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!''