P A R A D I S E I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E P O R T JUNE 1991 CONTENTS Contact Points Statistics National Reports Europe Austria Greece Portugal Belgium Ireland Spain Denmark Italy Sweden Finland Luxembourg Switzerland France Netherlands United Kingdom Germany Norway Yugoslavia World Australia Iceland Canada Israel United States CONTACT POINTS AUSTRIA Representative ACONET Contact: Florian Schnabel Technische Universitat Graz EDV-Zentrum Steyrergasse 30/1 A-8010 Graz Telephone: +43 3168736257 Email: schnabel@edvz.tu-graz.ada.at BELGIUM Representative University of Brussels Contact: Nils Meulemans ULB, IIHE - Groupe HELIOS-B CP 230 - Bd. du Triomphe B-1050 Bruxelles Telephone: +32 2 650 57 05 Email: nils@be.ac.vub.elem3 DENMARK Representative: DKnet Contact: Steen Linden Datalogisk Institut Koebenhavns Universitet Universitetsparken 1 DK-2100 Copenhagen Telephone: +45 31 39 64 66 x222 Email: anubis@diku.dk FINLAND Representative: FUNET Contact: Petri Ojala FUNET c/o VTKK PO Box 40 SF-02101 Espoo Telephone: +358 0 457 2005 Email: ojala@funet.fi FRANCE Representative: OPAX Group Contact: Paul-Andre Pays Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne 158, Cours Fauriel 42023 Saint-Etienne Cedex 2 Telephone: +33 77 42 01 74 X.400: S=pays;O=emse;P=emse;A=atlas;C=fr rfc822: pays@emse.fr GERMANY Representative: DFN Contact: Karl Bonacker GMD Germany Postfach 1240 5605 St. Augustin 1 Telephone: +49 22 41 14 27 21 Email: bonacker@f3.gmd.dbp.de GREECE Representative: Network Ariadne Contact: Yannis Corovesis NRC Demokritos 15310, Attiki Telephone: +30 1 65 13 392 X.400: s=corovesis; o=ariadne-t; p=ariadne-t;c=gr rfc822: korov@grathdem.bitnet IRELAND Representative: HEANET Contact: Donal O'Mahony Trinity College Dublin Dublin Telephone: +353 1 772941 x1261 Email: omahony@cs.tcd.ie ITALY Representative: None Contact: Franco Sirovich Systems Wizards via Torino Ivrea 10015 Telephone: +39 125 631712 Email: swproof@cs.ucl.ac.uk LUXEMBOURG Representative: None Contact: Pierre Decker Ministere de l'Education Nationale et de la Jeunesse rue Aldringen 29 2926 Luxembourg Telephone: +352 46 80 25 04 Email: pierredecker@eurokom.ie NETHERLANDS Representative: SURFnet BV Contact: Erik Huizer Netwerkontwikkeling Postbus 19035 3501 DA Utrecht Telephone: +31 30 310290 Email huizer@surfnet.nl NORWAY Representative: UNINETT Contact: Geir Pedersen University of Oslo PO Box 1059-Blindern 0316 Oslo Telephone: +47 245 3470 Email geir.pedersen@use.uio.no PORTUGAL Representative: None Contact: Vasco Freitas University of Minho Braga Telephone: Email: vf@uminho.ctt.pt SPAIN Representative: IRIS Programme/FUNDESCO Contact: Celestino Tomas RedIRIS/FUNDESCO Alcala 61 E-28014 Madrid Telephone: +34 14351214 Email: tomas@iris-dcp.es SWEDEN Representative: SUNET Contact: Roland Hedberg SUNET Umdac, S-90187 Telephone: +46 90 165204 Email: roland@umu.se SWITZERLAND Representative: ETHZ Contact: Cuno Lanz ETHZ, IFW CH-8092 Zurich Telephone: +41 12547005 Email: lanz@tik.ethz.ch UNITED KINGDOM Representative: Joint Network Team Contact: Directory Project Manager X-Tel Services University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD Telephone: +44 602 412648 Email: x500@xtel.co.uk YUGOSLAVIA Representative: University of Ljubljana Contact: Marko Bonac University of Ljubljana Jozef Stefan Institute Jamova 39 61000 Ljubljana Telephone: +38 61 21 43 99 Email: bonac@ijs.ac.mail.yu AUSTRALIA Organisation: AARnet Contact: Graham Rees The Prentice Centre The University of Queensland Queensland 4072 Telephone: +61 7 365 4143 Email: g.rees@cc.uq.edu.au CANADA Organisation: University of Toronto Contact: Glenn Britton University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 Telephone: +1 416 978 2011 Email britton@utcs.utoronto.ca ICELAND Organisation: University of Iceland Contact: Gardar Nielsen University of Iceland Sudurgotu 107 Reykjavik Telephone: +354 1 694300 Email goggi@rhi.hi.is ISRAEL Organisation: Hebrew University, Jersusalem Contact: Juliana Solomon UNITED STATES Representative: White Pages Project Contact: Marshall Rose PSI Inc 5201 Great American Parkway Suite 3106 Santa Clara California CA 95094 Telephone: +1 415 961 3380 Email: mrose@psi.com STATISTICS AUSTRIA Implementation: QUIPU 6.7 Master DSA: Piranah DSAs: 2 Organisations: 18 Leaf Entries: 1517 BELGIUM Implementation: QUIPU Master DSA: Woolly Spider Monkey DSAs: 1 DENMARK Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Axolotl DSAs: 1 Organisations: 20 Leaf Entries: 95 FINLAND Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Jaguar DSAs: 9 Organisations: 12 Leaf Entries: 10,282 FRANCE Implementations: PIZARRO, QUIPU Master DSA: opax-dsa DSAs: 12 Organisations: 12 Leaf entries: 100 GERMANY Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Puma DSA: 10 Organisations: 110 Leaf Entries: 5000 GREECE Implementation: None Master DSA: None DSA: 0 IRELAND Implementation: QUIPU 6.0 Master DSA: Irish Elk DSAs: 1 Organisations: 1 Leaf Entries: 150 ITALY Implementation: DirWiz Master DSA: swdsa DSAs: 1 Organisations: 1 Leaf Entries: 4 LUXEMBOURG Implementation: None Master DSA: None DSAs 0 NETHERLANDS Implementation: QUIPU 6.1 Master DSA: Hornero DSAs: 3 Organisations: 69 Leaf Entries: 2,128 NORWAY Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Electric Eel DSAs: 4 Organisations: 23 Leaf Entries: 8,000 PORTUGAL Implementation: None Master DSA: None DSAs: 0 SPAIN Implementation: QUIPU 6.1 Master DSA: Iguana DSAs: 2 Organisations: 5 Leaf Entries: 106 SWEDEN Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Hummingbird DSAs: 6 Organisations: 17 Leaf Entries: 2,961 SWITZERLAND Implementation: QUIPU 6.1 Master DSA: Chinchilla DSAs: 5 Organisations: 7 Leaf Entries: 5000 UNITED KINGDOM Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Giant Tortoise DSAs: 37 Organisations: 32 Leaf Entries: 66,392 YUGOSLAVIA Implementation: QUIPU 6.7 Master DSA: None DSAs: 1 Organisations: 1 AUSTRALIA Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Anaconda DSAs: 13 Organisations: 15 Leaf Entries: 16,597 CANADA Implementation: QUIPU 6.1 Master DSA: Wayne Gretzky DSAs: 10 Organisations: 10 Leaf Entries: 21,285 ICELAND Implementation: QUIPU 6.8 Master DSA: Elephant Seal DSAs: 1 Organisations: 25 Leaf Entries: 200 ISRAEL Implementation: QUIPU Master DSA: Dorcan Gazelle DSAs: 1 Organisations: 1 Leaf entries: 20 UNITED STATES Implementation: QUIPU 6. Organisations: 76 Leaf Entries: 182,763 TOTALS Austria 1 18 1,517 Denmark 1 20 95 Finland 9 12 10,282 France 12 12 100 Germany 10 110 5,000 Ireland 1 1 150 Italy 1 1 4 Netherlands 3 69 2,128 Norway 4 23 8,000 Spain 2 5 106 Sweden 6 17 2,961 Switzerland 5 7 5,000 United Kingdom 37 32 66,392 Yugoslavia (*) 1 1 ---- --- -------- 93 328 101,735 Australia 13 15 16,597 Canada 10 10 21,285 Iceland 1 25 200 Israel 1 1 20 United States 67 76 182,763 ---- --- ------- 92 127 220,865 Grand Total: 185 455 322,500 --- --- ------- (*) Not yet available. All figures were, like a stopped clock, reasonably accurate for an hour. NATIONAL REPORTS AUSTRIA The Austrian R&D network, ACONET, has been running a QUIPU DSA since March 1991 from the Technical University in Graz. Eighteen universities and other institutions of higher education, both scientific and arts-based, have been registered on this single national DSA holding over 1500 leaf entries. A second DSA is expected very shortly. BELGIUM There is currently no pilot activity in Belgium though several groups at the University of Brussels are interested in running a DSA. DENMARK Denmark's one operational DSA is run on a spare time basis by DKnet, currently the only organisation involved in this X.500 pilot, though others are beginning to show interest. The pilot has been running since March 1990 on an experimental basis as part of the NORDUnet collaboration and as yet has no sources of funding. The DSA runs on the DKnet mail backbone, a SUN 3/60, which is connected to the DEnet providing TCP/IP access to NORDUnet and thus the Internet. The software used is QUIPU 6.8 running on top of ISODE with the DUAs shipped with QUIPU. DEnet (the Danish Ethernet Network) is the Danish R&D-network run by UNI-C (the Danish Computing Centre for Research and Education) and the Danish part of NORDUnet. Its members are mainly academic institutions connected via leased 64 or 128 kbit/s lines with use of the available protocol suites, TCP/IP and DECNET. DKnet is a sub-organisation of DKUUG, (the Danish Unix system Users Group), and, as the Danish part of EUnet, the distributor of EUnet News and mail in Denmark using UUCP. The DKnet backbones are connected to DEnet. As well as mastering c=DK, the Danish DSA registers a total of 20 organisations; one university, the DKUUG and the 18 organisations from which representation of the DKUUG is drawn. These 18, of which 16 are industrial and two academic, have only a single entry each below the organisational level which are the individual members of the various DKUUG interest groups. The entry for the University of Copenhagen contains the electronic mail addresses of 71 employees of the Department of Computer Science. The total number of leaf entries for Denmark is 95, not counting aliases. The Danish sub-tree has hardly grown since the pilot started; there is little awareness of the directory in Denmark and no effort has been made to promote it. Today there are only a limited number of users of electronic mail with access to DEnet and, until this is rectified, and some means of general access to the directory is established, there will be no real development of the Danish subtree. It is also of considerable importance for the Danish pilot to ensure connectivity via X.25. Before the pilot embarks on a general education program, some legal issues must first be solved. Denmark has rather strict legislation on public electronic registers and there needs to be clarification of what information may legally be stored. Eventually it is intended that the directory should be made widely available through a mail-responder and a DUA-login, using DKUUG-Nyt and the newsletters of other Danish electronic groups to increase public awareness about the directory. It is hoped to make contact with institutions of higher education connected to DEnet with a view to persuading them to set up their own DSA's. (Steen Linden: anubis@diku.dk) FINLAND The Finnish master DSA is based at the Tampere University of Technology and runs QUIPU 6.8 over IXI and Internet on behalf of FUNET, the Finnish University and Research Network Project. The Finnish Directory contains the four universities, two technical universities, Hewlett Packard, VTKK (the Finnish PTT, headquarters in Helsinki), the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) at Espoo and several small commercial organisations. VTT Telecommunications Laboratory have developed a Unix-based X.500 DSA called CVOPS (C-language Virtual Operating System) with its own DUA. To date, this implementation is not connected to the PARADISE pilot. The Finnish PTT are subcontracted to PTT Telecom who are UCL's subcontractors in the PARADISE project. FRANCE The French directory pilot is the OPAX project (Operation Pilote X.500 dans le cadre Aristote) whose aim to set up a pilot directory service in France conformant with X.500 (88) recommendations. It will be open to members of Aristote (academic and industrial researchers) as well as any other organisation which wants to be associated with OPAX. The OPAX directory service will be connected to the PARADISE pilot directory service and is divided into two sections: o PARADIS: the academic and research institute members: CRU/CICB, EMSE, INRIA, UREC/CNRS) holding four DSAs; and o EDEN: the OPAX industrial group: Bull, CEA, CNET (Paris and Lannion), E3X, EDF/DER, INRETS containing three implementation sites but shortly expected to increase to nine. The partners in EDEN will be connected to the French tree but will not necessarily follow the recommendations of the PARADISE project for object classes and attributes. OPAX object entities are not yet defined, but will be compatible with those defined for PARADISE to ensure reciprocal availability between OPAX object entities and any other object entities in the PARADISE tree. The main objective of the OPAX project is to participate in a well co-ordinated effort to establish a reliable European directory service for researchers with a group of people in France who are well-informed on the problems encountered in the provision of directory services. Of equal importance is the need to provide a reliable service for French researchers and to facilitate the use of electronic communication tools (mail, conferencing etc). By promoting standards and European profiles, the project hopes to create a market pull for X.500 products and to act in an advisory capacity to suppliers of service provider and user requirements to generate the most appropriate products for market needs. Among the benefits accruing from the project's collaboration with other service providers in establishing a European directory used by researchers is the experience gained with problems occuring in a large real network which can also be detected in a simple local network. The essential experience gained in service provision and product performance will enhance choices of the most appropriate products, the maximisation of product usage and the facilitation of working with interoperable X.500 products. OPAX's goal is to create a French directory subtree as part of the PARADISE project, with the master DSA for France (c=FR) based at EMSE (Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne), an engineering school and research institute in Saint-Etienne. The other OPAX DSAs are placed at the organisation level (eg o=CEA) below EMSE with only one visible DSA per OPAX participant. At first, the pilot will mostly use SUNs but later incorporate IBM and BULL platforms. There is public X.25 access to EMSE and in June an agreement with TRANSPAC is expected to provide IXI connectivity to a number of selected academic sites including EMSE. Internet access is only available from France to the US and not to other European sites. Several X.500 products are being used in OPAX: o PIZARRO developed at INRIA by Christian Huitema and an outcome of the ESPRIT THORN project; o U-DIR, developed by E3-X and based upon PIZARRO; o a Bull product based on DIR-X from OSF. The OPAX project, started in March 1991, will run until the end of 1993 in two phases: o a gradual setting up of the infrastructure, starting with a few DSAs and one product (PIZARRO). The number of DSAs will be increased step by step with new products to be included later. (March - December 1991) o an operational service available to the whole research community (January 1992 - December 1993) There are also some groups in France using QUIPU; it is hoped when current interoperability tests with the PARADISE pilot are complete that they will be incorporated into the OPAX project. OPAX welcomes any group that wishes to join the project and shares its goals. (Paul-Andre Pays: pays@emse.fr) GERMANY Within DFN all work on distributed directories has taken place within the VERDI projects (VERDI = VERteiltes DIrectory) funded by the BMFT (Bundesministerium fur Forschung und Technologie) and carried out by the GMD (Gesellschaft fur Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung). VERDI1 (1984-1986) produced a study with early ideas based on a preliminary version of the standard. VERDI2 (1987-1989) dealt with the topic of directory support for MHS, FTAM and other DFN applications. A handbook was published describing in detail how to use the directory service for different purposes. These two VERDI projects and the stabilisation of the X.500 standard formed the basis for the third VERDI project started in 1989. VERDI3 has the task of building up a pilot distributed directories service with the intention that it should become a general use service at the end of 1992. The DFN directory service will offer: o information for the user (nameserver) o support for both the MHS and FTAM applications It was not intended to develop X.500 software (especially DSA software) but to examine existing software for use within DFN (preferably for UNIX and VAX/VMS systems). Ideally, it was hoped that more than one X.500 system would be involved in the pilot to gain experience with interconnecting different software. VERDI3 consists of the following three phases: o the evaluation of existing X.500 software; o the establishment of a Pilot Directory Service and the development of concepts for a general-use DFN Directory Service; o a general-use Directory Service in DFN Phase 1 finished in June 1990. A number of different systems were examined such as THORN (ESPRIT project), DIR-X (Siemens), DS 520 (RETIX), K500 (UBC, Canada) and QUIPU (UCL). A list of features was published comparing these different software packages. For a variety of reasons, only the QUIPU software seemed to be suitable for the DFN directory pilot. Therefore the requirement to install different software for the pilot could not be met at the beginning of the project. Phase 2, the directory pilot, began in the middle of 1990. Only QUIPU software on a SUN and recently also on a HP-9000/HP-UX is supported. A graphical DUA will be developed by VERDI. A QUIPU DSA is also available on VAX/VMS (from the implementation in Spain). As it is hoped that there will be other systems in the pilot, some vendors (eg Siemens) have been invited to participate with their products. The German PTT is currently not involved in the pilot. There are plans for the provision of X.500 services but no concrete time schedule. The pilot is running ten DSAs. Two backbone DSAs are managed by VERDI, the other eight DSAs by universities or research institutes. About 110 organizations are registered in the DFN directory: 100 of them are universities or research institutes, and 10 belong to industry. Since a principal goal was to support MHS, all organisations participating in the DFN MHS Service are registered. The directory contains approximately personal 5000 entries. Unfortunately most organisations don't manage their own data and thus have only incomplete data derived from an older DFN nameserver. For organisational reasons the functions of a DSA manager and a data administrator are separate from each other. A DSA manager is only responsible for the operation of the DSA while the data administrator is responsible for the upkeep of the entries in the directory (maybe only for some attributes of some entries eg mail addresses). It makes no sense if an organisation has a DSA manager but no data administrator. But if an organisation isn't able to run a DSA itself (perhaps no UNIX system available), it can still participate in the pilot and the data administrator can manage the entries of the organisation in one of the backbone DSAs. There is one university without its own DSA but with an active data administrator in the DFN pilot. VERDI provides the following central services and backbone: o two central QUIPU 6.8 DSAs at GMD Berlin and GMD Birlinghoven (Sun Sparc Server 330 with 64 kBit X.25 (IXI) and Internet access); usage statistics are collected for these DSAs with a tool from UCL. o a central DUA service with different user interfaces accessable via IXI address: 204362430303. A Reference Card for the most important commands of DISH is available. o mail access to the Directory via a special MHS-UA with O/R-address: c=de; a=dbp; p=gmd; ou=berlin; ou=fokus; s=ds-server. A Reference Card is also available. o supporting tools for DSA and data administration o a Help Desk, telephone: +49 30 254 99 232 The other eight DSAs are running QUIPU 6.1 and will upgrade to QUIPU 6.8 in July 1991. There are several laws in Germany dealing with the protection of personal data. After discussing the directory pilot with the commissioners for data protection, VERDI is not allowed to register personal data without permission of the person concerned, even if the data is not private but related to the workplace (eg mail address or telephone number). Everyone whose data is stored in the directory has to give written permission (e-mail is not allowed!). To make this easier, VERDI designed a form informing people of their rights which can then be signed if accepted. Many things have been done to popularise the pilot within the DFN community. Right at the beginning of the project, several workshops were held for people interested in X.500, especially X.400 managers. After the final preparation for the pilot, letters were sent to all DFN organisations drawing their attention to the pilot and inviting their participation. Several articles were published in previous releases of the DFN newsletter "DFN Mitteilungen" on the topic of X.500. The March 1991 issue of this newsletter was entirely devoted to the topic of X.500 and the Directory Pilot: the first time that an issue dealt with only one specific subject. Two reference cards, one for the basic usage of DISH and one for the usage of the mail server were distributed with this special issue enabling all DFN readers to be familiar with the use of the X.500 directory. At the moment there is too little data in the DFN directory; not all data can be collected by the project. Organisations themselves have to be responsible for their own data. Each organisation (or, if the organisation is too big, each organizational unit) must name at least one person as its data administrator to be responsible for the collecting and updating of their organisation's data. It is often difficult to convince organisations of the usefulness of a directory and the necessity to contribute to make it work, a point which has to be emphasised much more in the future. The situation might change in the near future. DFN set up a project to provide computers (HP 9800) to several universities in the eastern part of Germany for use as communication servers for X.400, FTAM as well as X.500. Each university is supposed to run a DSA and to collect and manage data. So, in the short term, there is the opportunity to get more directory entries from these universities than from universities in the west of Germany. (Renate Schroeder: schroeder@zpl.dfn.dbp.de) GREECE The ARIADNE project is hoping to set up a DSA for Greece in 1991. IRELAND There are hopes for X.400, FTAM and X.500 projects in Ireland but as there are none at the moment progress depends on voluntary effort. Trinity College Dublin have set up a DSA using QUIPU that can be accessed locally and contains details of staff in three College departments. Experimentation has taken place to get ISODE to work using DEC X.25 access for ULTRIX and, now efforts are being made to maintain performance. In April 1991 TCD took the c=IE node and so joined the PARADISE pilot. Networking for all seven Irish univerisities has been under the umbrella of HEANET (Higher Education Authority Network) since 1984. HEANET has a small budget and currently pays for modems, line rental and traffic within the republic. Once the 64 kbit/s connections are shortly in place, individual sites will have to pay for IXI traffic to Europe themselves and also for the Internet, which is only accessible at the moment from TCD and University College Dublin. ITALY The node for c=IT is currently being managed by Systems Wizards, a software company from Ivrea, whose proprietorial implementation DirWiz was developed under the aegios of the ESPRIT THORN and PROOF projects. This was the first non-QUIPU implementation to show interoperability with QUIPU in the global directory and is available for testing with minimal support from System Wizards by agreement. Once an Italian pilot representative comes forward, Systems Wizards will relinquish responsibility for the Italian sub-tree. Elsewhere Italy is split into independent areas of X.500 activity at CSATA, INFN, CINETE and other sites. Systems Wizards have a single DSA featuring a limited amount of their own organisational data; DirWiz has its own DUA and requires System V and an Olivetti L2. LUXEMBOURG Logica (UK) is currently performing a study on behalf of DG IX of the European Commission with a view to running a DSA later this year. As part of the appraisal, three new implementations, from Siemens, ICL and Retix, are being tested with a view to making interoperability assessments. NETHERLANDS The Dutch pilot X.500 directory services started in September 1989 with SURFnet the responsible organisation. The original project plan contained three phases: o a preparation phase, in which the project started and the necessary information for starting a pilot service was collected; o a technical phase, which lasted throughout 1990. Two DSAs were installed: one at the SURFnet offices, called Hornero, which acts as the master DSA for c=NL, and one at NIKHEF-H; and o finally, a datamanagement test phase which has not yet started. More recently a third DSA has been set up by the PTT Research Laboratory. All three DSAs are based on the same implementation: QUIPU. None of the DSAs are used in an operational manner, although efforts are made to keep the master DSA for c=NL as up-to-date and available as possible. A public DUA was installed based on SD, and from May 1990 onwards the directory as a new service has been gradually promoted in computer centres throughout the Netherlands. A manual to set up a DSA has been written, as have short manuals for several DUAs. After a year (1990) of trying out and gaining experience with X.500, the project almost came to a halt. One of the essential criteria for continuing with the next phase of the project, which concentrates on data management, was the availability of a second, preferably commercial, X.500 product. But to date no satisfactory second product has been found. The pilot project, which ends in September, is therefore aiming at writing a new project proposal for a Data Management Directory Services pilot, starting in October 1991. This new proposal will of course only be honoured when an acceptable new product is available. PTT Telecom are subcontractors to UCL and so part of the PARADISE project. Their role is to liaise with other European PTTs, monitor the development of X.500 and the PARADISE pilot with a view to the migration of the present pilot service to full self- supporting operation after 1992. The PTT Laboratory in Groningen will also be responsible for carrying out interoperability testing of X.500 products wishing to participate in the pilot. (Erik Huizer: huizer@surfnet.nl) NORWAY UNINETT provides OSI, TCP/IP and DECnet based services to research and educational organisations in Norway. UNINETT is organized as a project under the Royal Ministry of Education and Research, but is expected to be reorganized as a foundation in the near future. UNINETT has for several years participated in RARE WG3's work leading up to the PARADISE project. Since mid-1988 UNINETT has conducted X.500 related projects aimed at making an X.500 based directory service available to all users of UNINETT. The current main vehicle for making the Directory available to the users is a mail-responder developed by UNINETT. This service has been operational for well over a year, and has currently processed approx 8000 requests from users at over 20 organisations. The long term goal for UNINETT is to make the directory available for all computer users at UNINETT member organisations. The Directory shall at least support users with white pages directory information. To accomplish this it will be nessecary that a majority of the persons associated with the participating organisations are registered in the Directory. It is UNINETTs view that providing an integrated interactive Directory service to end-users can only be done by the users organisations in cooperation with UNINETT. For users at organisations that are not currently providing an X.500 based directory service for its users, UNINETT will continue to provide a possibility to use the Directory via electronic mail. UNINETT encourages its memberorganisations to start work to provide a full scale directory service to it users and also provides various kinds of support to these organisations. UNINETT has requested all its member organisations to register basic organisational information in the directory, thereby enabling its users to register themselves in the directory via UNINETTs Directory-mailresponder. A procedure for registering organisations into the directory has been established. UNINETT will continue to support member organisations doing practical work with directory software with technical advice, and will hold courses for system managers during 1991. UNINETT has established an X.500 backbone for its member organisations by operating two X.500 DSAs which ensures connectivity towards other national academic directory pilots coordinated by the PARADISE project. By participating in the PARADISE project and RARE WG3 as well as surveying the X.500 activities taking place within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), UNINETT ensures that the directory activities within UNINETT is well aligned with international directory activities. On a national level the same goals are attained by UNINETTs participation in the Directory group of the national forum for Value Added Service-providers. Contact has been established with the Norwegian PTT via the national forum for Value Added Service-providers. There are currently six DSAs operational within UNINETT. Four of these are operated on a service basis. That is, they are intended to be operational at all times. There are currently 23 organisations registered in the directory, all of which are educational or research institutions. Users from all of these organisations are using the directory through UNINETTs mailresponder. Approximatly 550 persons have registered themselves in the directory using the mailresponder. In addition the University of Oslo has entered information on all employees. This brings the total number of leaf entries to approximately 8000. Usage of the Directory by end users is mainly through UNINETT's mailresponder. The mailresponder, which was originally developed as a replacement for the EAN directory mailresponder, has been extended towards providing highly user friendly feedback, and a client running under Unix has also been developed. A total of about 8000 requests have been processed during the last year, unfortunately no statistics are currently available showing usage broken down by organisations. UNINETT provides X.25, TCP/IP and DECnet access to member organisations. Most member organisations have chosen to have both X.25 and TCP/IP access to UNINETT. Three UNINETT member organisations are currently activly working with directory software (DSA/DUA). It is expected that this number will grow during this year, and that at least all of the universities will have started work to make the directory available via interactive software by the end of 1991. The software currently recomended by UNINETT is the ISODE/QUIPU X.500 implementation. The most used interactive userinterfaces are DISH and Pod, both distributed with ISODE/QUIPU. UNINETT and the University of Oslo are developing user interface software excepted to be put into full use this year. The two DSAs operated by UNINETT are both connected to public X.25, IXI and to the TCP/IP Internet. It is expected that at least one of these DSAs will be connected to the European CLNS-pilot sometime this year. For the directory service to become a successful service for the end users, promoting the directory is essential. This is both to ensure that the service is made available to end-users by network specialists at the member organizations and that end-users actually use the service. The promotional activities are therefore directed towards two targets: o Network support people, i.e. system managers, network specialists and user support people at the member organizations. o End-users. During 1990 an introductory lecture on the directory was presented to representatives from most UNINETT member organisations. This will be followed up in 1991 with technical courses for system managers. To inform and encourage end-users as well as network support people each issue of UNINETTs printed newsletter, UNINyTT, contains at least a small article on the directory service. UNINETT have also, to a limited extent, directly mailed member organizations with information on the directory service. (Geir Pedersen: geir.pedersen@use.uio.no) PORTUGAL The Portugese national scientific community network RCCN (Rede da Comunidade Nacional) was recently launched by the Portugese authorities. The RCCN network will provide communication services for the Portugese research community and will establish connectivity to other researchers in Europe. ESPRIT supported this initiative financially and ensured that the RCCN plans synchronise with ESPRIT IES and COSINE activities. The RCCN will be based on a combination of a private national X.25 backbone with the public national X.25 backbone (TELEPAC) designed to connect all major research sites in Portugal. The private backbone will gradually be extended to cover all research organisations. For international X.25 traffic the RCCN X.25 configuration will be connected to IXI via the IXI access point in Lisbon. The basic X.25 network infrastructure will be used for application services such as e-mail, file transfer and directory access based on X.400, FTAM and X.500. Connectivity to existing non-OSI networks will be established through appropriate gateways. A small central team will be responsible for management and operations of the RCCN. SPAIN The Spanish directory pilot has been running since March 1990 through the IRIS program which is a part of the national research and development plan and funded by the government of Spain. The pilot has evolved through various stages of development to facilitate the distribution of this new service among all IRIS' university and research institutions. It is expected to become fully operational in May 1991. At present, there are two DSAs in Spain: both in Madrid. Both use QUIPU 6.1 but expect to migrate to QUIPU 6.8 shortly. In its initial year's outlay on hardware, IRIS' strategy was to site four SUN 4/330's in places with good communication links. To start its pilot service, IRIS plans to install and manage four DSAs on machines located in: o Madrid, at IRIS headquarters, replacing the SUN 3/160 currently holding the c=ES node; o Barcelona (Cataluna) where there is a metropolitan network connecting the city's three universities; o Sevilla (Andalucia) which has a regional network; o Tenerife (Canary Islands), in the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, where there is a plan to build up a network connecting the astrophysics observatories and the University of La Laguna. Three of the four IRIS DSAs should be in place by the end of May 1991 with the Tenerife-based DSA ready by June. By the end of 1991 there could be another four or five DSAs owned by universities with a total of 30 organisations registered in the tree. The first five organisations listed under Spain were: IRIS, FUNDESCO, a research institute in Andalucia and two universities in Madrid and Barcelona, with a total of over 100 leaf entries. The information currently held in the Directory is minimal but is expected to grow rapidly with the inclusion of other centres. In its development of the Directory, IRIS will first incorporate the institutions where its DSAs are installed and then move on to contacting other organisations with a view to finding the best means, in terms of computing infrastructure available, of incorporating them into the pilot. There are three possibilities: o the installation of DSA/DUAs on machines owned and managed by organisations themselves; o the installation of local DUAs to look at a remote DSA; o remote terminal access to the Directory with no on-site DSA/DUA. In the last two cases organisational data will be held on one of IRIS' four DSAs. The University Politecnica de Cataluna has developed a DUA over VMS. This software is a translation of DISH to VMS. Version 1 of this software runs only over X.25; version 2 (available in May 1991) will also run over TCP/IP). The pilot uses the public X.25 network and the infrastructure of ARTIX (a private X.25 network) which is the national part of IXI. Over X.25, there is also a network service of IP DoD and pilot experience of ISO-IP. The four DSAs managed by IRIS will be supported over public X.25, IXI, Internet and realNS. At present IRIS has no links with the Spanish PTT, but contact may be sought in the future. (Celestino Tomas: tomas@iris-dcp.es) SWEDEN The Swedish X.500 pilot has been run by SUNET, the Swedish University network based at Umea, since late 1988. The project began with the purchase of a SUNstation and experimentation with QUIPU. The pilot has steadily grown to a total of 9 DSAs, registering 22 institutions; eight academic, SUNET itself and 13 industrial organisations, including Televerket, with a total of over 6000 leaf entries. The Swedish tree has two locality entries for Goteborg and Stockholm with a few commercial companies registered at the level below them. The pilot evolved from the efforts of committed individuals though SUNET contributes some part-time effort to managing the national master DSA. SUNET also provides funding for travel expenses but has no plan for extending its support and promotion of the project. SUNET provides a multiprotocol backbone capable of supporting both TCP/IP, public X.25, IXI and CLNS. SUNET is committed to actively support the use of OSI applications, chiefly X.400 and X.500. It has over the years worked in cooperation with the OSINET-S directory services working group which has representation from Televerket, the Swedish PTT. Although QUIPU 6.8 is used exclusively in the pilot, some operational tests have been carried out with STDS, a Swedish implementation. SUNET also cooperates with commercial companies wanting to test X.500. No specific DUA has been chosen for the pilot. However as a large part of the user community is VT100-based, SUNET has developed and chiefly uses its own line-oriented and cursor-based DUAs. (Roland hedberg: roland@umu.se) SWITZERLAND The Swiss X.500 pilot is part of a nationally-funded project which aims to provide a basis for operational directory deployment in Switzerland, and co-ordination of local X.500 activities with those in other countries. The pilot is mainly concerned with the integration of data from the Swiss research and development community into the global directory and is funded by KWF (the Swiss Federal Commission for the Promotion of Scientific Research), as well as the pilot's commercial partners. The main contractor is ETHZ (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), participating with the Swiss PTT, DEC (Switzerland) and Alcatel/STR. The project started in October 1988 and will end in September 1991. Most of the pilot's activities take place at ETHZ (TIK) and at the Swiss PTT in Berne. In addition to running the master DSA for Switzerland (c=CH), ETHZ is engaged in the development of new DSA and DUA concepts. The Swiss PTT participates by both funding the and co-operating actively in the pilot. They provide public X.25 (TELEPAC) connectivity and maintain their own organisational DSA with employees' data. They also intend to store data about some electronic mailboxes and telephone users in order to gain experience in storing residential persons. As subcontractors to PTT Telecom in the Netherlands, they are also directly engaged in the PARADISE project. SWITCH (the Swiss Academic and Research Network) is the main service provider of both Internet and IXI connectivity and is cooperating with ETHZ to ensure a smooth handover of the running of the Swiss X.500 service at the end of the pilot. It is planned to have the two national DSAs connected with the Internet, public X.25 and with IXI, whereas the organizational DSAs will be connected with only two of them. At the moment, one DSA can only be reached over TCP/IP, another over TCP/IP and public X.25 and a third over public X.25. At present, there are three operational DSAs, all running QUIPU 6.1, and two experimental DSAs using the following platforms: o SUN 3/470 with SunOS and Sunlink (DSA and DUA) o SUN SPARCstation II with SunOS and Sunlink (DSA and DUA) o DEC microVAX II with Ultrix and Camtec (DSA and DUA) o Apple Macintosh II with MacOS and MacTCP (DUA interface) All machines are sited at ETHZ except for the SPARCstation at the Swiss PTT in Berne. It is planned to move the microVax II which runs the national master DSA to SWITCH. The second microVax II is being used to develop a management DUA. The five organisations registered in the Swiss tree represent government, industrial, academic and non-R&D organisations. The Swiss PTT has about 100 organizational units and 500 leaf entries; ETHZ about 300 organizational units and 4500 leaf entries and SWITCH five leaf entries. Both the Union Bank of Switzerland, who are waiting for the announced X.500 software for its Siemens mainframe, and Ascom Hasler AG have one dummy entry each. ETHZ has developed a QUIPU-derived DSA which implements the data storage component on top of a relational database management system (Oracle) to store locally managed data. This newly developed DSA runs on a SUN 3/50 and is sufficient as far as performance is concerned, but storage efficiency has turned out to be poor. The pilot's most commonly used DUA is QUIPU's DISH - not used directly but over a simplified graphical interface implemented in HyperCard on Apple Macintosh. ETHZ is working on two DUA interfaces for the Macintosh. Both use sockets over TCP/IP to communicate with DISH. One, specifically designed for the unexperienced user, graphically assists him in navigating through the DIT and supports the possibility of formulating search queries without knowing any details about the information model. The other, conceived for DSA administrators to simplify data management, allows the user to compose and concatenate X.500 operations in order to build macro operations such as modifications on groups of entries or consistency checks on DIT and schema information. The directory service is free of charge to users. But, as connection and/or transmission costs within the DSAs are not monitored, each DSA provider has to pay all its own communication costs. Each organisation which operates a DSA has to manage the local facilities of the used networks. As there are no tools yet available to analyse the logged usage information, assumptions have to be made with regard to the Swiss user community. As there has been no promotion of the pilot, few people uninvolved in the project make use of the service. Of the three non-academic organizations currently involved in the pilot only the Swiss PTT has provided its organisational data though the others have signalled their interest in greater involvement. Three universities were also asked to participate in the pilot but, although they've declared their interest, no initiative has yet been taken. (Cuno Lanz: lanz@tik.ethz.ch) UNITED KINGDOM The GB directory pilot first started to take shape in November 1988 when the QUIPU implementation was being developed by University College London (UCL) as part of the European ESPRIT project INCA. UCL and Nottingham University were two of the six organisations involved in the first public demonstration of distributed X.500 at ESPRIT Conference Week in November 1988. Soon after that Cambridge University and Brunel University joined in the pilot. At this time UCL were also managing the ROOT node of the DIT which included the US, Norway and Australia. This was a de facto choice as it was probably the only site in the pilot that had both Internet and X.25 (Janet and IPSS) access. At the end of the INCA project, the Joint Network Team (JNT) continued to sponsor the development of QUIPU as well as an Academic Pilot service. Universities were invited to write a proposal to the JNT requesting funding for a machine to run the pilot service on. Successful applicants (effectively any university that sent in a reasonable proposal - about eight at this stage) duly received a SUN 4/330 with 24 Mb core memory, 600 Mb disk and an MCP (Multiple Communications Processor) card. Initially the machines were sent straight to the universities in the raw directly from SUN. As many of the university computer centres had little UNIX experience, the pilot took longer than expected to get going. The number of academic sites involved in the pilot has steadily grown while at the same time, a few commercial sites have also been added into the DIT. Support of the software was becoming a big issue for the academic sites trying to run a service. UCL were developing the code but were unable to offer the support requirements the pilot needed. The JNT awarded a support contract to X-Tel Services Ltd. When the next batch of SUNs were ready to be delivered to the universities they went to X-Tel first who pre-configured the machines with ISODE and QUIPU before sending them on to the sites. This reduced significantly the delay between (some) sites receiving the machine and joining the pilot. As well as supporting the development of QUIPU at UCL, the JNT has funded Brunel University to develop a variety of DUA interfaces based on X-Windows, MS-Windows 3 (for PCs) and one using User Friendly Naming as the search "language". When PARADISE started, management of the ROOT node moved away from UCL to the project machine run by the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), who were able to provide higher bandwidth network connects and a higher level of support. The c=GB node was also moved to ULCC for similar reasons; both nodes of the DIT are now managed by X-Tel. All but seven of the 39 organisations represented in the UK tree are JNT funded sites. In discussion with these non-JNT sites already in the pilot, a clear need was seen for a greater involvement of commercial organisations and a forum for participation. Hence it was decided to increase the scope of the pilot from its University orientation to one that encouraged participation from industry. It was agreed by the participants that X-Tel Services would act as the name registration authority for the pilot (they were doing it anyway for the academic world so the overhead would be minimal), and, for a small administrative fee, would register organisations in the GB node of the pilot DIT. Support arrangements to help organisations without X.500 experience would also be available, by negotiation, with X-Tel. One of the main concerns of the industrial sites is the lack of a single lower layer. Some sites have Internet access only, some only PSS. Few have access to Janet or IXI, the main networks used by the academic sites. As a result of this, the possibility of opening up the academic networks is being looked into. In the meantime the DSA software will have to cope with the situation as it is. The X.500 assumption of a single network service is currently invalid in the UK. Statistics of the DIT size are collected weekly: the figures for the end of April 1991 show there are 39 organisations, of which 25 are universities, 7 industrial and 2 government (RAL, JNT). Below the organisations there are approximately 65,000 entries, held in a total of 42 DSAs. By the end of 1991 it is expected that all 55 universities will have taken delivery of the JNT SUNs and have operating DSAs. The GB tree has one locality entry, for Nottingham, which registers the University, X-Tel and a number of Indian restaurants. The central DSA averages one operation per minute. However this includes large periods of idle time. At peaks the DSA can receive a few operations per second. This use is spilt almost equally between "getEDB" operations (the QUIPU replication protocol), and DSA relaying. It is not very easy to tell how much real, as opposed to experimantal, use is being made of the directory. Each of the academic sites in the pilot is required to give a three monthly report. The last round of reports showed that a few sites were seeing some use of public access DUAs (one site reported around 40 accesses per week). This would appear to be slowly increasing as public access DUAs become more widely available and better known. No British telecom companies are involved in the pilot at the moment. All DSAs in the GB node currently use the QUIPU software, mostly because of a lack of alternative implementations. The use of other implementations is actively encouraged and, when a suitable alternative appears, a volunteer academic site prepared to try a non-QUIPU implementation will be looked for. (Colin Robbins: c.robbins@xtel.co.uk) YUGOSLAVIA A group in Ljubljana are experimenting with QUIPU 6.7 and hope to have their DSA take the c=YU node in summer 1991. A group at the University of Zagreb is also keen to be involved in the pilot and the Slovenian PTT are interested in co-operating with the other PTTs in the PARADISE project. AUSTRALIA The AARNet Directory Services project proposes to implement a pilot, national X.500 electronic directory. The project is funded by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC) and initially involves four universities (The University of Queensland, The University of Sydney, Monash University and the University of Adelaide) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Division of Information Technology.The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) is the Australian region of the Internet and connects all Universities and most research organistions. The base for the present work is the ISODE/QUIPU software. Four DEC 3100 Ultrix systems are being used as the DSAs for this project, however there are a number of other DSAs in Australia which are linked into the international DIT. The main aims of this project are to gain experience in implementing, populating, operating and managing a large distributed directory service and to provide a base for continued development and implementation of directory systems in the tertiary education and research community in Australia. (Graham Rees: g.rees@cc.uq.edu.au) CANADA Canada's master DSA is run from the University of Toronto and uses QUIPU 6.1 over the Internet. The ten organisations registered are a mixture of four universities, government departments, Northern Telecom, Bell-Northern Research (BNR) and Concurrent Computer Corporation. ICELAND Since late 1989, Iceland has beeen running its single DSA on a SUN 3/60 at the University of Iceland. The implementation used is QUIPU 6.8 and there is access via the Internet. The DSA, which masters c=IS, holds about 25 organizations and about 200 leaf entries. However, because of the lack of good DUAs, there is little use made of the Directory. Although there is no pilot project or funding for X.500 in Iceland, work is being carried out on the implementation of registration and query options to the Elm mail system. (Gardar Nielsen: goggi@rhi.hi.is) ISRAEL The QUIPU based at the Hebrew University in Givat Ram joined the pilot at the end of May 1991 and only contains test data from some Universtiy departments. UNITED STATES PSI White Pages Pilot Project teve Kille's quality-of-service object classes and attributes (defined in draft-ietf-osids-qos-00.txt) were implemented. The attributes and object classes defined in NADF-123 (RFC-1218) were implemented. Based on NADF-123 and Kille's draft-ietf-osids -dsanaming-00.txt, an initial draft of a transition scheme for the c=US DIT is being drafted. Pilot participants were informed about the upcoming transition, and will receive the next version of the transition scheme, which is nearly complete. (Marshall Rose: mrose@cheetah.ca.psi.com) North American Directory Forum The North American Directory Forum (NADF) is a collection of organizations which offer, or plan to offer, public Directory services in North America, based on the CCITT X.500 Recommendations. The NADF met in Reston, VA the week of March 18-22, 1991. Outputs from this meeting include NADF-123, "A Naming Scheme for c=US", which the NADF is widely circulating for comment prior to their next meeting in mid-July. An ASCII version of NADF-123 has been published as RFC-1218. The NADF-123 document proposes the use of existing civil infrastructure for naming objects under c=US. This has the advantage of using existing registration authorities and not establishing any new ones (the document simply maps names assigned by existing authorities into different portions of the c=US DIT). The NADF-123 document is intended as the basis for X.500 names in the US for the long-term; it is important that interested parties get a copy, review it, and return comments. A second output, which is still undergoing development, is NADF-128, a preliminary draft on "Mapping the DIT onto Multiple ADDMDs". This describes how the c=US portion of the DIT is mapped onto DSAs and what service-providers must minimally share in order to achieve a working public directory. The next revision of this document will likely be ASCII-ized and published as an informational RFC. (Marshall Rose: mrose@cheetah.ca.psi.com) Internet Engineering Task Force OSI-Directory Services WG [IETF] This working group, chaired by Steve Kille (UCL), is primarily concerned with technical issues of X.500 deployment. The efforts of this group parallels that of RARE WG3. They have produced several working documents that are available as Internet Drafts, and are in various stages of progress toward becoming RFCs. DISI WG [IETF] A new X.500 related working group was formed, chaired by Chris Weider of Merit. The "Directory Information Services (pilot) Infra-structure Working Group" (DISI) is concerned with developing an "Administrator's Guide" to Directory Services through X.500, and with promoting the growth of the X.500 infrastructure. Ruth Lang (SRI) and Russ Wright (LBL) are distributing a survey to compile a catalogue of X.500 implementations. FOX (Field Operational X.500 Project) The FOX project is a DARPA and NSF funded effort to provide a basis for operational X.500 deployment in the NREN/Internet. This work is being carried out at Merit, NSYERNet/PSI, SRI and ISI. ISI is the main contractor and responsible for project oversight. There are two primary thrusts of the FOX project: o X.500 Infrastructure: It is important that multiple interoperable platforms be available for deployment. FOX plans to examine and test the interoperability of the Quipu and NIST-X.500 (Custos) implementations, and DNANS-X.500 if possible. In addition, FOX will explore X.500 interfaces to conventional database systems (one target is Sybase), an alternate OS platform (VM) for X.500 servers, and X-window based user interfaces. o X.500 Applications: A long-range goal is to facilitate the use of X.500 for real Internet applications. FOX will first focus on making network infrastructure information available through X.500. This includes network and AS site contacts, topology information, and the NIC WHOIS service. A centrally managed X.500 version will be the first phase of a WHOIS service. Providing an X.500 version of a well-known widely-used service should promote the use of X.500 by Internet users. In addition, this effort will provide experience in designing X.500 applications. However, the managability of this scheme will be short-lived, so the next step will be a design for a distributed version of WHOIS. Finally, it is critical for Internet X.500 efforts to be aligned with directory service efforts that are ongoing in other communities. FOX participants are involved in, or are otherwise tracking these efforts, and information about FOX activities will be publicly available. (Steve Hotz: hotz@isi.edu) Merit [FOX] Several things have been happening at MERIT in conjunction with the FOX project: o ISODE 6.8i has been installed behind both of Merit's X.500 DSAs (directory servers). Merit operates a DSA on merit.edu for the Merit staff and for network information, and also a DSA on sprint.com for the Sprintmail X.400 gateway. o One Internet Draft has gone out from Merit's FOX project team: the title is "Interim Schema for Network Infrastructure Information in X.500". It contains a schema definition for the Site Contacts portion of the directory information tree. Two more IDs are in progress: one on a long term DIT structure for network information, and one on representing NSAPs in X.500. o Merit staff are using a Macintosh X.500 client written by Mark Smith, Bryan Beecher, and Tim Howes of the University of Michigan. This client is very nice, and uses Tim Howes' lightweight "Dixie" protocol to talk to the DSA. o The X.500 directory is now used to maintain and generate the production "aliases" file for the Sprintmail X.400 gateway. Previously the aliases file was edited as a text file by Sprint staff and updated manually. Now the Sprint staff and some of their customers use an e-mail based command protocol to modify the alias entries. (Chris Weider: clw@merit.edu) SRI [FOX] In order to provide an interim capability offering network information via the Directory, SRI has begun the task of replicating a subset of the WHOIS information in the Directory. The development of a schema to support the WHOIS information is underway and will be completed in early April. SRI developed a program to produce a QUIPU EDB load file for WHOIS individual information. It uses the pilotPerson object as a prototype, as a means to anticipate potential data conversion problems (e.g. size mismatches). Other more straightforward conversions will be required, but the following two have been identified as mismatches: o WHOIS address field maximum greater than postalAddress o reversed name ordering. Names in WHOIS are last name first, whereas commonName suggests first name first. The other WHOIS entities (eg, computer, domain) will be analysed in a similar manner as part of the conversion process. (Ruth Lang: rlang@nisc.sri.com)