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-
- CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
-
- Reported by Gene Hastings/Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
-
- Minutes of the Network Status Reports Working Group (NETSTAT)
-
- The Network Status Reports Working Group met on 7 December. Scheduled
- presentations were ANS (Rob Lehman), NSFNET Transition (Elise Gerich),
- InternetMCI (Phill Gross), BBN (John Curran), Sprint NAP (Tim Clifford)
- and SprintLink (Sean Doran)
-
-
- Meta-Issues
-
- In addition to the presentations and Q&A, several meta-issues were
- raised or implied (furnished along with the reporter's attempt to digest
- the pulse of the group).
-
-
- o Is it appropriate to give what is essentially a marketing
- presentation at IETF? The consensus seems to be ``no'' if it is
- solely and blatantly such, but there is dissension as to where the
- line is.
-
- o With the increasing activity of for profit concerns in the
- Internet, will it be possible to continue the openness of past
- years' presentations with regard to traffic, performance, uptime
- statistics, etc.? [Despite the fears or predictions of some, there
- appears to come continuing openness, and examples of extremely
- closed practices. I think that collegial back pressure has ceased
- to be sufficient to maintain the historical levels of disclosure
- and cooperation. - efh]
-
- o In the light of these questions, what is the charter of this group?
- (Including what is desirable versus what is acceptable.) [I think
- this is an ongoing process. Does commercial necessarily mean
- concealed? I think in the context of an interconnected,
- interdependent environment, it cannot in the long run. - efh]
-
- o Beyond concerns about openness, there are areas of concern not
- being addressed at all: What is the forum for operations,
- engineering and troubleshooting above TCP/UDP? Traditional IP
- regionals and carriers have been content to (determined to?) focus
- their energies on transport and routing. What is the forum for
- general end-to-end problem solving?
-
-
- ANS -- Rob Lehman
-
- See Rob's slides. Only supplemental notes follow.
-
- ANSNET traffic surpassed 100m inbound packets in November! CIDR note:
- after AUP disappears, there ought to be further aggregation possible
- ANS' NAP connectivity status:
-
-
- o Connection to the Sprint NAP was installed on 9-21-94. At this
- time (7 December 94) it has only been operational for two weeks,
- but substantial traffic has been exchanged.
-
- o Connection to the PacBell NAP was installed on 10-14-94, but is not
- in production.
-
- o Connection to the Ameritech NAP was installed on 11-22-94, but is
- not in production.
-
- o A MAE+ FDDI installation plan has been established. Its exact
- schedule is contingent on logistics -- real soon now.
-
-
- ANS did link optimizations for cross-country trunking, to address an
- imbalance in the relative utilizations of their northern and southern
- routes. After testing, they are further considering deployment of
- Random Early Drop.
-
-
- Transition -- Elise Gerich
-
- There are no slides from this presentation. See contemporaneous
- presentations to the IESG, etc.
-
- None of the ENSSen have been retired. The regionals' transition to
- non-NSF Inter-Regional Connectivity has been slow. Target dates of
- November 1 and December 1 have been missed, Merit is hoping for around
- January 1 terminations + 60 days.
-
- THEnet and MOREnet have made the transition to SprintLink. SURAnet has
- moved traffic to MCInet, but has not formally notified Merit of the
- ability to terminate the ENSS connection. (THEnet was previously
- sharing Inter-Regional Connectivity with Sesquinet.) CA*NET is close to
- transition to MCI
-
- Interconnection point status:
-
-
- o The Sprint NAP has connections from Sprint, MCI, and NSFNET.
-
- o In DC, at MFS facilities, everyone is on MAE and is committed to
- connecting to MAE+.
-
- o At the Ameritech NAP, MCI and NSFNET are about to start peering,
- with Sprint to connect soon.
-
- o PacBell has MCI and ANS are peering, and Sprint will connect soon.
-
- o Route servers are present at MAE, the PacBell NAP, the Ameritech
- and the Sprint NAP.
-
- o Routing DB deployment and transition. The applications are moving
- from PRDB (@merit) to RA (db-admin@radb.ra.net). At some point,
- Merit will do dual use of NACR and RADB forms, followed by
- retirement of NACR (transition around January 15.)
-
- o Merit has recommended to NSF that during transition (January -
- June, there should be no need to specify AUP.
-
- o If anyone is still relying on PRDB reports they should contact
- Dale!
-
-
-
- InternetMCI -- Phill Gross
-
-
- See Phill's slides.
-
- Problems were experienced transitioning SURAnet, thus delaying the CoREN
- schedule. ``DS3 networking is not yet a commodity service.'' Some
- problems were experienced in the routers.
-
- What management platform does InternetMCI use? Hewlett-Packard
- OpenView, plus homegrown tools and extensions. What Other nets beside
- CoREN is MCI serving? CA*NET is partially transitioned (at 3Mb), WIDE
- (at T1) and BTnet (at E1).
-
- InternetMCI NAP connectivity status: Chicago (Ameritech) was connected
- at the end of last week, MCI is connected and peering at Sprint, MAE and
- CIX. ANS and MCI are interconnected at FDDI at Hayward CA. common PoP
- (Phill commented, ``Thanks for the cooperation, ANS!'').
-
- When will MCI be connected to FIX-W? Phill said that he does not know.
- It is underway and might be connected by the end of year, approximately
- the same time as CIX-SMDS, MAE+. What is the status of the vBNS? Phill
- responded that MCI is deploying a testnet, and full rollout 1Q95 at
- OC-3. The testnet should be operational before Christmas.
-
-
-
- BBN -- John Curran
-
-
- John's slides are admittedly marketing slides.
-
- BBN is upgrading the NEARNET spine in the Boston area, migrating from
- microwave Ethernet to fiber (MFS 10Mb over NYNEX T3). Currently BBN has
- almost 2000 SNMP managed items. Operations/NOC/NIC tip: you can head
- off phone calls by giving seminars!
-
- BBN is now offering ``Turnkey Internet Server'' (Pentium/BSDi) Internet
- Site Patrol -- managed firewall (BBN CONTROLS it), with remote
- management done by BBN ISC over a secure channel. It is derived from
- TIS products, and supports TELNET, FTP, SMTP, NNTP, WWW and X.
-
- BBN strenuously wants to know how to pursue end-to-end problem solving
- (they still subscribe to `the router is BBN's, we control the
- horizontal, we control the vertical').
-
-
-
- Sprint NAP -- Tim Clifford
-
- This report is on the Sprint ``NY'' NAP (in Southern NJ). It is now
- (December 1994) a dual FDDI ring, and in January will be converted to a
- DEC GigaSwitch. [See before and after diagrams.] Connected parties
- include MCI, NSFNET, Sprint and Cerfnet. A Route Server is present and
- running.
-
- Tim mentioned that Sprint has ``always thought about ATM.'' [The
- implication being that they felt ATM was not ready. - efh]
-
- It was noted that the DEC GigaSwitch has DS3 cards and asked if Sprint
- has considered access this way? Tim responded, ``Not really.'' [It is
- my understanding that a GS ATM interface can only talk to other GS. -
- efh] A question was asked: being already co-located, can folks try
- alternate interconnect technologies? Tim responded, ``Likely. Try
- us.''
-
-
- SprintLink -- Sean Doran
-
- SprintLink's T1 backbone was melting down, and was supplanted by a
- parallel T1 net. The parallel T1 links are being converted to DS-3s in
- the next few weeks. [See diagram.] T3 customers feed directly into BB
- routers to avoid saturating local FDDI rings For trans-US international
- connectivity, ICM has two T3s between Stockton, CA and DC. The design
- goal in the separation of SprintLink and ICM was the assurance of
- symmetry of routing. The context is that preservation of next hop in
- routing is critical feature (could not wait for IDRP). A question
- concerning fears of an ASpath explosion in routing tables was asked.
- Sean responded, ``Too late. Already here!''
-
-