) o Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap Protocol (Proposed Standard) o An Architecture for IP Address Allocation with CIDR (Proposed Standard) o The PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP) (Proposed Standard) o Applicability Statement for the Implementation of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) (Proposed Standard) o Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy (Proposed Standard) o Exchanging Routing Information Across Provider Boundaries in the CIDR Environment (Informational) o Interactive Mail Access Protocol - Version 3 (Historic) o Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3 Medium Attachment Units (MAUs) (Proposed Standard) o Token Ring Extensions to the Remote Network Monitoring MIB (Proposed Standard) o Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3 Repeater Devices (Draft Standard) o Host Resources MIB (Proposed Standard) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Source Routing Bridges (Proposed Standard) 4. One Working Group was concluded during this period: IP Over Large Public Data Networks (iplpdn) 5. A total of 39 Internet-Draft actions were taken during the month of August, 1993: (Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) ) (atommib) + Definitions of Managed Objects for the SONET/SDH Interface Type (bgp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 4) (hostmib) o Host Resources MIB (pip) o Pip Header Processing (none) o ISO/CCITT and Internet Management Coexistence (IIMC): ISO/CCITT to Internet Management Security (IIMCSEC) (none) o ISO/CCITT and Internet Management Coexistence (IIMC): ISO/CCITT to Internet Management Proxy (IIMCPROXY) (none) o Routing over Demand Circuits on Wide Area Networks - RIP (none) o ISO/CCITT and Internet Management Coexistence (IIMC): Translation of Internet MIBs to ISO/CCITT GDMO MIBs (IIMCIMIBTRANS) (none) o ISO/CCITT and Internet Management Coexistence (IIMC): Translation of Internet MIB-II (RFC1213) to ISO/CCITT GDMO MIB (IIMCMIB-II) (none) o A tutorial on gatewaying between X.400 and Internet mail (none) o DNS NSAP Resource Records (pppext) o PPP LCP Extensions (pppext) o PPP over Circuit-Switched ISDN (pppext) + PPP over SONET (none) + NBMA Next Hop Resolution Protocol (NHRP) (bridge) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Source Routing Bridges (madman) o Network Services Monitoring MIB (ifmib) o Evolution of the Interfaces Group of MIB-II (atm) o Classical IP and ARP over ATM (madman) o Mail Monitoring MIB (madman) o Directory Monitoring MIB (pppext) o PPP HDLC Framing (dns) o Common DNS errors and suggested fixes. (pppext) o The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) (tn3270e) o TN3270 Enhancements (upsmib) + UPS Management Information Base (snanau) + Definitions of Managed Objects for SNA NAUs (none) + Transport Multiplexing Protocol (TMux) (thinosi) + Octet sequences for upper-layer OSI to support basic communications applications (isis) + Multiple Levels of Hierarchy with IS-IS (atommib) + Definitions of Managed Objects for ATM Management (dns) + Common DNS Data File Configuration Errors (imap) + INTERACTIVE MAIL ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION 2bis (iafa) + Data Element Templates for Internet Information Objects (iafa) + Publishing Information on the Internet with Anonymous FTP (none) o Handling of Bi-directional Texts in MIME (tn3270e) + TN3270 Current Practices (none) + Packet Forwarding for Mobile Hosts (none) + SIMPLE NETWORK PAGING PROTOCOL - VERSION 1 6. There were 12 RFC's published during the month of August, 1993: RFC St WG Title ------- -- -------- ------------------------------------- RFC1467 I (none) Status of CIDR Deployment in the Internet RFC1494 PS (mimemhs) Equivalences between 1988 X.400 and RFC-822 Message Bodies RFC1495 PS (mimemhs) Mapping between X.400 and RFC-822 Message Bodies RFC1496 PS (mimemhs) Rules for downgrading messages from X.400/88 to X.400/84 when MIME content-types are present in the messages RFC1497 I (none) BOOTP Vendor Information Extensions RFC1498 I (none) On the Naming and Binding of Network Destinations RFC1500 DS (none) INTERNET OFFICIAL PROTOCOL STANDARDS RFC1501 I (none) OS/2 User Group RFC1502 PS (x400ops) X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets RFC1503 I (none) Algorithms for Automating Administration in SNMPv2 Managers RFC1504 I (none) Appletalk Update-Based Routing Protocol: Enhanced Appletalk Routing RFC1505 E (none) Encoding Header Field for Internet Messages St(atus): ( S) Internet Standard (PS) Proposed Standard (DS) Draft Standard ( E) Experimental ( I) Informational Steve Coya (scoya@nri.reston.va.us) INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- ANSNET/NSFNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING ---------------------------------- Network Status Summary ====================== ANSnet stability improved in August over the July measurements. New routing software was deployed in the ANSnet to reduce instability, and simplify the reconfiguration process. August Backbone Traffic and Routing Statistics ============================================== The total inbound packet count for the network (measured using SNMP interface counters) was 31,945,944,041 on T3 ENSS interfaces, down 2.87% from July. The total packet count into the network including all ENSS serial interfaces was 37,652,126,636 up 1.02% from July. As of August 31, the number of networks configured in the Merit Policy Routing Database was 15249 for the T3 backbone. Of these, 3334 were never announced to the T3 backbone (e.g. silent nets). The maximum number of networks announced to the T3 backbone during the month (from samples collected every 15 minutes) was 10,879. Rcp_routed Routing Software Changes =================================== In mid August, the "Dynamic Reconfig" version of the rcp_routed routing daemon was replaced with the "Better IBGP Aggregation" version. Problems with the dynamic reconfiguration feature are now corrected and the effects of configuration runs has been minimized. The "Better IBGP Aggregation" also has performance improvements that should improve stability outside of the configuration window. Release notes provide further details. They can be found in: ftp.ans.net:/pub/info/t3-rcp_routed/Release-Notes Rcp_routed has now evolved to a very stable version quite capable of handling the high load of routing updates. Handling of intermittent circuits was to be the next target for improvement, but rcp_routed will most likely be replaced by Gated within a month. Rcp_routed will be retiring shortly. Further development will be targeted at gated. Routing Stability Measured on the T3 Network ============================================ Internal routing stability measurements are made by monitoring short term disconnect times (disconnects of five minutes duration or less). This is intended as a measure of stability rather than complete connectivity. Stability during August was 97.5% including disruptions during the configuration windows. Excluding the configuration windows, stability was 97.9%. This is a slight improvement over July. MONTH overall excluding configs ------ ------- ----------------- January 99.1% 99.5% February 99.0% 99.5% March 97.5% 99.1% April 96.1% 97.2% May 97.4% 98.0% June 95.5% 96.6% July 97.3% 97.7% August 97.5% 97.9% July stability was improved over June. August was a further improvement over July. This was despite severe circuit problems at ENSS136 (College Park) on August 19, 20, 22, and 24. The access T3 circuit from CNSS58 to ENSS136 was changed. The local carrier portion of the T3 circuit was highly unreliable for over a week. Congestion on the T1 backup circuit was quite severe, and SURAnet had to disable it's FDDI peers at ENSS136 at times to force backup through the T3 ENSS138 at Georgia Tech. ENSS136 saw about 6:33 hours of instability (99.1% stable). ENSS230 (Digital Express) continued to have circuit problems and/or [CSU problems in early August. A zeros density problem seems to have been the cause. ENSS230 saw 4-3/4 hours of instability (99.5% stable). ENSS222 had circuit trouble. ENSS145 (Fix-E) had problems involving CPU loading due to EGP processing. ENSS135 (San Diego) had problems due to local power, and UPS power problems in the adjacent MCI POP (CNSS16, CNSS17, CNSS19). Each of these ENSS's had 2-1/2 to 3 hours of instability, though for ENSS135 much of it was during the configuration window (only 47 minutes outside the window). CNSS16, CNSS17, and CNSS19 saw approximately 2 hours of instability, approximately 1 hour each during the configuration window. The number of nodes experiencing a great deal of outage improved over June and July, though ENSS136 shows up in the >5hr column. The breakdown by sites is as follows (these figures include instability seen during configuration runs): MONTH >5 hr >2 hr > 1hr >30 min >15 min <= 15min ------------------------------------------------------------ January 0 0 1 8 19 55 February 0 0 1 24 19 41 March 0 4 18 23 23 22 April 2 2 3 13 12 57 May 0 4 33 32 15 5 June 3 21 35 18 12 3 Jul 0 12 28 44 6 1 Aug 1 5 28 21 17 15 During August, MCI corrected the problems with the St. Louis to Denver link and other links in the area which previously suffered outages associated with flooding in the midwest. This accounts for much of the shift toward improved stability. Only half as many nodes saw over 2 hours of instability and far more saw under 15 minutes and 30 minutes. Route Table Growth ================== The number of networks actually announced to ANSNET grew by about 7.5% in August. There were 15,249 configured networks by the end of August. The maximum number of routes observed was 10,879. MONTH MAX Growth RATE(%) ===== ==== ============= 01/93 6654 6.65 02/93 7037 5.76 03/93 7767 10.37 04/93 8239 6.08 05/93 8961 8.76 06/93 9534 6.39 07/93 10113 6.07 08/93 10879 7.57 On average for routes that were announced, the primary route was in use 98.8% of the time, secondary was used 1.6% of the time and a tertiary or less preferred route was used less than 0.6% of the time (due to rounding this adds to 101%). There were 3,334 networks configured by August 1 or earlier but were never announced during the the entire month (silent nets). Eight peer networks had over 100 each, accounting for 2,266 of these. There were 4,105 networks configured by August 20 but never announced by the last week of August. Notable Outages in August '93 ============================= E129 (Champaign) suffered an extended outage on 08/12 due to power problems. E157 (Louisville) suffered extended outages on 08/24 and 08/25 due to circuit problems. E222 (InterNIC) suffered extended outages on 08/02 and 08/14 due to circuit problems and on 08/30 due to power problems. E230 (DigEx) suffered an extended outage on 08/31 due to power problems. E136 (College Park) lost T3 connectivity on 08/23 and 08/24 due to circuit problems. UNAM (Mexico) suffered an extended outage on 08/06 due to site problems. Xlink (Germany) suffered an extended outage on 08/18 due to power maintenance. Jordan Becker (becker@ans.net) BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- Real-Time Multicast Communications and Applications During August, testing was completed in the DARTNet on shared stream service. At this point, implementation and basic testing has been done for the 4 realtime multicast communications services -- anycasting, multi-level flows, Resource Coordination Objects (RCOs), and shared streams -- and we have begun integrating them with distributed real-time applications. We began working on the nv video program to add multi-level multicast flow support to it. This involves using a high frame sampling rate, and tagging the outgoing packets with different priority levels. E.g., half of the frames are marked with the lowest priority value, 1/4 of the frames with the next-higher value, etc. A receiving nv application can then pick a frame rate based on processing capability and available bandwidth, and request all frames at and above a cut-off level. With proper pruning and multi-level flow support in mrouted and DVMRP, this will allow optimal forwarding of multicast packets, with packets from unwanted subflows being dropped along routes containing only low-rate receivers. The RCO paper that we mentioned last month has turned into two papers, one on the general concepts and design of the RCO system, and one describing the prototype protocol and implementation details. These should be available for distribution soon. (See January '93 and March '93 Internet Monthly Reports for more details about the application and communications services being developed.) Karen Seo CONCERT ------- The communications research group at MCNC has taken delivery of a Cray Y-MP EL. This entry level system will be used as a development system to support the gigabit networking research undertaken by the group. Activities expected to involve the Cray Y-MP EL include: porting and evaluation of new transport layer protocols to UNICOS including optimized versions of XTP, PIP and PIPE; development of a prototype HIPPI to ATM gateway with cryptographic capabilities; development of direct bus attached ATM interfaces for the Cray Y- MP; and development of collaborative environments involving scientific computing. The communications research group has been experimenting with network resource management and packet video. The group's IP/ATM network testbed has been expanded to four Sparc10s dually connected through an Ethernet and a Fore System ASX-100 ATM switch. The group has four prototype video capture boards from Sun and three Parallax XVideo cards (with JPEG compression) installed in the workstations. Experiments with network resource management and packet video continues in this environment. A software H.261 codec implementation has been completed. It has been tested using XVideo as a frame grabber. It runs at 1.15 frames per second between two Sparc10 with CIF size and 4.5 frames per second with QCIF size. The codec is used in studying codec-network interface issues. A two-level coding option is also being implemented. by Tom Sandoski INTERNIC INFORMATION SERVICES ----------------------------- Contact Information: Reference Desk Information Toll-free hotline +1 800 444-4345 email info@internic.net Fax +1 619 455-4640 InterNIC Suggestions or Complaints Suggestions suggestions@internic.net Complaints complaints@internic.net NSF Network News newsletter subscriptions newsletter-request@internic.net Listserv lists net-happenings listserv@internic.net net-resources listserv@is.internic.net nics listserv@is.internic.net InfoSource Host Name is.internic.net Host Address 192.153.156.15 Postal address InterNIC Information Services General Atomics P.O. BOX 85608 San Diego, CA 92186-9784 NIC Fest -------- Registrations are now being accepted for the first annual NIC Fest to be held Saturday, November 6, in conjunction with ACM SIGUCCS '93 in San Diego, California. NIC Fest is a day-long workshop specifically designed for network information center management and staff, as well as anyone who supports Internet users. The workshop will include interactive tutorials taught by InterNIC staff, Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) staff, and leading NIC staffers from around the Internet. Participants will also engage in discussions on topics of immediate relevance to NIC personnel. Topics will be approached from the providers' point of view and will include: The InterNIC: What it is and what it can do for you Network Tools and their uses NIC Projects Around the World Developments in Cyberspace Participants will receive one free copy of the first issue of NICLink, a CD-ROM containing highlights of the Internet. See the section below for a description of the product. .bp The registration fee is $89.00. For more information about NIC Fest '93, contact Information Services at the addresses and telephone numbers given above. NICLink ------- InterNIC Information Services will release a special introductory issue of NICLink in early November. NICLink, issued quarterly, is a CD-ROM subscription service. The NICLink CD will contain the InfoSource, the Information Services online information database that highlights the information resources of the Internet. Additional information, images, electronic books, and software from the Internet will be included in future issues. The CD-ROM will be compatible with Macintosh, PC Windows, and some UNIX configurations. The software used to present the data is Interleaf's WorldView Press, which incorporates full database search functions as well as hypertext linking capabilities to provide a powerful, easy-to-use interface. Contact the Information Services Reference Desk or check the InterNIC store on the InfoSource for details as they become available. Seminars -------- Information Services offers a series of seminars covering a range of topics for new, intermediate, and advanced Internet users. These seminars are intended for the benefit of Internet providers and and users from education, government and industry. Information Services will be hosting these seminars throughout the year in cooperation with NICs on campuses, at government agencies, and network service providers. Currently the series includes: "Welcome to the Global Village: An Introduction to the Internet" "Locating Information on the Internet: Using Network Tools Effectively" "Building an Electronic Network Information Center: Implementing Network Tools" "Building a Distributed Directory: Establishing an X.500 Directory System Agent" "Hello Internet: Tools for the Classroom" "Making and Managing Global Learning Projects: Using the Internet Effectively in the Classroom" Detailed descriptions of each seminar are available online in the InfoSource. Several of the courses offered can be tailored to accommodate the staff and members of a given organization. Additional classes will be added as requested. NSF Network News ---------------- Information Services has taken over the publication of the NSF Network News from BBN. The first issue will be available in September. The newsletter will be distributed in hard copy and electronic formats. There is no subscription fee, except for international suscribers who want to receive hard copy format. A $30 annual fee will be charged to defray the cost of overseas shipping and handling. The primary electronic format will be ascii which will be emailed to users. A PostScript version will also be available. In addition to subscription delivery, the newsletter will be placed online in the InfoSource. Reference Desk -------------- The Reference Desk continues to receive a large number of calls from non-users who want to know more about the Internet. Articles published in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times led to over 3000 calls to the Reference Desk in a 10-day period in August. The following table gives a summary of the Reference Desk contacts for August. Method Contacts Daily Average Percent of Total ====== ======== ============= ================ Email 457 18 8.28 Phone 4930 224 89.31 Fax 122 5 2.2 U.S. Mail 11 0 < 1 Other 2 0 < 1 ------------------------------------------------------------ Total 5522 251 100 by Paul W. Wilson DIRECTORY AND DATABASE SERVICES Directory and Database Services had a workstation in the InterNIC booth at InterOp, and we demonstrated our services to booth visitors. Demonstrations centered on the Directory of Directories (accessed through WAIS and Gopher) and on our Directory Services. Our Directory Services currently use X.500, Netfind, or WHOIS to help locate individuals on the NSFNET. Our X.500 DSA is tied in to the PSI White Pages Project and is linked to X.500 servers worldwide. More than one million entries are accessible through this system. The WHOIS server on ds.internic.net checks the Registration Services WHOIS, the DISA NIC WHOIS, and our local list of individuals who are not network points of contact. Netfind, written by Mike Schwartz at the University of Colorado, uses a seed database, DNS, and finger to find users in the Internet. X.500, WHOIS, and Netfind are accessible through Gopher, and X.500 and Netfind are accessible via Telnet on our server (log in as x500 or netfind, respectively, on ds.internic.net; no password is required). A reminder - if you would like to help the Internet community find a resource that you offer, send mail to admin@ds.internic.net and we will send information about listing your resource in the Directory of Directories. by Rick Huber ISI --- GIGABIT NETWORKING Atomic ------ Work on the ATOMIC LAN is proceeding on several fronts. Kernel-AC Software Work In the current version of the ATOMIC LAN, address resolution is performed by a program called the Address Consultant (AC), which utilizes a special address family (AF_ATOM) to send link level probe packets when it maps the network. This month we began the task of moving the AC from user space into the Sun kernel, where it will perform functions analogous to the Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). The mapping function that the AC performs is much more complicated than ARP. It is expected that the kernel-based implementation of the AC will simplify the process of porting the Atomic software to other platforms, since it will eliminate the need for the AF_ATOM address family. Design of 486-based VL-Bus ATOMIC Interface We have been continuing our high-level design for a 700Mb/s interface for a 486 VL-bus system. We expect a nearly complete specification by the end of August. The interface will have DMA access by the host system and separate sending and receiving Mosaic processors. Cable Component Testing We have also been continuing work testing the various components of a high-speed cable for the ATOMIC LAN. Our goal is to create a bidirectional 500Mb/s cable over a 100' length of twisted pair (25pr) cable. Specifically we have been testing the differential driver chips (ATT 41mm), the Slack-20 v4.0 chips created by Caltech and various grades/lengths of twisted pair cable. Our expectation is to build a low-cost cable for installation over relatively short distances at ISI. The Slack chip will eventually be replaced by the "Dialog" chip that is also designed by Caltech. The Dialog includes flow control and fault tolerance. We are participating in Dialog design discussions with Caltech. Simulation of the ATOMIC LAN We created a simulator for the ATOMIC LAN that allows us to evaluate the performance of the 16x16 crossbar switches in our network and to examine the impact of various high-level routing algorithms in a complex network. The simulator allows us to examine much larger topologies than we can currently build in the lab and can be used as a tool to aid the installation of a production LAN. The simulation results have led us to re-think the routing strategy used in the Address Consultant. Papers and Presentations: Cohen, D., Finn, G., Felderman, R., DeSchon, "ATOMIC: A Very High-Speed Local Communication Architecture", Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing, pp. I-39, I-46, August 1993. Bob Felderman presented three papers during August: "Simulation of the ATOMIC LAN", presented at the SIAM Conference on Simulation and Monte Carlo Methods in San Francisco, CA, August 4-6, 1993. "ATOMIC: From Interconnection Network to Local Area Network", presented at the Hot Interconnects '93 Symposium at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, August 5-6, 1993. "ATOMIC: A Low-Cost, Very High-Speed Local Communication Architecture", presented at the International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP) in St. Charles, Illinois, August 16-20, 1993. Annette DeSchon Bob Felderman Greg Finn deschon@isi.edu feldy@isi.edu finn@isi.edu Infrastructure Jon Postel, Joyce Reynolds, attended INET '93 Conference San Francisco, California August 15-20, 1993. Bob Braden attended ARPA networking '93 meeting in Santa Rosa, Ca. Aug 27 to Sept 2, 1993. 13 RFCs were published this month. RFC 1467: Topolcic, C. "Status of CIDR Deployment in the Internet" CNRI, August 1993. RFC 1486: Rose, M. (Dover Beach Consulting) and C. Malamud, (Internet Multicasting Service) "An Experiment in Remote Printing, Dover Beach Consulting, August 1993. RFC 1494: Alvestrand, H. (Sintef Delab), and S. Thompson, (Soft Switch) "Equivalences between 1988 X.400 and RFC-822 Message Bodies", August 1993. RFC 1495: Alverstrand, H., (Sintef Delab) S. Kille, (ISODE Consortium), R. Miles and S. Thompson, (Soft*Switch, Inc.) M. Rose, (Dover Beach Consulting), "Mapping Between X.400 and RFC-822 Message Bodies", August 1993. RFC 1496: Alverstrand, H., (Sintef Delab), J. Romaguera (NetConsult AG), and K. Jordan, (Control Data Systems, Inc), August 1993. RFC 1497: Reynolds, J. "BOOTP Vendor Information Extensions" ISI, August 1993. RFC 1498: Saltzer, J., "On the Naming and Binding of Network Destinations", August 1993. RFC 1500: Postel, J., "Internet Official Protocol Standards" IAB, August 1993. RFC 1501: Brunsen, E., "OS/2 User Group", Eastern New Mexico University, August 1993. RFC 1502: Alverstrand, H., " X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets", SINTEF DELAB, August 1993. RFC 1503: K. McCloghrie (Hughes LAN Systems), and M. Rose (Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.), "Algorithms for Automating Administration in SNMPv2 Managers", August 1993. RFC 1504: Oppenheimer, A., "Appletalk Update-Based Routing Protocol: Enhanced Appletalk Routing", Apple Computer, August 1993. RFC 1505: Costanzo, A. (AKC Consulting, Inc.), D. Robinson, and R. Ullman, (Computervision Corp), "Encoding Header Field for Internet Messages", August 1993. Ann Westine Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU) MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING On August 17, an MBONE teleconference meeting of the IETF AVT working group was held to review the changes in the "next-to-last call" draft specification for the Realtime Transport Protocol and reach agreement on several questions. One item agreed was to seek "proposed standard" rather than "experimental" status when the draft is submitted to become an RFC. This should happen in September, after the "last call" edition of the draft spec is completed to incorporate the changes discussed in the meeting and some additional explanatory sections on usage scenarios. Our teleconference session orchestration program, mmcc, was demonstrated at INET'93 with audio/video calls placed to remote locations such as ISI, where the camera gave a nice view of the marina. To avoid requiring an individual to answer the calls, an option was added to the call setup process in mmcc to allow an automatic yes or no answer when contacted, rather than ringing. For automatic calls, mmcc can also send a Tcl command to instruct PARC's nv program automatically to begin sending video at session startup. This is an example of the kind of cross-application communication that will be necessary to fully integrate the tools in a teleconferencing suite. We are converting mmcc to Tk/Tcl to facilitate experimentation in this area, and plan to publicly release that version of mmcc. One function which will require coordination among the tools is the selection of the quality of service. Mmcc has been augmented to provide a range of QoS choices to the user in abstract terms and to share the initiator's QoS choice with all potential participants. It then maps the abstract request to a flow specification and requests resource reservations for both senders and receivers via the RSVP API. To aid in testing RSVP, direct control is also provided to change the selected flow spec. Two open questions are: how should the high-level QoS abstraction be mapped into a flow specification, and which components of the end-system suite should perform the mapping and make the reservations. At the workshop on Programming Abstractions for Distributed Multimedplications held in conjunction with Multimedia '93, Steve Casner gave a keynote presentation on "Multimedia Abstractions and the Internet" and Eve Schooler gave a presentation as part of a panel on "Session Abstractions for Coordination and Control". Steve Casner made a presentation on "Session Management for Internet Teleconferencing" at the ARPA Networking PI meeting in Santa Rosa. Eve Schooler, Steve Casner, Joe Touch (schooler@ISI.EDU, casner@ISI.EDU, touch@isi.edu) JVNCNET ------- JvNCnet-Global Enterprise Services, Inc. 3 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540 voice: 1-800-35-TIGER; 1-609-897-7300, fax 1-609-897-7310 I. New Information Network operations center (NOC) telephone numbers are: 609-897-7319 and 609-897-7320 Customer Service: 609-897-7318 and 609-897-7337 II. Symposia Series (open to the public) A. OSI and X.400 and X.500 Applications and How to Implement Date: October 21, 1993 Meeting location: Princeton Marriott Forrestal Village, College Road, Plainsboro, NJ Agenda to be finalized. For details or to register, send email to email to hammer@jvnc.net or call 609-897-7315. B. Cisco Router Technical Training (open to the public) Title: Cisco router configuration course Audience: Network managers, operations staff, technicians, and anyone involved with the configuration and management of routing and bridging equipment. Knowledge of basic routing principles, TCP/IP, or OSI is recommended but not required. Location: GES office. The Router Configuration Course is five days: Monday - Thursday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Friday - 9:00 am to 3:00 pm Course dates: September 27-October 1, October 11-15, November 1-5, November 15-19, November 29-December 3, December 13-17 Request course outline, pricing, and other details by sending email to: training@jvnc.net. You may also call the GES instructor, Steven Williams at 609-897-7314 or williams@jvnc.net III. New Online Members (fully operational April, May, June, and some July 1993): Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, DE Datacom Global Communications, Princeton, NJ DC Public Schools, Washington, DC Dobbins Area Vocational-Technical, Philadelphia, PA Educational Information and Resource Center, Sewell, NJ Francis Scott Key High School, Unionbridge, MD George Washington High School, Philadelphia, PA Gibbs and Cox, New York, NY Haddonfield Memorial High School, Haddonfield, NJ Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, Erdenheim, PA Mount St. Joseph Academy, Flourtown, PA Neshaminy Schools Ed Services Center, Langhorne, PA Parkview Elementary, Westville, NJ Souderton Middle School, Souderton, PA Springfield Schools, Philadelphia, PA Cherry Semiconductor, E. Greenwich, RI Electronic Systems Associates, New York, NY EMCORE, Somerset, NJ J. Abrahams, Princeton, NJ Carnegie Corporation, New York, NY Dayna Communications, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT Dun and Bradstreet, Berkeley Heights, NJ ALK Associates, Princeton, NJ Ansaldo Industria, New Providence, NJ Atlantis, Montclair, NJ DRS Military Systems, Oakland, NJ Ericsson Messaging Systems, Woodbury, NY Exele Information Systems, East Rochester, NY Helene Curtis , Chicago, IL Insight Research, Livingston, NJ JG Computing, Princeton, NJ Knickerbocker Securities, New York, NY T. Nishimura, Fort Lee, NJ Octagon Research Lab, New York, NY Polychip, New York, NY Ridgewood Public Schools, Ridgewood, NJ Integrated Network Corp, Bridgewater, NJ P. McKenzie, Madison, NJ MCNR, Philadelphia, PA NAPS International, Netcong, NJ Parlant Technologies, Provo, UT Patterson and Associates, Paradise Valley, AZ Scientific Process & Research, Inc., Somerset, NJ Software Associates, Little Falls, NJ Technical Insights, Fort Lee, NJ K. Wolman, Wayne, NJ Decision Data, Horsham, PA Xybion Corporation, Cedar Knolls, NJ Cplex Optimization, Princeton, NJ J. Ferron, West Haven, CT International School Services, Princeton, NJ Primetime, Wayne, PA J-P, Radley, New York, NY Sorden Financial Services, Wilmington, DE 3D Technologies, Trumbull, CT Warner Insurance Services, Fairlawn, NJ Oksana International Trade, Linden, NJ GH Besselaar Associates, Princeton, NJ Woodstown Pilesgrove Regional School District, Woodstown, NJ by Rochelle Hammer MERIT/MICHNET ------------- Beta testing of the Livingston PortMaster network access server by selected UM/MichNet personnel at the University of Michigan continues. The purpose of this period for beta test is to evaluate the services and performance provided by the PortMaster before making it available to the greater community. The PortMaster is expected to provide a superior level of dial-in service, as well as PPP and SLIP access. The dial-in service offered via the UM/MichNet NAS has been configured to be as flexible as possible, at a variety of modem speeds and with or without error correction and data compression. The UofM machine will be used for PPP access only, with public availability to authenticated users upon completion of successful testing. Common connection establishment procedures have been determined to be the principle requirements which must be met by a NAS participating in the MichNet pool of ports, as well as the ability to interface with an authentication helper interfacing with serveral authentication servers. Michigan State University is working with Xylogics, where the Xylogics Annex terminal service has been deployed. State-of-the-art network access will be provided to users around the state with the deployment of Network Access Servers throughout the MichNet backbone. The College of Education at Westerm Michigan University is coordinating a project to offer west Michigan school districts access to WMU computing resources and the Internet during the 1993-94 school year. Several districts have expressed an interest in this initiative which will support accounts for teachers and their students. Saginaw Valley State University sponsored a three-week Summer Research Institute which included use of SVSU's Internet connectivity. Participating in the Institute, was a team of four students and two teachers from Bay City Central, a local high school, which won an environmental research competition, "EarthVision," sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Greater Flint Educational Consortium announced its funding of a Modem Pool & Information Server project in Genesee County. A group of modems will be installed for public access via computers, and the Information Server will act as a computerized bulletin board for the educational community. Ultimately, students, parents and teachers in the area will be able to access computerized events calendars, homework listings, library holdings and local college admissions requirements. Hope College, a MichNet affiliate, upgraded its connectivity to the MichNet regional backbone as a 1.5Mbps (T1) link using a cisco router. The new link runs from Hope to the MichNet backbone router in Grand Rapids. Two new MichNet public dial-in access sites, Holland and Big Rapids, are available. The cooperative efforts of Hope College and Merit provide service at the Holland site, while Ferris State University and Merit cooperatively make access possible at the Big Rapids site. Jo Ann Ward (jaw@merit.edu) MERIT/NSFNET INFORMATION SERVICES --------------------------------- Merit/NSFNET Information Services The Merit Network Information Center Services host computer, nic.merit.edu, is accessible via Anonymous FTP, electronic mail and Gopher, and provides a wide array of information about the Internet, NSFNET, and MichNet. An electronic mail message to nic-info@nic.merit.edu with the message help will respond with the READ.ME file which overviews the means of access and on-line holdings for nic.merit.edu. Other new information available on nic.merit.edu via Anonymous FTP, e-mail query and Gopher: "A Survey of Advanced Usages of X.500" by Chris Weider of Merit and Russ Wright of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. This rfc/fyi is the result of a survey of advanced X.500 uses, demonstrating the various ways in which X.500 may be broadened as a "White Pages" service. Available as /internet/documents/rfc1491.txt or /internet/documents/fyi_21.txt A new release (2.90) of John December's "Information Sources: the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication." This document lists pointers to information describing the Internet, computer networks, and issues related to computer-mediated communication. Available as /introducing.the.internet/information.sources iNET '93 in San Francisco, CA, was attended by Chris Weider, Merit Information Delivery; Jim Williams, Merit Associate Director for National Networking; and Elise Gerich and Jessica Yu, Merit Internet Engineering. Weider participated on the panel, "Helping Users Help Themselves," a discussion of tools and tool design for Internet navigation. Gerich was a member of the iNET '93 program committee and served as the Network Engineering Track coordinator. Gerich also led the session, "Practical considerations for routing and addressing." Gerich chaired the IEPG meeting which met in California, August 23-24, and attended the joint CCIRN/IEPG meeting at this time. As a member of a networking delegation that traveled to St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, Gerich participated in discussions with Russian research centers and scientific institutes regarding connectivity to the U.S. Internet. An invitation to address issues surrounding information services architecture took Weider to the UC-Berkeley School of Graduate Library Studies. At the fall InterOp '93, Weider spoke on "Directory Services for Resource Discovery" and participated on the Resource Discovery panel. Other Merit staff attending InterOp included Sue Hares, Bill Norton, and John Vollbrecht. Jo Ann Ward (jaw@merit.edu) NORTHWESTNET ------------ Approximately 70 participants from various State of Washington agencies attended eight Internet classes led by NorthWestNet trainers. Topics covered included an introduction to the Internet, electronic mail, FTP, Telnet, and many Internet resources. Training sessions were held at the State of Washington's Learning Center in Lacey, Washington. At the INET '93 conference in San Francisco, Dr. Eric Hood, executive director of NorthWestNet, served as program chair of the Applications Technology track and also chaired a session titled "Building Applications." Terry Gray, director of networks and distributed computing at the University of Washington gave presentations on UWIN and the PINE mailer. New NorthWestNet member organizations during the month of August included Central Washington University and the North Dakota Information Network (NDIN). NorthWestNet info@nwnet.net 15400 SE 30th Place, Suite 202 Phone: (206) 562-3000 Bellevue, WA 98007 Fax: (206) 562-4822 Dr. Eric S. Hood, Executive Director Jan Eveleth, Director of User Services Dan L. Jordt, Director of Technical Services Anthony Naughtin, Manager of Member Relations NorthWestNet serves the six state region of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington. by Jan Eveleth PREPNET ------- PREPnet New Members: -------------------- King's College Wilkes-Barre, PA Ursinus College Collegeville, PA Altoona Area School District Altoona, PA With these new additions, PREPnet has a current total of 136 members. PREPnet News: ------------- On August 10, PREPnet conducted a training session for the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Topics covered by the session included: * Introduction to the Internet and PREPnet * TCP/IP protocal suite * Extended services and Internet utilities * Troubleshooting techniques. PREPnet Executive Director Tom Bajzek attended the INET '93 conference August 17-20, held in San Francisco. PREPnet is planning for its fifth annual member meeting on September 14, to be held in Philadelphia. For more details about this meeting, feel free to contact us at the address/phone/e-mail address below. For information regarding connectivity options in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, contact the PREPnet NIC: 305 S. Craig St. E-Mail: nic@prep.net 2nd Floor Telephone: (412) 268-7870 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 PREPnet NIC (prepnet+@andrew.cmu.edu) RIPE ----- Introduction to the RIPE NCC ---------------------------- The RIPE NCC RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) is a collaborative organisation open to all European Internet service providers. The objective of RIPE is to ensure the necessary administrative and technical coordination to allow the operation of a pan-European IP network. Much of this work is achieved through voluntary effort. RIPE does not operate a network of its own. The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is a European organisation with a charter to support RIPE. It is specifically focused on undertaking those activities which cannot be effectively performed by volunteers from the participating organisations. As such, it provides a wide range of technical and administrative support to network operators in the Internet community across Europe. The RIPE NCC currently has 3 permanent staff members. The RARE association provides the legal and financial framework for the NCC. RIPE NCC Activities Regional Internet Registry In order to operate IP networks in the Internet or between organisations each physical network must use a unique IP address. Other number spaces like the Autonomous System numbers need also be maintained in a way to guarantee uniqueness. This is the task of the Internet Registry. Before the RIPE NCC existed these tasks were performed centrally for the whole Internet under the auspices of the US Department of Defense and funded by various US agencies. Recently it has been recognised that the fair and hierarchical allocation of IP address space is a necessity for the Internet to survive. To answer this need the RIPE NCC has set up the Regional Internet Registry and a network of Local Internet Registries at IP service providers for Europe. The RIPE NCC has identified and helped to set up more than 60 local registries to date. These local registries serve either the customers of a particular service provider or all organisations within a country which do not have a service provider. The latter category of registries is called "Non-Service Provider" registry, a community service which to date is being provided free of charge. So far 22 organisations willing to provide this have established a non-service provider registry. Most European organisations now have access to a local registry which knows the local environment, speaks the local language and can provide most registration functions locally. Only requests for large amounts of address space are being reviewed by the NCC. As a result, IP number allocation to European organisations is now easier, more timely and last but not least fairer than before. Particularly the local support and the increased responsiveness are appreciated by network operators. To date the European Internet Registry system has allocated more than 14,000 network numbers, 800-900 of which are currently being routed on the Internet. This shows that many organisations are using the Internet protocols without actually connecting to the Internet, at least not initially. Another clearly visible trend is that the vast majority of new address space is assigned for purposes other than research and development. The RIPE Database In many operational situations ranging from loss of connectivity to intrusion attempts it is necessary to establish quickly who is actually responsible --a specific IP network or DNS domain-- and find a way to contact them. To answer this need one of the core activities of the NCC is maintaining the RIPE Network Management Database often referred to just as "RIPE Database". This database contains information needed for the technical coordination of European IP networks. The RIPE database is maintained at the RIPE NCC in cooperation with local Internet Registries throughout Europe. It can be queried from anywhere on the Internet using a variety of methods including the standard WHOIS service. Currently decentralised servers for access to the database are being set up. General Coordination Network operators need to coordinate with each other in order to maintain the functionality of the European Internet. RIPE is the forum for this coordination and much of it is done at the meetings RIPE holds three times a year. RIPE working groups discuss specific problems and produce recommendations. Between RIPE meetings a focus for these activities is needed. The NCC supports general RIPE activities by providing a focal point for and by fielding many queries. This activity is not easy to describe or quantify. Nevertheless the NCC plays an important role in many RIPE activities just by providing a permanently staffed location that keeps track of activities and is able to perform small but urgently needed tasks. In addition the NCC organises the RIPE meetings. Information Services The RIPE NCC maintains the "RIPE document store" which is a collection of RIPE`s own documents and information relevant to the Internet community in general such as RFC's, FYI's, information on the IETF, IEPG and other technical documentation. Publicly available software tools which are useful for network operators are also made available via the document store. The document store can be accessed with traditional tools such as interactive login from the Internet and via X.25 based networks and FTP. It can also be accessed with many of the new resource discovery tools such as Archie, Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), Gopher and World Wide Web (WWW). If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact the RIPE NCC. The contact address is given below: RIPE NCC Phone: +31 20 592 5065 Kruislaan 409 Fax: +31 20 592 5090 NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam Email: ncc@ripe.net The Netherlands by Anne Lord UCL ---- We have now integrated LBL's Class Based Queueing code into a streams module that is plumbed between the IP output module and and System V compliant DLPI type link level device driver. Access to the module to program flow classes is implemented via an ioctl at the moement that adds or subtracts fixed bitmap patterns that are used in mask and matches on packets to flows. A more complex piece of code to provide efficient matching on less obvious (less friendly) keys in packets that identify flows is being developed alongside this approach. Testing across the fatpipe is taking place in september, with the seperation of MICE and ARPA Project multimedia and other traffic from UCL service traffic, and several (albeit artificial) subclasses of traffic. Traces of the traffic will be taken to try to demonstrate the effectiveness of the scheme. Essentially, deliberate overload conditions will be set up, and conditions where multimedia traffic threatens the service, and vice versa, and the queueing controls turned on and off periodically. During August, Kirstein attended Inet 93 and t meet with many collaborators stateside. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) CALENDAR -------- Readers are requested to send in dates of events that are appropriate for this calendar section. Please send your submissions to (cooper@isi.edu). 1993 CALENDAR Aug 1-6 Multimedia '93, Anaheim, CA Aug 17-20 INET93, San Francisco, (Request@inet93.stanford.edu) Aug 23-27 INTEROP93, San Francisco Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Sep 13-17 SIGCOMM 93, San Francisco Sep ?? 6th SDL Forum, Darmstadt Ove Faergemand (ove@tfl.dk) Sep 8-9 ANSI X3S3.3, Boulder, CO Sep 13-17 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD Sep 14 -? IFIP TC6. GMD-Fokus, 2nd Intl Conf. on Open Distributed Processing ICODP12, Berlin Sep 20-31 ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6, Seoul, Korea. Sep 28-29 September RIPE Technical Days, TBC Oct INTEROP93, Paris, France Oct 5-6 IFIP WG 6.6 Intl Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management DSOM'93. Oct 12-14 Conference on Network Information Processing, Sofia, Bulgaria; Contact: IFIP-TC6 Oct 14-16 6th IEEE Workshop on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks, San Diego, Del Mar, CA Oct 18-20 International Workshop on Applications of Neural Networks to Telecommunications Princeton, NJ Oct 18-22 TCOS WG, Atlanta, GA (tentative) Nov 1-5 IETF Houston, TX. Nov 2-4 ANSI X3S3.3, TBD Nov 2-4 EMAIL World Contact: Einar Steffurd Nov 9-13 IEEE802 Plenary, Crown Sterling Suites, Ft. Lauderdale, FL Nov 15-19 Supercomputing 93, Portland, OR Dec 6-10 OIW, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 1994 CALENDAR Feb 3-4 ISOC Symposium on network and Distributed System Security, San Diego, (nessett@llnl.gov) May 2-6 NetWorld+INTEROP 94, Las Vegas, Nevada Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) Jun 1-3 IFIP WG 6.5 ULPAA, Barcelona, Spain Einar Stefferud (stef@nma.com) Aug 28-Sep 2 IFIP World Computer Congress Hamburg, Germany; Contact: IFIP Sep 12-14 NetWorld+INTEROP 94, Atlanta, Georgia Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) 1995 CALENDAR Sep 18-22 INTEROP95, San Francisco, CA Dan Lynch (dlynch@interop.com) 1996 CALENDAR Sep 2-6 14th IFIP World Computer Congress Canberra, Australia Contact: IFIP ========================================================================