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!''