Directory Services Activities Report - 8/92

[Tom Tignor <[e-mail]>]

								July 1992
								Issue #17

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
           - ISI                                                [included]
           - Merit                                              [no]
           - PSI                                                [no]
           - SRI                                                [no]
        o National Institute of Standards and Technology        [included]
        o North American Directory Forum                        [no]
        o OSI Implementor's Workshop                            [no]
        o PARADISE Project                                      [included]
        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

FOX -- FIELD OPERATIONAL X.500 PROJECT
--------------------------------------

     The FOX project is a  DARPA  and  NSF  sponsored  effort  to
     provide  a  basis  for  operational  X.500 deployment in the
     NREN/Internet.  This work is being  carried  out  at  Merit,
     NSYERNet/PSI,  SRI  and ISI.  ISI is the main contractor and
     responsible for project oversight.

     ISI
     ---

                ISI is working on an RFC  to  be  called  "User's
        Guide to Portable DUAs." This document explains how users
        with an absolute minimal familiarity with X.500 and ISODE
        can  easily  set  up  DUAs in their own environments. The
        DUAs require only small portions of the ISODE environment
        to  be  present,  sparing  the user the hassle of dealing
        with ISODE's voluminous  directory  tree.  This  document
        gives  simple  setup  procedures  for four DUAs: "WHOIS",
        "de", "doog" and "ud".  The  document  anticipates  setup
        procedures for other DUAs as future additions.

        Tom Tignor ([e-mail])


NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
----------------------------------------------

     NIST/GSA X.500 Pilot
     --------------------
     Dialup  access  to  a  Directory  user  interface   is   now
     available, for those agencies not in possession of Directory
     User Agent (DUA) software.  Users may log in to  an  account
     on  the  pilot DSA host system via modem.  The guest account
     will automatically run a Widget user interface  and  connect
     into the pilot DSA.

     Custos (the NIST X.500 Implementation)
     --------------------------------------
     July saw  the  completion  of  a  statistics  package  which
     enables  us  to glean usage information for the pilot, based
     on  the  operational  log  record  produced  by   the   DSA.
     Information  collected  includes: the number of DSA restarts
     (an indication of how many times the DSA was  shut  down  or
     crashed  each  month);  the  number  of incoming connections
     handled, both over the DAP, DSP and in total, which gives an
     indication  of  frequency  of  use;  the number of Directory
     operations processed, an indicator of intensity of use;  and
     a   breakdown  by  operation  of  the  kinds  of  operations
     performed, which gives an  indication  of  the  most  common
     types   of   usage  (such  information  will  be  useful  in
     determining how to optimize a particular DSA configuration).
     Statistics  will  be collated on a monthly basis from now on
     and included with this report.  The statistics  for  July  8
     through July 31 were as follows:

     Number of DSA restarts:         6
     Number of DAP connections:      13
     Number of DSP connections:      0
     Total number of operations:     41
             DAP Operations:         41
             DSP Operations:         0

     Breakdown of operations:
     DAP:
             Read:           9
             Compare:        0
             List:           14
             Search:         18
             Add:            0
             Remove:         0
     DSP:
             Read:           0
             Compare:        0
             List:           0
             Search:         0
             Add:            0
             Remove:         0

     Looking to the Future
     ---------------------
     As the pilot gains momentum, it may be necessary to  provide
     access  from  non-Unix based systems. One possible method of
     achieving this might be to use a "lightweight" DUA  package,
     linked  into  a server based here at NIST.  Several of these
     packages are available, eg for the  Macintosh  and  the  PC.
     They  use  a  stripped  down  form  of  the Directory Access
     Protocol to communicate with a server running  on  a  larger
     system.  This  server  then  formulates  full  DAP operation
     requests and ships them out to a DSA over the full  protocol
     stack.

     John Tebbutt ([e-mail])


PARADISE
--------

     The last few months has seen the  addition  of  several  new
     countries  to  the  international  pilot:   Brazil  (Federal
     University  of   Rio   Grande   do   Sul,   Porto   Alegre),
     Czechoslovakia  (Institute  of  Automation  & Communication,
     Banska  Bystrica  (Slovakia))  and  Greece   (Institute   of
     Computing, Heraklio (Crete)).  In addition the new states of
     Slovenia and Croatia are ready to register as c=SI and  c=HR
     but will temporarily be listed as localities under the root.
     This is because the old ISO codes are  compiled  into  ISODE
     7.0,  and  so  the  new  codes would not be accepted by DSAs
     running the old software.  As of today,  eight  universities
     in  Poland  have  joined the pilot.  All these countries are
     running  QUIPU  DSAs.   Keen  interest  is  being  shown  in
     Hungary,  Korea  and  Turkey  who  are  all  expected to run
     servers in the near future.

     The latest version of the PARADISE International Report (#3)
     is  now  available  in  hard  copy as well as from the info-
     server.  In addition to  the  country  status  notices,  the
     report contains articles on the following:

             o       Corporate Concerns
             o       Service Providers
             o       DSA Survey

     The project has also produced a number  of  metrics  reports
     over  the  last  few  months  which are (or will shortly) be
     available     from     the     info-      server      (info-
     [e-mail]).  These are:

             o       DSA metrics
             o       DUA metrics
             o       Pilot metrics

     All three of these documents will be on rfc track.

     In addition to the near-conformance  testing  being  carried
     out by the PTT Research Labs in the Netherlands, the project
     has been directly involved in interworking  discussions  and
     testing  with  ICL  (UK),  Siemens  Nixdorf (Germany), U.COM
     X.500 (France) and DirWiz (Italy).  Details of this work are
     contained   in  the  first  interoperability  report.   Also
     related to this activity, the project  has  produced  a  DSA
     survey  of  over  20  implementations.  This is available as
     part of the International Report or electronically.

     "de"  the  PARADISE   Directory   Enquiries   is   available
     interactively from the central server (128.86.8.56, type dua
     at the login: prompt), or as part of ISODE 8.0.  The project
     issued  a  third  release  of the software last month, which
     incorporates  ufn  searching,  read/list  opertations   when
     accessing non-QUIPU DSAs (eg in France), and locality/ state
     searching.

     The  project  is  also  piloting  a  new  tool,  "idm"   the
     interactive  Directory  manager, which will be run centrally
     (128.86.8.56, type idm at  logi:  prompt)  and  released  to
     local  sites  on  request.   This  tool  allows  users (with
     appropriate access control) to add  new  organsiations  into
     the Directory and then to add, modify or delete entries.  It
     is seen as an ideal way to help SMEs (small to  medium  size
     enterprises) actively participate in the pilot, as well as a
     tool to allow users in large organisations to  have  limited
     access to their own entries.  Time will tell ..

     David Goodman ([e-mail])
     PARADISE Project Manager