/nsfnet/linkletter/linkletter.9105-06 Vol. 4 No. 2 May/June 1991 L I N K L E T T E R The Merit/NSFNET Backbone Project FIRST PURE OSI EXCHANGE BETWEEN NSFNET REGIONALS Two end systems connected to two mid-level networks exchanged files using pure Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) stacks on April 9 and 10, 1991. This marked the first successful exchange of OSI traffic using production software and hardware over the NSFNET. Previous demonstrations illustrating compliance with the Government's Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) used experimental software and equipment. Merit-MichNet-NSFNET-AlterNet-MITRE The T1 NSFNET has been capable of routing Connectionless Network Protocol (CLNP) traffic since August 1990. Network engineers and software engineers at Merit and MITRE were able to use that capability to exchange files between their two end sites. The files went from a Sun SPARC station running SunNet OSI 7.0 at Merit's location in Ann Arbor, MI through MichNet, across the NSFNET to AlterNet and finally to MITRE in McLean, VA. MichNet routed the files as packets through NSFNET using the Nodal Switching Subsystem (NSS) developed by IBM. Files were moved from MITRE to Merit using the same paths. Production routers AlterNet and MITRE both used production routers from cisco Systems using the CLNS Service (software Version 8.2) by cisco. The end system at MITRE was a Sun 3/60 running SunNet OSI 7.0. The protocol stack used CLNP for the network layer and FTAM for the application layer. Merit Internet engineers involved in the project extend thanks to Sun Microsystems for making available a beta-test version of the SunNet software during early trials and to cisco Systems for the loan of a cisco router for early testing. However, the software used in the exchange described was the production version. Key players Key players in the participating organizations included Walt Lazear and Mike SaintCross at MITRE, Andrew Parton at AlterNet, Paulina Knibbe at cisco Systems, plus a number of behind-the-scenes players at these three organizations, as well as Mark Knopper and Sue Hares of Merit. Further information about Merit's work on OSI on the NSFNET can be obtained from Sue Hares, skh@merit.edu, and in future issues of the Link Letter. MERIT/NSFNET INFORMATION SERVICES CONCLUDES SUCCESSFUL SEMINAR On May 20 and 21, Ann Arbor, MI was the site of Merit's "Making Your NSFNET Connection Count" seminar. Presented by Merit/NSFNET staff and national and regional networking experts, the seminar continued Merit's outreach to representatives of diverse computing facilities which would benefit from a national network initiative. More than 80 educators, researchers, librarians, and administrators attended the conference which urged them to use available NSFNET connections to foster education and research. As a part of Merit's commitment to providing access to and information on national networking, a number of participants attended on scholarships. What? Who? How? Why? In his opening address, Paul Evan Peters, Director, Coalition for Networked Information, posed several questions: What benefits can be achieved by the network? Who will experience these benefits when using what resources? How will these benefits be secured and routinized as soon as possible? Why will these benefits contribute to the quality of life and inspiration or intellect? K-12, libraries, NASA image data Paul Peters' insightful questions were followed by a thorough overview of national networking by Susan Calcari of the Merit/NSFNET Information Services group. Subsequent presentations described worldwide foreign policy/foreign language networking simulations, the Inter-School Communications project, accessing national library resources, and K-12 Free Educational Mail (FrEdMail). Jim Knighton of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-NASA provided outstanding visual aids in his discussion of accessing NASA image data from one's desktop. Day one was rounded out by two presentations featuring Dale Johnson and John Labbe of the Merit Network Operations Center and a tour of the NOC. National Networking Perspectives Day two, "national networking perspectives," opened with a down-to- earth discussion of Internet technology and protocols by Dave Katz of the Merit/NSFNET Internet Engineering group. Presentations regarding fiber optic backbones and regional networks were also included in day two's activities. Current NREN legislation Mike Roberts, Vice President, Networking, EDUCOM, provided an outstanding review of the current National Research and Education Network (NREN) legislation. In his closing address, Douglas E. Van Houweling, Vice-Provost for Information Technology at the University of Michigan, spoke to the participants about the opportunity that high-speed networking offers both educators and researchers. In education, a national network would provide access to a wider range of information, research results and data, Van Houweling says, citing as examples electronic publishing, joint authoring, education through computer conferencing, library data bases, and increased collaboration between researchers at universities and at industrial laboratories. If you are interested in attending future Merit networking seminars, send a message to NSFNET-info@merit.edu or watch the Link Letter for announcements. Laura Kelleher, Merit/NSFNET FrEdMail USERS GAIN ACCESS TO THE INTERNET Recently, thousands of FrEdMail users gained access to the NSFNET via newly established gateways at two NSFNET mid-level network locations: Merit/MichNet in Ann Arbor, MI, and CERFnet (California Education and Research Federation Network) in San Diego, CA. FrEdMail subscribers can now exchange electronic mail with the entire Internet community, including the large number of K-12 teachers currently attached to NSFNET. The Free Educational Mail (FrEdMail) Network is a dynamic, grass-roots telecommunications network which links K-12 schools, students and educators around the world. The network consists of approximately 150 electronic bulletin boards, each representing a node on the network. FrEdMail was initiated by Al Rogers when he was a Computer Specialist for the San Diego County Schools. Rogers is now Executive Director of the FrEdMail Foundation, a California non-profit corporation, owned and operated by educators who provide all the services for the FrEdMail Network. NSFNET access reduces costs In the past, FrEdMail files were exchanged between nodes by using the store-and-forward method of dialing up a nearby node when telephone rates were low and then exchanging the files. An advantage of the new FrEdMail-NSFNET gateways will be to use the NSFNET infrastructure for these connections, eliminating the long-distance phone charges for file transfers between nodes. No membership fees The end-users of the network, teachers and administrators, pay no membership dues or system charges to access FrEdMail, send e-mail, or participate in projects and activities. The only cost to the end-user is the telephone connect charge to the nearest FrEdMail node. With the advent of the FrEdMail-NSFNET Gateway Software, costs may be further reduced by reaching a FrEdMail node through an NSFNET regional network. The FrEdMail-NSFNET Gateway Software will soon be available to any mid-level network, college, or university which has an interest in collaborating with local K-12 school districts to bring the power of electronic networking to a cross-section of teachers and students. "Colleges and universities which use this gateway can provide their local districts with electronic services without having to bear the burden of maintaining a large number of individual accounts," reports Rogers. "One gateway account can effectively serve hundreds of teachers and students." Through FrEdMail, teachers can share classroom experiences, distribute curriculum ideas and teaching materials, as well as obtain information about workshops, job opportunities, and legislation affecting education. Motivates students to become better writers FrEdMail activities are used in the classroom to motivate students to become better learners and writers. Students at all levels in schools around the world may take part in collaborative projects such as data collection, sharing, analysis, and joint authoring efforts. Their participation in these projects promotes geographical, cultural, and sociopolitical understanding. FrEdMail has been so successful that it has influenced the development of commercial services such as the McGraw-Hill Information Exchange (MIX) and the AT&T Long Distance Learning Network. "The National Research and Education Network (NREN) is pushing the development of gigabit speeds for academia and industry and, at the same time, pulling all levels of education towards the inherent benefits of connectivity to the national infrastructure," noted Stephen Wolff, Director of NSF's Division on Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure. Wolff continued, "The NSF is committed to improving the performance of students in math and science. The development of this gateway will facilitate a national network of academic computing hubs that will act as local file servers to their regional K-12 FrEdMail sites via existing facilities and transportation networks." The FrEdMail-NSFNET Gateway Software project was developed by CERFnet with the assistance of a grant from the National Science Foundation. -Susan Calcari, Merit/NSFNET NEW ANS SERVICE WILL PROVIDE COMMERCIAL ACCESS TO INTERNET On June 6, 1991, Advanced Network and Services, Inc.(ANS) announced a new service that will help broaden commercial access to the Internet. Eric Aupperle, President of Merit, Inc., commented: "I am delighted with the opportunity for commercial access that ANS has announced. I believe that it will be an important contribution to the furtherance of the work of educators, librarians, scientists and students by providing wider access to essential information sources." The text of the news release follows: ELMSFORD, N.Y., June 6, 1991 - ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc., today announced CO+RE Service*, a new service that will allow commercial as well as research and education users to interconnect to the Internet through the ANS high speed computer networks. ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc. is a newly formed taxable subsidiary of Advanced Network & Services, Inc. "The new CO+RE Service will enable the private sector and the research and education community to interconnect with fewer restrictions via existing computer networks. This will help technology transfer, enhance productivity and promote the exchange of ideas across many disciplines," said Allan H. Weis, President and CEO of ANS. To ensure the broad connectivity required to make the new service a success, a series of agreements are being entered into with other network service providers and private organizations. CO+RE Service's objectives are to expand connectivity, broaden access, and make the Internet a more useful and productive tool. Revenues from the provision of CO+RE Service, after covering associated expenses, will be used to enrich national networking infrastructure. "The new service will not only enrich the network resources accessible to the research and education communities the National Science Foundation is charged to support, but will enable all network users to benefit from the infrastructure enhancements and accompanying economies of scale," said Steve Wolff, Director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Networking Communications Research and Infrastructure (DNCRI). By broadening access to the Internet, CO+RE Service will further ANS's efforts to complement and support the concepts proposed in the National Research and Education Network (NREN) put forward by the Administration and Congress as a part of the High Performance Computing and Communications Program. The Internet is a collection of interconnected networks which serves research and education institutions and federal agencies. "By strengthening and improving the ability of American business and industry to move information and to communicate, we strengthen and improve our economy," said Sen. Al Gore, D-TN, author of the High Performance Computing Act that would create a national high speed computer network, "Just as local roads provided invaluable access to the interstate highways, this new service will provide invaluable access to the Internet and eventually to the new national network. And, the national network will further encourage development of private networks connecting computer users in every sector of the economy. Investments by the federal and state governments will be made even more valuable." CO+RE Service is the result of several months of detailed work between ANS and many of the midlevel networks. "Without this service, researchers and educators had to use many different networks to reach the resources they needed to solve problems," said William Yundt, Executive Director of the Bay Area Regional Research Network (BARRNet). "A biochemist might need to call one number using a modem to search chemical abstracts, use a local college network to reach the university's library catalog and use a third network to get to databases on the human genome. With expanded commercial providers on the Internet, a single common network will increase that researcher's ability to find any information needed and focus on the research task at hand." ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc. is a wholly owned taxable subsidiary of Advanced Network & Services, Inc. (ANS), a not-for-profit corporation. ANS provides computer network services to expand the interchange of information technology resources among academic, government and private sector users. ANS manages and operates the ANS network, a national computer network used by researchers, educators and staff in universities, federal laboratories and the private sector. ANS was formed in 1990 by the IBM Corporation, MCI Communications Corporation and Merit Network, Inc. to help advance research and education. For more information, contact: Kristin Mortensen (914) 789-5304. *CO+RE is a service mark of ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc. COALITION FOR NETWORKED INFORMATION WORKING GROUP MEETS AT STANFORD The inviting campus of Stanford University was the site of a recent Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) meeting titled, "Developing a Framework for Network Directories and Related Services." The meeting was facilitated by George Brett and Peggy Seiden, Co-leaders of the CNI working group on directories and resource information services, and hosted by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). Develop a consensus for near-term action The primary goal of the June 3-4 event was to develop a consensus among participants for a near-term action agenda by which to develop and coordinate directory solutions for the Internet and future NREN. Attendees included leaders in networked information and representatives from the library community, regional networks, various universities, national organizations, and the private sector who influence the shape of the policies. George Brett opened the meeting by stating its goals as follows: to gather together in person and in one place as many of the stakeholders' in this area as possible, to explore the possibilities of commonalities that can be leveraged to make good things happen, and to determine what role CNI has in all this. Brett remarked that the problem facing society today is an inversion of the "Tragedy of the Commons" which refers to limited resources that are consumed by the masses without thought for future needs: "Inversion reflects the notion that we are beginning to 'drown' under an avalanche of raw data." Brett suggested a solution of working together to share ideas, processes, and products. Technology status Speakers Clifford Lynch, University of California, Office of the President; Brewster Kahle, Thinking Machines Corporation; Mike Schwartz, University of Colorado, Boulder; and David Ely, Corporation for National Research Initiatives, provided an excellent overview of current and emerging network technologies. Their presentations included discussions of the need for a directory structure, the difficulty of database creation, the dilemma in creating a standard versus waiting for an approved standard, the challenge of meeting users' needs, and the task of scaling this directory for the Internet community of at least 5 million users. Focus moves to the users The focus of the meeting then shifted from the technology to the users. Glee Harrah Cady of Merit facilitated this portion by reminding the participants that when making assumptions about what resources are involved in directories they should "not forget the people as a resource." Ann Bishop of Syracuse University and William Moen of the Library of Congress then discussed ways to meet users' needs. Prosser Gifford, also of the Library of Congress, led a discussion that focused on locating information resources for science and technology. The first day of the meeting concluded with a tour of the RLG headquarters in Mountain View and demonstrations of RLG's ARIEL project of scanned images sent via telecommunications to an MS-DOS microcomputer for printing on a 300 dots per inch laser printer. Brewster Kahle also demonstrated Thinking Machines Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS). Information gathering strategies The second day opened with a discussion of information-gathering strategies facilitated by Peggy Seiden. Karen Roubicek of BBN Systems and Technologies Corp. gave a thought-provoking presentation about the Internet Resource Guide, where she raised the question of using a carrot rather than a stick to get information from users to include in a directory. Laura Kelleher of Merit gave a presentation on the MichNet approach to collecting network information which focuses on the user, not the resource. Clifford Lynch of the University of California then discussed a directory designed to serve the UC system and Tim Lynch of Cornell University presented a directory system that is being used at Cornell's Mann Library. Determining directory data elements A portion of the afternoon was spent in small groups discussing questions prepared by Steve Cisler of Apple. Group participants subsequently agreed to form a CNI data elements working group to determine directory data elements. The working group expects to issue a Request For Comment (RFC) and publish articles in several journals to gain input from the Internet community. It was agreed that whatever CNI does must be extensible to other directories and projects. It was also agreed that these working groups should attempt a rapid implementation of a pilot directory and not wait for all of the standards to be approved. The participants feel that more collaboration will be via the CNI directories, listserve and electronic mail. In general, the participants felt that the meeting was a success and returned home with a renewed sense of commitment to working together to produce a common directory. -- Laura Kelleher, Merit/NSFNET NSFNET T3 NETWORK COMING SOON TO A SITE NEAR YOU The ramp-up of NSFNET's new T3 network is well underway with seven network end nodes at Ann Arbor, MI; Boston, MA; Ithaca, NY; Palo Alto, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; San Diego, CA; and Urbana-Champaign, IL now operational. Due to a moratorium on construction at the Argonne, IL site, completion of the last of the original eight installations was delayed. It is now anticipated that hardware and circuit installations for the eighth end node at the National Laboratory in Argonne, IL will be completed June 24. Eight sites to be added The NSFNET partnership which includes the National Science Foundation (NSF), Merit, Advanced Network & Services (ANS), IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan, has also announced a schedule for upgrading the eight remaining T1 network sites to full T3 capacity. "The current T3 project has grown substantially since our initial planning, and we are delighted to be in the position of extending this increased capacity to more users," said Eric M. Aupperle, President of Merit Network, Inc. and Principal Investigator for the NSFNET project. The plan calls for work to begin at the end of June to add Atlanta, GA; Boulder, CO; College Park, MD; Houston, TX; Lincoln, NE; Princeton, NJ; Salt Lake City, UT; and Seattle, WA to the T3 network. Upon completion later this year, the NSFNET, which currently links over 2,800 university, industry and government research networks, will be providing T3 service to all of its connected networks. Initially, all of the original 14 T1 sites will continue to be connected to both the T1 and T3 infrastructures. The T1 and T3 networks are independent. Each has its own Internal Gateway Protocol (IGP) and they share reachability information via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Second interconnect added Since the T1 and T3 infrastructures are independent administrative domains, they exchange reachability information at an interconnection at the Ann Arbor, MI node. A second interconnection point between the two networks is planned at the San Diego, CA node. This second interconnection will provide redundancy and the capability to balance traffic between the two interconnection points. The San Diego interconnection is expected to be in place and operational by the end of June. Interconnection routing The current routing scheme between the two networks prefers the internal over the external path. Normally, the interconnection between the two networks is used only if the source and destination networks are not both known to the same network. For instance, if Network "A" is only known to the T3 and Network "B" is only known to the T1, traffic between those networks will reach each other by traversing the interconnection point. However, if Network "A" is connected to both the T1 and the T3, it then has the choice of using either the T1 or T3 networks to reach its destination. Individual needs of a regional network will be reviewed by its technical representatives and Merit Internet Engineering staff on a case-by-case basis if the T3 path for all traffic or some other routing plan is preferred. Minimal disruption anticipated The installation of additional core nodes and circuits to the T3 infrastructure for the eight remaining T1 upgrades may cause some amount of service disruption to existing T3 sites. However, extensive consultation by the partnership has resulted in a plan to minimize the adverse impact on the use of the current T3 network. Phased deployment of core and end nodes This scheme calls for a phased deployment of the new core nodes and end nodes. The original T3 network design was comprised of eight core nodes and eight end nodes. In addition to adding eight additional end nodes, the network topology will be redesigned to have five additional core nodes which will greatly enhance the current topology. Work on the new topology was scheduled to begin in mid-June. The deployment has been planned to make use of the redundancy in the network so that the loss of service to any end node will be minimized. Sites will be contacted with more detailed information regarding this deployment. Evolutionary state of FDDI a factor As with all new technologies, some problems have arisen in the initial stages of the T3 deployment. Unlike the T1 infrastructure, which exchanges information with the regional sites solely via a shared Ethernet, the T3 technology also supports a Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI). Several sites have deployed FDDI and in such configurations the Exterior Nodal Switching Subsystem (ENSS) communicates with a variety of different vendors' routers via the ring. Since all FDDI implementations are in their infancy, the deployment of the T3 infrastructure has been complicated by the current evolutionary nature of FDDI software and by interoperability issues. Routing complexities While there has been significant growth in the amount of traffic traversing the T3 infrastructure, many sites have delayed migrating to the T3 due to the routing complexities presented by having multiple connections to the Internet. Some regional technical representatives with the support of the Merit/NSFNET staff have spent a great deal of time redesigning routing for their regionals. For instance, CICnet has three access points to the T3 infrastructure and two access points to the T1. In order to provide a sane routing environment to all the clients of the NSFNET, the technical representatives of the regionals and the NSFNET have examined the implications of various routing scenarios to develop a plan which will meet the routing requirements of each regional. Expanding connectivity and service Full production routing on the deployed T3 network nodes is resulting in expanded use of the network. Packet traffic is increasing daily, and new networks are being configured in congruence with the resolution of routing issues at individual sites. Later in 1991 the partnership plans to deploy enhanced technology with significant performance enhancements. T1 network decommissioning The partnership is planning to dismantle the existing T1 network upon completion and testing of all T3 installations. The plans are contingent on confirming the integrity of redundant connectivity to all T3 nodes. "We hope to have the NSFNET T3 infrastructure in place later this year as a fully operational 16-node network," said Aupperle. - Ken Horning, Merit/NSFNET X.500-CRAZY ... LIKE A FOX! The "global network directory" defined by the X.500 protocol has spawned a number of interesting projects across the Internet. One of these is the Field Operational X.500 (FOX) project which is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Four organizations comprise the nucleus of this endeavor: University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute (ISI) which is the main contractor and coordinator of the project, SRI International (SRI), Performance Systems International (PSI), and Merit Network, Inc. (Merit). Features X.500 is a protocol which resides in the Application Layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol suite and defines a global network directory. It is a distributed, hierarchically-structured directory which features: Decentralized maintenance. Each site that runs such a directory is responsible only for its local part, which makes it possible for directory updates and maintenance to be accomplished instantly. Authoritative local information. Since each site is responsible for its local information, data are kept current and accurate, with backups needed only to be kept locally. Structured directory information. Because each site resides in a specified location in the global hierarchy, directory searches are much more efficient. How It Works The abstract X.500 server contains two pieces, a Directory User Agent (DUA) and a Directory Service Agent (DSA). The worldwide collection of DSAs form a vast distributed directory. Because the DSAs are hierarchically ordered, each one may contact all the others without maintaining huge location tables. The Directory User Agent acts as an interface between the user and the DSAs. When a user makes a request to a Directory User Agent it contacts the nearest Directory Service Agent. If that DSA does not have the desired information, but suspects that another DSA may have it, a referral/chaining process is initiated to allow the information to be obtained from the other DSA(s). To the user, however, it appears as if the entire global directory resides locally. Infrastructure FOX plans to examine and test the interoperability of the Quipu and Custos (NIST-X.500) implementations, and Digital Network Architecture Naming Service (DNANS-X.500) if possible. Additionally, FOX will explore X.500 interfaces to conventional database systems and X window- based user interfaces. Applications A long-range goal is to facilitate the use of X.500 for real Internet applications. FOX will first focus on making network infrastructure information available through X.500. This includes network and autonomous system site contacts, topology information, and the NIC WHOIS service. X.500 version of "whois" A centrally-managed X.500 version will be the first phase of a WHOIS service. The main focus is how to offer WHOIS information via X.500. PSI has populated "@o=Internet" (organization=Internet) of the White Pages Pilot with RFC and FYI information. K-12 and NIC information Merit is providing "network infrastructure information" made available through the Merit/NSFNET Network Operations Center (NOC). Merit is also working with the IETF/Network Information Services Infrastructure working group to provide information about Network Information Centers, with EDUCOM to provide information about K-12 resources and also to provide Network Service Access Points or OSI network layer addresses. Bibliographic retrieval of RFCs/FYIs PSI is involved in the development of a bibliographic retrieval application which will initially be used to look up RFCs and FYIs. In order to avoid conflict with existing procedures/policies for WHOIS registration and advertisement of this information via WHOIS, part of the Directory Information Tree (DIT) will contain RFC/FYI data. For each document, title, publication date, author and storage location will appear. This part of the DIT will be freely distributed to several Directory System Agents and will be updated regularly. For example, a program called "barney" will accept queries such as: find all the rfcs by reynolds which will produce information on all RFCs with reynolds as the author will be returned. In addition, one can tell "barney" to obtain a copy of the desired document and it will use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to retrieve a copy. X.500 version of "whois" SRI has begun work on identifying the Internet-related information that will be copied from the old database to X.500 and on defining how that information will be represented in the Directory. Providing an X.500 version of such a well-known widely-used service will help promote the use of the new standard by Internet users. In addition, this effort provides experience in designing X.500 applications. However, the manageability of this scheme will be short-lived as the next step will be a design for a distributed version of WHOIS. For those readers interested in following the FOX project and other X.500 activities more closely, two mailing lists are suggested: disi- request@merit.edu and osi-ds@cs.ucl.ac.uk. -Pat Smith, Merit/NSFNET Joyce Reynolds, ISI