Agenda for San Diego IETF

["Chris Weider" <clw>]

Gang:
     The DISI meeting is on Thursday, March 19, 1992 in San Deigo, from 
9:30 - 12:00 noon. The agenda is as follows:

 1: Discussion of old minutes
 2: Progression of DISI Internet Drafts to RFCs
 3: Discussion and assignment of new papers.

Papers to be discussed during the meeting include a benchmarking paper, a "how
to join a pilot" or a "Pilot Catalog" paper, a "how to set up a DSA" paper,
an "advanced usages" document, and a "X.500 bibliography" paper which contains
pointers to relevant documents.

Now, Ruth Lang sent along a European document called "A guide for DSA managers"
sometime in December. This has a few pointers for a document for us, so I am
including it here again. Please come prepared to discuss this.

See you in San Diego!
Chris


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                       HOW TO GET STARTED

                    A Guide for DSA Managers

Introduction

The PARADISE project is funded by the COSINE project to provide a
pilot international directory service across Europe with
connectivity to North America and the rest of the world. It
enables members of the academic, commercial and governmental
research community to look up information about colleagues and
find, for example, their electronic mail addresses. In keeping
with the goals of OSI, the commitment of this pilot is to be non-
implementation specific and the PARADISE project is looking to
involve as many stable products based on the X.500/ISO 9594
standard as possible in the directory.

Choosing an Implementation

The most common implementation currently used in the pilot is
QUIPU (release 6.8) which is packaged with the public domain
ISODE software. PARADISE will be making the first release of a
packaged DSA and DUA based upon QUIPU available in summer 1991
from X-Tel Services.

A list of other implementations used in the pilot with details
of reference sites and support is available from PARADISE
(imps.txt from the info-server - see below) together with a
listing of other implementations commercially available. To
ensure that the implementation you choose will interoperate
within the pilot, please consult the document "A COSINE/Internet
Schema" (na.txt from the info-server) and let the helpdesk know
how closely you will conform to it.

Setting up a PARADISE X.500 directory

If you are living in a country where there is no existing
national pilot or there is no-one responsible for your country's
node in the directory tree, you may wish to run your country's
entry. If you are not sure whether your country is represented in
the global tree, contact the PARADISE helpdesk (see below).

(A)  Starting a national directory subtree
     
     The principal requirements for joining the directory are
     that:
     o    a DSA should be available preferably using both X.25
          over PSPDN (PSS, Janet IXI) and the Internet (using
          RFC-1006 over TCP/IP); and 
     o    be able to contact the Giant Tortoise DSA at ULCC which
          holds the PARADISE root node and provides the glue at
          the top of the directory tree. 
     Except in circumstances where it has been agreed with the
     PARADISE project that your DSA route via Giant Tortoise for
     access to other national DSAs, you will need to maintain the
     presentation addresses of the other national DSAs in your
     DSA configuration. These are centrally available
     (addresses.txt from the info-server) or by asking the
     helpdesk. For further information on representing such
     addresses, refer to the document on string encoding
     (string.txt from the info-server).

     Contact needs to be made with the helpdesk to let them know
     that you are trying to connect. If you wish to master your
     country's name space, then it needs to be pointed to for the
     benefit of the rest of the directory.

     If you are using an implementation other than QUIPU, you
     will need to perform interconnection tests with a PARADISE
     test DSA to demonstrate that you can read data and that
     your data can be read. As pilot activities grow in your
     country you will be expected to demonstrate interoperability
     with any other implementation that wishes to join the pilot.
     The PTT Telecom's Laboratory in Groningen, Netherlands are
     responsible in the project for looking at interoperability
     problems and if you are having difficulties, you should
     contact them (see below). 

(B)  Starting a DSA below the country level

     To become fully registered in the PARADISE pilot you will
     need to register your organisation with the PARADISE
     representative in your country who will be responsible for
     managing the DSA mastering your country level entry in the
     global tree. If you're not sure who this is, contact the
     helpdesk. You will need to be running an X.500 Directory
     System Agent (DSA) which holds data representing your
     organisation and be available either using X.25 over PSPDN
     (PSS or IXI) or the Internet (using RFC-1006 over TCP/IP).
     It is in the spirit of the pilot to make some or all of your
     organisational telephone and/or email data publicly
     available for other pilot sites to look at via the X.500
     protocol (that is, allow them to read data explicitly made
     available to them). Similarly other pilot sites will make
     their data available to you.

     You will have to consult with your official national name
     registration authority to choose (or be allocated) a
     relative  distinguished name (RDN) and register it. If
     there is no such authority in your country and your national
     pilot is not in a position to help, consult the "Naming
     Guidelines" document available from the info-server. 
     
     Your organisation can be registered at the country level of
     the tree, or if your organisation is not a national one,
     and you do not wish to be registered under the country node
     of the tree, you can opt to be registered under a locality;
     for example "c=FR, locality=Paris". There is as yet no
     standard policy across the PARADISE pilot as to the use of
     locality naming components and it would be advisable to
     discuss this further with your national representative
     and/or the PARADISE Project.

     Any cost involved in joining the pilot will vary from
     country to country and will be dependent on the nature of
     your organisation and what affiliation (if any) you have to
     your national pilot body. In many countries there is as yet
     no pricing mechanism in place.
 
     There is an informal agreement in most national pilots that
     data found in the directory is for personal use only, for
     example to get the telephone number of somebody you want to
     call. By registering your organisation in the pilot, you
     are seen to have agreed to this principle. Any use of the
     data for generating mailing lists or the like, without
     permission of the recipients is frowned upon and strongly
     discouraged. An attribute has been defined in the
     COSINE/Internet Schema which in future will allow users to
     indicate whether they wish their names to be added to lists.
 
     All data in your DSA should be registered under your
     national Data Protection Act or equivalent for worldwide
     access and it will be assumed that all organisations
     registering in the pilot have suitable data protection
     registrations. 
 
     To register your organisation you will need to supply your
     national pilot with the Distinguished Name both that you
     wish your organisation to be registered with, and that of
     your DSA. For providing your DSA addresses, refer to the
     NSAP document (nsap.txt from the info-server).
 
     Having registered your organisation you have a commitment to 
     making your DSA(s) available to other pilot sites. DSAs
     which are consistently unavailable may in some countries be
     deregistered from the pilot. In order to maintain a high
     profile of service DSA availability, sites should follow the
     guidelines outilined in the draft "Quality of Service"
     (qos.txt from the info-server). This allows users of the
     Directory to detect which DSAs are experimental, and also
     gives an indication as to the completeness and currency of
     the data in the Directory.

     An important part of the Pilot service is replication.
     Replication is not covered by the X.500(88) protocol.
     However, the pilot service achieves replication using the
     protocol defined in a draft document on replication (repl-
     req.txt from the info-server). 
 
     Your national pilot should be able to offer replication
     services. This means holding copies of entries immediately
     below the root and the entries below all the country
     entries, then making them available to you via the draft
     replication protocol mentioned above. 
 
     Currently there are two major networks involved in the
     global  pilot - PSPDN and Internet. If your DSA is only
     connected to one of these networks you may require a DSA
     Relay service, details of which you can obtain from your
     national pilot or the helpdesk. The relay DSA service is a
     DSA that has access to both networks and is prepared to
     chain queries to DSA on one network on behalf of your DSA
     which is on the other. 

(C)  Running a remote DSA through your National Pilot

     If you do not have a DSA yet, but wish to register your
     organisation, you may be able to supply your national pilot
     with your organisational information which can then be
     registered in the directory with possibly some service
     charge.
 
     If you do not have the facilities to run a DSA, another
     organisation within your national pilot may be able to run a
     DSA on your behalf. If this is not possible, contact the
     helpdesk and alternative arrangements might be found.

(D)  Running a remote DSA through PARADISE

     For those COSINE countries which do not have a national
     pilot, PARADISE provides a DSA to take the country level
     entry and up to a limited number of organisations per
     country. This number is currently ten but will be reviewed
     regularly. This service is primarily intended for SMEs
     (small-to-medium size enterprises) but other requests will
     be considered on a case by case basis. There will be an
     appropriate administrative charge for this service.
  
     Input and maintenance of organisational data will be the
     responsibility of individual organisations. Interactive
     access will be provided to carry out this task.

Main Contact Points

PARADISE HelpDesk:

     Telephone: [phone] x432
     Fax:       [phone]
     Email:     [e-mail]

The HelpDesk will be staffed during office hours 9:00-5:00.

PARADISE Project Manager:

     David Goodman, Department of Computer Science, 
     University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
     Telephone:  [phone] x3695
     or:         [phone]
     Fax:        [phone]
     Email:      [e-mail]

INTEROPERABILITY TESTING

     John van der Aalst, PTT Telematic Systems
     Telephone:   [phone]
     Fax:         [phone]
     Email:       [e-mail]

PARADISE DSA/DUA:

     X-Tel Services Ltd.
     University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
     Telephone:  [phone]
     Fax:        [phone]
     Email:      [e-mail]

Info-server Access

The following documents are available from the info-server using
a request in the form:
     request:  paradise
     topic:    <one of the topics below>

For example:
     From:     [e-mail]
     To:       [e-mail]
     Subject:  The Coming of Pizarro

     request:  paradise
     topic:    dsa.txt

Files are available in text, postscript or both.
     <filename>.txt for text

The files are also available by FTP, NIFTP and FTAM.

Summary of Relevant Documentation

Index               index.txt [**]      
                    An index of all documents centrally
                    available from PARADISE including those
                    referred to here.

Implementations in  imps.txt [**]
PARADISE            This document contains a brief description of
                    each implementation connected to the
                    international pilot with a list of reference
                    sites and help points as well as other known
                    stable X.500 products a commercially
                    available. This document is intended to
                    reflect an up-to-date picture on X.500
                    implementations and comments are welcomed.

Presentation        addresses.txt [**]
Addresses           A up-to-date listing of all country-level DSA
                    presentation addresses.

PARADISE            international.txt 
International       A six-monthly report produced by the project
Report              giving a snapshot of X.500 activity in each
                    COSINE country as well as North America and
                    the rest of the world with details of contact
                    points, implementations used and the extent
                    of each country's directory sub-tree. This is
                    a living document and will be updated with
                    the latest information about national pilot
                    status as and when it is received.

COSINE/Internet     na.txt         
X.500 Schema        An X.500 Directory Schema (or Naming
                    Architecture) for use in PARADISE and the
                    Internet pilots. The schema is independent of
                    any particular implementation. As well as
                    indicating support for the standard object
                    classes and attributes, a large number of
                    generally useful object classes and
                    attributes are also defined. An appendix
                    includes a machine processable version of the
                    schema. The document also proposes a
                    mechanism for allowing the schema to evolve
                    in line with commonly held requirements.
                    proformas to support this process are
                    included.
                    This is a living document and comments on the
                    updating mechanism are welcomed.

Naming Guidelines   structure.ps
for Directory       structure.txt
Pilots              Deployment of a directory will benefit from
                    following certain guidelines. This document
                    defines a number of guidelines which are
                    recommended. Conformance to these guidelines
                    will be recommended for national pilots.
 
Replication         repl-req.ps
Requirements        repl-req.txt
                    This draft document on the replication
                    requirements to provide an Internet Directory
                    using X.500 concerns itself with certain
                    deficiencies of the 1988 standard which can
                    only be addressed by use of additional
                    protocol or procedures for distributed
                    operation.

A String Encoding   string.ps
of Presentation     string.txt
Addresses           There a number of environments where a simple
                    string encoding of Presentation Addresses is
                    desirable. This specification defines such a
                    representation.

An Interim Approach nsap.ps 
to use of Network   nsap.txt
Addresses           The OSI Directory specifies an encoding of
                    Presentation Address, which utilises OSI
                    Network Addresses as defined in the OSI
                    Network layer standards. The OSI Directory,
                    and any OSI application utilising the OSI
                    Directory must be able to deal with these
                    Network Addresses. Currently, most
                    environments cannot cope with them. It is not
                    reasonable or desirable fro groups wishing to
                    investigate and use OSI Applications in
                    conjunction with the OSI Directory to have to
                    wait for the lower layers to sort out.

Handling QOS in     qos.ps 
the Directory       qos.txt   
                    This document describes a mechanism for
                    specifying the Quality of Service for DSA
                    Operations and Data in the Internet Pilot
                    Directory Service.

Managing the X.500  manage.txt [**]
Directory Pilot     For over two years there has been a pilot
                    distributed directory service. The management
                    of this has passed to the COSINE PARADISE
                    project. PARADISE manages the top-level
                    country data for the participating COSINE
                    countries in Europe and co-ordinates with
                    pilots in North America and the rest of the
                    world.