IETF User Services Area Report - Columbus, Ohio

[Joyce Reynolds <[e-mail]>]

			    IETF
  		    User Services Area Report
                        Columbus, Ohio
		    Joyce K. Reynolds (USAD)


Ten working groups and three BOFs (Birds of a Feather) in the User
Services Area of the IETF met in Columbus, Ohio.


Integrated Directory Services (IDS), chaired by Chris Weider and
Tim Howes.  

The IDS Working Group is chartered to facilitate the integration and
interoperability of current and future directory services into a
unified directory service.  This work will unite directory services
based on a heterogeneous set of directory services protocols (X.500,
WHOIS++, etc.).  In addition to specifying technical requirements for
the integration, the IDS Group will also contribute to the
administrative and maintenance issues of directory service offerings
by publishing guidelines on directory data integrity, maintenance,
security, and privacy and legal issues for users and administrators of
directories.

The final draft of the X.500 Advanced Usages Survey was released and
will be moved to RFC publication status.  The final draft of FYI 11
revision ("A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations") will be out
in three weeks for movement to RFC publication.  The Pilot Project
Catalog was not released in time for review and discussion for this
IETF.

The Whois++ - X.500 Interoperability document was assigned to Chris
Weider and Mark Prior.  The Whois++ Implementation Catalog will be
assigned at the next IETF in Amsterdam.  The "Directory
Administrator's Guide" has been assigned to a team of 7 people and
will be called,"The Directory Policy Handbook".  A "Directory Users
Rights" document will be discussed at the next IETF.


Integration of Internet Information Resources Working Group (IIIR),
chaired by Chris Weider.  

IIIR is chartered to facilitate interoperability between Internet
Information Services, and to develop, specify, and align protocols
designed to integrate the plethora of Internet information services
(WAIS, archie, Prospero, etc.) into a single "virtually unified
information service".

The agenda included: the introduction and correction of minutes from
last meeting, discussions on a Resource Transponder document, and the
draft, "Vision of Integrated Information Services document".  A
taxonomy document was discussed, but not assigned at this session.
The Gopher protocol work will be brought into IIIR.


Internet School Networking (ISN), chaired by John Clement, Art St.
George, and Connie Stout.  

The Internet School Networking Working Group is chartered to
facilitate the connection of the United States' K-12
(Kindergarten-12th Grade) schools, public and private, to the
Internet, and school networking in general.

Gene Hastings led a discussion on his draft document of connectivity
models.  Jennifer Sellers discussed ISN's FAQ draft document.  Jon
Postel described the history and concept of domain names, and the US
domain.  K12 placement in the naming system was discussed.  Art St.
George and Connie Stout went over new/updated ISN goals and
milestones.


Networked Information Retrieval (NIR), chaired by Jill Foster and
George Brett.

NIR is chartered to increase the useful base of information about
networked information retrieval tools, their developers, interested
organizations, and other activities that relate to the production,
dissemination, and support of NIR tools.  NIR is a cooperative effort
of the IETF, RARE, and CNI.

Updates were provided by Jane Smith on the Clearinghouse for Networked
Information Discovery & Retrieval, and Jill Foster on the RARE ISUS WG
NIR activities.  The working group reviewed the draft Status Report on
NIR tools and groups (version 3.0) and reviewed the templates in light
of experience in completing them.  Dates were scheduled for the next
revision and the next step of evaluation of the various tools.


The Network Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (NISI),
chaired by April Marine and Pat Smith.  

NISI is exploring the requirements for common, shared Internet-wide
network information services.  The goal is to develop an understanding
for what is required to implement an information services
"infrastructure" for the Internet.

The NISI Working Group discussed the current relationships between
NICs of different "levels", especially as they relate to the roles of
the new InterNIC and to NISI.  From this discussion, new goals were
defined, including writing an informational paper describing these NIC
roles and relationships and starting work toward developing guidelines
for coordinating cooperative user assistance when more than one NIC is
involved.


Network Training Materials (TRAINMAT), chaired by Ellen Hoffman and
Jill Foster.

The Network Training Materials Working Group is chartered to enable
the research community to make better use of the networked services.
Towards this end, the Working Group will work to provide a
comprehensive package of "mix and match" training materials for the
broad academic community which will: 1) enable user support staff to
train users to use the networked services and 2) provide users with
self-paced learning material.  In the first instance, it will not deal
with operational training.  This Working Group is the IETF component
of a joint RARE/IETF group working on Network Training Materials.

Thirty people attended the working group session to discuss training.
This is the first official meeting of the group following a BOF at the
last IETF in Washington, D.C.  The group discussed a current, on-going
project at the University of Newcastle, UK, to catalog training
materials and agreed to use this work as the basis for an information
RFC on training materials.  Jill Foster lead the discussion on a
template to be used to catalog the materials.  The template has been
developed based on input from several other projects, including NIR,
IAFA, and the Coalition for Networked Information's TopNode.  The
group had open discussions on what is needed in training materials and
what projects are being worked on.  The group agreed to work on an
informal posting system to the US-WG mailing list to share information
about training aimed at the trainers.  (This working group is a joint
project with RARE ISUS.)


User-Doc2, chaired by Ellen Hoffman and Lenore Jackson.  

The User-Doc2 Working Group is preparing a revised bibliography of
on-line and hard copy documents, reference materials, and training
tools addressing general networking information and how to use the
Internet.  The target audience includes those individuals who provide
services to end users and end users themselves.

The short bibliography is now complete and has been submitted to the
User Services Area Director as a first step in becoming an official
FYI RFC.  The "Introducing the Internet" document archive which
contains the files documented in the short bibliography is on-line at
four sites and four other sites have expressed interest in mirroring
the files for anonymous FTP.  Merit has the files in Gopher and WAIS.
The group's next project is completing a comprehensive bibliography to
supplement RFC 1175.  A first draft was distributed and discussed,
with a final version to be completed the next IETF in Amsterdam.
Future goals were considered, including a new FYI aimed at those who
are not connected to the Interent, a documents location system aimed
at making materials in the long bibliography available, and
consideration of developing materials aimed specifically at making
information available to help librarians.  The first of these projects
will be started by looking at materials already produced by several
working group members.


Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI), chaired by Alan Emtage and Jim
Fullton.  

URI is chartered to define a set of standards for the encoding of
system independent Resource Location and Identification information
for the use of Internet information services.

URI held three sessions at this IETF.  Session 1 focused on URL's
(Uniform Resource Locators).  Tim Berners-Lee led a discussion of
URL's and review the draft URL document.  Discussions included
incorporation of final changes to the draft, and this document should
go into ID status before the Amsterdam meeting in July.  Session 2
focused on URI's (Uniform Resource Identifiers).  Discussion included
presentations of proposals for URI's (open admission), discussion for
proposals for URI's, that the document be ready for the Amsterdam
IETF, and the Transitioning to UR*'s.  Session 3 focused on future
plans beyond URL's & URI's.

After much spirited discussion, URI was able to finalize both the URL
documents (which will now be submitted as Internet-Drafts) and a
conceptual and syntactical framework for URN's (Uniform Resource
Name).  Documents are now to be written up for URN's and should be
submitted to the list in the next couple of weeks.  Work continues in
other elements, which need to be defined for these objects to be useful
to the end-user.


User Services Working Group (USWG) chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds.  

The USWG provides a regular forum for people interested in all user
services to identify and initiate projects designed to improve the
quality of information available to end-users of the Internet.

Joyce Reynolds reported on the IETF User Services Area activities
including: Working Groups coming to closure and new Working groups
starting up, new publications, and current user services related
Internet-Drafts postings.  Discussion also focused on the "new NICs"
(i.e., the InterNIC and the proposed/experimental APNIC - Asia/Pacific
NIC).  Jill Foster presented an update on RARE activities, including a
report on the RARE Information Services/User Services (ISUS)
activities.  Susan Calcari presented a talk on the on the new
InterNIC.
                   
Gary Malkin led a session on two FYI RFC updates; FYI 7 "FYI on
Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly Asked "Experienced Internet
User" Questions", (Also RFC 1207), February 1991. and FYI 4 "FYI on
Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly asked "New Internet User"
Questions", (Also RFC 1325), May 1992.


Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS), chaired by Joan
Gargano. 

The purpose of WNILS is to expand and define the standard for WHOIS
services, to resolve issues associated with the variations in access,
and to promote a consistent and predictable service across the
network.

Peter Deutsch led a review of Whois++ - Architecture.  Dave Crocker
briefly presented his two drafts to the WNILS session.  Chris Weider
led a review of Distributed Whois++ Model - Centroids, and Jim Fullton
lead a review of Front End to Database Integration.

Discussion of Projects: A simple server, centroid and client will be
available by April 30.  Sources will be available on ftp.cnidr.org.
The working group also discussed and revised their goals and
milestones.


Three BOFs were held in the User Services area:


World Wide Web (WWW) BOF, chaired by Tim Berners-Lee

The World-Wide Web has an established user base, many compatible
implementations, and many new ideas.  This BOF discussed how the
current WWW standards should be put into the RFC process, and discuss
future directions for the Web.

Tim Berners-Lee mentioned a few recent developments, including NCSA's
"Mosaic" WWW client for X11, a windows client for MS-DOS machines, and
the growth rate of access to the CERN server.

The three "standards" important for WWW at this stage include the
Universal Resource Locators specification which defines the addressing
syntax used by WWW, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification
that defines the transport format for menus, hypertext and general
online documentation, and the HTTP access protocol which is used by
WWW servers.


Gopher (GOPHER) BOF, chaired by Jim Fullton and Joyce K. Reynolds

This BOF focused on the Gopher protocol and to insure its existence in
a well-defined, standard fashion.  Current implementations/licensing
issues were not discussed at this meeting as it was outside the scope
of involvement of the chairpersons and this BOF.

Comments of the current Gopher protocol (RFC 1436) were fielded and
discussed.  Discussion and consensus of moving this BOF to IIIR
(Integration of Internet Information Resources) Working Group for
formal actions was approved.  The BOF Chairs and Chris Weider (IIIR
Chair) will report the results of this BOF to the Gopher people at the
University of Minnesota.


Low Cost IP Hardware Wish List (LO-IP), chaired by Mark Davis-Craig,
on behalf of Laura Breeden.

The purpose of this BOF was to draw together interested IETFers and
multi-vendors to define the next generation of its router/modem
products.  The issues were mostly operational (functions, features,
price, performance).  The FARNET community is interested in these
issues because of providing services across a spectrum of users (from
cost-conscious schools and colleges to supercomputer centers).