Directory Services Activities Report - 7/92

[Tom Tignor <[e-mail]>]

								June 1992
								Issue #16

Directory Services Activities
-----------------------------

This report serves as a forum to distribute information about the
various efforts working to develop directory services that are for, or
affect, the Internet.  It is published as part of the FOX Project's
efforts to facilitate the coordination and cooperation of different
directory services working groups.  This report is distributed
virtually unchanged as part of the Internet Monthly Report, and a
modified version is submitted to the PARADISE International Report.
We would like to encourage any organization with news about directory
service activities to use this forum for publishing brief monthly news
items.  The current reporters list includes:


        o IETF OSIDS Working Group                              [no]
        o IETF DISI Working Group                               [no]
        o Field Operational X.500 Project                       [no]
           - ISI
           - Merit
           - PSI
           - SRI
        o National Institute of Standards and Technology        [included]
        o North American Directory Forum                        [no]
        o OSI Implementor's Workshop                            [no]
        o PARADISE Project                                      [no]
        o PSI DARPA/NNT X.500 Project                           [no]
        o PSI WHITE PAGES PILOT                                 [no]
        o Registration Authority Committee (ANSI USA RAC)       [no]
        o U.S. Department of State, Study Group D,              [no]
            MHS Management Domain subcommittee (SG-D MHS-MD)

                [X] indicates no report this month

Tom Tignor ([e-mail])
DS Report Coordinator


NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
----------------------------------------------
     During  June  the  Pilot  DSA  was  up  and  running  almost
     continuously.   Starting in July, we will collect statistics
     on Pilot usage.  These will be reported beginning in August.

     Work has progressed on extending the scope and accessibility
     of  the  Pilot.  An account has been set up to enable dialup
     DUA access for other agency staff.  On login, the Widget DUA
     user interface is automatically brought up, providing access
     to the Pilot DSA.  Some details remain to be worked out, but
     dial-up access is expected to begin by the end of July.

     We are continuing to pursue TP4/CLNP  accessibility  to  the
     Pilot DSA over FTS A and B.  The impediments have to do with
     establishing an OSI routing path from the  NIST  FTS  access
     machine to the machine running the Pilot DSA.

     NIST X.500 Implementation
     -------------------------
     Improvements were caried out in two areas of the Custos code
     during   June.  A  problem  with  the  result  of  the  List
     operation, in which the origin of the information carried in
     the  result  was incorrectly flagged, was corrected, and the
     code for the Search operation was enhanced to enable  Search
     to operate on all naming contexts, regardless of whether the
     naming context has been loaded into memory at startup.

     Future Plans
     ------------
     We have continued  our  work  with  NASA,  DHHS,  and  other
     agencies  to  establish Internet and FTS2000 connectivity to
     the pilot DSA.  We have begun a dialog with  Dallas  Day  of
     Wright-Patterson  AFB  on  the  integration  of  his  base's
     OSIWare DSA into the Pilot, and have had similar discussions
     with  Doug  Harsha from the Department of Agriculture in Ft.
     Collins, CO.  We have also initiated discussions with NIST's
     Computing   and   Applied   Mathematics   Laboratory   on  a
     collaborative venture to provide  a  NIST-wide  white  pages
     directory     service.    The    plan    is    to    provide
     telephone/email/addressing information on NIST staff to  the
     desktop, via PC and Macintosh based DUA packages.  We expect
     that this can serve as a model for other agencies interested
     in deploying the OSI Directory.


     John Tebbutt ([e-mail])