CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Gene Hastings/PSC
NJM Minutes
There was discussion about the means to distribute timely up/down
reports. Dale Johnson of Merit solicited comments on the value of
Network Status Reports, as the Merit mailings take extra effort. The
general opinion is that they are still valuable but there is the hazard
of becoming inundated if everyone started posting campus up/down
messages. Several results came of the discussion:
o As an interim practice, operators continue as before, pending any
observed instance of too much data.
o Attempts will be made to use standard mail templates to issue
messages from multiple places.
o SURAnet will start posting messages about the status of FIX-East.
o Participants will start to analyze and evaluate the possibilities
of a database-like mechanism (X.500 was one such proposed) so that
a network operator may query for status without needing to examine
and classify messages for relevance simply to have context when the
information is needed.
News, Comments:
o X Drawing Tool:
X based MacDraw work-alike: idraw from Stanford U. Anon ftp
Interviews. Stanford.Edu) report courtesy Erik Sherk @ Cornell
o Watch out for Byzantine Routing:
Gene Hastings observed in November that connectivity is becoming
rich enough with multiple mid-levels serving some regions that
unexpected routing can result. A specific example was a DuPont
facility in Delaware whose path to the University of Delaware
passed through at least four states: DuPont -> PSInet (Delaware
-> Reston, Va. -> Ithaca, NY -> NSFNET -> SURAnet (College
Park, MD.) -> Newark DE -> U. of Delaware.
There was once a time when such a path was considered extremely
undesirable due to limited resources in the backbones. In this
example it may be moot, as the round trip times were fairly low.
The major concern is that it is a likely harbinger of other
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peculiar paths and that network operators must be aware of this
situation in order to be productive when debugging. Please Note:
Sue Hares, as part of her examination of backbone routing changes
would like to hear any reports of other unexpected paths; please
send such reports to njm@merit.edu.
o Mac document translations:
An issue of MacUser this past fall had an article and guide to
document conversion tools, describing a number of utilities which
can convert between different Macintosh graphics format. In
addition, there is a new version of DrawOver (3.0) released with
Adobe Illustrator 3.0
New Business:
o Ted Brunner - Map Edit:
Ted gave an update on the map editor/topology database he and
others have been working on at Bellcore. This is an application
and tools to create and store database entries on the behavior and
configuration of a network (number and kind of interfaces, etc.).
He showed the results of a prototype map editor which reads this
database and draws a map based on that knowledge. Copies of this
software may be available to interested operators. Versions exist
for Sun 3, Sun 4, and DEC RISC. If interested call or mail to Ted.
o Sue Hares - Routing Stability:
Sue gave a presentation on route slop in the backbone, as seen by
changes in the number of nets a given AS announces. In some cases
one could see individual nets toggling back and forth between
alternate ASes announcing them to the backbone. The first question
raised is ``what does this mean''? Is it affecting service to
users? This behavior is a general concern since frequent changes
DO consume resources in the backbone and attached regionals. In
some cases it was possible to characterize a specific campus or
net's activity as being a lousy line, with no desire or budget to
correct it, or known itinerant service. The implication of known
sources of frequent routing updates raises the question of whether
there is value in having ``pseudo-static'' routes, or the ability
to set some hystereis on known sources of routing noise.
Attendees
Theodore Brunner tob@thumper.bellcore.com
Tom Easterday tom@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu
Fred Engel
Vince Fuller vaf@Standford.EDU
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Jack Hahn hahn@umd5.umd.edu
Susan Hares skh@merit.edu
Eugene Hastings hastings@psc.edu
Dale Johnson dsj@merit.edu
Ken Jones uunet!konkord!ksj
Dan Jordt danj@cac.washington.edu
Darren Kinley kinley@crim.ca
Walter Lazear lazear@gateway.mitre.org
Marilyn Martin martin@netcom.ubc.ca
Matt Mathis mathis@pele.psc.edu
Bahaa Moukadam
David O'Leary oleary@noc.sura.net
Mark Oros oros@nmc.cit.cornell.edu
Joel Replogle replogle@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil
Timothy Salo tjs@msc.edu
Tom Sandoski tom@concert.net
Bernhard Stockman boss@sunet.se
Paul Tsuchiya tsuchiya@thumper.bellcore.com
Kannan Varadhan kannan@oar.net
Carol Ward cward@spot.colorado.edu
Linda Winkler b32357@anlvm.ctd.anl.gov
Dan Wintringham danw@osc.edu
Cathy Wittbrodt cjw@nersc.gov
David Wood dcmwood@spot.colorado.edu
Sze-Ying Wuu syww@thumper.bellcore.com
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