pilot projects draft

[[e-mail] (April Marine)]

Hi gang,

One of the DISI WG tasks was to write a doc explaining what the
X.500-based white pages pilot projects are and giving info about
how to join them.  Here is a draft of that document.  (The pilot
contacts are even now reviewing what is written about them, so
corrections may be forthcoming.)

Any feedback on this document is appreciated.  If you know of other
pilots that you feel should be included, let me know.

This is formatted as an I-D, but it has NOT yet been submitted as one.

Thanks,
April Marine
SRI Network Information Systems Center




**************Not Yet an I-D*******************************************

INTERNET-DRAFT (not really :-)                                A. Marine
DISI X.500 Pilots                                                   SRI
                                                          November 1992



		
                           X.500 Pilot Projects


Status of This Memo

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This INTERNET-DRAFT provides information for the Internet community.
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Expiration Date

This Internet Draft expires May 18, 1993.


Abstract 

This document lets people know about three significant
X.500-based white pages projects.  Each pilot is described
briefly, then basic information is provided about how an
organization may participate in the pilot and where they
should ask for more details.


Introduction

This document is the result of work done in the Directory
Information Services Infrastructure (DISI) working group
of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

A "white pages" directory generally lists information about
users, such as where they work, their electronic mail
addresses, and their phone numbers.  The X.500 protocol is
the OSI standard for providing such a directory service.  In the X.500
model, information is supplied by one or more servers, called Directory
System Agents (DSAs) to clients called Directory User Agents (DUAs),
which act on behalf of users.  Although information may be distributed
among many DSAs, they work together to provide a single transparent
view of the directory to DUAs.

If you would like more general information about X.500, we
suggest you refer to FYI 13, "Executive Introduction to
Directory Services Using the X.500 Protocol" or FYI 14,
"Technical Overview of Directory Services Using the X.500
Protocol."


Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following extremely helpful
people: Mark Prior (AARNet), Wengyik Yeong (PSI), David
Goodman (PARADISE), and Tim Howes (University of
Michigan).



The Pilots

The three pilots described are the AARNet Directory Services
Project, the PARADISE project, and the PSINet White Pages
project.


1. AARNnet Directory Services Project

--Background

The Australian Academic Research Network (AARNet)
Directory Services Project was formed, and funded for one
year (1991), by AARNet to report on whether it was
feasible at this time to implement a nationwide directory
service.  The project partners are CSIRO Division of
Information Technology, Monash University, the University
of Adelaide, the University of Queensland, and the
University of Sydney.

Although the choice was not to recommend full scale
nationwide implementation at this time, a number of other
institutions have started running their own directories as
part of the "project" and this trend is continuing.

The project uses the Quipu implementation exclusively,
although some interoperability testing with at least one
other product developed in Australia is being attempted.
There are 25 DSAs running in Australia that contain basic
information about all AARNet organizations loaded in the DIT
(those sites running their own DSA have more information
available) with just over 42,000 entries.

--Participation

Any AARNet member or network affiliate member is welcome
to join the project.  To aid this process, binary kits for
a number of popular platforms are provided.  These kits
are available for ftp on the host archie.au, as is the
ISODE source distribution.  At present, connectivity is
offered only via TCP/IP or X.25, but once the AARNet
backbone supports TP4/CLNS, connections via native OSI
will be possible.


--More Information

Initial information is available from the project report
submitted to the funders of AARNet.  This report is available for
anonymous ftp on the host archie.au in the subdirectory
/projects/directory-services/report.

In addition, the mailing list [e-mail] can be
used to contact the project team for assistance.  There are
also a number of Australia-wide newsgroups for discussion of
the Directory.



2. PARADISE Project
 

--Background

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.

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 organization 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.


--Participation

The PARADISE project spans several countries.  If your
country is already participating in the pilot, you will
need to contact the people in your country who are already
involved.  The best first contact for the project is the
PARAIDSE helpdesk ([e-mail]).  The
helpdesk will put you in contact with the appropriate
people to get you started in the pilot.

To participate in the project, you need to make
a DSA available, preferably using both X.25
over PSPDN (PSS, Janet IXI), and the Internet (using RFC-1006
over TCP/IP.   The DSA should 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.


--More Information

The best first source of information about the PARADISE pilot is
the PARADISE HelpDesk.

PARADISE HelpDesk:

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

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

In addition, PARADISE informational documents are available online
from the electronic mail info-server. 

Documents are available from the info-server using a request in the
form:
     request:  paradise
     topic:    <a topic>

For example, send a message to [e-mail]
with the body of the message in the form:
     request:  paradise
     topic:    index.txt
     topic:    guide.txt
     request:  end

This request will return you an index of documents available
about PARADISE, and the file "How to Get Started: A Guide
for DSA Managers."

The files are also available by FTP, NIFTP and FTAM from the
host ftp.paradise.ulcc.ac.uk.



3. PSI White Pages Pilot

--Background

In July of 1989, the NYSERNet network sponsored a White
Pages Pilot Project.  This service, the largest pilot
project to use the OSI Directory standard (X.500), is now
available throughout PSINet.

Participation in the White Pages project is strictly
voluntary.  The project is a grass roots effort, both to
understand the white pages service desired by users and to
understand the limitations of the OSI Directory in providing
those services.

The primary goal of the project is to encourage
organizations to use the OSI Directory to store
infrastructural information about their personnel.  In
addition, organizations are encouraged to maintain their own
portion of the Directory tree.  For resource constrained
members of PSINet, PSI will offer maintenance service just
as it does for the Domain Name System (DNS).  Another goal
of the Pilot Project is to use the same programs and tools
to access both global and local white pages information.  As
a part of this, new applications which might make use of the
White Pages service, such as private mail, will be
encouraged.


--Participation

Anyone in the US can participate in this pilot.  Those
people outside the US should contact the organization that
runs that country's national node.  There are two
requirements for U.S. site participation: full IP connectivity
and an (informal) commitment on the part of the organization
to devote personnel resources to running the local server
and keeping the data current.

Each participating organization must run a DSA.  each
participating organization should also provide DUA access
to its users, although PSI maintains two service hosts
which allow anonymous DUA access: wp.psi.net and
wp2.psi.net.  To access the service, simply telnet to one
of these hosts and login as "fred".

For U.S. sites to participate in the service, the site must have
IP-connectivity.  (The pilot can't deal with X.25-only and
CLNP-only DSAs, due to a lack of resources to run the
necessary transport bridges.)

PSI provides, free of charge, the software that is run at
each participating site.  For more information, use
anonymous ftp to uu.psi.com and retrieve the file
wp/src/pilot-ps.tar.Z in BINARY mode.  After uncompressing
and untaring this file, several PostScript files will be
present containing an Administrators' Guide and Users'
Manual.  The Administrators' Guide contains instructions on
how to retrieve the software and then build, install, and
configure the system.

After you have done this, you will need to contact
[e-mail] to connect your DSA to the pilot.


--More Information

The WPP pilot provides information via automatic replies
when you send to a series of email addresses.  To start
along the short, informative path, send email to
[e-mail] for an overview of the project.  Information
is also available online from the host uu.psi.com in
the "wp" directory.  Get the README file first.

Security Considerations

Security considerations are not discussed in this document.


Author's Address

  April N. Marine
  SRI International
  Network Information Systems Center
  333 Ravenswood Avenue, EJ294
  Menlo Park, CA  94025-3493

  Phone: [phone]
  EMail: [e-mail]



Expiration Date

This Internet Draft expires May 18, 1993.

**************Not Yet an I-D*******************************************