~ July 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 Cooper [Page 1] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERNET ARCHITECTURE BOARD IAB MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3 INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 PRIVACY AND SECURITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4 Internet Projects ANSNET/NSFNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING . . . . . . . . . . . page 10 BARRNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13 BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC., . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14 CSUNET (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK). . . . . . . page 15 INTERNIC INFORMATION SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 16 ISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19 JVNCNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29 MERIT/MICHNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 31 MERIT/NSFNET ENGINEERING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32 MERIT/NSFNET INFORMATION SERVICES . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39 NEARNET (NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK) . . . page 41 NORTHWESTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 41 PREPnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 43 UCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 43 CALENDAR OF EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 47 Cooper [Page 2] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 INTERNET ARCHITECTURE MESSAGE IAB MEETING The IAB held an open meeting at the Amsterdam IETF, on Tuesday evening July 13, 1993. About 110 observers attended, approximately 20% of the IETF meeting. The following is a brief summary of the meeting. A more complete summary is available by anonymous FTP from host ftp.isi.edu with pathname pub/IAB/IABmins.jul93.txt. 1. Standards Procedures Document Another round of revisions will be made in the replacement for RFC-1310, and a new Internet-Draft will be circulated. However, the IAB feels this document should be moved into an RFC as soon as possible. A key issue is the rules for intellectual property, particularly copyrights. The IAB will take steps to inform and involve the Internet community, as soon as ISOC lawyers have prepared new text. 2. Proposed ISOC Liaison Agreements with ISO and ITU The IAB accepted a recommendation from Vint Cerf, President of the Internet Society, that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ISO and ISOC be drafted. This MOU, if accepted by both sides, would form the basis for a Category A liaison relationship with ISO. It would be framed to protect the successful IETF processes for standards making, while establishing the ground rules for interaction between IETF working groups and ISO subcommittees, and any other relations deemed helpful. Cerf agreed to draft such a document, for presentation to the Internet community for comments and discussions. Liaison with the ITU, delayed by their reorganization, is now under active consideration. 3. Projections of CIDR Effects There was an extensive discussion of the existing projections of the effects of CIDR on preserving the IP address space and preventing a routing explosion. The uncertainties are still very large, and further studies, with their assumptions carefully documented, are needed. Cooper [Page 3] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 4. Architecture The IAB has initiated a study of modificiations of the Internet architecture for shared media, like public data networks. Steve Kent summarized the ongoing work in the IETF and IRTF towards a security architecture for the Internet. Bob Braden, for the IAB (Braden@ISI.EDU) INTERNET RESEARCH REPORTS ------------------------- PRIVACY AND SECURITY -------------------- The PSRG met at Cambridge University on July 7-9, preceeding the IETF meeting in Amsterdam. Most of the meeting was devoted to review and discussion of the Internet security architecture document. This document is now over 100 pages in length and is expected to double in size by the end of this year. It is undergoing substantial review and revision by PSRG members and members of the IETF community are being solicited to contribute to the document. A draft version of this document will be published as one or more Internet Drafts before the end of the year. The general and program chairs for the ISOC-PSRG Security Symposium reported that planning is proceeding apace and that review of submissions will occur in September. The next meeting of the PSRG will be held at MIT, October 5-7. Steve Kent INTERNET ENGINEERING REPORTS ---------------------------- IETF MONTHLY REPORT 1. The 27th IETF meeting was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from July 12-16. 1993. The meeting, co-hosted by SURFnet and RARE, was the first time an IETF meeting has been held outside of North America. The meeting was wekk attended with almost 500 attendees during the week, a little over the original estimates of 450 attendees made one year ago during the Cambridge meeting. Cooper [Page 4] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 The ratio of non-US attendees was, as expected, significantly higher than at the past few meetings which have ranged from between 8 and 11%. For this meeting, 46% of the attendees were from outside the United States. The top five countries were, in terms of the number of individuals attending: The Netherlands 55 attendees United Kingdon 30 attendees Germany 25 attendees Sweden 15 attendees France 14 attendees 2. 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. 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. 3. The IESG issued three Last Calls to the IETF during the month of July, 1993: o Compressing IPX Headers Over WAN Media (CIPX) (Proposed Standard) o FDDI Management Information Base (Proposed Standard) o Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments (Proposed Standard) 4. One Working Group was concluded during this period: Chassis MIB (chassis) 5. 62 Internet Draft actions were taken during the month of July, 1993: (Revised draft (o), New Draft (+) ) (cat) o Generic Security Service API : C-bindings (mospf) o Multicast Extensions to OSPF (mhsds) o Representing Tables and Subtrees in the Directory (mhsds) o Representing the O/R Address hierarchy in the Directory Information Tree Cooper [Page 5] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 (mhsds) o Use of the Directory to support routing for RFC 822 and related protocols (mhsds) o Use of the Directory to support mapping between X.400 and RFC 822 Addresses (mhsds) o A simple profile for MHS use of Directory (mhsds) o MHS use of Directory to support MHS Routing (pppext) o The PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP) (bgp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border Gateway Protocol (Version 4) (tuba) o Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments (nasreq) o Network Access Server Proposed Requirements Document (hostmib) o Host Resources MIB (mhsds) o MHS use of Directory to support MHS Content Conversion (ospf) o OSPF Version 2 (x400ops) o Postmaster Convention for X.400 Operations (pppext) o Compressing IPX Headers Over WAN Media (CIPX) (avt) o RTP: A Real-Time Transport Protocol (avt) o Media Encodings (avt) o Sample Profile for the Use of RTP for Audio and Video Conferences with Minimal Control (pppext) o PPP LCP Extensions (pip) o Use of DNS with Pip (none) o Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy (iplpdn) o Parameter Negotiation for the Multiprotocol Interconnect (iplpdn) o Determination of Encapsulation of Multi-protocol Datagrams in Circuit-switched Environments (pppext) o PPP over ISDN Cooper [Page 6] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 (pppext) o PPP in Frame Relay (pppext) o PPP in X.25 (cat) o FTP Security Extensions (none) o Exchanging Routing Information Across Provider Boundaries in the CIDR Environment (mospf) o MOSPF: Analysis and Experience (none) o Connection Multiplexing Protocol (CMP) (uri) o Uniform Resource Locators (tuba) o Assignment of System Identifiers for TUBA/CLNP Hosts (none) o FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR) (none) o Korean Character Encoding for Internet Messages (frnetmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Frame Relay Service (isn) o FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly Asked "Elementary and Secondary School Internet User" Questions (dns) o DNS Resolver MIB Extensions (dns) o DNS Server MIB Extensions (atm) o Default IP MTU for use over ATM AAL5 Services (atm) o Classical IP and ARP over ATM (frnetmib) o Service Management Architecture for Virtual Connection Services (iiir) o Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): A Representation of Textual Information and MetaInformation for Retrieval and Interchange (madman) o DSA Monitoring MIB (pppext) + PPP HDLC Framing (wnils) + Whois and Network Information Lookup Service Whois++ (pppext) + The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) Cooper [Page 7] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 (dns) + Common DNS Errors and Suggested Fixes (x400ops) o Mail based file distribution Part 1: Dialog between two nodes (appleip) + KIP AppleTalk/IP Gateway Functionality (x400ops) o Mail based file distribution Part 2: Over-all structure (pip) + IP Independent Transition (IPIT) for Pip (isis) + Routing over Nonbroadcast Multiaccess Links (none) + TELNET MPX option (none) + Definitions of Managed Objects for the Node in Fibre Channel Standard (iplpdn) + A Simple Multilink Protocol for Synchronizing the Transmission of Multi-protocol Datagrams. (pppext) + Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions for Bridging (none) + The Virtual Network Protocol for Host Mobility (none) + Internet Authentication Requirements (tn3270e) + TN3270 Enhancements (tn3270e) + TN3270 Extensions for LUname and Printer Selection 6. 17 RFC's were published during the month of July, 1993. RFC St WG Title ------- -- -------- ------------------------------------- RFC1440 E (none) SIFT/UFT: Sender-Initiated/Unsolicited File Transfer RFC1477 I (idpr) IDPR as a Proposed Standard RFC1478 PS (idpr) An Architecture for Inter-Domain Policy Routing RFC1479 PS (idpr) Inter-Domain Policy Routing Protocol Specification: Version 1 RFC1481 I (iab) IAB Recommendation for an Intermediate Strategy to Address the Issue of Scaling RFC1482 I (bgpdepl) Aggregation Support in the NSFNET Policy Routing Database RFC1483 PS (atm) Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5 Cooper [Page 8] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 RFC1484 E (osids) Using the OSI Directory to achieve User Friendly Naming(OSI-DS 24(v1.2)) RFC1485 PS (osids) A String Representation of Distinguished Names(OSI-DS 23(v5)) RFC1486 E (none) An Experiment in Remote Printing RFC1487 PS (osids) X.500 Lightweight Directory Access Protocol RFC1488 PS (osids) The X.500 String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes RFC1489 I (none) Registration of a Cyrillic Character Set RFC1490 DS (iplpdn) Multiprotocol Interconnect over Frame Relay RFC1491 I (ids) A Survey of Advanced Usages of X.500 RFC1492 I (none) An Access Control Protocol, Sometimes Called TACACS RFC1493 DS (bridge) Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges St(atus): ( S) Internet Standard (PS) Proposed Standard (DS) Draft Standard ( E) Experimental ( I) Informational Steve Coya (scoya@nri.reston.va.us) Cooper [Page 9] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 INTERNET PROJECTS ----------------- ANSNET/NSFNET BACKBONE ENGINEERING ---------------------------------- Network Status Summary ====================== ANSnet stability improved in July over the June measurements. New routing software was deployed in the ANSnet to reduce instability, and simplify the reconfiguration process. T3 circuit topology changes where implemented to improve route diversity. July Backbone Traffic and Routing Statistics ============================================ The total inbound packet count for the network (measured using SNMP interface counters) was 32,888,889,408 on T3 ENSS interfaces, up 4.6% from June. The total packet count into the network including all ENSS serial interfaces was 37,587,985,321 up 5.8% from June. As of July 31, the number of networks configured in the Merit Policy Routing Database was 14122 for the T3 backbone. Of these, 3228 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 10,058. Rcp_routed Routing Software Changes =================================== During July the "Dynamic Reconfig" version of the rcp_routed routing daemon was deployed. The primary purpose of this version was to eliminate the disturbance caused by restarting the routing daemon as a means of reconfiguration. Problems arose with this feature, and for the moment routing daemon restarts are still being used to accomplish reconfiguration. There was also a problem with an EGP option used only at ENSS145. To correct this, the "Less Broken" version of the routing daemon was deployed on ENSS145. In August, the problems with the reconfiguration are expected to be corrected allowing non-disruptive reconfigurations. Release notes provide further details. They can be found in: ftp.ans.net:/pub/info/t3-rcp_routed/Release-Notes Cooper [Page 10] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 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 July was 97.3% including disruptions during the configuration windows. Excluding the configuration windows, stability was 97.7%. 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% Jun 95.5% 96.6% July 97.3% 97.7% July stability was improved over June. Most of the network was quite stable. ENSS230 suffered chronic troubles throughout the month. There was one troublesome CNSS-CNSS circuit that contributed to the instability. This was the CNSS80 (St. Louis) to CNSS96 (Denver) circuit. The flooding in the Midwest contributed to problems with this circuit. A patch panel problem at CNSS57 (College Park) on July 13 caused a lengthy outage to the T3 circuit at ENSS136. There was about 3.75 hours of instability at ENSS136 due to congestion on the T1 backup link. This single event made ENSS136 the most unstable node in July. ENSS145 has exhibited CPU starvation problems. Reducing the routing daemon logging on this machine has helped. The problem is related to building 24 KB EGP packets (and searching the announcement restrictions to do so) for multiple EGP peers that accept full routing. ENSS145 saw 3.5 hours of instability. ENSS136 and ENSS144 have seen similar problems but far less often (ENSS144 saw about 2 hours of instability). The Denver nodes also exhibited instability due to the St. Louis to Denver circuit. These are ENSS213, ENSS141 and ENSS142, each with over 3 hours of instability. The remaining ANSnet nodes saw under 3 hours of cumulative instability. The number of nodes experiencing a great deal of outage improved over June. The breakdown by sites is as follows: Cooper [Page 11] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 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 The majority of ANSnet nodes saw between 30 minutes to 2 hours of instability. That is between 99.9 and 99.7 percent stability. Two problems which can be corrected are improvements in routing around problem links and elimination of the config run disruptions. The former will reduce the instability due to problems such as the St. Louis to Denver link and the latter will move the majority of nodes to the under 30 minutes of instability threshold (better than 99.9% stability). T3 Backbone Topology Change =========================== During July, we added a new T3 circuit between the Hartford CNSS48 and the Cleveland CNSS40. We also removed the T3 circuit between the Greensboro CNSS72 and the Hartford CNSS48. The San Francisco CNSS8 <-> Seattle CNSS88 T3 backbone link was rolled over to a new fiber. Notable Outages in July '93 ============================ E140 (Lincoln) suffered an extended outage due to hardware problems on 7/1 Several circuits terminating in St. Louis suffered from problems on 7/13 that were complicated by flooding. E230 (DigEx) suffered an extended outage due to scheduled circuit testing on 7/7 E139 (Rice) sufferd an extended circuit outage on 7/11 E136 (College Park) lost T3 connectivity due to hardware problems on 7/13 Jordan Becker Cooper [Page 12] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 BARRNET (BAY AREA REGIONAL RESEARCH NETWORK) -------------------------------------------- BARRNET Membership Update ------------------------- Date: 7/31/93 Member Organizations: 185 New Members, Jun/Jul: Philips Semiconductor Woodland High School Informix Software CR Labs VHDL International Kalpana, Inc. Elan Computer Group TelLink Publications: The BARRNetter (Quarterly Newsletter) Heard on the Net (Electronic Newsletter) BARRTech Notes The BARRNetter, Heard on the Net, and BARRTech notes are currently available to BARRNet members only. Submissions and comments welcome. Email: jhoag@barrnet.net News: Networkers from over 60 countries will attend a 6-day workshop for technologically developing countries to be held this August 10-16 on the Stanford campus. BARRNet and the Internet Society are co-sponsoring the workshop, which will be held in conjunction with INET '93. 130 participants will attend workshop sessions taught by an international team of instructors, covering low-cost and advanced internetworking technologies and the use of network services. Following the workshop, attendees will also participate in the INET'93 conference in San Francisco. New FTP Archives and Gopher server: BARRNet's ftp archives can now be reached at either of the following hostnames: ftp.barrnet.net nic.barrnet.net Gopher clients can access these archives by connecting to: gopher.barrnet.net (port 70) Cooper [Page 13] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 The BARRNet anonymous FTP archives contain information about BARRNet, the Internet in general, and resources to assist our members in configuring aspects of their internetworking connections. In the months ahead, the archives will be expanded to include a wider range of Internet resource materials, popular client/server software, and other files of general interest to the Internet community. BARRNet info@barrnet.net Pine Hall, Rm 115 Phone: 415-725-1790 Stanford University Fax: 415-723-0010 Stanford, CA 94305-4122 John Hoag BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. ---------------------------- Scaleability ------------ Work on the network editor for the flow-level simulator is nearing completion. The user interface has been constructed using GUI tools from the InterViews distribution. The graphical network editor has been heavily leveraged from the Unidraw graphical editor toolkit, which is based on a general model of graphically- represented objects with additional state and which directly supports connections between objects. The study on congestion issues for distributed simulation has been completed. For the probable topologies for distributed simulations, there is typically only one bottleneck point along any given path -- it occurs as the traffic enters a site tail circuit (typically T1) from the backbone network (expected to be T3). There appear to be three useful strategies in handling congestion at this point: - the application should prioritize traffic, and the network should provide priority queueing - the network should provide fairness between flows (based on source/destination addresses) - when traffic is dropped, the oldest traffic in queue for the given flow should be dropped, rather than dropping the newest traffic (See December '92 Internet Monthly Report for more details about this project and the toolset being developed.) Cooper [Page 14] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Real-Time Multicast (Communications) ------------------------------------ During July, we implemented two new multicast services as modifications to mrouted -- multi-level flows and multicast access control. Multi-level flows are intended for use in applications where different types or grades of data (such as hierarchically-encoded video) are being sent to a multicast address where receivers might have differing requirements for the various data streams. The sending application labels messages in a multicast flow with a subflow identifier (carried in the IP precedence field). Receivers can provide a subflow mask when adding themselves to a group (the subflow mask is carried in an unused field in the IGMP Host Membership Report message). Routers only forward packets if they belong to a requested subflow. When IP multicast supports pruning, some simple modifications to the routing protocol will be required to propagate subflow masks with the routing information. IP multicast access control is a mechanism to provide a simple form of access control to the IP multicast system. An access list of permitted receivers is provided to mrouted. When an IGMP Host Membership Report is received by mrouted, the source is checked against the list for the group (if any is provided), and the message is ignored if the host is not present. Backwards compatibility is maintained by having groups without access lists allow any receiver to join. The access list is distributed using "flow-tracking" RCOs (described in the May Internet Monthly), which are associated with the multicast destination address. A draft of a document describing Resource Coordination Objects (RCOs) was completed, with a final draft planned for distribution next month. We have started work on an RCO-based resource-scheduling utility, intended to help organize access to shared network resources such as the DARTnet and the MBONE. Karen Seo CSUNET (THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NETWORK) ----------------------------------------------- * In order to reduce costs to end-users, CSUnet has dropped its subscription to CERFNET as of July 31. CSUnet will retain its T-1 connections to the NSFNET ENSS at San Diego and to BARRNET at San Francisco and San Diego. Cooper [Page 15] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 * CSUnet is investigating how to ramp-up to DS3/ATM to provide for interactive two-way video-conferencing and increased Internet demands. * A Request for Information (RFI) to telecommunications facility vendors was disseminated to several major IECs and RBOCs which will disclose (via non-disclosure agreements with CSUnet) their proprietary ATM and Broadband, Low and Medium Bandwidth, and remote access offerings and plans that are soon to be available. The responses are due mid-August. Newly Connected CSUnet TCP/IP Members: ------------------------------------- CSU Monterey Bay, Planning Office (Seaside, CA) El Camino College (converted from X.25 to Internet) Grossmont Unified High School District (San Diego, CA) Kern Community College District (Kern, CA) Ventura County Superintendent Of Schools (Ventura, CA) New Pending TCP/IP Members (signed contract pending): ----------------------------------------------------- Butte College (Orville, CA) College of the Sequioas (Visalia, CA) This is also a PBX and video connection. Mike Marcinkevicz INTERNIC INFORMATION SERVICES ----------------------------- This month the InterNIC begins regular entries to the Internet Monthly Report. The InterNIC is a cooperative project of three organizations, General Atomics/CERFnet, AT&T, and Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI), designed to provide network information services to the networking community. General Atomics/CERFnet provides Information Services; AT&T provides Directory and Database Services; and NSI provides Registration Services. InterNIC Information Services ----------------------------- InterNIC Information Services, provided by General Atomics/CERFnet, provides a range of services to the networking community. These include a Reference Desk with a toll-free phone number (800.444.4345) and mailbox (info@internic.net). InterNIC Information Services provides procedures for getting connected to Cooper [Page 16] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 the Internet, pointers to resources and tools available over the network, and training seminars for new and intermediate users. The goal of InterNIC Information Services is to act as a focal point of information for network information centers (NICs) and end users. Information about the Internet and how to use it is collected and re-distributed via hardcopy and FAX, and through the InfoSource via Gopher, WAIS, telnet, FTP, and e-mail. Below are statistics from July representing the number and type of inquiries handled by InterNIC's Reference Desk: REFERENCE DESK CONTACTS - July, 1993 ==================================== Method Contacts Daily Average ====== ======== ============= Email 288 14 Phone 944 47 FAX 68 3 U.S. Mail 15 1 ============================================= TOTAL 1,315 66 During July, Information Services also planned the first NIC Fest, to be held in conjunction with SIGUCCS in San Diego on November 6. The InterNIC seminar schedule has also been established. Details on both seminar and NIC Fest can be found on the InfoSource or by sending mail to info@internic.net. Visit the InterNIC booth at InterOP and leave your card for a chance to win a free gift. Directory and Database Services ------------------------------- InterNIC Directory and Database Services, provided by AT&T, offers a number of services designed to help users find resources in the Internet. The "Directory of Directories" contains individual listings of many types of resources. "Directory" Services provides access to tools that help locate individuals or specific files (WHOIS, X.500, Netfind, Archie, Gopher). "Database" Services makes general Internet information (RFCs, Internet Drafts, etc.) available to the community and can also support databases for special groups or other organizations. The Directory of Directories was originally seeded with the contents of the Internet Resource Guide (compiled by BBN's NNSC), and is continually expanded to include new entries. If you have a Cooper [Page 17] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 resource you would like to list, or would like detailed information on any of our services, please send email to admin@ds.internic.net. July activities in Directory and Database Services included creation and maintenance of a "Current IETF Documents Archive" to make available the most current versions of documents during the Amsterdam IETF and recording the MBONE broadcasts of Amsterdam IETF sessions so they could be downloaded and played back for those who could not attend or listen "live". Directory and Database Services also initiated registration of our X.500 DSA at the root level of the DIT to provide increased reliability, and creation of a WHOIS server that searches WHOIS data available at MILNET, InterNIC Registration Services, and InterNIC Directory and Database Services, returning the combined results. InterNIC Registration Services ------------------------------ The InterNIC registration services group continues to work with Internet service providers and regional registries on CIDR address allocation. There were 71,204 Class C number delegated or allocated during this month of operation. This large number includes the delegation of 194.x.x.x to RIPE NCC. We will continue the delegation to providers as necessary. Individual class C requests are being referred to the anticipated service provider when a service provider can be identified. The following statistic show the activity at the InterNIC Registration facility during the month of July. Hostmaster Email 2772 Postal/Fax Applications 250 Telephone Calls 903 Domain Registered 554 Inverse Addresses 356 Class C's Assigned 71,204 Class B's Assigned 193 ASN Assigned 26 Connections Retrievals Gopher Sessions 24,254 9,662 Wais Sessions 12,224 21,725 Ftp Sessions 4,404 17,873 Telnet Sessions 27,084 Mail Server 778 Susan Calcari (susanc@is.internic.net) Subu Subramanian (subu@qsun.att.com) John Zalubski (johnz@internic.net) Cooper [Page 18] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 ISI --- GIGABIT NETWORKING Joyce Reynold's Trip Report Joint European Networking Conference Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) Trondheim, Norway May 10th-13th, 1993 RARE ISUS Working Group The RARE Information Services and User Support (ISUS) Working Group, chaired by Jill Foster, met in tandem with the JENC Conference. The first meeting was held of the morning of May 10th. The agenda on this day included: 1) Review of the Pisa minutes Report on the results of the electronic mail meeting Other matters 2) Administrative 3) Report of COSINE projects (Concise, P3) 4) Brief Liaison Reports (IETF User Services Area, CNI, TopNode, CNIDR, and EARNInfo) 5) Update/Review of the Task Forces within ISUS (e.g., Support of Special Interest Groups, ISO SR projects, document delivery, CWIS, etc.) Other business on this agenda included documentation (from 10:00- 11:00am), publicity awareness (11:00-12:00noon), an ISUS plenary (12:00-12:30pm), and any other business. Introductions were made around the room from the attendees. Discussion then focussed around the RARE Document server and the mailing list. They are now available via Gopher. Comments were made from the attendees that there not only needs to be a number on each of the documents on this server, but also there is a need to put in some kind of abstract. Erik Huizer suggested that this group ought to tailor the "style" based on CNRI's Internet-Drafts type tagging. This is a preliminary suggestion. Tim Dixon, Erik, Jill, and others will discuss this further. Cooper [Page 19] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Brief Report on COSINE projects This included CONCISE (a European Information Service) and P3 (Supports International User Groups). COSINE is looking for funding for the continuation of its projects. P3 is currently being funded. Each group is trying to be self sufficient. A talk was presented on CONCISE. The past history was CONCISE was to build an OSI information services. This project was completed, and the deliverables were satisfied. The services were extended to February 1993, as the usage was increasing. In regards to CONCISE in the present: information items available circa 800 countries accessing greater than 35 accesses in quarter 1 (1993) 6,296 SIGs (special interest groups) 12 server reliability over 12 months 99% The CONCISE future includes: services contract anticipated to continue support and maintenance agreed for 1993 A fourth CONCISE site is to be in Belgium Enhancements are planned (e.g., Telnet, access to other servers, etc.) CONCISE questions: - Positioning - where should it fit within the relationships of information services in Europe and globally. - Publicity - usage increases dramatically when information is disseminated - information - what is put out? - Enhancements Liaison Reports Geza Turchanyi presented a report on RIPE's NIDUS (Network Information Discovery for Users Support) Working Group. This group is currently concentrating on user surveys and documentation. Bert Stals presented an EARNinfo report, including EARN's "Guide to Network Resource Tools" publication. Cooper [Page 20] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Joyce Reynolds presented a report on the current activities and new FYI RFC publications of the User Services Area of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Document Delivery Bert Stals lead this session. This session focused on the better use of networked services, and offering assistance in using networks. Deliverables currently include: introduction leaflets user guides reference cards handout/leaflet publication The original intent of this group is to bring together basic introductory information for local and national support groups. There is a desire to see information up on a central Gopher server, so that one can set up a "training Gopher". In regards to publication of documentation, if it is copyrighted, will there be a willingness for redistribution? The answer is if there is an acknowledgement from the source, similar to the RFC series of notes. The problem with this is that some publishers have taken the verbatim documentation, published it and then made a profit. There seemed to be two differing opinions that came out of this group's discussions regarding user and documentation availability. Concensus was reached that "political" filtering should make all information available to all users. Network Training Material Task Force Meeting The aims of this group include: - see what network training material exist - provide a comprehensive mix and match package for: a) network training staff b) end users - use the net to deliver training - share experiences and successful methods - enable the research community to make better use of networked services - liase with IETF and Australian groups Margaret Issacs is working on a catalog of training materials. Jill is looking for volunteers to help add to the catalog. She has a couple of North American volunteers. Milan Sterba volunteered a student working with him to help out from the Cooper [Page 21] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 European perspective. A training PAK is being developed by this Task Force. The pack is to include: video OHP Masters Speaker's notes and suggested demos Handouts Workshop sheets Evaluation forms Disk based tutorial Bibliography of reference documentation IETF BOF at JENC Erik Huizer presented an IETF BOF which included: - What is the IETF? - How does it work? - What is an RFC? - What is a STD (Standard)? - What kinds of working groups will be meeting in Amsterdam? - What will they be working on? Joyce Reynolds submitted an IETF User Services Area summary for Erik to read to the BOF participants on what working groups in her area will meet and what they will work on. Global Interconnection session Bernhard Stockman led off this session with a slide of Europe and networking traffic from 1991. Since then, there has been an increase of traffic and a there is a need for more global infrastructure. The Global Internet Exchange (GIX) is being developed. This is due to the advent of global connectivity. The increased complexity has driven the concept of the GIX. There is a need for a specification of a neutral framework. The GIX proposal was worked out by the IEPG (Internet Engineering Planning Group). The intent is to specify connection points so people can come with their router and connect. In this spring of 1993, a pilot GIX was installed in Washington, D.C. Bernhard emphasized that this is currently a working version, not a production version. Its intent: Cooper [Page 22] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 - ubiquitous and homogeneous Internet - maximal connectivity and maximal facility - simplified method to give connectivity to all Internet connected networks - stable and reliable policy based routing - no restrictions in top level transit backbones - free choice of transit backbones - restriction as close to the end-users as possible The functionality of GIX includes connectivity, transit, and routing. It is required to have scalability, manageability, accountability, and timeliness. The GIX model includes a physical layer 2 structure where providers can be their routes and peer with other providers. There is to be a routing registry, also. Discussion are continuing to go on with regards to routing implementation, switching of traffic, transit, and management. There has been one basic model discussed for one GIX: |---| |---| | N |--------------| |---------| N | |---| | | |---| | | |---------| | | | GIX | | | |---------| | | |---| | | |---| | N |--------------| |---------| N | |---| |---| This provides low connection cost for geographically close local networks. Multiple GIXs are interconnected via fully connected backbones (services providers). Some networks connect as a backbone, others have to negotiate transit. Multiple GIXs interconnected via shared resources need commonly agreed methods (similar to EBONE). Cooper [Page 23] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Refinements to GIX: 1) Physical Layer 2 LANs * 24hr/7days a week management coverage * excellent environmental support * pro-rate the share of costs 2) Routing Registry * neutral routing registry * registration of preferred paths * method for routing policy 3) Route Server * gated The Washington D.C. GIX pilot (this is NOT the GIX, but this is the platform where they are piloting a GIX) is called MAE-East. They may set up another pilot on the West coast (MAE-West) if this pilot proves successful. Participation is from several telecommunications entities (MCI, Sprint, etc.). This pilot is supported by the CIX Association, and is regarded as excellent as a first GIX pilot. The traffic capacity is possible over the MAE-East, but also via direct connection between connecting networks. The working rules for MAE-East: - only network providers can join - any network providers can join - any network providers may or may not peer with any other provider - providers pay for their connection Daniel Karrenberg was the second presenter of this session presenting a talk coordinating IP networks in Europe. There were 350,000 hosts registered in the DNS (Domain Name System) as of last March 1993. Daniel went on to explain what is RIPE and what is the RIPE NCC. RARE is the financial and legal umbrella of the RIPE organizations. In general, there are providing: 1) information services and the RIPE document store 2) WAIS, Gopher, and WWW access 3) interactive services 4) general support for the RIPE meetings Cooper [Page 24] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 The most specialized services the RIPE NCC provides include: 1) The Internet Registry (IR) (specifically, IP network numbers) Global Internet Registry (InterNIC) / \ / \ |---------| |----------| | RIPE | | A-P | | NCC | | NIC | |---------| |----------| The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) delegates to the IRs. There are currently more than 1,000 network numbers assigned by the RIPE NCC each month. These assignments are decentralized to local IRs: 2) service provider IRs (Europanet, EBONE, etc.) 3) non-services providers (community services, goodwill) The challenges to this effort is in managing the growth. It is an exciting challenge. Daniel noted that Paul Mockapetris, in his talk, mentioned that there could be 100,000 nets by 1996. Other challenges include: 1) routing stability in the registry, with a multiple interconnection architecture. You will have to have something like this. 2) quality of services 3) to find good people to do the work 4) getting the funds to continue. A need to spread funding out to more services providers. IPng (Next Generation Internet Protocol) session Bob Hinden presented a talk on the next generation of IP effort, which included discussion on what is the short term, medium term, and long term issues, and a summary. What is the problem? Overwhelming success! In the beginning, no one could imagine running out of IP network numbers. The Cooper [Page 25] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Internet is doubling about every year. 11,000 networks in excess of millions of hosts. There are problems in two areas. In the short term, it is the routing table size and computation. In the later term, it is IP address exhaustion. This is a "success" problem, not a "broken" problem. Bob put up an Internet growth graph slide which showed a big curve, which doesn't seem to want to level off. Recently, the growth curve has been going in a straight line, but it still doesn't stop. Bob explained that IP routing is largely flat. There is no topological relationship, if you were just looking at an IP number. There is a need to have routing computations that are consistently updated, globally. There is no information in addresses to aggregate. One can send a whole range of addresses in one route. Routing tables are growing exponentially. The current IP addresses are broken into three classes (A,B,C, etc.). In the local part of an address is the division between domain and host. In the short term, we are running out of Class B network numbers and assignments of multiple Class C addresses will aggravate routing problems. In the long term, we will run out of all network numbers. What is being done? The IETF is developing solutions. The short term solution is CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). In the medium term, new IP protocols are in development with large address space, with fixed boundaries of IP addresses: Class As are too big Class Bs are 50% assigned Class Cs are too small CIDR will relax the boundaries of IP addresses. It will allow multiple Class C addresses to be used efficiently at one site. Allocate blocks of IP addresses to providers. New or additional assignments will be made from provider blocks. In the medium term of new protocol development, there are three primary contenders: TUBA, SIP/IPAE, and PIP. In Bob's opinion, it will be the transition factor, not what protocol will be used, that will be most critical. All these protocol can work, with responsible people working on this effort. The community needs to decide. Once one protocol is chosen, the people need to get behind it and support it. Cooper [Page 26] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Long Term work: NIMROD - separation of address and identifiers - dynamic creation of level of hierarchy independent of hosts - routes calculated and installed based on traffic patterns and policy requirements UNIFIED Source Demand Routing (SDR) - use BGP/IDRP protocols for common case routers - use IDPR for specialized policy routes - provide efficient, yet flexible routing In summary: - there is significant work in all of these areas - CIDR is being deployed now * blocks of addresses have been assigned to providers - new IP protocols are being developed and implemented * no clear winner (yet) * routing implementations are being routed and deployed * research is underway on routing paradigms, with the focus on stability and flexibility Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) teleconference There was an IESG teleconference held on 13 May, in which Bob Hinden, Erik Huizer and Joyce Reynolds participated at the SINTEF facility in Trondheim, during the JENC conference. Special thanks to Alf Hansen for his assistance. 15 RFCS WERE PUBLISHED THIS MONTH. RFC 1477: Steenstrup, M., "IDPR as a Proposed Standard", BBN Systems and Technologies, July 1993. RFC 1479: Steenstrup, M., "Inter-Domain Policy Routing Protocol Specification: Version 1", BBN Systems and Technologies, July 1993. RFC 1481: Huitema, C., " IAB Recommendation for an Intermediate Strategy to Address the Issue of Scaling", July 1993. RFC 1482: Knopper, M., Steven J. Richardson, "Aggregation Support in the NSFNET Policy-Based Routing Cooper [Page 27] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Database", Merit/NSFNET, June 1993. RFC 1483: Heinanen, Juha, "Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5", Telecom Finland, July 1993. RFC 1484: Hardcastle-Kille, S., "Using the OSI Directory to Achieve User Friendly Naming (OSI-DS 24 (v1.2)", ISODE Consortium, July 1993. RFC 1485: Hardcastle-Kille, S., "A String Representation of Distinguished Names (OSI-DS 24 (v1.2)", ISODE Consortium, July 1993. RFC 1486: Rose, M., (Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.), C. Malamud, (Internet Multicasting Service), "An Experiment in Remote Printing", July 1993. RFC 1487: Yeong, W. (PSI), T. Howes (University of Michigan) S. Kille (ISODE Consortium), July 1993. RFC 1488: Howes, T, (University of Michigan), S. Kille (ISODE Consortium), W. Yeong (PSI Int'l), C. Robbins (NeXor Ltd), "The X.500 String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes", July 1993. RFC 1489: Chernov, A., "Registration of a Cyrillic Character Set", RELCOM Development Team, July 1993. RFC 1490: Bradley, T., C. Brown, (Wellfleet Comm.), and A. Malis (Ascom Timeplex, Inc.), "Multiprotocol Interconnect over Frame Relay", July 1993. RFC 1491: Weider, C., Merit Network, Inc., and R. Wright, LBL, "A Survey of Advanced Usages of X.500", July 1993. RFC 1492: Finseth, C., "An Access Control Protocol, Sometimes Called TACACS", University of Minnesota, July 1993. RFC 1493: Decker, E. (Cisco), P. Langielle (DEC), A. Rijsinghani (DEC), K. McCloghrie, Hughes LAN Systems, Inc., "Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges", July 1993. Ann Cooper (Cooper@ISI.EDU) Cooper [Page 28] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING At the Amsterdam IETF, there were two meetings of the newly created WG on Multiparty Multimedia Session Control (MMusic). This represented the first time we were able to get beyond the groundwork and delve into the details for a strawman communications substrate. Detailed minutes and slides may be found in venera.isi.edu:confctrl/minutes as "ietf.7.93" and "slides.7.93.ps" respectively. Two channels of live audio and video were multicast from the Amsterdam IETF meeting, the fifth such multicast. The cumulative total of remote hosts that joined into the audio multicast was 518. For the first time, this was slightly more than the number of people who attended locally (approximately 490). Thanks to the efforts of a number of people, both in Amsterdam and elsewhere around the MBONE, to re-engineer the topology of the MBONE, this multicast was much improved over the previous ones in that both channels of audio and video worked to most places most of the week. However, the quality was often "listenable" but not "good". We need further work on performance monitoring so we can find and fix bottlenecks. During July, the IETF AVT working group discussed via email how transport-layer demultiplexing should be done in the Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP). The results of this discussion, and some revisions to the protocol options for security, were incorporated by Henning Schulzrinne into a new Internet Draft of the spec, dubbed the "next-to-last call" within the working group. Steve Casner, Eve Schooler (casner@ISI.EDU, schooler@ISI.EDU) JVNCNET ------- JvNCnet-Global Enterprise Services, Inc. 3 Independence Way Princeton, NJ 08540 1-800-35-TIGER I. New Information GES has moved to a new location at the Princeton Corporate Center. (Address above). Main number is (609) 897-7300; fax (609) 897-7310. Network operations center (NOC) telephone numbers are: (609) 897-7318, 897-7319, and 897-7320. Cooper [Page 29] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 II. Symposia Series (open to the public) A. Internet Information Services and Implementation Procedures Date: September 9, 1993 Location: Princeton Marriott Forrestal Village, Plainsboro, NJ Audience: Network information systems specialists, computer consultants, and network technical staff including system managers of TCP/IP- based networks responsible for managing an Internet connection and installing network services. Additionally, those who will manage a new Internet system or anyone new to the Internet who is interested in learning about internet information services will benefit from attendance. Speakers include: Mark Lindner (gopher), Alan Emtage (archie), and Jim Fullton (WAIS). Early bird special for registration by Sep. 3, 1993 JvNCnet Members.....$250; non-members.....$275. After September 3: JvNCnet Members.....$295; non-members.....$325 Registration and information: Email to hammer@jvnc.net or call 609-897-7315. B. GES has scheduled Cisco router configuration classes. 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. Class location: GES office in Princeton, NJ. Length: Router Configuration Course is five days: Monday - Thursday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Friday - 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. Cooper [Page 30] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 First five-day session begins July 26-July 30. Subsequent course dates: August 9-13, 30-3 September September 13-17, 27-1 October October 11-15 November 1-5, 15-19, 29-3 December December 13-17 Request course outline, price, and other details from instructor Steven Williams at: (609) 897-7314 or email to williams@jvnc.net by Rochelle Hammer (hammer@jvnc.net) MERIT/MICHNET ------------- As members of the IETF working group NASREQ, MichNet engineers John Vollbrecht, Allan Rubens, Glenn McGregor, Larry Blunk and Richard Conto have published the internet draft "Network Access Server Proposed Requirements Document" (draft-ietf-nasreq- nasrequirements-01.txt). This document focuses on issues of authentication, authorization and accounting support for the Network Access Server (NAS) in its role of providing access to a wide range of environments. After an initial review of vendors and their available products, Merit chose to work with Livingston in implementing a pilot NAS supporting MichNet requirements of authentication, common user interface, and a means by which to track patterns of network use. Beta test of the Livingston Portmaster at the University of Michigan MichNet site has begun, with initial indications of superior performance for PPP and SLIP access. Network Access Servers will ultimately be deployed throughout the MichNet backbone, providing state-of-the-art network access to users around the state. As announced earlier, use of SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) and SLFP (Serial Line Framing Protocol) are now restricted to basic TCP/IP service, ftp, telnet, finger, and Quote of the Day, on MichNet public ports. Unrestricted access requires the use of PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) and authorization for a full service connection. MichNet is encouraging serial TCP/IP users to move to PPP, a true Internet standard and a newer protocol offering better performance and authorization for access to some services. Cooper [Page 31] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 The Michigan Molecular Institute (MMI) is the most recent MichNet affiliate. Providing graduate level courses in polymer science in conjunction with several Michigan colleges and universities, the Institute is involved in advanced research and the development of polymers and polymer composites. Jo Ann Ward (jaw@merit.edu) MERIT/NSFNET ENGINEERING ------------------------ This report is a summary of the major activities carried out by Merit's Internet Engineering Group during the period of June and July of 1993, which included: improvement of the NSFNET configuration process; routing coordination for the Russian networks; organizing the NSFNET regional tech meeting; participation and organizing of several IETF working group meetings; and progress on implementation of IDRP. I. Improvement of the NSFNET configuration process The number of networks configured (and requested to be configured) for the NSFNET backbone continue to increase rapidly, with an average monthly growth rate of 7-10%. To keep pace with the work load, we have continued to improve the NSFNET configuration process. We have made major progress in that area and significant improvement in efficiency has been achieved. (1) Use of powerful UNIX tools: As our migration from the mainframe-based database to UNIX-based relational database was completed in the first quarter of this year, more readily available and powerful UNIX tools have been used to facilitate the configuration tasks, including tracking of configuration requests (e.g., use "mh", "diff", and "fgrep" to quickly group related requests and eliminate duplicate requests), deployment of configuration files (e.g., "rcp" or "rdist"), and automated acknowledgement for configuration requests (by use of "mh" scripts). (2) Streamlined process for non-US requests: Now that the registration process for non-US nets no longer requires a confirmation step (in most cases) from NSF or from foriegn reps, Merit has implemented a set of streamlined procedure for accepting and configuring non-US networks. The current policy is that a NACR for non-US networks may be submitted directly to nsfnet-admin@merit.edu by an authorized Cooper [Page 32] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 person of a NSFNET midlevel/regional. This procedure has helped to expedite configuration processing of non-US nets. (3) Adoption of NACR 7.0: To allow for a more efficient and scalable approach, a version of machine parsable "network announcement change request" (NACR) template was adopted in June, 1993. This version of NACR is simpler, and easier to fill out, than previously versions. A new field called "home AS" has been added to this new version and this information will be made available to the Internet community. More importantly, it is machine parsable and can be generated by the auto-NACR program (see (4)). We recently announced that a block of consecutive Class C addresses may be submitted on one NACR to further facilitate the NACR submission process. The transition from older NACR versions to the new NACR 7.0 was smooth and has been successfully completed. The cooperation from the NSFNET regionals in this transition has been excellent. The new NACR template and instructions are available from nic.merit.edu: nsfnet/announced.networks/template.net.README nsfnet/announced.networks/template.net (4) Auto-NACR Program: To enhance data validation and to facilitate the submission of NACRs, a program called Auto-NACR (or NACR Server) was developed and deployed in May. A designated person of NSFNET regionals may connect with the program to submit a NACR. The NACR Server program is curser driven with extensive on-line help. It checks the InterNic "whois" information and the Merit's PRDB to fill in some information, and it validates many fields in real time. A NACR in the electronic mail format will be generated and delivered to all related AS's once all the fields on NACR have been properly filled in. (5) Enhancement of NACR parser: The work on enhancing the Lex-based NACR parser has been completed. We have added more effective NACR validations to catch inconsistencies and the parser is more flexible and can handle more NACR variations. (6) Automation of "whois" check: For all configuration requests, the network and orgnization information is validated with the InterNic "whois" information Cooper [Page 33] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 before the network is configured. The process of the InterNic "whois" validation has been partially automated. The work load on this part has been reduced substantially. We also expect that this automation would help us to catch typos and other types of errors and inconsistencies more easily. II. Routing Coordination for Russian networks Up until June 1993, announcements of Russian networks to the NSFNET/ANSnet backbone were not accepted. Merit coordinated with NSF and ANS on the planning and implementation of routing of traffic to and from Russian networks on the ANS backbone. The plan allows announcements of Russian networks to be accepted, but only for the purposes of communication with ANS's customers. Traffic to and from Russia will not be carried by the shared NSFNET Backbone Services. In particular, Russian traffic will not be passed to other federal agency networks. Russian networks have been configured on the NSFNET/ANSnet backbone according to this routing implementation plan. (1) The "no-install" feature of the rcp_routed allows configuration of specific networks neither to be advertised to any peer nor installed in the forwarding tables even if received from an internal link. This feature has been used at the following sites to actively filtering traffic to and/or from these Russian networks. E135 San Diego, E137 Princeton, E144 FIX-West, E145 FIX-East, E146 ARPA All of the AS's bordering these ENSS's are NSFNET service users, and we are actively filtering routes for them. (2) The "no-announce" feature of the rcp_routed allows configuration of specific networks not to be advertised to certain peer AS's but these networks may be announced to other peers and will be installed in the forwarding table if received from an internal link. This feature has been used at the following sites to disallow advertisement of these Russian network to certain peers. E129 Champaign, E130 Argonne, E133 Ithaca, E134 Boston, E136 College Park, E139 Houston, E141 Boulder, E143 Seattle All of these AS's are NSFNET service users, but the no-announce feature (weak filtering) was used because the ENSS was shared with CO+RE customers. These AS's should use explicit announcements for reachability, or have some other path to the Cooper [Page 34] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Russian nets. III. NSFNET Regional Techs Meeting A meeting of the NSFNET Regional Techs group was held June 10th and 11th in Reston, Virginia at the headquarters of Sprint, International. The major topics discussed at the meeting are summarized as follows. (1) Configuration of NSFNET for Aggregation Steve Richardson, Merit, Dale Johnson, Merit The session discussed what the NSFNET backbone will offer in terms of initial support of CIDR. An overview of the process of configuring the backbone was given by Dale Johnson, who noted that this process will see minimal changes in moving to CIDR. Steve Richardson presented what has since been published as RFC 1482 (by M. Knopper and S. Richardson), "Aggregation Support in the NSFNET Policy-Based Routing Database," illustrating the following services: - the NSFNET will accept announcements of aggregates (coming from CIDR-capable regional peer routers); - the NSFNET will "aggregate by proxy" for CIDR-incapable regional peers; - the NSFNET will announce aggregates (from either of the above sources) to regional peers. Merit proposed the service of Aggregate Registry to aid midlevel/regionals and other service providers in coordinating CIDR aggregates and deployment. (See the RFC for details.) (2) GATED Support of CIDR Dennis Ferguson, ANS, Jeff Honig, Cornell This session presented the capabilities of gated with respect to CIDR. In particular the BGP implementation and status were described, as well as the configuration capabilities of gated with BGP-4. (3) Registration Issues for IP Aggregates Mark Knopper, Merit, Scott Williamson, Mark Kosters, InterNIC/NSI Cooper [Page 35] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 The registration of aggregates into the various databases, e.g. Merit/NSFNET, RIPE and InterNIC, requires some changes to the way contact and organizational information is associated with network number/name. This discussion covered the changes necessary to the databases. The session suggests that further discussions are necessary to further address sereval registration issues, especially the issue of ip number "ownership". (4) Proposals for Representation and Sharing of Routing Policy Information Peter Ford Daniel Karrenberg and Enke Chen presented an overview of RIPE-81 paper and RPDL paper, respectively. The discussion at the meeting seemed to suggest that the "AS path" selection may not be needed soon, but network level filtering is needed (such as the current NSFNET policy). Also, these two representions need to be combined. RIPE and Merit agreed to implement compatible database access and representations such that routing registry tools will be compatible across the two databases. (5) Route Server Deployment Elise Gerich, Merit, Andrew Partan, AlterNet Deployment of route servers at the MAE-East "experimental NAP" is taking place, and the status of this cooperative effort were given in this session. The routing plan for each of the route servers was covered, along with configuration issues. RIPE and Merit are operating route servers at MAE-East, with Alternet/CIX planning deployment of another route server. (6) NSFNET Policy Routing Database Implementation Status Andy Adams, Merit, Enke Chen, Merit Andy Adams presented an overview of the design and implementation of the Merit/NSFNET policy based routing database system that is now being used to configure the NSFNET backbone. Enke Chen summarized Merit's work on improving the NSFNET configuration process, including NACR 7.0 and the NACR Server program. (7) NSFNET Solicitation Status Dan Jordt, NorthWestNet Quite a few questions were raised and discussed about the Solicitation. Some issues were further clarified by Peter Ford and Priscilla Huston who represented NSF. Many regional techs Cooper [Page 36] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 expressed concerns about the transition schedule and urged NSF to allow adequate time for a smooth and stable transition. Peter Ford emphasized that the NSF would do whatever it takes to ensure a stable transition, and the NSF sincerely wecomes suggestions. (8) ANSNET Backbone Status Report Jordan Becker, ANS The T3 backbone status was covered including recent and planned deployment of new software and hardware for the backbone routers. IV. IETF BGP-Deployment Working Group: Jessica (Jie Yun) Yu chaired the BGP Deployment Working Group at the July IETF at Amsterdam to discuss CIDR deployment. At the meeting, the initial CIDR deployment plan and routing aggregation rules developed at the March Network Service Providers' CIDR meeting and Merit NSFNET Regional-Tech meetings were discussed and enhanced. The initial deployment plan: Step 1. Deploy BGP4 without aggregation Step 2. Advertise test aggregated route Step 3. Aggregate at site level OR single policy level whichever with a smaller block |->Step 4.-| Understand more |--Step 5.<- Aggregate more Step 4 and step 5 are recursive until CIDR is fully implemented. Rules of Aggregation at Initial deployment stage: o Aggregate based on manual configuration o Proxy aggregation allowed (but agree by advertiser) o Holes in aggregates allowed o IGP/IBGP carry aggregation within a domain o Coordination: bi-lateral and overall o Aggregate Routing Registry needed o No aggregation without informing others o No de-aggregation Engineers from 3com, ANS, cisco, EuropaNet, Proteon and Wellfleet reported the status of BGP4/CIDR implementation. Some of them have beta version software already and some of them Cooper [Page 37] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 project to have implementation by the beginning of the next year. Interoperability test strategies were also discussed. Analysis on CIDR's impact on IPv4 ROAD (Routing and Addressing) was also discussed and a group of volunteers would produce a paper on the subject. See BGPDepl WG Jul IETF minutes for more detailed information. V. IETF TUBA working group Mark Knopper chaired two TUBA working group meetings at the IETF, one of which was a joint meeting with the NOOP working group and the RARE CLNS working group. Merit and ANS also participated in the TUBA demonstration. Several TUBA hosts were set up in Ann Arbor, including a pair of modified BSD/386 systems and a PC running NCSA Telnet. Significant agreements resulting from the meetings included: RIPE NCC agreed to host a routing registry for CLNP networks. The ISO network layer standards will be released as RFCs. The TUBA documents were recommended by the groups to go forward for the Internet standards track. VI. IDRP implementation status In June Merit held a seminar for participants in the ATN (Aeronautical Telecommunications Network), including a status report and tutorial on our IDRP (in gated) implementation. The IDRP implementation supports both IP and CLNP routing. It is currently in test/debug and is available -- for experimentation purposes only! -- on request from John Scudder or Sue Hares (jgs@merit.edu or skh@merit.edu). We expect to make the implementation generally available later this year. The first year of the FAA grant for IDRP implementation was completed, and funding has been approved for an additional 18 months. This funding has allowed Merit to join the GateD Consortium. Mark Knopper (mak@merit.edu) Cooper [Page 38] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 MERIT/NSFNET INFORMATION SERVICES --------------------------------- Network Information Center (NIC) Profiles, a database of information on existing NICs designed to be easily accessible via the Internet, is available via Merit's Gopher server at nic.merit.edu port 70, or indirectly through the international Gopher tunnels. By default, NICs are displayed in alpha order by commonName. X.500 search options currently include the database attributes commonName, contactName, servicesOffered and publicationsOffered. Still in a beta version, NIC Profiles is subject to further refinement, with efforts especially directed toward expanding options to a more flexible search mechanism. NIC Profiles is a project initiated by the Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI) working group of the IETF. Pat Smith, Merit Network Information Services and co-chair of NISI, Rick Schmalgemeier and Chris Weider of Merit, and Tim Howes of the University of Michigan were responsible for the Internet availability of this project. Indonesia became the newest international site with announcement to the NSFNET backbone during July. Foreign networks now number 5,827 of the total 14,121 networks announced to the NSFNET backbone. Growth as reflected in the number of domestic and foreign networks having announcement to the NSFNET infrastructures, as well as network distribution by country over the term of the NSFNET project are available for Anonymous FTP from the host nic.merit.edu as /nsfnet/statistics/history.netcount and /nsfnet/statistics/nets.by.country respectively. These files may also be received via electronic mail query. The message should be sent to nis-info@nic.merit.edu with the first line of text (not subject) send history.netcount A new directory on nic.merit.edu, conference.proceedings, contains the proceedings from network related conferences. Papers presented at the Public Access to the Internet Symposium, held at the Kennedy School of Government on May 25 and 26, 1993, are available in the subdirectory /conference.proceedings/harvard.pubaccess.symposium Cooper [Page 39] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Other new information available on nic.merit.edu via Anonymous FTP, e-mail query and Gopher: The revised version of HR 1757, the National Information Infrastructure bill introduced by Representative Boucher, courtesy of the CPSR Internet Library. Available as /nren/nii.1993/hr1757.txt Result of U.S. House of Representatives vote on HR 1757, as published on the mailing list nren-discuss@psi.com. Available as /nren/nii.1993/hr1757.status "Aggregation Support in the NSFNET Policy-Based Routing Database" by Mark Knopper and Steven J. Richardson of Merit has been published as RFC 1482. This document describes the proposed support of route aggregation, as specified in Classless Inter- Domain Routing (CIDR) and the BGP-4 protocol by the NSFNET Backbone Network Service. Available as /internet/documents/rfc/rfc1482.txt Growth as reflected in the number of computers and domain names on the Internet as reported in the Internet Domain Survey by SRI International. Available as /nsfnet/statistics/history.hosts Chris Weider of the IETF WNILS working group, is proceeding with development of the Whois++ Internet directory tool. Server code is expected to be available for release in mid-August. Representatives of the National Archives and Records Administration came to Ann Arbor for a two-day intensive course on Internet tools and resources by Merit Information Services staff. Intensive hands-on sessions with WAIS, Gopher and X-Mosaic, were interspersed with discussions of the issues facing information providers. Merit staff traveled to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to participate in IETF proceedings and chair several working groups. Merit Internet Engineering was represented by Mark Knopper, Sue Hares, Jessica Yu, Laurent Joncheray and John Scudder; Dale Johnson attended on behalf of Network Management Systems; Ellen Hoffman, Pat Smith and Chris Weider represented the interests of Merit's Information Services. Ellen Hoffman and Pat Smith were invited to the Library of Congress to speak on Internet tools and resources by the Federal Library and Information Center Committee of the Library of Congress. The content was designed for the audience of federal librarians from various agencies, and included a new discussion by Hoffman, "Publishing on the Internet," how to implement Internet tools and design information resources for ease of use. Elise Gerich, of Cooper [Page 40] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Merit Internet Engineering, spoke on IP address allocation at the Third Russian Forum: Electronic Communication Technology of the 90's held in Moscow, Russia. Issues of Internet connectivity were addressed by Gerich at the Russian Space Science Institute (IKI) while in Moscow. Jo Ann Ward (jward@merit.edu) NEARNET (NEW ENGLAND ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH NETWORK) --------------------------------------------------- NEARnet Membership Update ------------------------- As of July 30, 1993, NEARnet has grown to a total of 235 member organizations. NEARnet Transitions to BBN Technology Services, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------- On July 1, John Rugo, the NEARnet Project Manager, sent a message announcing the NEARnet transition to several NEARnet-specific e-mail lists. A copy of the transition press release is available via anonymous FTP on ftp.near.net, in the file: docs/nearnet-transition-press-release-txt. In his message John mentioned that BBN Technology Services Inc. has assumed responsibility for NEARnet activities. This is an organizational change; NEARnet services will continue to be provided by the same staff within BBN. NEARnet Conference Participation in July ---------------------------------------- Sean Kennedy of the NEARnet Network Analysis Group attended the IETF in Amsterdam, July 12-16. Alanna MacDonald NORTHWESTNET ------------ Representatives from US West, Pacific Bell, Bellcore, and NYNEX spent time with NorthWestNet staff learning about the Internet and, more specifically, about the mission, goals, programs, and services of NorthWestNet. During their visit, they met with project leaders at NorthWestNet member sites Cooper [Page 41] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 including the University of Washington, Boeing, National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency/Pacific Marine Environmental Labs, XKL Systems, and the Bush School. Conversations between the groups were both stimulating and enlightening. The visitors from Bellcore, the Regional Bell Operating Companies and NorthWestNet agreed to meet again this autumn to craft a standard glossary of network terminology to facilitate future discussion and promote cooperation. Ken Kay, executive director of the Computer Systems Policy Project, and Karen Christensen, attorney for National Public Radio, spent a four-day sabbatical with NorthWestNet's User Services group learning about the Internet, its tools, resources, and services. In particular, they focused on applications related to government documents, civil rights, K-12, and broadcasting. They were introduced to Gopher, World Wide Web, WAIS, archie, Xmosaic, and Usenet along with the standard tools of e-mail, FTP, and Telnet. Eric Hood and Dan Jordt, director of Technical Services, gave an invited presentation at a meeting of the Association of Computer and Information Sciences/Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions in Washington, D.C. This meeting focused on the vision for Internet connectivity to minority institutions. New NorthWestNet member organizations during the month of July included: Group Health Cooperative, Kalispell Regional Hospital, Merle West Medical Center, Providence Hospital, and George Fox College. 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 by Jan Eveleth Cooper [Page 42] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 PREPNET ------- PREPnet New Members: -------------------- Buckeye Pipe Line Co. Emmaus, PA Law School Admission Services Newtown, PA Hampton Township School District Allison Park, PA Quaker Valley School District Sewickley, PA Beaver Area School District Beaver, PA Steel Valley School District Munhall, PA Bethel Park School District Bethel Park, PA Shaler Area School District Glenshaw, PA Crawford Central School District Meadville, PA With these new additions, PREPnet has a current total of 133 members. PREPnet News: ------------- On July 27, PREPnet conducted a training session for Allegheny Intermediate Unit (Pittsburgh, PA). Topics covered by the session included: * Introduction to the Internet and PREPnet * TCP/IP protocol suite * Extended services and Internet utilities 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) UCL ---- The MICE demonstration at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) at the RAI Conference Centre, Amsterdam, July 11-16 1993 Mark Handley, Angela Sasse, Stuart Clayman, Atanu Ghosh, Peter Kirstein and Tony Ballardie attended. Jon Crowcroft and a cast of several jugglers attended virtually from London. Cooper [Page 43] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 Mice demonstrated: the Conference Multiplexing and Management Centre (CMMC) interworking between hardware codecs, software codecs and ISDN codecs interworking between conference rooms and workstations integration of multi-way shared workspace applications interworking with both European and US sites. Sites involved were: UCL (London) - Conference Room, CMMC Amsterdam, Terminal Room at the IETF, RAI GMD Conference room, Darmstadt RUS, Stuttgart University of Oslo Norwegian Telecom Research Lawrence Berkeley Labs, California Univ. of Hawaii (Sunrise only:-) This software allows an H221/H261 serial line codec, such as are currently available in many organisations videoconferencing suites, to be used over unreliable packet networks. It removes the H.221 protocol and the accompanying error correction codes in software, ready from transmission using RTP, and reinserts H.221 and the CRC at the receiver and pads the stream to achieve a valid synchronous fixed bit rate stream despite damage caused by packet loss. If is a key building block of the CMMC, and will be integral to the reference conference room. It should be noted that generating the CRC in software is expensive, and is the most limiting factor in determining the data rate supportable with a particular workstation. For instance, the current limit for a SparcStation 2 (as used at GMD) is around 192Kb/s for a full duplex link. Further work will improve the situation a little, but being able to disable the CRC checking in the codec would greatly alleviate this problem This software is still under development, but the version exhibited proved to be exceptionally stable. The links between London, Amsterdam and GMD stayed up for a number of days continuously, with the codecs never losing synchronisation due to packet loss. This software was successfully also used to interface the CMMC to software codecs using the INRIA IVS software, so that a number of sites without hardware codecs, such as Van Jacobson in California and the Univerisity of Hawaii, could communicate with a conference (London-Amsterdam-GMD) ran at much higher frame rates than software codecs can currently support. The end-to-end delay experienced between London and Amsterdam was around 1.5 seconds, and was considered to be usable. The end-to-end delay experienced from GMD was considerably larger, but as less Cooper [Page 44] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 time had been spent on configuring this link, and an older version of the software was in use. Currently a number of parameters in the software are manually configurable. As we gain experience with their configuration, we can expect to reduce these delays further. There is however a tradeoff between stability and minimum delay, and for demonstration purposes we chose to opt for maximum stability. As we better understand the complex interactions involved, much of this configuration will be performed automatically, thus reducing the delays without sacrificing stability. This software currently has to manually ran at both sending and receiving sites, although it can be run remotely, for example the Amsterdam, the GMD and the three UCL CMMC codecs were all controlled from Amsterdam for some of the time, along with the video switch at UCL. As the CMMC develops, the need for manual intervention will be reduced, as the codec control systems are integrated into higher level conference control software. Inria Videoconferencing System (IVS) (used at Amsterdam (2nd video channel), RUS, Oslo, LBL, Hawaii): This is a software implementation of an H.261 video codec. It was demonstrated at JENC, and has been documented extensively. However, this is the first we have demonstrated the interworking of software and high performance hardware codecs, so the sites without full conferencing rooms can participate in this sort of conference. The end-to-end delays experiences by sites with software codecs communicating with the hardware codecs of the CMMC varied enormously depending of the load on the machine involved. On an otherwise unloaded SparcStation 10 in Amsterdam, the delay between the video received on the hardware codec and that received on the workstation was less than one second. However it was noted that if the processing power to decode the video exceeds that available, network input buffers to IVS start to fill up and the delay increases enormously. Clearly this isn't a problem when IVS sends to and IVS on a similar machine, and thus this effect hasn't emerged before. However a small amount of experimentation and tuning should greatly reduce this effect. The version of IVS used in the demonstration was slightly modified to achieve compatibility with the UCL codec software. This was due to the version of the network protocol implemented by UCL being slightly older than that implemented by INRIA. This was known well before the demonstration, and did not prove to be a problem, but will be resolved as soon as possible. Cooper [Page 45] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 LBL Visual Audio Tool (vat) (used at all sites, and used by more than 500 people to listen to the IETF conference itself) We observed that problems with audio quality are not always due to packet loss; we tried to gather statistics whenever problems with the audio occurred, and found that in some cases, the problems were due to local problems with microphones and speakers, or the way in which the participants were using VAT. This highlights the importance of making sure that the peripherals (mikes, speakers, cameras etc.) are set up and used properly. At this stage, some audio/visual expertise is extremely useful. Further diagnostic tools and procedures are required, knowledge on these needs to be pooled and made available, e.g. in the form of catalogues on what equipment works with what other equipment instruction on how to synchronise volume levels Various whiteboard programs from other projects were also tested - these will no doubt be reported elsewhere. John Crowcroft (j.crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK) Cooper [Page 46] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 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 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) Mar 28-Apr 1 IETF Meeting - Seattle, Washington (tentative) 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) Jul 25-29 IETF Meeting - Toronto, Canada (tentative) Cooper [Page 47] Internet Monthly Report July 1993 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 ======================================================================== Cooper [Page 48]