-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Multiprotocol Internet by Barry Leiner member, Internet Architecture Board (IAB) In recent discussion in the IAB, we considered the subject of how the community might deal with two pressing issues: multiple protocol suites and the selection of a next generation internet protocol. These IAB discussions have led to a brief Internet Draft attempting to stimulate and focus discussion to resolve these questions. This Internet Draft is available as . The following is a summary. Over the past few years, with the increasing scope of the Internet, has come an increasing need to develop mechanisms for accommodating other protocol suites. Most techniques have fallen into the regime of either interoperability (techniques that allow for communications between users of different protocol suites) or resource sharing (allowing common resources such as links or switches to jointly service communities using different protocol suites.) It must be noted that such techniques have been quite limited, with interoperability happening primarily at application layers and resource sharing happening to limited extent. This need to deal with multiple protocol suites has led to discussion within the community concerning the role of the IETF/IESG/IAB regarding the TCP/IP protocol suite versus other protocol suites. Questions are asked as to whether the TCP/IP protocol suite is the sole domain of interest of the IETF/IESG/IAB or if the community needs also to deal with other protocol suites, and if so, in what manner, given these other protocol suites have their own communities of interest pursuing their development and evolution. The answer to this question lies in understanding the role of the IETF/IESG/IAB with respect to the iterative process of protocol development and evolution. The continued success of the Internet relies on a continued strong force for convergence, making sure that the Internet's primary protocol suite (TCP/IP) is successful through an evolutionary process in accommodating both the changing user requirements and emerging technologies. It also requires that we recognize the reality of the Internet having to deal with multiple protocols. Thus, we can summarize the directions for the IETF/IESG/IAB as two-fold: - Have as a primary focus the evolution of the primary protocol suite (TCP/IP), acting as a force for convergence at all times towards a single set of protocols, and - Make provision for other protocol suites within the global Internet through mechanisms for interoperability and resource sharing. The principles described above for multiprotocolism can also be applied to the discussions regarding the next generation internet protocol (IPng). Currently, there are several candidates for IPng, which raises the question of how to deal with multiple protocols at that level. We note that even if just one is selected, there is an issue involved in transitioning from IPv4 to IPng. Selection of a single internet protocol provides considerable benefit to the community: - Communities of end users can select their desired applications, independent of the technologies used to support the intermediate networks. - The common underlying infrastructure provides a common marketplace upon which application developers can create new and exciting applications. Installation of these applications does not require end users to select a corresponding network protocol (although some advanced applications may require enhancements, such as high-bandwidth approaches). Thus, the community (IETF/IESG/IAB) should continue to act as a force for convergence by selecting a single next generation Internet protocol and developing methods to ease the transition from IPv4 to IPng. Specifically, at the applications layer, it is desirable to promote different approaches and "let the marketplace decide." However, it is unacceptable to treat the internet protocol layer in the same way. Historically, the IETF/IESG/IAB has acted as a strong force for the development of the Internet by acting as a force for convergence on and evolution of a single primary protocol suite. This has served the community well, and this approach should be continued for the future. In particular, the IETF/IESG/IAB should: - maintain its focus on the TCP/IP protocol suite, - work to select a single next-generation internet protocol - develop mechanisms to aid in transition from the current IPv4, and - continue to explore mechanisms to interoperate and share resources with other protocol suites within the Internet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DECLARATION OF OAXACA A landmark document was signed recently by 24 directors of institutions related to the study of biodiversity in Mexico to establish the Mexican Information Network on Biodiversity. The network will be formed by a group of institutions to share information for the benefit of scientific research on biodiversity and will provide precise taxonomic and geographic information for users interested in the rational use of natural resources and biological conservation. The network will consist on the computerized information of the specimen labels that the taxonomists consider: 1) scientifically sound, 2) not likely to endanger a species (for example, by providing localities of a comercially attractive species), and 3) not being activey worked for research. Such label information is 1) available for thousands of species and millions of specimens, 2) essential for taxonomic, biogeographic and ecogeographic research, 3) of foremost importance to environmental planning, monitoring, etc., and 4) it may be used, when not downright required, in many cases stipulated by mexican and foreign legislation (i.e., the Mexican Ley del Equilibrio Ecologico or the American Endangered Species Act). Taking into account that Mexico has more than 150 institutional zoological collections and herbaria distributed over the country, and with some very large and important collections (i. e., the herbaria of the Institute of Biology at the National University and the Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biologicas at IPN hold more than one million plant specimens), there are significant technical and organizational problems to be solved. The importance of the Declaration of Oaxaca lies on the fact that the heads of some of the most important Mexican institutions agreed to face the problems squarely, as a collective effort that will provide an important tool both to Mexican taxonomy and to conservation efforts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hypertext Internet Health Resources by Dr. Gary Malet gmalet@doc.healthtel.com HEALTHMATRIX- Authors Lee Hancock, Healthtel Corp. Healthtel announces a windows hypertext presentation of Internet health resources-Healthmatrix! The program is available as: matrix.zip (Ftp this file from the ftp site ftp.gac.edu in the submissions directory). The hypertext format allows easy browsing of medical libraries, listservs, newsgroups, data archives, gophers, institutions, and wais based information concerned about health. Healthmatrix gives in depth instructions to telnet medical libraries, retrieve files from data archives, and subscribe to newsletters and electronic journals. It describes the character and volume of participation of health mailing lists and newsgroups. Healthmatrix should be of value to medical librarians who access Internet resources. It can be windowed to serve as a database of addresses and commands while on line. Healthmatrix was developed to serve as an introduction and database for the Internet community to access health information. The program introduces Healthtel's communication and librarian services. Healthmatrix is appropriate for distribution to library patrons interested in access to health information over Internet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is new in the region of Former Yugoslavia by Borka Jerman-Blazic After the spliting up of Yugoslavia to several countries the academic network YUNAC as a network cease to exist despite the attempts for reorganization the network as a regional network. Instead of YUNAC there are several other networks providing Internet services. In Slovenia there are three service providers, the academic - ARNES, EUNet and ABM BBS which is a member of Greenpeace net. ARNES overtook the existing YUNAC connection to IXI which is now a part of the EuropaNET IP service offered by Dante. The line is 64 Kbit and is expected to be upgraded to 128 Kbit in near future. The internal lines of the network are leased but some customers are still using the national PPSDN. Basic services offered are X.400 and TCP/IP (SMTP, FTP). THe Slovene branch of Eunet is providing IP services to customers outside the academic sector of Slovenia. The Eunet backbone is connected with 19 600 Kbit line to Amsterdam and the customers of EUnet are mainly using dial-up connections. The most powerful BBS system in Slovenia is ABM which provides to its users many services typical for BBS and beside that international e-mail service based on UUCP. ABM is open for any kind of customers. In Croatia the academic and reserach network is CARnet. CARnet is IP based network (TCP/IP is mandatory protocol for its customers but X.25 is also available). CARnet is connected with leased line to Vienna and has access to EBONE and to Ljubljana (to ARNES) with 9.6 Kbit lines. CARnet has developed recently remarkable information services (several GOPHERs with scientific magazines published in English in Croatia and other relevant information) accessable via the network. The policy of use of the CARnet services is relatively open as all kind of public libraries and schools, administration offices, some kind of industrial institutions and individual users are wellcomed. In Serbia and Monte Negro, the two republics which constitutes the current Federal Yugoslavia there are no international leased lines and direct connections to Internet due to the U.N sanctions which caused Beograd-Linz EARN line to be cancelled. However, the former users of the academic network and customers of some BBS systems can exchange electronic mail with Interenet by use of UUCP site located somewhere in U.S. The international connections of the PPSDN are still functioning. Most important changes happened in Macedonia. Macedonia was last year accepted by U.N and was recognized by majority of European countries. The country code MK was allocated by ISO 3166 and the TLD was registred in the Internet NIC in October 1993. The users in Macedonia can be accessed from Internet by e-mail with addresses based on the recently registred TLD. Currently the service is based on UUCP over the PPSDN international links but a leased dedicated line is expected to be set up soon. This service is offered by the BBS network MICRONET with a backbone in Skopje and systems all over Macedonia. MICRONET is also offering fax services for the e-mail for users not connected to the network. The macedonian academic network MARNET is still using the e-mail gateway between DECNET mail and X.400 offered by University of Ljubljana. The Open Society Fund is seriously working on the international connection of its macedonian branch office and the Internet. Similar attempts are also present in Slovenia and Croatia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina everything is destroyed and Sarajevo where we used to have very well developed network services is transformed now to concentration camp. The city is besieged for more then two years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Europe '93 by Frode Greisen 1993 was a year of Internet growth in Europe as in the rest of the world: more countries connected, more bandwidth in the backbones, new applications spreading and finally - more users. It was also the year where network organizations incorporated. A large group of national research networks established Dante Ltd., the five Nordic countries formalized their network organization into NORDUnet Ltd. and the good old international Unix network split off from EurOpen and became EUnet Ltd. In addition, several national research networks have incorporated or are working on it. Why ? Well, as networking moves from research and pilots for the few to general services for the many, it is natural to have professional organizations provide the service and in addition there is a potential for making money. On the other hand, the research networks still want government support so their incorporation is generally with governmental share capital and sometimes mostly motivated by tax saving reasons. Incorporation is slow and sometimes expensive. With the right spirit as in Ebone, a consortium can be very effective. Ebone finally moved international IP in Europe to the megabit/s range with a backbone Washington-Stockholm-Amsterdam-Geneva-Paris-Washington. The COSINE project supported by the CEC, or the Commission of the European Union as it would be called today, finally came to an end in 1993. The resulting services were taken over by Dante and the IXI/EMPB/Europanet backbone became multi-protocol, providing both X.25 and native IP service in the 64 kbps to 2 Mbps range. As is apparent from Larry Landweber's connectivity tables, the number of Internet countries has increased. In some cases, this is an artificial effect of countries breaking up such a the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but even in these cases, and in extremely difficult economic circumstances, there is a genuine spread to new sites as the technology becomes more and more affordable. Europe '94 In 1994, we expect more of the same: More bandwidth, more users and more service providers. Maybe this will be the year where PTOs become serious about international data communication services (I mean in addition to providing X.25). As we talked about megabit backbones for some years before they became a reality, maybe we've now promoted a 34 Mbps backbone for so long that it will happen, perhaps as an offering by Dante supported by the CEC. As the Internet will not become fully operated by professional companies, you'll still see the well known organizations: The three year old RIPE that gathers enthusiastic IP engineers. The eight year old RARE which is changing from OSI goals to a more pragmatic outlook. And the ten year old EARN that refuses to die and which is re-orienting itself from NJE to general network application support. The dilemma between networks being provided with an AUP (Appropriate Usage Policy) for special purposes or special user groups and general purpose networks will not go away. On the one hand, setting up a sensible routing structure when there are no AUPs is so much easier, but on the other hand the research and education sector will still want government funds for their special purpose or front end technology networks. And governments cannot very well support general purpose networks. For many reasons (technical, financial, competitive, AUP) the development on the GIX (Global Internet eXchange) will continue. For the same reasons (plus the need for resilience and perhaps some national pride) this work will expand into distributed exchanges, or D-GIXs. There will be a need for a lot of cooperation and ingenuity until the white smoke emerges from the meeting rooms and the next generation of IP solves all our problems. For the globally connected Internet there can be no purely local solutions so the Internet Society will have a unique role to provide the overall framework for the operation and development of the Internet. To do this, it needs broader support and guidance from both individual and organizational members. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NSFNET Backbone Trends by Erice Aupperle Over a year ago, on 2 December 1992, the T1 NSFNET backbone service ended when all its former traffic traversed the T3 NSFNET service provided by ANS's T3 backbone infrastructure. With the ANS T3 network's greater capacity, NSFNET traffic successfully continued its extraordinarily rapid growth. The T1 network's peak traffic occurred in February of 1992 when it transported 11.3 billion packets. With that load it exhibited signs of saturation. In November of 1993 the ANS T3 NSFNET service carried 44.5 billion packets, nearly four times as much traffic, without any evidence of congestion. Figure 1 reports this traffic on a monthly basis from January 1987. Assuming the current traffic growth rate continues, with it doubling annually, the projection for April 1994 is 63 billion packets for the month. That's an average of 2 billion packets per day. By comparison during the first half of 1987 the initial 56 kbps NSFNET backbone averaged 115 million packets per month, about 550 times less traffic. Interestingly, the capacity of a T3 circuit is 672 times that of the circuits used for the initial backbone. The second notable growth metric is the number of Internet networks announced by the NSFNET backbone service. This number has grown from 173 in July 1987 to 19,664 in November 1993. While this growth rate is somewhat less than the traffic rate over the same period, it's still formidable. It is both a managerial and technological challenge to support this growth. In addition to traffic and announced network data, Merit has measured and recorded other statistical information related to the NSFNET service. Among these other data are the distribution of backbone packets and packet bytes based on their protocol type. An analysis of these data affords an understanding of how the NSFNET service is used and changes with time. Figure 2 shows the percentage distribution of all backbone packets when they are classified into six major categories. These data date from August 1989 when this breakdown was first recorded. Figure 3 is similar; it reports the same distribution based on the number of bytes rather than packets from October of 1990. It is useful to note that this distribution history spans the T1 and T3 network implementations and that there are no dramatic or abrupt changes in either of these percentage data over time. Trend lines for each of these protocol percentages reveal that some are changing while others are remarkable stable. For example, the packet based File Exchange percentage is fairly constant at 25%, indeed over the four year history recorded, it is slightly increasing. On a byte basis the File Exchange percentage is slowly decreasing from about 48% to 45%. It has always been and remains the dominant service on a volume basis. By way of contrast, both on a packet and byte basis, Network Mail has significantly decreased from about 25% to 15% of the traffic. The major growth category is the Other TCP/UDP group. It now is the leading packet percentage at 35% and second at 25% to File Exchange when measured in bytes. This trend is expected to continue as new applications continue to evolve. There is also evidence that M- bone traffic is beginning to be noticed. It shows up in the Non TCP/UDP category and that component's recent change is noticeable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet prospects in the South: simple questions, complex issues. by Daniel Pimienta* and Senaida Jansen* The last years have shown a spectacular move of the Developing Countries into the networks. Depending on the region, Fidonet or UUCP have been the preferred entry protocols and everywhere the trend is to migrate, whenever possible, towards TCP-IP. If measured in term of new countries having gateway to the Internet the move has been impressive and one could expect that the same patterns which apply in the industrial world will come very shortly in the South (relative stronger growth of commercial nodes, use of navigating software to access the growing resources of the Internet, weakening of the subsidized patterns for research networks, and later, conveying multimedia objects...). However, a closer look in the field shows that the reality is more complex and that the rudimentary measurement tools in use presently are not capable to sense it adequately. What will happen specifically in the South in the coming five years? Rather than presenting a forecast on the subject, we decided to present a selected set of simple questions whose answers will shape the future of the Internet in the South. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACT QUESTIONS: -Will the dominating trend for charging the end-user gain force also in the South? Will the tariff patterns converge around the world? Will the new fashionable concept of "sustainable development" be translated into models where subsidizing networks is considered a sin? -Will the natural propensity to communicate with the historical colonizer continue to be reflected in the network traffic (e-mail and information) over the next five years? Will the proportions of national/international and south/north traffic increase seriously within that time-frame? -Will the growth of end-users become evenly spread by sexes? -Will the people from agriculture, health and social sciences become fluent Internet users and start using the technology for the benefit of these crucial development areas? -Will the South networks be organized in user groups capable of participating efficiently in the reinforcement of national institutionalism, with appropriate articulation between public and private sectors? ISSUES: -Wide and open access to the Internet vs economic limitations of the majority of would be users. -Strength of the economic and social impact of networking. -Emergence of new forms of cooperation. -Regional integration as a tool for development. -Integrality of social impact. -Priority to development. -Role of the females in the development. -New form of institutions to answer the needs of the South. NATIONAL INFORMATION POLICIES, POLITICAL CHANGES AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT -Will the emergence of the electronic library encourage the creation and organization of information in the South? Will the generalization of interactive information access be accompanied by sufficient bandwidth increase? Will the information specialists of the South get sufficient skill in time to handle the challenge? Will the small and medium enterprises get organized quickly enough to integrate the information as a key business asset? -Will the Internet become a natural channel for permanent technology transfer and allow the South to keep up with the upcoming changes? ISSUES: -Reinforcing of national information policies. -Requirement for wise management of costly resources such as telecommunication (and, in particular, the organization of batch access). -Sustainable development. We believe that: 1) The answers are not determined by simple cause-effect models. 2) The system theory approach is obviously necessary, but not sufficient to understand the coming changes. 3) The impacts of users' global choices will probably be decisive and the chaos theory appears to be the most appropriate tool for forecasting (in the sense that small events may have tremendous effects and that long time stable and strong evidence may disappear rapidly). This premises makes us conclude that, besides large impact probable from technology improvements, the future of the Internet in the South will strongly depend on the decision of the very end-users (in the South and in the North). The best strategy to influence the future of the Internet in the interest of the South is then to be found in the EMPOWERING AND ARISING AWARENESS OF THE SOUTH END-USERS. Thinkers and decision-makers of the South must come into the arena soon to give themselves a chance to build the tool their way. The responsibility of institutions and people from the North to: a) help South end-users join the Internet, b) be tolerant to different styles of use, is the counterpart key factor. Heavy clouds can be perceived in the Southern skies, however tremendous opportunities come together. One of the original opportunities is the coming of a real and non-hierarchical dialogue between the North and the South, thanks to the Internet... PS: In 1994, FUNREDES is preparing a meeting to brainstorm and then report on the global impact of the Internet in the South in the next five years. As authors of the above work, our submission by this message operates as an irrevocable grant to the Internet Society of a non-exclusive, royalty-free right and license to reproduce, distribute, transmit and otherwise communicate the submission to the public in any form whatsoever throughout the world, including the right and license to make minor conforming modifications or adjustments, and to authorize others to do so. In addition, We affirm that this submission does not violate the rights of others. *Foundation Networks and Development (FUNREDES) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1993 is the year the Internet `happened'. by Larry Masinter Oh, of course, we've had networks and Arpanet and Internet and things for decades now, but 1993 is the watershed year that the Internet became a place to be, rather than a bunch of wires; that we found CyberSpace, and it was us. 1993 was the year that Time Magazine, the New York Times, and your brother-in-law found the Internet. And, one primary reason _why_ 1993 is the year that the Internet happened is because of the astounding phenomena of the growing web of information that is finally conveniently available to newcomers. Gopher grew from `yet another Campus Wide Information System' to `how you could read about NAFTA and MTV'. World Wide Web grew; now no longer a glimmer-of-Xanadu for high-energy physicists, it has become the foundation for one of the slickest applications to hit the net: Mosaic. Mosaic, from our net friends at NCSA, wasn't the first, but it's certainly the most polished of the convenient browse-the-world's-information tools. Together with its cousins, it provides access to nearly everything that is on the net, to novices who've just discovered affordable computers and modems. Along the way, 1993 was the year that Muds Grew Up, from games to virtual communities, with laws and ethics, and Real World Implications. 1993 was a year of sensational net-stories, from the Village Voice to Newsday, telling some of the darker tales. Oh, of course, there are still plenty of MUDs that are hack-and-slash, furry, or poor imitations of INFOCOM games, but there is an increasing diversity of community, practice, and intent to use the net as a meeting room and a meeting place. 1993 was a banner year for multi-media, as we found Dilbert being sent by Clarinet netnews, and MIME attachments actually being the media type their headers claimed. In 1993, you could expect even the backwaters to have found a GIF, postscript, and HTML previewer. 1994 will bring some seriousness of purpose to the emerging chaos. We will no longer be content to explore the wonders of the network merely because it is there; we'll become blase' to the gee-whiz of clicking once and actually going to Hawaii or Switzerland, and we'll start looking for real content. 1994 will bring real commercial applications of what corporate-speak calls `mission critical' uses, and the `this is an experimental service' and `under construction' notices on the world's home pages will gradually disappear. 1994 will bring New Hordes of consumers online, with the gateways from online services and Internet-in-a-Box, and we'll rediscover why it isn't a Good Thing that World Wide Web has no replication, and that one little Mac II in a lab in Minnesota really can't serve All The Gopher Servers In The World to 30 million users, even if they don't all try to access it at once. But, even though our systems don't scale, and we'll have more success disasters than we would if we'd had good sense to build in replication, authentication and the like from the start, we'll manage. The Internet is resilient that way: broken servers will get fixed, protocols will change, and, in 1994, new communities will connect with information and ideas that they actually need. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reaching Out by Steve Ruth* The focus of my work is helping to add very large, difficult-to-reach user communities to the Internet. So in looking at the past and the future my eyes are not glued on on the new fiber optic cabling that may someday span the Ural Mountains or on the fully functioning, highly successful node that will someday be operating in Islamabad, or Dacca or in Bomako. Instead, I am interested in what can be done immediately for the Internet "have-nots", roughly eighty percent of the world's population and, not surprisingly, the lowest in all measurements: development, education, health, etc. So from this perspective a FIDONET site in Bamako, Mali, is a triumph, a linkage between Niger and an Internet host is a dream come true, a connection that brings together a dozen high schools all over Romania is wonderful. (All these things are happening as this is being written.) I see the past few years as being very productive in terms of setting up low unit cost, high yield connections to some of the most difficult places on earth. Randy Bush's listing of the large and growing number of African connections, fragile but functioning, is an example of how far we have come. My own work indicates that over the past six years there has been an order of magnitude increase in the initial surge of network users if good opportunities are offered. Chile's first months (1987) were characterized by scores of users, the Czech Republic's (1990) by a few hundreds and Romania's (1993) by thousands. Data like this needs to be tracked more closely since it can be helpful for new implementation planning. For the future I am concerned that there will be too much emphasis on that word "infrastructure". In the broadest sense infrastructure is the several trillion dollars that must be spent world wide to make communications as simple in Sri Lanka as in Shreveport. My constituency is the four billion people who can gain simpler network services long before the infrastructure is ready. In most of the fifty Islamic nations, for instance, it is currently possible to make user access to Internet possible at a unit cost of about a penny to a dime per message, with no change in the current telecommunications structure. The major problem is policy, not technology. One Islamic nation, Turkey, is an exception. Turkey has begun its Internet journey with more messages and registered users than was the case in the US, Germany or France when they began. My vision for 1994 is major FIDONET activity in every large city in the world. This means a dozen sysops in Kiev, Tashkent, Bombay, Sarajevo, Dacca, Dakar, Cali, etc. Each of these sysops would aim to offer services to about a hundred people and calls could be polled to avoid PTT problems. It isn't a fancy vision and anyone who is interested in supplying a $200,000 plus VAX system to supplement the vision in Kiev or anywhere else is welcome. During the past year I have come to know Mr. George Soros and the work of the Soros Foundations. They are offering simple connectivity services to many of the most destitute places on earth--Sarajevo, Kosovo, Mostar, etc. Their view is that with connectivity as with much else it is important to give people a sample of what's possible, help them to learn how the networks can facilitate the arts, journalism, literature, public broadcasting, etc. I fully support this view. Strategy before structure is a good maxim in business and it applies to networking too. So for 1994 I hope to see the tough cases, the "have nots" connected to networks in huge numbers. We need to keep launching the satellites, laying the cables, setting FDDI standards at the world level--but at the same time we must be connecting the people and the countries that need the open systems that the Internet provides. If our score card regards connecting a million people per month to simple systems like FIDO as a home run, then we will win the ball game. *Professor of Decision Sciences/MIS Director, International Center for Applied Studies in MIS George Mason University --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF CRNet by Guy F. de Teramond* Undoubtedly 1993 represents a landmark in the history of computer communications in Costa Rica with the interconnection to the Internet, and the creation and consolidation of CRNet, a digital backbone linking major institutions in the country. This development not only brings worlwide instant connectivity to a large community, but also introduces internetworking technology at large scale in the country. The University of Costa Rica (UCR) was the first national institution to be connected to the Internet, using CRNet 64 Kbps satellite link to the NSF-Sprint-Panamsat gateway in Homestead, Florida in January 26. The Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica, in the province of Cartago, and the Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) soon became part of the Internet interconnecting their high performance equipment to CRNet routing system. The Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnologicas (CONICIT) interconnected their National Scientific and Technological Information System databases (SINICyT) with CRNet backbone. SINICyt nodes provide information in the following areas: industry, agriculture, health, commerce, natural resources and energy, and technological services. SINICyT nodes have also access through Radiografica Costarricensa S.A. X.25 network. Of particular relevance is the recent interconnection of the Omar Dengo Foundation (FOD) to CRNet, which will allow 140.000 children from public schools around the country to have communication among themselves and with children in other parts of the world. The FOD initiative includes specific projects in many areas, including studies in biodiversity, the environment and trash recycling. The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio), located in the Province of Heredia, interconnected its Intergraph computers to CRNet allowing access to its huge biodiversity databases, containing a description of two million species, to the national and international community. INBIO, in collaboration with Intergraph, is developing a graphical information system including images with geographical distribution of species. The Instituto Centroamericano de Administracion de Empresas (INCAE), located in the province of Alajuela, and the Instituto Interamericano de Coperacion para la Agricultura (IICA), joined CRNet at the year's end. With a record of 97.000 business people trained at its seminars from all over Latin America, INCAE is using the Internet as an effective communication instrument to reach its disperse community and branch offices across Latin America. The IICA with 33 branch offices in Latin America, Canada and the U.S. will use the Internet to integrate its resources in the continent. IICA will allow access to its agricultural databases through the Internet. The number of connected nodes to CRNet increased from 12 in January 1993 to 250 at the end of the year. With the forthcoming connection of the Universidad Nacional de Heredia (UNA), the Centro Regional Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE), the Escuela Agronomica Regional del Tropico Humedo (EARTH) and the Congress of the Republic, the number of nodes will double during the first weeks of 1994. A rapid expansion into the commercial sector and doubling the speed of all the links is expected. It is also expected that the IP connection to neighbouring Nicaragua and Panama, sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS) proyect Red HUCyT, will be fully operational by January 1994. A list of CRNet connected nodes, network topology and other documents can be obtained via anonymous ftp at prwtos.crnet.cr (163.178.8.26) or using gopher.cr. In 1993 CRNet received important support from the Organization of American States, The Agency for Internatinal Development, The Ministry of Science and Technology, the Omar Dengo Foundation, the University of Costa Rica, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. *President, CRNet -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GlasNet by Anatoly Voronov In 1993 GlasNet has affirmed its position as full Internet service provider in Russia. GlasNet policy, based on keeping the lowest rates possible, just to cover expenses for staff salaries, local access numbers, local leased lines, has attracted individual users. No other network in Russia has that high rate of private persons online: more than 50 per cent. The opportunity to do telnet from the home (what GlasNet users have now) made quite a splash. The problem is the common Internet illiteracy. When we tell a newcomer that he/she can login to a host somewhere in the USA, eyebrows are raised: "You're kidding!" "No kidding", we reply proudly :-) The "Internet illiteracy" is one of important factors which slows down the expansion of Internet in Russia. GlasNet would be grateful to such authors as Ed Krol (or the publishers like O'Reilly & Associates) if they gave us permission to translate their "Internet Gospels" into Russian and use them in our "missionary work", to convert the "fax-gentiles" into Internet believers ;-) The other factor is the notorious Russian phone lines and switching equipment (to be exhibited in archaelogical museum). GlasNet (due to the help of ISF, and personally Steve Goldstein) installed ZyXel in-dial modems. They perform well, with the only drawback: they don't support software MNP emulation. Many of our users are not wealthy enough as to purchase modems with MNP built in :-( Apple users have problems too: as the MNP or V.42 error correction is mandatory on the noisy Russian lines, those who have non-MNP Apple modems built in their PowerBooks, cannot connect, because, if I am not mistaken, no communication program for Apple has been written, with software emulation of the error correction protocol. The only solution we can suggest is to buy an external modem with MNP or V.42, but many of our users cannot afford it yet. Hey, Apple guys/girls, why don't you help buyers of your computers who are on budget, but want to use e-mail in Russia? But anyhow, GlasNet host in Moscow can be reached now through local call (X.25) from Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg (city where the last Russian Zar was killed, and where Mr. Yeltsin started his carreer as local Communist Party boss), Novosibirsk, Kazan, Izhevsk, Saint-Petersburg, Voronezh, Odessa, Kiev. Again, politics clash with common sense: as a high-ranked representative of Russian Ministry of Communicartions said, no plans exist to build a common X.25 network on the territory of the FSU (Former Soviet Union). The Russian Government seems to have no interest in fostering the new democratic communications. The only thing the independent Internet enthusiasts like GlasNet expect from the bureaucrats is at least to act as Hypocrates oath suggests: If you cannot help, don't harm. But now, only the first part of the commandment is true: they cannot help indeed, but do harm, raising the phone rates and taxes, and nurturing inflation by their irresponsible economic policy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mathematicians outlook by Flemming Topsoe* The key exponent for the world mathematical community, the International Mathematical Union (IMU), declared Year 2000 as the World Mathematical Year at a meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The initiative is supported and sponsored by UNESCO and other organizations. In June 1993 appeared the first World Mathematical Year 2000 Newsletter. An increase in the level of activities is expected through 1994. Three aims are singled out. The first is intrinsicly mathematical and evident, trying, as did David Hilbert in 1900, to envision the mathematical challenges of the century to come. The second and third aims, with headlines 'mathematics, key for development' and 'the image of mathematics' are broader and more open in scope, and the entire community is invited to cooperate in achieving the aims. It is in relation to these two last goals that networking is of significance in a number of instances. IMU points itself to the importance of access to scientific information and talks about the systematic presence of mathematics in the 'Information Society'. And we hear about joint efforts of UNESCO and IMU's Commission for Development and Exchange to establish regional mathematical information and documentation centres in the developing countries which will be partly based on the electronic media. The African Mathematical Union points to a project to create a mathematics communication network within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world. Many other initiatives are associted with the World Mathematical Year 2000. The editor of this column hopes to be able to report on significant steps taken this year on the way to realize the above outlined goals. It apears evident that proper structuring of information and associated design and usage of computer networking services are key ingredients to ensure success. Many parties are expected to contribute. Among them, though not directly linked to the World Mathematical Year 2000 initiative, is the European project Euromath and the associated Euromath Network and Services (EmNet) which will be followed with interest in 1994 in relation to a major software release. *University of Copenhagen -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /Box with Topsoe article/ Mathematics Subject Tree The creation of the Mathematics Subject Tree should be seen as a step in the direction outlined by Anders Gillner, to organize gopher servers according to their subject. After preliminary considerations during the Network Services Conference 1992 in Pisa, the Euromath Center, Copenhagen (EmC) agreed to do the part of the work connected with mathematics. The task to realize the Mathematics Subject Tree was given to me in the spring 1993 when I was working at the Euromath Center. By looking around in gopher-space to trace information of relevance to mathematicians (here, the Veronica service was useful), a general picture of the type and the organization of this information emerged. The gopher-servers at the Institute of pure Mathematics, University of Heidelberg and at the Center for Scientific Computing in Finland turned out to be particularly useful in this respect. The task was then to design a structure which would allow the users to get rid of as much redundancy as possible when searching for mathematically relevant information using the subject tree. The result is a structure which at the first level of the Mathematics Subject Tree contains the following items: 1. Archives for Mathematics 2. FAQ.sci.math 3. Journals 4. Mailing Lists 5. Math Gopher Servers in Europe 6. Math Gopher Servers in North America 7. Other Related Gopher Servers The criteria used for grouping the links was a "type of service" criterion. To give an indication of the data which are easily available through this structure, we mention the following: * list of add-on public domain software and documenation for Mathematica, Maple, Reduce and Matlab packages * some mathematical software for various hardware platforms (PC, Mac, Unix) * telnet connections to e-MATH and to eLib archives * preprints retrieved from some (too few!) mathematics research centres * access to mathematics related mailing lists and gopher servers * the TeX archive at Aston and the SGML archive in Oslo. After inclusion in the overall Subject Tree structure, the addition was advertised on the eurogopher mailing list, and on the sci.math and comp.infosystems.gopher newsgroups. The Mathematics Subject Tree can be accessed directly via gopher connection to the address gopher.euromath.dk or via anonymous telnet access (with restricted functionality) to the same address (username gopher) or, of course, via the overall Subject Tree root server at gopher.ebone.net. In order to maintain the Mathematics Subject tree, it is important that users and providers of services cooperate. When you have information about new mathematics data available or any comments, suggestions, etc., please communicate this to emc@euromath.dk. Zbynek Linhart Charles University, Prague -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /filler/ CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS UP VIA THE INTERNET by Bendan Kehoe Dec. 7, 1993 - Employees of Cygnus Support in Mountain View, California, discovered when they came to work today that they can light the company Christmas tree without leaving their computer consoles. Engineers at this four-year-old software startup last night reprogrammed the company's internal computer network to enable users of the network to issue commands to the decorations on the tree. A Cygnus engineer sits in front of his Unix XWindows workstation and brings up a windowed, mouse-drive application called "xmastree". Clicking the mouse over the correct gadget turns on lights on the seven-and-one-half foot tall evergreen in the lobby of Cygnus Headquarters. Clicking the mouse over another gadget turns other decorations, including bubble lights and musical bells, on or off. Currently, only users on Cygnus's internal network can actually control the Christmas tree, but anyone at any Internet site anywhere can discover the current status of the Cygnus christmas tree by issuing the command, "finger xmastree@cygnus.com". The command will report whether the lights, bubbles, and bells are on or off. Cygnus engineers, when not playing with their Christmas toys, write and maintain software tools such as compilers, tools which enable programmers to create new computer programs. Since many of Cygnus' customers are engaged in embedded systems programming, Cygnus uses X-10 controllers to enable and disable target single board computers during testing. "Cygnoids" Jason Molenda and Brian Smith extended the principle to the Christmas tree this year and added the spiffy graphical user interface called "xmastree" for the amusement of their fellow employees. The cost of the decorations plus control hardware used on the tree itself (exclusive of the computers on the Cygnus network) was about $100. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /box/ finger xmastree@cygnus.com [cygnus.com] Login name: xmastree In real life: Cygnus Support Xmas Tree Directory: /cygint/s1/users/xmastree Shell: /bin/false Never logged in. No unread mail Plan: The state of the Cygnus Support Christmas Tree is: Lights: on Tacky Bubble Lights: on Bells: on -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /box/ GET WELL SOON, BRENDAN! On December 31, 1993, Brendan Kehoe, well-known as the author of "Zen and the Art of the Internet," was critically injured in an automobile accident. He sustained massive head injuries but the prognosis as of January 3 was "cautiously optimistic." Tragically, the severity of the injuries makes it likely that some permanent disabilities will be inevitable, but their nature and extent are not certain. Doctors expect him to be semi-comatose for at least two weeks. He is not permitted to receive flowers or other tangibles, but cards may be sent to: Brendan Kehoe c/o Alice Kehoe Penn Tower Hotel Civic Center Blvd and 34th St. Philadelphia PA 19104 USA Although Brendan will not be able to communicate for some time, his brother and other friends plan to set up an email capability to keep his friends informed of his condition. ISOC wishes this valued Internaut as speedy and full a recovery as possible. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gopher and Phonebook: Resource Discovery Analysis During 1993 by Hank Nussbacher An attempt has been made to analyze data produced by Gopher access logs to determine usage patterns. During a 50 day period from September 18,1993 to November 7, 1993, the Gopher server at Bar-Ilan University kept track of which systems in the Internet made access to a menu, document or phonebook (QI/PH) search. Monitoring period: September 18, 1993 - November 7, 1993 (50 days) Number of countries accessing Gopher: 41 Number of distinct systems accessing our Gopher: 2101 Total accesses to Gopher: 15460 Total Israeli access to Gopher: 4332 (28%) Total Bar-Ilan access to Gopher: 2589 (59%) Total Israeli access (not Bar-Ilan): 1743 (40%) Total foreign access to Gopher: 11128 (71%) Total phonebook searches: 1122 Let us first analyze the numbers presented above. In the short space of 50 days, less than 2 months, a small Israeli university was able to have its information disseminated to over 40 countries who have access to the global Internet. Not only that, these countries had to have at least one Gopher client available within their country in order to access the Gopher server at Bar-Ilan University (vm.biu.ac.il). This shows that Gopher clients have managed to infiltrate the Internet and it won't be long before the computer industry says "TCPIP is telnet/ftp/smtp/gopher". This might have a tremendous impact on the publishing industry in the future. The ease at which people thousands of miles away can access information might very well change the newspaper and magazine industry over the next 5-10 years in ways we cannot yet fathom. Let us analyze the numbers a bit further. Bar-Ilan actively publicizes the existence of its Gopher server. Nonetheless, only 16.7% of all accesses to the Gopher server were from the local campus. All the rest came from off-campus. Even within Israel, access only amounted to 28%. Of the seven Gopher servers running in Israel, almost all of them have customized menus pointing to the rest of the Israeli Gophers, including Bar-Ilan's. This should have theoretically boosted the national Israeli access to the Bar-Ilan Gopher. But another lesson we can learn is that the Internet world is so so large, that a mere 1% of it can overwhelm anything you do locally, no matter how well planned or advertised. Lets look at a slightly finer breakdown of the data: Access to Bar-Ilan main menu: 5806 (37%) Access to ILAN network info menus: 2133 (13%) Access to Bar-Ilan English information: 3156 (20%) Access to Research Authority menus: 1063 Access to Bar-Ilan Hebrew information: 1576 (10%) Access to Israeli Gopher menu: 835 (5%) Access to other information: 1954 (12%) Bar-Ilan's Gopher server has a main menu, like all other Gophers in the world. It then contains certain subsections which I have divided as above. Almost all accesses come through the main menu. The deepest level on Bar-Ilan is 4, where one can find a document. 2nd level has 27 items, 3rd level has 97 items and 4th level has 48 items. The submenu that had the most direct access was the "ILAN network info menus" (a menu that has general information regarding the Israel segment of the Internet), since it appears in certain customized menus in other systems and therefore allow direct access, bypassing the main menu. If we compensate for this sort of direct access, we can say that most Gopher sessions to Bar-Ilan were between 2-3 accesses to menus or documents (2.3-2.7 to be exact). Next lesson learned: If information is buried too deeply within multileveled Gopher menus, users will never find it. Veronica is able to compensate somewhat for that but until all Gopher systems place a Veronica entry on their main menu, we will not see "deep" access to deeply buried submenus via menu tree transversal. A 4th level document/menu or lower will most probably not be seen. What was the upper-level domain breakdown? EDU 6461 IL 4332 CA 806 COM 699 ORG 251 NL 208 UK 175 AU 119 NET 118 SE 92 GOV 91 FI 91 US 88 DE 82 CH 73 NO 63 DK 57 PL 51 NZ 39 HU 33 TW 30 JP 26 FR 26 BE 23 MIL 19 SG 18 VE 17 SK 15 IT 14 AT 12 MX 11 CZ 10 TR 10 ZA 9 CL 8 ES 8 BR 4 IS 3 EC 3 HK 3 HR 3 TH 2 MY 2 KW 2 KR 1 IE 1 Notice that the above total does not equal 15,460? That is because 456 systems did not respond to inverse domain checks so as to determine their true domain name. This means that 22% of the systems in the Internet have not registered with Internic.Net their inverse-domain name (in-addr.arpa). I was not prepared to run down these 456 systems to determine which country they belonged to (1251 accesses in total to the Bar-Ilan Gopher - 2.7 per system which once again verifies the mistake of creating too much depth to Gopher menus). This fact that a very large percentage of systems have either forgotten to or were never informed to register in-addr.arpa will make network analysis and resource usage patterns harder to determine in the future. Which 2nd level domains were the main ones accessing our Gopher? AC.IL 4054 BIU.AC.IL 2589 HUJI.AC.IL 718 TAU.AC.IL 310 BGU.AC.IL 215 TECHNION.AC.IL 115 WEIZMANN.AC.IL 107 UMN.EDU 287 CO.IL 259 UMD.EDU 250 DELPHI.COM 249 COLUMBIA.EDU 209 CARLETON.CA 205 WLU.EDU 201 UMICH.EDU 167 AC.UK 164 UPENN.EDU 145 HARVARD.EDU 123 MSU.EDU 116 RUTGERS.EDU 112 OHIO-STATE.EDU 109 WISC.EDU 108 CNIDR.ORG 100 UCHICAGO.EDU 96 FSU.EDU 90 UMBC.EDU 86 EDU.AU 81 PRINCETON.EDU 76 PACBELL.COM 75 CORNELL.EDU 71 NYU.EDU 69 CHALMERS.SE 68 BU.EDU 65 WASHINGTON.EDU 64 BERKELEY.EDU 64 UIUC.EDU 63 PSU.EDU 63 CUNY.EDU 62 UNR.EDU 56 UVA.NL 55 UBC.CA 55 VIRGINIA.EDU 54 JHU.EDU 53 NETCOM.COM 53 NODAK.EDU 53 DIGEX.NET 52 UDEL.EDU 52 SFU.CA 51 SYR.EDU 51 YALE.EDU 51 COLORADO.EDU 50 EDU.PL 47 GMU.EDU 46 YU.EDU 46 CO.US 46 Notice the first entry which includes six Israeli institutes of higher education? Even though we are able to outnumber any single system in the Internet, we still comprise only 28% of all accesses to our Gopher system. Of the over 2,100 systems that accessed our Gopher in the space of 50 days (7.3 accesses per system), the top systems were: VM.BIU.AC.IL 2005 VMS.HUJI.AC.IL 602 HAFNHAF.MICRO.UMN.EDU 201 LIBERTY.UC.WLU.EDU 201 DELPHI.COM 199 FREENET.CARLETON.CA 185 CCSG.TAU.AC.IL 181 SHIKMA.CC.BIU.AC.IL 180 INFO.UMD.EDU 172 JERUSALEM1.DATASRV.CO.IL 130 ASHUR.CC.BIU.AC.IL 124 RODENT.UIS.ITD.UMICH.EDU 118 SALAAM.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU 101 BURROW.CL.MSU.EDU 100 CONCORD.CNIDR.ORG 100 ALON.CC.BIU.AC.IL 88 WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL 76 IPAI.KN.PACBELL.COM 75 MABUHAY.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU 69 GDUNIX.GD.CHALMERS.SE 65 ACTCOM.CO.IL 59 UMBC8.UMBC.EDU 58 TAMAR.CC.BIU.AC.IL 57 MAIL.SAS.UPENN.EDU 57 BGUMAIL.BGU.AC.IL 56 ARISTO.TAU.AC.IL 56 HAR1.HUJI.AC.IL 55 CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU 53 ACCESS.DIGEX.NET 52 BOS3A.DELPHI.COM 50 Useless trivia: The longest domain name found was a tie of 40 characters between: SILLIMAN-COLLEGE-KSTAR-NODE.NET.YALE.EDU N2-11-222-OCS-PUBLIC-1.PUBLIC.DREXEL.EDU Now lets analyze the phonebook data a bit more: Total phonebook access: 1122 Distinct system access: 151 Total "fields" requests 334 Total "quit" requests 350 Total "query" requests 411 Total "siteinfo" requests 9 Other 18 Of the 411 query/ph requests (which is the actual data lookup; "fields" merely returns which search fields are available), only 12 were actual Hebrew lookup searches, and all the rest were in English. Ignoring searches from outside Israel, this still represents only 5.8% of the total Israeli searches conducted. Conclusion: the de-facto language on the Internet is English. Of the 1122 searches, 207 were from Israel (18%) which is an even smaller percentage than Gopher access (28%). Interestingly, within Bar-Ilan the percentages stayed more or less the same. Gopher access for Bar-Ilan was 16.7% of the total and for Phonebook it was 16.1% of the total. What can we learn from this? My conclusion is that people within a small country (population 5 million) all know each other pretty well and therefore know the email address of their colleagues. People abroad are the ones therefore that benefit the most from a local Phonebook (whois, X.500 or whatever one is using) database. Bottom line: setting up an online phonebook provides marginal benefit to your local users but helps very remote users find your users. Another interesting observation is that 97.6% of all phonebook transactions are either "query", "fields", or "quit". Those sites that intend to set up some sort of phonebook lookup service (with only central updates; no user update) should look into creating a small subset of the CCSO qi server as was done on Bar-Ilan University's VM/CMS system. Last observation: only 151 distinct Internet systems accessed the qi server at Bar-Ilan University during the same period that 2101 distinct systems accessed the Gopher server. My conclusion: even though there is a pointer from the root menu of Bar-Ilan's Gopher (accessed 5806 times) directly to qi/ph, users are more interested in finding "information" than finding "people". *Bar-Ilan University -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Israel - Present & Future by Hank Nussbacher During 1993, Israel's segment of the Internet, ILAN, was open to any organization that fell into the category of "R&D, educational or cultural". By the beginning of December 1993, Israel had the following registered and operational upper level domains: ac.il - 11 co.il - 50 org.il - 2 k12.il - 1 gov.il - 5 Even though in "domain" terms the ac.il (higher education) domain is only 16%, it still comprises 86% of our monthly data traffic. This percentage is expected to decrease as more organizations connect to the network. In order to better assist smaller organizations to connect to the network via dial-up and SLIP/PPP, the government has authorized and licensed four commercial service providers to provide Internet connectivity via the ILAN backbone. There are already 140 organizations that have connected up with one of these Internet service providers. We currently are moving 120 gigabytes per month within Israel and are sending/receiving close to 55 gigabytes to abroad. ILAN is currently in the process of accepting a 256kb satellite line as an upgrade to our existing 128kb line to the USA. This will give Israel a total of 320kb bandwidth to abroad, when including our 64kb fiber optic line to Europe. On a national scale, ILAN has outgrown its 128kb leased line backbone and has signed an agreement with the national PTT to be the first customer to use its MAN service. The seven university bankbone will run on 10Mb/sec Ethernet speeds via the MAN service (the only service offered by our PTT) which will initially cover the cities of Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. This change in our backbone will allow us to begin exploring new technologies that were previously unattainable at slower speeds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Policy-realted happenings in 1993: International Cooperation at its Best Steven N. Goldstein* By far, the most noteworthy development in the Internet was the integration of the Russian Federation and Ukraine into the Global Internet at the IP level, with the promise that China, too, would join in 1994. By mid-year, Relcom was connected northward through the Nordic countries, Demos connected to UUNET, and the International Science Foundation had sponsored a link between RELARN (the academic and research networking association of Russia) and Washington, open to everybody. The German Electron Synchrotron Laboratory (DESY) had connected to the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow, and together with the German Research Networking Association (DFN) was making plans for a high-bandwidth (256 kbps) link via Moscow State University. NASA made extensive arrangements with the Russian Space Research Network to link the Goddard Space Flight Center (and the NASA Science Internet) with the Institute for Space Research (IKI) in Moscow, also at 256 kbps. The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Sciences Network planned, at least initially to share the NASA link, and to work collaboratively with NASA to help to connect institutes in St. Petersburg as well. At year's end, the expanded German link is almost installed, and NASA awaits an early-1994 start-of- service. Plans were also underway for several groups to help fund a 64 kbps satellite link from Novosibirsk to Helsinki, and the International Science Foundation also committed to fund another satellite link from Moscow to Stockholm (64 kbps, with growth potential to 128 kbps). In December, NSFNET was able to overcome earlier policy restrictions and exchange traffic with the countries of the former Soviet Union. This is a start; Russia is a huge country, and the Internet reaches only a small, albeit scientifically significant, portion of the country. The challenge will be to get various domestic and international parties to cooperate in expanding the national infrastructure atop a telecommunications base that itself needs modernizing. By mid-year, Ukraine connected at 9.6 kbps from Lvov, in the western part of the country, to Warsaw. (Warsaw also offered connectivity to Belarus.) Commercial IP connections were also made to Moscow. The International Science Foundation also readied an Internet demonstration project to be centered in Kiev with the possibility of connecting to nodes elsewhere in the country, perhaps with additional partners-in-grants. More than 20 Internauts from the countries of the former Soviet Union attended the INET '93 Workshop at Stanford University, and several more joined them at the main INET meeting in San Francisco the next week. Many stayed on for INTEROP, for a three-week grand tour of Internet bounties. In China, the DECNET link between the Institute for High Energy Physics and the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) was converted from DECnet to dual protocol (IP and DECnet). Also a metropolitan area network connecting the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Computer and Networking Center of China, and Tsinghua University prepared for a 64 kbps Internet connection to a U.S. node in California. Chinese Internauts were also present for the three-week San Francisco Internet gala, and Chinese network leaders visited many U.S. networking sites, including the Washington, D.C. Global Internet eXchange (GIX). In quite separate, but nevertheless spectacular chain of events, Latin American networks continued to meet in workshops (Lima, Peru; San Jose, Costa Rica, Caracas, Venezuela), and by the end of 1993, and in early 1994, we look for Internet connections from Uruguay (to Washington GIX), Peru, Panama, and Honduras (to the International Connections Management for NSFNET [ICM] node in Homestead, Florida), Colombia (Homestead or Washington) and, soon, Bolivia. These add to the relatively recent links from Ecuador and Costa Rica, as well as the established links from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil. The Caribbean Academic Network, CUNet, continued to grow, and Jamaica anticipates an early-1994 terrestrial connection to Homestead, via Miami. While the main credit must be given to the local network organizers, many of whom donated time and money to get their networks established and connected, the efforts of international organizations like the Organization of American States (Hemispheric Inter-University Science and Technology Network project, RedHUCyT) and the United Nations Development Program provided both crucial financial support. Several years ago, few observers would have predicted the degree of mutual cooperation that has emerged among the Latin American and Caribbean networking groups and their international sponsors. *Program Director, Interagency & International Networking Coordination Div. of Networking and Communications Research & Infrastructure National Science Foundation Arlington, VA 22230 || //////////////////////////// Richard: corrections: I jotted it off from memory, and a draft I just reviewed of a forthcoming presentation from Frank Kuo snd Farooq reminded me of my errors as regards China: "...In Beijing, we saw a very impressive metropolitan networking project called NCFC (National Computing and Networking Facility of China). NCFC is a demonstration network linking the two major universities, Tsinghua and Peking Universities to a number of research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). The NCFC network is a new shining star in Chinese academic networking. Funded by the PRC State Planning Commission and the World Bank (over $10 million), NCFC has built the best metropolitan area network (MAN) in China, and it is likely to become China's major connecting point to the global Internet. NCFC consists of three campus LANs: Tsinghua University Network (TUNET), Peking University Network (PUNET) and Chinese Academy of Science Network ( CASNET). " My paragraph should therefore be corrected: "..In China, the DECNET link between the Institute for High Energy Physics and the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) was converted from DECnet to dual \_to be protocol (IP and DECnet). A new metropolitan networking project called NCFC (National Computing and Networking Facility of China) has been taking shape. NCFC is a demonstration network linking the two major universities, Tsinghua and Peking Universities to a number of research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). NCFC made preparations for a 64 kbps Internet connection to a U.S. node in California. Chinese Internauts were also present for the three-week San Francisco Internet gala, and Chinese network leade visited many U.S. networking sites, including the Washington, D.C. Global Internet eXchange (GIX)." ////////////////////// -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /box/ Q: What do you get if you cross a Connection Machine with a neural network? A: A Massively Paranoid Processor --courtest of Vint Cerf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1993 in Internet Library Science by Billy Barron 1993 was an interesting year for library science on the Internet where a lot of long time trends were starting to reach maturity. Several new projects appeared also. Implementations of the Z39.50 protocol have started to be used in production on the Internet. Vendors, such as DRA and NOTIS, have started selling Z39.50 implementations to their customers. A couple of public domain clients have also hit the street, but neither are of production quality. My Internet library guide finally reached the point I hoped for several years now. Instead of generating it from a word processing, the guide is now generated by Marie-Christine Mahe of Yale University. She has a program which turns links in Gopherspace into the document. Similar projects can and should be done to make more Internet resource lists with minimal manual labor. The electronic journal market went through the roof this year. By this time, I would not be surprised to find a thousand different electronic periodicals being published. The premier collection of them on the Internet is the CICNet Electronic Journal Project. Other smaller and specialized collections also exist. Electronic journals are becoming increasingly important to libraries as the price of paper journals continue to increase. Though this may have started in 1992, it was even more common in 1993. Libraries, such as the Library of Congress, have started making images and text of special collections available over the Internet. It provides a unique opportunity for Internet users to see collections they otherwise would never have had the chance to see. The University of Michigan started offering a course in Internet resource discovery in their library science program. As a part of the course, the students are required to generate an Internet resource guide. The guides are then collected and placed in Gopher in an area known as the Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Gophers. Another trend is that quite a few public libraries became attached to the Internet during the year. Some of them even made their catalogs available over the Internet. Some libraries have started doing electronic reserves over the Internet during 1993. More sites will find this useful and it will be increasingly common. It is always hard to predict the future on the Internet. In 1994, I know that all of the above will continue happening. I predict that two different Internet Encyclopedia projects will occur. One will be thinking technology will solve all the problems. The other will be be more traditional and realistic in its goals and will use the technology where appropiate. An Internet Museum will be created in 1994 by someone. It has already been discussed on the PACS-L mailing list. Currently, I'm personally doing a bit of Internet archaelogy work by looking for the oldest Internet library guides I can find. I plan on including these guides in the museum. On a related note, if you have any Internet library lists from 1990 or before (electronic or paper), please let me know. Finally, I hope 1994 is the year where more people start worrying about documents vanishing into the vapor without a trace. I have definitely learned my lesson about this in my hunt for old library guides. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AARNet Engineering Working Group (AEWG) by David Woodgate On 30 Nov 30 1993, at the Australian Networkshop Conference at the World Conference Centre in Melbourne, Victoria, the AARNet Engineering Working Group was announced. The Technical Manager of AARNet, Geoff Huston, stated that the AEWG would provide technical advice to AARNet on the provision of networking technologies and user services to the networking community of Australia. The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) was created in 1989 as a joint venture between the Australian Universities and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in order to provide a national infrastructure of networking services to Australia's research community. It is intended that the AEWG will help AARNet maintain and enhance the high quality of this infrastructure. The AARNet Engineering Working Group will investigate particular issues that are relevant to maintaining successful networking within the Australian environment, and will offer recommendations to AARNet on directions in networking technologies and services within Australia. The AEWG is made of working groups that each focus on a particular issue or area. Working groups are open to all interested individuals. Where the objectives of AEWG working groups coincide with those of working groups from international bodies ( such as the IETF ), it is intended that the members of the AEWG working groups will contribute to the international effort towards solving those issues and generally improving the quality of the Internet. Any enquiries about the AARNet Engineering Working Group can be sent to David Woodgate ( davidw@its.csiro.au ). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's news at Galapagos--JPL to install GPS station by Steve Goldstein We have some exciting news at the Station that involves the Internet connection which the Banco del Pacifico and Ecuanet provided to us. Yesterday and today we met with Steve DiNardo, of the Jet Propulsion Labratory (JPL is a major sub-contractor to NASA), and with Capt. Rodolfo Salazar, of the Instituto Geografico Militar technical staff. JPL does research and development on the GPS (Global Positioning System). As you know, GPS is a sytem of satellites which provides navigational and other geographic location information which can be picked up by small hand- held receivers. These receivers can indicate your position on earth with an accuracy of about 100 meters. JPL is setting up a series of base stations scattered around the world which gather information from the satellites. JPL processes the information, and 24 hours later produces data correction tables that can be used to adjust previous readings so that they are accurate to less than a centimeter. There are many potential research and conservation uses for these data. There is currently no base station in the Galapagos area, and this reduces the accuracy of the system. JPL is very interested in eliminating this "blind spot" by setting up a base station here at Charles Darwin Research Station. The Instituto Geografico Militar is very interested in this project since the information gathered can be used to produce *very* accurate maps. Also the information can be used to detect movements in the earth's crust. We could discover for example, precisely which direction and rate Galapagos is moving with respect to the continent. JPL is providing funds for the station to build a small, very stable platform on top of the Thomas Fischer Science Building, to mount the down-link antenna for the base station. The JPL will also provide air conditioning for the room in the Fischer building which will house the computer, and a UPS system that can allow the equipment to operate all night. Also, they will provide a 486 computer to act as a mail router, and will run a thin Ethernet from the Fisher building, through the library and adminstration buildings, to the computer lab. This gives the station the Ethernet backbone it has needed for so long! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard: Note from Vint: how about putting masthead page on one side, isoc application form on the other? can we put in an ad for INET94? check with Bernie or Geoff Manning to see if they have some nice graphics yet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Building on the Internet Spirit - a Sustainable Human Development Perspective Lawrence Yeung The United Nations Development Programme first became an Internet node in late 1991. At that time, the primary use was for electronic mail and file transfers between UNDP LAN users and the external Internet communities. As we matured in the use of Internet, we began setting up the 'gopher' server in mid 1992 for public access. Since then, the amount of daily connections from the different Internet sites all over the world has grown from around 50 to over 900 a day. The rate of growth is around 20% a month for connections to our main menu, whereas the file retrievals have grown substantially more given the increasing amount of files on our server. Today, people are downloading 4300 files from our server daily. . What is on our Gopher ? The UN Department for Public Information has provided a feed of the UN Press Releases and Resolutions to our server. This material has been received with much excitement by the Internet community, as it is of value for information, educational and research activities. We have ventured into posting UNDP documents on activities in Eastern Europe, on the Sustainable Development Network initiative, on important speeches and developments in general. As a step to making UNDP personnel more easily accessible, our electronic mail addresses and telephones are also listed. . What are the user responses ? Despite the short exposure since such information is made available on our host, the UNDP Division of Public Affairs has received compliments from the Congressional Research Service of the U.S. Library of Congress, who are downloading the Administrator's speeches, the UNDP Updates, and other materials. These items are being filed on their system as 'major policy statements' for use by US Congressional and Senatorial offices as 'an important research tool for their work'. A leading business magazine in the Arab World, Alam Attijarat, has also picked up information from our server on Palestinian issues. The UNDP host has also become a vehicle of inter-agency cooperation. The Coordinating Unit of the global Population Information Network (POPIN), within the Population Division with funding from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has a section within the UNDP 'gopher' server, designed to improve the flow of population information, both among population experts and to the larger world audience. With these successes, other UN and US organizations have contacted us requesting information, demonstrations and seeking assistance in performing the same electronic publication. Many Missions to the UN and NGOs have registered on our host as users, and through it, they regularly correspond and interchange development information with their partners. While we are delighted with the inroad we have made with this service, we welcome your comments on the usefulness of our gopher host, and any suggestions on improvements. . What is next ? The UNDP vision is sustainable human development. That is, development should not only generate growth but also distribute it equitably; not only raise productivity but also expand employment; not only build infrastructure but also sustainable management systems; not only transfer external knowledge but also value and build on traditional wisdom; not only teach skills but also equip people to realize their full potential; not only provide a safety net but also empower people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; not only exploit natural resources but also regenerate them; not only provide for today's needs but also those of future generations. In this vision, the focus is moving towards increasing investment in specialists in this development area, and the sharing of information through networks. With timely access to information, the goal is to position UNDP Field Offices as consultants to governments and national institutions in environmental management, economic development trends, macro economic policies and national investment plans. Internet, a network of networks with such a diversity of audiences, will undeniably be the communications channel for UNDP. About 20 UNDP Field Offices presently have direct access to Internet but it is envisioned in the next two to three years that all the 132 Field Offices will be Internet nodes or have direct access to it. A challenging task lies ahead ! Chief, Communications and Computer Services UNDP, New York N.Y. 10017 U.S.A. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1993 viewed from CERN, Geneva, Switzerland by Brian Carpenter Brian.Carpenter@cern.ch It seems that every year is an exciting year for networking, and 1993 was no exception. With the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) working better than ever, the amount of CERN experimental data to be processed continued to increase. We hit new traffic records in our internal backbone network (over 1500 GBytes in November) as well as in our off-site traffic (over 350 GBytes in November, of which some 50 GBytes was CLNP supporting DECnet/OSI). In addition, IP transit traffic exceeded 500 GBytes in November. One technical high spot of the year was CERN's participation, with three other user sites, in the first international 34 Mbps ATM application pilot, BETEL (Broadband Exchange over Trans-European Links). The carriers for this project, funded by the European Union, were France Telecom and Swiss Telecom PTT. CERN and the IN2P3 computer centre in Lyons, France, demonstrated remote physics data analysis over BETEL's IP service. Data transfer rates up to 100 GBytes/day have been observed. In another successful technology pilot, CERN and SEFT (the particle physics institute in Helsinki, Finland) demonstrated overnight bulk data transfer using an 8 Mbps IP link via the European Space Agency's OLYMPUS satellite. Unfortunately this pilot was brutally terminated by a satellite malfunction. CERN's World Wide Web, coupled with the popular Mosaic interface from NCSA, continued to grow dramatically in both the academic and commercial parts of the Internet. A reasonable estimate is that Web traffic grew by more than 300,000% in 1993. The web is its own best advertisement, so if neither Xmosaic nor Www is installed on your favourite computer, ask for them! Like most Internet sites in Europe, CERN has suffered in the second half of the year from uncertainties about the European Internet infrastructure to be expected in 1994. As late as December, CERN concluded an agreement with DANTE, the new non-profit operator of the Europanet IP service. CERN also expects to remain connected to the EBONE IP infrastructure at the beginning of 1994, and we will of course continue to operate leased line connections to a number of particle physics research institutes around the world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Sincoskie Honored mentioning that one of the IAB members, W. David Sincoskie, Bellcore, has been honored by elevation to IEEE Fellow for his contributions and innovations in fast packet switching, leading to the development of an international broadband information infrastructure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Errata of my article on ISOC newsletter Vol.2 No.3 I mentioned RFC1482 for ISO-2022-JP; the correct RFC is RFC1468. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet Index Compiled by Win Treese (treese@crl.dec.com) Annual rate of growth for Gopher traffic: 997% Annual rate of growth for World-Wide Web traffic: 341,634% Average time between new networks connecting to the Internet: 10 minutes Number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Internet during the first nine months of 1993: over 2300 Number of on-line coffeehouses in San Francisco: 18 Cost for four minutes of Internet time at those coffeehouses: $0.25 Date of first known Internet mail message sent by a head of state: 2 March 1993 (Sent by Bill Clinton, President of the United States) Date on which first Stephen King short story published via the Internet before print publication: 19 Sept 1993 Number of mail messages carried by IBM's Internet gateways in January, 1993: about 340,000 Number of mail messages carried by Digital's Internet gateways in June, 1993: over 700,000 Advertised network numbers in July, 1993: 13,293 Advertised network numbers in July, 1992: 5,739 Date after which more than half the registered networks were commercial: August, 1991 Number of Internet hosts in Norway, per 1000 population: 5 Number of Internet hosts in United States, per 1000 population: 4 Number of Internet hosts in July, 1993: 1,776,000 Round-trip time from Digital CRL to mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov in McMurdo, Antartica: 640 milliseconds Number of hops: 18 Number of USENET articles posted on a typical day in February, 1993: 350,000 Number of megabytes posted: 44 Number of users posting: 80,000 Number of sites represented: 25,000 Number of Silicon Valley real estate agencies advertising with Internet mail addresses: 1 Terabytes carried by the NSFnet backbone in February, 1993: 5 Number of countries reachable by electronic mail: 137 (approx.) Number of countries not reachable by electronic mail: 99 (approx.) Number of countries on the Internet: 60 Amount of time it takes for Supreme Court decisions to become available on the Internet: less than one day. Date of first National Public Radio program broadcast simultaneously on the Internet: 21 May 1993 Percent of Boardwatch Top 100 BBS systems with Internet Connectivity: 21 Number of people on the Internet who know you're a dog: 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GNET: an Archive and Electronic Journal Toward a Truly Global Network Larry Press Computer-mediated communication networks are growing rapidly, yet they are not truly global -- they are concentrated in affluent parts of North America, Western Europe, and parts of Asia. GNET is an archive/journal for documents pertaining to the effort to bring the net to lesser-developed nations and the poorer parts of developed nations. (Net access is better in many "third world" schools than in South-Central Los Angeles). GNET consists of two parts, an archive directory and a moderated discussion. Archived documents are available by anonymous ftp from the directory global_net at dhvx20.csudh.edu (155.135.1.1). To conserve bandwidth, the archive contains an abstract of each document, as well as the full document. (Those without ftp access can contact me for instructions on mail-based retrieval). In addition to the archive, there is a moderated GNET discussion list. The list is limited to discussion of the documents in the archive. It is hoped that document authors will follow this discussion, and update their documents accordingly. If this happens, the archive will become a dynamic journal. Monthly mailings will list new papers added to the archive. We wish broad participation, with papers from nuts-and-bolts to visionary. Suitable topics include, but are not restricted to: descriptions of networks and projects host and user hardware and software connection options and protocols current and proposed applications education using the global net user and system administrator training social, political or spriritual impact economic and environmental impact politics and funding free speech, security and privacy directories of people and resources To submit a document to the archive or subscribe to the moderated discussion list, use the address gnet_request@dhvx20.csudh.edu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evolution of a Homegrown Desire to Network: The Ugandan Experience by Charles Musisi The introduction of electronic mail to Uganda began in May 1992 as a spinoff from the International Development Research Centre's (IDRC) ESANET project for universities in East and Southern Africa. The original idea was to experiment with computer-based communication in the East and Southern African region by setting up nodes at leading universities in each of the participating countries: Nairobi University, Kenya; the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Makerere University - Kampala (MUKLA), Uganda; the University of Zambia; and the University of Zimbabwe. In Uganda, the ESANET project's mandate was promptly extended to include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and health-related organizations through NGOnet-Africa and HealthNet, two other IDRC-funded projects. Since the introduction of this service to the wider community, many NGOs, small businesses, government agencies, UN bodies, and other international relief, health, and development agencies have demonstrated serious interest in communicating via electronic mail. Achievements and Constraints Though the ESANET project focus was modest - to experiment with various computer-based communication modalities and to work out technical bugs associated with poor telephone lines, erratic management of the telephone long distance dialing system, and hardware and software problems - it has made a lasting contribution by introducing electronic mail communication to researchers and other users at the Makerere University campus. From its humble early days with just a handful of users, the node at MUKLA has evolved to a base of over 100 installed sites comprising over 400 users. Of these, about forty sites call into the node daily, so with an average of three users per site, we estimate that about 160 of our users communicate by e-mail every day. Most of the sites are around Kampala, but there are also a few in outlying areas such as Entebbe (15 sites), Jinja (two sites), Mbale (three sites), Mbarara (two sites), and Kabale (two sites). As of December 1993, solutions to most of the technical challenges have been worked out. MUKLA's FidoNet technology-based electronic mail system has reached a level of reliability surpassing that of fax machines. A cost analysis completed at the conclusion of the ESANET project clearly showed the appropriateness of Fidonet as an entry level technology and its suitability to Africa's difficult telephone infrastructure. During the ESANET experiments our FidoNet electronic mail system demonstrated a high degree of sustainability. It required only a modest initial investment and proved capable of recovering operational costs from the local user community. The system operator at MUKLA provides the user community with ongoing technical support services and user training. Users of the MUKLA system can send and receive internet messages and access internationally distributed electronic conferences on a wide range of topics and from a variety of sources. These include research-oriented conferences on green house gases whose distribution to researchers in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Senegal, the Gambia, Morocco, and Kenya is being supported through the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environment Facility Project. The MUKLA sysop has also setup and trained operators of e-mail systems at four Nairobi-based groups: FEMNET, Climate Network Africa, EcoNews Africa, and the Institute of Primate Research. Interest in using electronic mail is strong throughout the region, but technical capacity to meet this demand is severely constrained by the scarcity of funding to retain experienced personnel. To permit continued expansion of networking in the region, there is urgent need for a corps of regionally based experts who can advise on hardware and software problems as well as do the installations and train new users. Promotion and Expansion Although the MUKLA system was setup primarily to serve the Ugandan research community, we have collaborated with related initiatives to promote broader usage of network services. Among these are the UNESCO-supported Regional Informatics Network for Africa Project (RINAF); the INET '93 Developing Countries Workshop; the ComNet Commonwealth project, a network intended to link key government decision makers; and the forthcoming IDRC- supported Capacity and Infrastructure Building for Electronic Communication in Africa (CIBECA) project. A strategy for expanding electronic networking through 1994 and beyond is in place. This incorporates the CIBECA regional initiative as well as MUKLA's own homegrown expansion plan aimed at achieving full Internet connectivity for Uganda by the end of 1995 through a gradual step-by-step approach. Currently each of our upcountry installations must make long distance calls to the MUKLA node at Kampala. To improve efficiency and reduce costs, we need to establish satellite nodes in some of these places. An Entebbe node is planned under the expansion programme to service the enthusiastic user community there. Entebbe is the seat of a number of Ugandan government ministries, UN agencies, international organizations, and NGOs. Another node is planned for Kabale in the Southwestern part of Uganda. Kabale is well-placed to serve as an point of entry for spreading electronic networking throughout the Kagera River Basin, an area comprising the landlocked countries of Rwanda and Burundi, and some parts of Western Tanzania and Eastern Zaire. The rationale for this is a recently installed modern microwave-based telephone infrastructure that now connects the subregion. Our expansion strategy also seeks to improve on the institutional capacity of MUKLA and its future satellite nodes to effectively enhance communication both nationally and internationally by: (1) developing appropriate educational materials and training formats for end users; (2) providing technical assistance and training for system operators; and (3) facilitating communication via e-mail amongst users within the country and the region at large. We will continue to give a high priority to increasing the use of electronic mail for communications within Uganda, especially targeting further expansion among research institutions, NGOs, small businesses, cooperatives, government departments, and parastatal bodies. Organizations and individuals involved in health, relief, environment, and other development-related work will remain an important group for us. From a strong self-sustaining local base, we look forward to improving communication opportunities both nationally and regionally, and to integrating our growing Ugandan user community ever more closely with the global Internet. *Institute of Computer Science, Makerere University -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The IETF Secretariat by Steve Coya* The second part is the list of protocol actions and RFCs since my last report. This has been quite a year for the IETF. We began the year with IPNG candidate demonstrations in the terminal room at Columbus, status updates in Amsterdam, and the consolidation of SIP and PIP into a single effort by the November meeting. New members of the IESG and IAB, chosen for the first time by a selection committee, took office during the March meeting. The IESG established a special ad-hoc Area for all the IPNG related working groups, and by November the IPNG Directorate had been announced, along with a six month plan of action. We held the first IETF meeting outside of North America, and future non- North American meetings are being planned as I write this message. Multi-casting is no longer a "special" component but an integral part of the meetings themselves. At the first IETF meeting of the year, there were just under 350 avt recipients. This grew to just over 400 receiving host at the Amsterdam meeting. For the final meeting in Houston, the number of receiving sites grew to more than 600 in over 15 countries. The InterNIC launched services during the week of the first IETF meeting in 1993, and a presentation was given to the IETF by representatives from the three organizations comprising the InterNIC. Part of the presentation included remote participants who spoke to the IETF via the audio-video link. And the world has discovered the Internet. A significant number of books have appeared in bookstores, many articles are printed in the press, a cartoon appeared in the New Yorker Magazine (see the Amsterdam proceedings), and even Doonesbury has gotten into the act. More and more "mainstream" publications are carrying information on the Internet. More and more services are being offered and discussed. There are a number of new products (user interfaces) that are available to all Interneters; new tools and features are anticipated all the time, and are being worked on today. Capabilities we are only now beginning to conceptualize will probably be designed, implemented, distributed, and re- implemented (good ol' Version 2, eh?) by this time next year. Traditional concepts are being challenged and rethought as the general public moves into cyberspace. Consider electronic publication... this is/will be much more than merely having the articles and pictures, along with the cover and title pages, available on-line for electronic distribution or browsing. The entire concept of books will be re-examined as one considers the capabilities available today (and conceptualize what COULD be available tomorrow)... additional references, use of new technologies such as hypertext, knowbots, links to reference material and even more... two way communications! Just imagine an application where a ``reader'' can ask the author to elaborate on a concept, or clarify with additional examples, or even to submit additional queries. "May you live through interesting times" is an ancient Chinese curse. However, I am looking forward to more interesting times as new capabilities are provided and we improve our ability to perceive what cyberspace has to offer. *Executive Director -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) approved or recommended the following 27 actions between 1 October 1993 and 31 December 1993: o Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol as a Proposed Standard o Guidelines for Running OSPF Over Frame Relay Networks be published as an Informational RFC. o Multiprotocol Interconnect on X.25 and ISDN in the Packet Mode is now a Draft Standard. o Classical IP and ARP over ATM is a Proposed Standard. o Extensions to the Generic-Interface MIB is reclassified as Historic. o MOSPF: Analysis and Experience be published as an Informational RFC. o OSPF Version 2 is now a Draft Standard. o Multicast Extensions to OSPF is a Proposed Standard. o Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments is an Experimental Protocol. o The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is now a Draft Standard. o PPP in HDLC Framing is now a Draft Standard. o Common DNS Data File Configuration Error be published as an Informational RFC. o Common DNS Implementation Errors and Suggested Fixes. be published as an Informational RFC. o FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR) is an Experimental Protocol. o Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol be published as an Informational RFC. o FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly Asked "Primary and Secondary School Internet User" Questions be published as an Informational RFC. o Representing IP Information in the X.500 Directory is an Experimental Protocol. o DSA Metrics be published as an Informational RFC. o Telnet Environment Option is a Proposed Standard. o DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions is now a Draft Standard. o Telnet Environment Option Interoperability Issues be published as an Informational RFC. o Charting Networks in the X.500 Directory is an Experimental Protocol. o Network Services Monitoring MIB is a Proposed Standard. o Mail Monitoring MIB is a Proposed Standard. o X.500 Directory Monitoring MIB is a Proposed Standard. o PPP LCP Extensions is a Proposed Standard. o Evolution of the Interfaces Group of MIB-II is a Proposed Standard. o Essential Tools for the OSI Internet be published as an Informational RFC. Thirty-four Requests for Comments (RFC) were published between 1 October 1993 and 31 December 1993: RFC St Title ------- -- ------------------------------------- RFC1528 E Principles of Operation for the TPC.INT Subdomain: Remote Printing -- Technical Procedures RFC1529 I Principles of Operation for the TPC.INT Subdomain: Remote Printing -- Administrative Policies RFC1530 I Principles of Operation for the TPC.INT Subdomain: General Principles and Policy RFC1531 PS Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol RFC1532 PS Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap Protocol RFC1533 PS DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions RFC1534 PS Interoperation Between DHCP and BOOTP RFC1535 I A Security Problem and Proposed Correction With Widely Deployed DNS Software RFC1536 I Common DNS Implementation Errors and Suggested Fixes. RFC1537 I Common DNS Data File Configuration Error RFC1538 I Advanced SNA/IP : A Simple SNA Transport Protocol RFC1539 I The Tao of IETF - A Guide for New Attendees of the Internet Engineering Task Force RFC1540 S INTERNET OFFICIAL PROTOCOL STANDARDS RFC1541 PS Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol RFC1542 PS Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap Protocol RFC1543 I Instructions to RFC Authors RFC1544 PS The Content-MD5 Header Field RFC1545 E FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR) RFC1546 I Host Anycasting Service RFC1547 I Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol RFC1548 DS The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) RFC1549 DS PPP in HDLC Framing RFC1550 I IP: Next Generation (IPng) White Paper Solicitation RFC1551 I Novell IPX Over Various WAN Media (IPXWAN) RFC1552 PS The PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP) RFC1553 PS Compressing IPX Headers Over WAN Media (CIPX) RFC1554 I ISO-2022-JP-2: Multilingual Extension of ISO-2022-JP RFC1555 I Hebrew Character Encoding for Internet Messages RFC1556 I Handling of Bi-directional Texts in MIME RFC1557 I Korean Character Encoding for Internet Messages RFC1558 I A String Representation of LDAP Search Filters RFC1559 DS DECnet Phase IV MIB Extensions RFC1560 I The MultiProtocol Internet RFC1561 E Use of ISO CLNP in TUBA Environments Key to RFC Status: S Internet Standard PS Proposed Standard DS Draft Standard E Experimental I Informational -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Battle for Real Estate in the Global Village by Carl Malamud* After decades of visionaries talking about the future, people are realizing that the future is today. For 25 years, the Internet has been developing to the point where even industry pundits have realized that the global village is a reality. Why did Bell Atlantic pay billions of dollars for TCI? Why are QVC and Viacom battling for Paramount? Why is the Internet suddenly so hip? The answer to all these questions can be found in the buzzword of 1993, "convergence." Convergence is not about what is going to happen tomorrow, it is about what has happened under our eyes. The World Wide Web, Gopher, Wired Magazine, on-line presidential reports, and many other phenomena are just a few indications that we have reached the critical stage. Over the next few years, we will see every computer in the world gradually join this web of connectivity. THe question that is being asked by many, however, is whether the Internet is some temporary experiment that will go away. Now that the big boys are in the game, can we all go home and leave the question of networks to the professionals? The Internet is not going to go away when cable companies and telephone companies and movie studios join the digital world. Instead, the Internet will continue to spread, just as any fundamental infrastructure becomes more and more embedded in our daily lives. The Internet is an infrastructure, not a network. What has happened in 1993 is a realization that we have something real. The challenge for 1994 is to make sure that we protect what we have. The Internet is an internetwork, a joining together of the networks of the world into a global mesh, a matrix of connectivity. It is crucial that we don't loose sight of the importance of an internetwork. When we look at the spread of information that will happen over the next few years, it will be tempting to build little islands, isolated worlds of cable TV systems or video-on-demand over telephone systems or private networks for distribution of music. These isolated worlds have an important place: they are the networks that we will build and use over the next 20 years. What we don't want to loose sight of, however, is joining all those networks together. Even if I have the ultimate cable TV box in my home, I still want to be able to send messages to people in other islands. Even if the phone company provides the ultimate information service, there is always information available in other places. The Internet has a crucial role to play, and it is vital that we don't loose sight of the difference between the convergence of media in the home and the need for universal connectivity in an internetwork. Convergence is about newer and better local area networks: better ways of giving the consumer a nice, pleasant working environment. The Internet is about joining these islands together to build our global village. You can't do one without the other and our challenge in 1994 will be to do both. *Internet Multicasting Service -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRINGING COMMERCIAL INTERNET TO THE UK IN '93 (and '94) by D J Mooring* In the UK, 1993 was the year in which the Internet finally grew up. One year before, PIPEX (The Public IP Exchange) had been launched by its parent, the Unipalm group, into a market that didn't yet exist. As the UK's first real provider of commercial-quality Internet connections, its task was to put together a service that people could literally 'plug' into. Less than two years later, PIPEX has succeeded in building a commercial UK Internet more or less single-handed, with 75% of the UK market by volume and well over 80% by value. Before PIPEX, the number of UK commercial organisations with a serious direct connection to the Internet (ie, a digital leased line) could be counted on one hand. As 1993 closes, PIPEX has over 150 corporate customers connecting to the Internet via leased line, with virtually all of those taking KiloStream bandwidth (64kbps) or higher. Scores more are dialling into the PIPEX network, either directly (even from Switzerland and Ghana) or through resellers, who between them carry traffic for many more hundreds of customers. Unfortunately, an almost continuous flow of mainstream UK press coverage about the Internet has largely failed to convey a true impression of how it is being utilised, choosing instead to dwell on the figure of the lone, often anti-social, cybernerd as the archetypal Internet user. In fact (as even a glance at PIPEX's customer list will confirm) scores of blue-chip companies are now connected - banks, insurance companies, power generators, publishers, as well as big names from the worlds of electronics and manufacturing. Many of those are moving core applications across their links. Others are now seriously looking at the Internet as a more cost-effective medium for their VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) than any closed alternative. In addition to constructing an enviable, 'resiliant and redundant' UK backbone for its customers, with no single points of failure, PIPEX has this year branched out into Europe, where there has been a dearth of truly commercial providers. POPS have now been commissioned for France and Benelux. In 1994, availability for PIPEX-standard services across Europe will undoubtedly expand further. Throughout 1993 PIPEX has experienced sustained compound growth of 10% per month - that growth rate is expected to continue if not increase during 1994, making PIPEX probably the fastest-growing commercial provider in the industry. PIPEX was also the first provider to introduce an ISDN service (June 1993), and takeup of ISDN, both as a means of connection and as a backup option, will increase next year. Above all, the provision of products and services 'online' will become de rigeur in 1994. Publishers are already rushing to put their catalogues and many of their publications on the wire, as are the major credit-check and business information vendors. Players in the computer industry will have to look to put support and even software distribution online, in order to keep up with the Joneses. Despite media emphasis on the supposed consumer benefits of cheap and ubiquitous connectivity, it is the real benefits of low-cost connectivity for business that will cause the Internet to keep on growing in '94. [consider the following tacked, on the express condition that any re-communicated version that is not entirely verbatim is submitted first, in context, to PIPEX Limited att: for approval] *PIPEX Limited 216 The Science Park Cambridge CB4 4WA England -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Subject Matter Guides Available by Lou Rosenfeld I'm pleased to announce the availability of eleven new subject-specific guides to the Internet. These guides were created between September and December of this year by students enrolled in the course "Internet: Resource Discovery and Organization" at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies, taught by Prof. Joe Janes and myself. Students were instructed in Internet tool usage and resource discovery approaches with the goal of creating ASCII text guides identifying and evaluating the quality of the resources in specific subject areas. Some of these guides will be available as HTML documents as well. Titles and authors of these guides follow: * Aerospace Engineering: A Guide to Internet Resources Chris Poterala Dave Dalquist * Archives on the Internet (available 12/28) Nika Kayne Denise Anthony * Internet Guide to Book Discussions and Book Reviews Shannon Allen Gretchen Krug * Government Sources of Business and Economic Information Kim Tsang Terese Austin * A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet Toni Murphy Carol Briggs-Erickson * Film and Video Resources on the Internet Lisa Wood Kristen Garlock * Neurosciences Internet Resource Guide Sheryl Cormicle Steve Bonario * Personal Finance Resources on the Internet Abbot Chambers Catherine Kummer * Internet Guide to Popular Music Rolaant MacKenzie Vicki Coleman * Guide to Theater Resources on the Internet Deborah Torres Martha Vander Kolk * US Technology Public Policy Steve Kirk David Blair Unless otherwise mentioned, these guides are now available from the Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides. Jointly sponsored by the University Library and the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan, the Clearinghouse provides access to subject-oriented resource guides created by members of the Internet community. There are currently over 60 guides available via anonymous FTP, Gopher, and WorldWideWeb/Mosaic. Information on accessing the Clearinghouse follows: anonymous FTP: host: una.hh.lib.umich.edu path: /inetdirsstacks Gopher: gopher.lib.umich.edu menu: What's New and Featured Resources=>Clearinghouse... Gopher .link file: Name=Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides (UMich) Type=1 Port=70 Path=1/inetdirs Host=una.hh.lib.umich.edu Uniform Resource Locators (URL): http://http2.sils.umich.edu/~lou/chhome.html or gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu/11/inetdirs There is also descriptive information available about these projects available from the Clearinghouse. Other questions, suggestions, and comments regarding this course and the Clearinghouse are welcome. *School of Information and Library Studies University of Michigan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Latin America and Caribbean Whois Goes On-line by Xavier Baquero Last August at INET93, the Latin American network administrators met and decided to setup a Latin American WHOIS. - - - The project was asigned to ECUANET (Ecuador) and UNIRED (Chile). - - - The host in which the WHOIS SERVER is installed is WHOIS.LAC.NET (LAC stands for Latin America and Caribbean) - - - The server is at this time in Ecuador (aliasing ecua.net.ec host), but in february is going to be moved to Miami, Fl., in order to provide a better response time. The whois.lac.net server will serve more than 25 countries in latin america and the caribbean. *Vicepresident, EcuaNet (Quito, ECUADOR) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scientific Networking for Developing Countries by Wendy White Significant in 1993 -- the increased recognition that scientific communication must be international and that efforts must be expanded to include researchers from around the world in the "information highway." With this increased awareness comes a recognition that, in order to benefit from these changes, societies will need to improve the way they educate children and train adults to cope with the technologies. There is also a need to recognize that these technologies need to be disseminated equally and that they cannot remain in the hands of the elite. The Task Force that was designated by the U.S. White House to consider the National Information Infrastructure (NII) said it this way: "The benefits of the NII for the nation are immense. An advanced information infrastructure will enable U.S. firms to compete and win in the global economy, generating good jobs for the American people and economic growth for the nation. As importantly, the NII can transform the lives of the American people -- ameliorating the constraints of geography, disability and economic status -- giving all American a fair opportunity to go as far as their talents and ambitions will take them." This quote applies equally to people living in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but, according to Mike Holderness (New Scientist, 8 May 1993, pp 36-40): "As we enter the age of global electronic communication, more than half the world's population has no access even to the phone network that is the basis of the new information networks. Global division -- between the "information- rich" and the "information-poor" is now more sharply defined than ever." Significant for 1994? This gap cannot be allowed to increase. Policy makers in developing countries will join this debate and become a part of the global information highway. They cannot afford to have their countries left behind so they will join their colleagues in Europe and North America in discussing issues related to access to the technology. They will also join the debate about issues related to the application of the technology. They will establish an indigenous research capacity that is built upon a strong informational base and that will, in turn, create, modify, interpret, and disseminate scientific and technical information. In this new information age, communication and information generation and management are so intrinsic to the scientific endeavor that they cannot be ignored. There is no reason to discount the potential existing now in all countries to exploit information technologies and to use these to increase productivity, to guide decision making, and to allow scientists to interact with the international community. Low-cost, interim technologies, such as Fidonet, will continue to prove effective in international, scientific, business, educational, and government institutions. Scientists and information professionals will learn valuable lessons about which information technologies work best in which settings. These leaders will build an experiential base that will be useful as the information sector develops and as scientists make more and more demands for high-quality and timely information resources. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1993, the Internet gains momentum by Erik Huizer (SURFnet BV)" In the history of the ever changing and developing Internet, it is hard to point out significant years, but I'd like to think 1993 was one of those. In 1993 the Internet gained momentum in various ways: Internationalization; Of course the Internet has been an international network from it's conception, but the real internationalization of the Internet was a gradual process of many years. In 1993 the growth of the Internet was keeping its usual rate of doubling roughly every year. However in 1993 the growth outside of the USA was more significant than that inside of the USA. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) the technical forum, that develops the standards for the Internet met for the first time outside of North America in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For the first time 50% of the participants was from outside of the USA. Commercialization; While commercial networks have been around for along time, 1993 was the year where the commercialization became really significant. The Internet changed from a network that exists mostly of academic and reserach networks into one where commercial organizations own the largest part of the Internet address space. Several countries now have multiple commercial Internet providers. Application and service orientation; While infrastructure (copper, glass, ip-connectivity and routing) was (and still is) the aspect that gets most of the attention in the development of the Internet, 1993 showed that there is a shift of interest towards applications and services. In 1993 tools like Gopher (University of Minestota) and World Wide Web (CERN) have conquered the user that wants to roam the sheer endless source of Information called Internet. More and more developers and service providers have caught on to the fact that we need to provide well supported services and sophisticated applications with simpele interfaces to the increasing amount of users that use the Internet as a day to day tool. User support and training; With the masses of new Internet users coming on to the network every day, user support, user documentation and training have had to evolve significantly. Thanks to the IETF User Services Area and especially the RARE Working Group on Information Services and User Support (ISUS) this gets the attention and coordination it deserves. Furthermore various professional publications for newcomers to the Internet can now be bought in the local bookshop. All of these developments are for the good of the Internet, and we will see these developments continue to keep up their momentum through 1994 and after. Undoubtedly, one year from now there will be other areas to add to this list, while the Internet develops more and more into an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to communicate or access information. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NETWORKING IN BRAZIL 93 / 94 by Eduardo Tadao Takahashi* Ninety-three was a year of transition to adulthood for the Brazilian Research Network (RNP). On the technical, concrete side, our backbone at 9-6-64Kbps operated without surmounting problems, in spite of the heavy demand, and the number of connected institutions reached almost twice as many as we expected in our most optimistic predictions. The backbone covers today 22 states of the country, out of 26); and the remaining four (which are in the Amazon) are expected to be connected in 1994. Two Regional Centers were put in operation, one in San Paulo and a second one in Brasilia, setting in motion a decentralization process which RNP means to further accelerate in 1994. A Center for Informatics Resources in Molecular Biology was set up in Brasilia under the umbrella of the Ministry of Agriculture, in cooperation with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). On the political front, the year was marked by two major activities: first, Phase II of the RNP Initiative was planned in detail, and means and resources were sought with overall success second, critical steps were taken in order to provide for specific legislation to support (non-commercial) networking activities in Brazil. The New Distance Education Act 1994 begins under the impact of a newly issued Act by the Presidency of Brazil. For three years, starting on 8 Dec. 1993, the Act provides a special tariff for communications services used by any national project in Distance Education where networking is expected to play a crucial role. This covers our Brazilian Research Network - RNP. The special tariff is 10% of the normal cost! This is a breakthrough for academic networking in Brazil. Much ground has yet to be covered in order to evolve from the political decision already taken to daily impact. However, one cannot overstate the importance of the Act, which squarely tackles the major obstacle preventing further dissemination of networking in Brazil (and in Latin America in general): costs, costs, costs! As the immediate consequence, RNP is striving to put in place the so-called Backbone - Phase II, which will have trunk links at 2 Mbit/s covering six cities in the country in July 94. Complementary initiatives for 94 include: - the installation of three more Regional Centers; - the coverage of Amazon states by a VSAT-backbone; - the organization of a number of specialized Centers/Nuclei in areas such as Multimedia, Sustainable Development, and Public Administration; - the launching of a large experiment in Distance Education, involving secondary schools in 5 cities in the country; and - the access to High-performance Computing Centers and Data Base Services in Brazil and abroad. It is of course not certain that RNP will be able to achieve the larger part of these goals in 94. However, the mere fact that, amid the political turmoil within which Brazil has lived for years, we can state such objectives is a motive for contentment. * Director, Brazilian Research Network (RNP) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Technology by Craig Partridge A columnist in a local newspaper opined recently that past year retrospectives are an excuse for columnists to take an issue off. Perhaps so, but writing a gigabit networking retrospective on the year actually took some effort because there was no defining event in 1993 that really changed high speed networking. Rather, it was a year of many small accomplishments. First, on the link level technologies front, considerable progress has been made. The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) standards reached an important level of maturity when the ATM Forum issued version 3.0 of their ATM specs (as a book from Prentice Hall). Furthermore, several US carriers announced tariffs for ATM/OC-3 (155 Mb/s) service and, for research purposes, OC-12 (622 Mb/s) is apparently available. And, fiber optic experts at Bellcore have started to talk about the need to deploy OC-192 (about 10 Gb/s) in the near future. The High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI) also firmly established its role as the commodity high-end (800 Mbit/s) local-area network. By this fall, most major computer vendors offered a HIPPI interface for their systems. The result is that, via HIPPI, you can attach your EISA-bus PC to your Cray at 800 Mbit/s. While attaching the PC may seem silly, the expected widespread availability of PCI bus products in 1994 may make this scenario perfectly reasonable. (Informal reports are that the PCI bus offers sustained gigabit transfer rates). Second, from the perspective of connecting hosts, the exciting news was the development of the HP Afterburner network interface. A memory mapped network interface, the Afterburner validated Van Jacobson's 1990 arguments that simple memory mapped interfaces could support high performance by demonstrating over 200 Mbit/s TCP/IP throughput on a HP workstation. By late 1993 the Afterburner, which started the year as a research effort, was a product. Now that inexpensive hosts are capable of high speeds, routers will not be far behind. Third, in optical networking, the major news was that some US long lines carriers are starting to replace electrical-optical repeaters on some lines with optical amplifiers. Two advantages of optical amplifiers are that they substantially ease the upgrading of a fiber's transmission rate and they don't impose special framing requirements on the fiber's transmission scheme. Both degrees of flexibility will be important as telephone infrastructure upgrades to higher bandwidths. Finally, information about high speed networks became even more available. The Journal of High Speed Networking finished a strong first year of publication. High speed networking conferences sprouted like weeds. There are two IFIP conferences, a US Government sponsored conference, and a USENIX conference on high-speed networking all scheduled for 1994. And we're beginning to see books: Paul Green's, Fiber Optic Networking, Martin DePrycker's Asynchronous Transfer Mode, and my Gigabit Networking, all appeared in 1993. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------