<NIS.NSF.NET> [IMR] IMR86-08.TXT
 
 
 
 
 
AUGUST 1986
 
INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS
------------------------
 
The purpose of these reports is to communicate to the Internet Research
Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by
the task forces and contractors in the ARPA Internet Research Program.
 
   This report is for research use only, and is not for public
   distribution.
 
Each task force and contractor is expected to submit a 1/2 page report
on the first business day of the month describing the previous month's
activities.  These reports should be submitted via ARPANET mail to
Westine@B.ISI.EDU.
 
Reports are requested from BBN, ISI, LL, MIT-LCS, NTA, SRI, UCL, and
UDEL.
 
Other groups are invited to report newsworthy events or issues.
 
BBN LABORATORIES AND BBN COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION
---------------------------------------------------
 
   WIDEBAND NETWORK
 
   On August 4, a new BSAT/ESI-B installation was performed at DCEC in
   Reston, VA.  With that installation the BSAT-based Wideband Network
   has grown to a total of nine operational sites.  The eighth
   operational Wideband Butterfly Gateway was installed the following
   day, connecting a local ethernet at DARPA in Arlington, VA to the
   Wideband Network via the DCEC BSAT.  The gateway's Wideband Network
   connection is supported by a 1.5 Mb/s T1 phone link running between
   DARPA and DCEC.  Multiplexers at either end of the T1 line will also
 
 
 
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   provide a connection between the DCEC BSAT and a Voice Funnel machine
   to be installed at DARPA at a future date.
 
   On August 14, the Wideband Network provided the high-bandwidth data
   service required to conduct an all-day, cross-country Internet
   Activities Board video conference/meeting. The conference, conducted
   at BBN in Cambridge, MA, and at ISI in Marina del Rey, CA,
   represented the longest such continuous use of the Wideband Network
   to date.  The conference was supported by ISI's packet video system,
   BBN's Voice Funnel system, Butterfly Internet Gateway, and the
   Diamond Multimedia Conferencing system in addition to the Wideband
   Network.
 
   The BSAT machines at both CMU and M/A-COM Linkabit were upgraded to
   consist exclusively of 1-Mbyte Butterfly processor nodes.  All of the
   BSATs have now been so upgraded.
 
   Two new features that should prove useful for Wideband Network
   operations and maintenance have been implemented in the BSAT
   software.  The first feature permits control of any arbitrary set of
   remote BSATs to be exercised from any local BSAT console.  The second
   feature provides a built-in BSAT satellite channel bit error rate
   testing facility.  These features will be included in the next BSAT
   software release.
 
   GATEWAYS
 
   The major event of the month was the installation of a new software
   release (Rel. 3.2) into the Satnet Butterfly Gateways.  The new
   software is now running at NTA, CNUCE, CSS, and UCL.  First reports
   are that it is much more reliable and allows mail, ftp, and telnet to
   flow.  The next step, after it is stable at UCL for a few weeks, is
   to reconnect the UCL Butterfly Gateway back to Satnet.
 
   SATNET
 
   The performance of the SIMPs remained stable.  There appear to be
   some problems with channel 1 (errors and some lost hellos).  However
   until we obtain spare modems from Linkabit, we have decided to
   refrain from attempting any repairs.  Since channel 0 performance was
   stable, SATNET service continued uninterrupted.
 
   This month, a new release of Butterfly gateway software was installed
   at NTARE and CNUCE.  As a result, connectivity between the SATNET and
   the local networks at these sites was greatly improved.  The SIMP
   configuration at Goonhilly was changed in preparation for the
   re-installation of the Butterfly gateway at UCL next month.
 
   Bob Hinden
 
 
 
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ISI
---
 
   Internet Concepts Project
 
      Jon Postel, Bob Braden, and Paul Mockapetris participated in the
      TCP/IP Workshop in Monterey, CA, 25-26 Aug.
 
      This workshop was very successful in brining together the
      technical people from commercial vendors of products that
      incorporate IP/TCP protocols and experts from the research
      community.  In theory most of the participants already knew about
      the protocols, so this was not a tutorial rather a discussion of
      the issues and pitfalls not covered in the documents, a passing on
      of the folklore.  About 275 people participated, with about 100
      companies represented.  One result of the workshop is the
      formation of a IP/TCP vendors coalition, currently being
      coordinated by Dan Lynch (LYNCH@B.ISI.EDU).
 
      Annette DeSchon continues to work on developing a domain name
      resolver which will be accessed via the standard software
      interfaces in the XEROX ARPA protocols package, as well as by a
      special purpose test tool (NameTool) running in the XDE.
 
      We welcome two new ISIers to DIV-2, Francisco Chaparro, and Rivi
      Sherman, who are working on the FAST-PARTS project.
 
      Jon Postel and Ann Westine
 
   Multimedia Conferencing Project
 
      The prototype multimedia teleconferencing facility passed its
      toughest test to date on August 14 when the first bi-coastal
      Internet Activities Board meeting was held between meeting rooms
      at ISI and BBN.  During the 7-hour meeting there was continuous
      packet video transmission in both directions except for a
      few-minute outage caused by the accidental reactivation of a
      Wideband Network site having some failed equipment.  Service
      resumed automatically without manual intervention.  The Wideband
      Network carried both the video channel from ISI's packet video
      system and the shared-workspace display of BBN's Diamond
      multimedia conferencing system.  Video traffic uses the ST
      protocol through the Voice Funnel gateway and Diamond uses IP
      through the Butterfly gateway.  From all appearances, the
      communication path provided by the teleconference facility allowed
      the meeting to be essentially as effective as a face-to-face
      meeting.
 
      For the IBM-PC based image scanner system, Brian Hung has added an
      additional write_to_file function to the current set of functions.
 
 
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      This function has been incorporated into a new application which
      scans, clips and displays documents and also writes the scanned
      data into a file simultaneously.
 
      Joyce Reynolds presented a Multimedia Mail demo to a group of
      people from the University of Davis, and Dongman Lee from KAIST in
      Korea.
 
      Steve Casner and Brian Hung
 
   Supercomputer and Workstation Communication Project
 
      Alan Katz attended the Cornell Summer Supercomputer Institute in
      Ithaca, N.Y., and worked on a paper on issues concerning an
      Equations representation standard.
 
      Ann Westine
 
   Computer Center
 
      No internet-related progress to report.
 
MIT-LCS
-------
 
   No report received.
 
NTA & NDRE
----------
 
   No report received.
 
SRI
---
 
   No report received.
 
UCL
---
 
   1. Further tests using the Network Time Protocol over SATNET and
      ARPANET have been conducted against various remote NTP servers.
      Because our own radio signal receiver has broken, we have been
      taking the time from the remote server and then calculating the
      offset between its clock and ours, using the round trip delay.
      Analysing the data was complicated by the fact that, over the last
      few weeks, we have been regularly recording round trip delays of
      over 50 seconds, and occasionally some reaching 100 seconds.
      However, after making the necessary adjustments, the offset
      variance remained at less than half a second.
 
 
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   2. Jon Crowcroft attended the TCP-IP Vendors conference at Monterey,
      putting the case that internetworking from our side of the
      Atlantic is a little more difficult. Jon also called in at BBN on
      the way and talked with Jill Westcott about network management.
 
   Peter Lloyd
 
UDEL
----
 
   1. I have been appointed Professor in the Department of Electrical
      Engineering at the University of Delaware, effective 1 September,
      so this and future reports will originate from there.  I will
      continue as a consultant to Linkabit and assist in their
      Dissimilar Gateway Protocol program for RADC and Ford Aerospace,
      as well as in their Multiple Satellite System program for DARPA,
      RADC and a cast of thousands.
 
   2. I began the intricate process of moving myself and DCnet swamp
      creatures, creeks and bogs to the University of Delaware.  The
      present plan is to rehome the DCnet swamp via the UDEL IMP (96),
      but leave some fuzzcreatures behind to maintain ARPANET
      connectivity for the NSFNET Backbone clients, as well as the
      University of Michigan, University of Maryland, Ford Scientific
      Research and Ford Aerospace.
 
   3. Much of my effort this month was in the design and simulation of
      routing algorithms for MSS.  I distributed a preliminary summary
      of issues and suggestions to the INARC for comment early in the
      month and prepared more substantive simulation data and results
      for a presentation at the SURAN Implementors meeting early next
      month at BBN.  A new algorithm I have called Shortest Total Path
      First (STPF) works very well for metric routing in the MSS
      topology, but the old standby Dijkstra (SPF) works better for
      mean-square (minimum-energy - not a metric) routing. MSS has
      turned up some new and interesting issues in this area.
 
   4. The NSFNET Backbone is picking up real user traffic and seems to
      be surviving various infant-mortality problems and training
      exercises.  The officially blessed ARPANET gateway at CMU is not
      yet up, so the temporary gateways at Cornell and Linkabit are
      horsing the load, currently about 77000 packets per day through
      Linkabit alone.  Severe problems were occasionally encountered
      during the month, apparently due to corequakes when the core
      tables filled up again.  Some issues concerning EGP and the
      dual-connected nature of the system have not yet been resolved.
 
   5. With help from Hans-Werner Braun at the University of Michigan, I
      developed, tested and deployed, a major change to the fuzzball
      routing algorithm for use in the NSFNET Backbone.  The change
 
 
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      involves the distribution of network numbers, as well as
      delay/offset data, in the hello messages.  The result is the
      elimination of frequently updated, handcrafted tables and the
      automatic distribution of net-reachability information throughout
      the amalgamated twenty-network swamp.
 
   6. Bill Nesheim at Cornell, Mike Petry at the University of Maryland
      and I, cooked up a scheme to splice the fuzzball routing data and
      EGP.  Bill and Mike implemented it under 4.3 bsd and I implemented
      it in the fuzzball.  The implementations are now cooking on
      cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu, trantor.umd.edu and dcn-gateway.arpa
      respectively.  We are still investigating the stability issues
      involved, including such things as the hold-down period,
      hop-count/delay interactions and so forth.
 
   7. I attended the IAB meeting on 14 August at BBN and the TCP-IP
      Implementors Workshop on 25-27 August in Monterey, CA.
 
   Dave Mills
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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TASK FORCE REPORTS
------------------
 
   APPLICATIONS
 
      No report received.
 
   END-TO-END SERVICES
 
      End2end TF: No report this month.
 
      Bob Braden
 
   INTERNET ARCHITECTURE
 
      1. I have been appointed Professor in the Department of Electrical
         Engineering at the University of Delaware, effective 1
         September, so this and future reports will originate from
         there.
 
      2. Issues involved with the recently installed NSFNET Backbone and
         Multiple Satellite System were submitted for discussion, but
         activity in the mail group continues at a low ebb.
 
      3. I have invited Greg Lauer to discuss recent thinking in the
         SURAN routing community at the next INARC meeting in October.
         I have also invited Len Bosack to discuss issues in advanced
         routing.  It looks like we might lose our eagerly anticipated
         ANSI/ISO participants as the result of an ISO meeting in Tokyo.
         Since this is the second time this has happened, I may suggest
         holding the following INARC meeting in conjunction with the
         next ANSI or ISO meeting.
 
      Dave Mills
 
   INTERNET ENGINEERING
 
      No report received.
 
   INTEROPERABILITY
 
      No report received.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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   PRIVACY
 
      John Linn distributed copies of a draft RFC, entitled "Privacy
      Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail, to the Privacy Task
      Force Membership", to be reviewed at the September task force
      meeting at UCL.  Guest speakers were recruited for that meeting.
 
      John Linn
 
   ROBUSTNESS AND SURVIVABILITY
 
      No report received.
 
   SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
 
      No report received.
 
   SECURITY
 
      No report received.
 
   TACTICAL INTERNET
 
      No report received.
 
   TESTING AND EVALUATION
 
      No report received.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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