Internet Monthly Report - July 1993
Ann Westine Cooper <cooper@isi.edu> Fri, 13 August 1993 23:25 UTC
Received: from ietf.nri.reston.va.us by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa17306; 13 Aug 93 19:25 EDT
Received: from CNRI.RESTON.VA.US by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa17299; 13 Aug 93 19:25 EDT
Received: from ietf.cnri.reston.va.us by CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa03212; 13 Aug 93 19:24 EDT
Received: from ietf.nri.reston.va.us by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa17258; 13 Aug 93 19:24 EDT
Received: from CNRI.RESTON.VA.US by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa17219; 13 Aug 93 19:22 EDT
Received: from zephyr.isi.edu by CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa03191; 13 Aug 93 19:22 EDT
Received: from zephyr.isi.edu by zephyr.isi.edu (5.65c/5.61+local-13) id <AA11701>; Fri, 13 Aug 1993 16:06:51 -0700
Message-Id: <199308132306.AA11701@zephyr.isi.edu>
To: Internet-Research-Group:;
Cc: ietf@CNRI.Reston.VA.US
Subject: Internet Monthly Report - July 1993
Reply-To: cooper@isi.edu
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 16:06:50 -0700
X-Orig-Sender: ietf-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US
Sender: ietf-archive-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US
From: Ann Westine Cooper <cooper@isi.edu>
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 <kent@BBN.COM>
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)
<draft-ietf-pppext-cipx-04> (Proposed Standard)
o FDDI Management Information Base
<draft-ietf-fddimib-objects-02> (Proposed Standard)
o Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments
<draft-ietf-tuba-clnp-04> (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
<draft-ietf-cat-secservice-03.txt>
(mospf) o Multicast Extensions to OSPF
<draft-ietf-mospf-multicast-04.txt, .ps>
(mhsds) o Representing Tables and Subtrees in the Directory
<draft-ietf-mhsds-subtrees-03.txt, .ps>
(mhsds) o Representing the O/R Address hierarchy in the
Directory Information Tree
<draft-ietf-mhsds-infotree-03.txt, .ps>
Cooper [Page 5]
Internet Monthly Report July 1993
(mhsds) o Use of the Directory to support routing for RFC 822
and related protocols
<draft-ietf-mhsds-822dir-03.txt, .ps>
(mhsds) o Use of the Directory to support mapping between
X.400 and RFC 822 Addresses
<draft-ietf-mhsds-supmapping-03.txt, .ps>
(mhsds) o A simple profile for MHS use of Directory
<draft-ietf-mhsds-mhsprofile-03.txt, .ps>
(mhsds) o MHS use of Directory to support MHS Routing
<draft-ietf-mhsds-routdirectory-03.txt>
(pppext) o The PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control
Protocol (IPXCP) <draft-ietf-pppext-ipxcp-04.txt>
(bgp) o Definitions of Managed Objects for the Border
Gateway Protocol (Version 4)
<draft-ietf-bgp-mibv4-02.txt>
(tuba) o Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments
<draft-ietf-tuba-clnp-04.txt>
(nasreq) o Network Access Server Proposed Requirements Document
<draft-ietf-nasreq-nasrequirements-01.txt>
(hostmib) o Host Resources MIB
<draft-ietf-hostmib-resources-02.txt>
(mhsds) o MHS use of Directory to support MHS Content
Conversion <draft-ietf-mhsds-convert-01.txt, .ps>
(ospf) o OSPF Version 2 <draft-ietf-ospf-version2-03.txt,
.ps>
(x400ops) o Postmaster Convention for X.400 Operations
<draft-ietf-x400ops-postmaster-02.txt>
(pppext) o Compressing IPX Headers Over WAN Media (CIPX)
<draft-ietf-pppext-cipx-04.txt>
(avt) o RTP: A Real-Time Transport Protocol
<draft-ietf-avt-rtp-02.txt>
(avt) o Media Encodings <draft-ietf-avt-encodings-01.txt>
(avt) o Sample Profile for the Use of RTP for Audio and
Video Conferences with Minimal Control
<draft-ietf-avt-profile-01.txt>
(pppext) o PPP LCP Extensions <draft-ietf-pppext-lcpext-02.txt>
(pip) o Use of DNS with Pip <draft-ietf-pip-dns-01.txt>
(none) o Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): an Address
Assignment and Aggregation Strategy
<draft-fuller-cidr-strategy-03.txt>
(iplpdn) o Parameter Negotiation for the Multiprotocol
Interconnect
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-para-negotiation-01.txt>
(iplpdn) o Determination of Encapsulation of Multi-protocol
Datagrams in Circuit-switched Environments
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-multi-isdn-01.txt>
(pppext) o PPP over ISDN <draft-ietf-pppext-isdn-01.txt>
Cooper [Page 6]
Internet Monthly Report July 1993
(pppext) o PPP in Frame Relay
<draft-ietf-pppext-frame-relay-01.txt>
(pppext) o PPP in X.25 <draft-ietf-pppext-x25-01.txt>
(cat) o FTP Security Extensions
<draft-ietf-cat-ftpsec-02.txt>
(none) o Exchanging Routing Information Across Provider
Boundaries in the CIDR Environment
<draft-rekhter-cidr-environment-01.txt>
(mospf) o MOSPF: Analysis and Experience
<draft-ietf-mospf-analysis-02.txt>
(none) o Connection Multiplexing Protocol (CMP)
<draft-cameron-cmp-01.txt>
(uri) o Uniform Resource Locators
<draft-ietf-uri-url-01.txt, .ps>
(tuba) o Assignment of System Identifiers for TUBA/CLNP Hosts
<draft-ietf-tuba-sysids-02.txt>
(none) o FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR)
<draft-piscitello-ftp-bigports-02.txt>
(none) o Korean Character Encoding for Internet Messages
<draft-chon-korean-encoding-01.txt>
(frnetmib) o Definitions of Managed Objects for Frame Relay
Service <draft-ietf-frnetmib-fr-02.txt>
(isn) o FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly
Asked "Elementary and Secondary School Internet
User" Questions <draft-ietf-isn-faq-01.txt>
(dns) o DNS Resolver MIB Extensions
<draft-ietf-dns-resolver-mib-01.txt>
(dns) o DNS Server MIB Extensions
<draft-ietf-dns-server-mib-01.txt>
(atm) o Default IP MTU for use over ATM AAL5 Services
<draft-ietf-atm-mtu-01.txt>
(atm) o Classical IP and ARP over ATM
<draft-ietf-atm-classic-ip-01.txt>
(frnetmib) o Service Management Architecture for Virtual
Connection Services
<draft-ietf-frnetmib-virtual-sma-01.txt>
(iiir) o Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): A Representation
of Textual Information and MetaInformation for
Retrieval and Interchange
<draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt, .ps>
(madman) o DSA Monitoring MIB
<draft-ietf-madman-dsa-mib-01.txt>
(pppext) + PPP HDLC Framing <draft-ietf-pppext-framing-00.txt>
(wnils) + Whois and Network Information Lookup Service Whois++
<draft-ietf-wnils-whois-lookup-00.txt>
(pppext) + The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
<draft-ietf-pppext-lcp-main-00.txt>
Cooper [Page 7]
Internet Monthly Report July 1993
(dns) + Common DNS Errors and Suggested Fixes
<draft-ietf-dns-common-errors-00.txt>
(x400ops) o Mail based file distribution Part 1: Dialog between
two nodes <draft-ietf-x400ops-tbl-dist-part1-01.txt>
(appleip) + KIP AppleTalk/IP Gateway Functionality
<draft-ietf-appleip-kip-gateway-00.txt, .ps>
(x400ops) o Mail based file distribution Part 2: Over-all
structure <draft-ietf-x400ops-tbl-dist-part2-01.txt>
(pip) + IP Independent Transition (IPIT) for Pip
<draft-ietf-pip-ipit-transition-00.txt>
(isis) + Routing over Nonbroadcast Multiaccess Links
<draft-ietf-isis-nbma-00.txt>
(none) + TELNET MPX option
<draft-caradec-telnet-mpx-option-00.txt>
(none) + Definitions of Managed Objects for the Node in Fibre
Channel Standard
<draft-chu-fibre-channel-mib-00.txt>
(iplpdn) + A Simple Multilink Protocol for Synchronizing the
Transmission of Multi-protocol Datagrams.
<draft-ietf-iplpdn-simple-multi-00.txt>
(pppext) + Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions for Bridging
<draft-ietf-pppext-for-bridging-00.txt>
(none) + The Virtual Network Protocol for Host Mobility
<draft-teraoka-mobileip-vip-00.txt>
(none) + Internet Authentication Requirements
<draft-haller-auth-requirements-00.txt>
(tn3270e) + TN3270 Enhancements
<draft-ietf-tn3270e-enhancements-00.txt>
(tn3270e) + TN3270 Extensions for LUname and Printer Selection
<draft-ietf-tn3270e-luname-print-00.txt>
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 <becker@ans.net>
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 <jhoag@barrnet.net>
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 <kseo@BBN.COM>
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 <mdm@csu.net>
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 <macdonal@nic.near.net>
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 <eveleth@nwnet.net>
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 <stef@nma.com>
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]
- Internet Monthly Report - July 1993 Ann Westine Cooper