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                   Report to FARnet Executive Committee
                     CCIRN Meeting -- 10-11 May 1990
                         INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis
                              by Guy Almes

1. On May 10-11, 1990 I attended the CCIRN Meeting hosted by Christian
Huitema of INRIA.  Our hosts were cordial and the attendees quite professional.
In the rest of this brief report I will summarize the business conducted and
offer a very personal view of international networking, particularly networking
between the United States and Europe.

2. Attendees:
Co-Chairs
       Bill Bostwick           FNC             [email protected]
       James Hutton            RARE            [email protected]
Others
       Guy Almes               FARnet          [email protected]
       Rob Blokzijl            RIPE/HEPnet     [email protected]
       Bob Cooper              RARE/JAnet      [email protected]
       John Curley             NRC             [email protected]
       Elise Gerich            FEPG            [email protected]
       Phill Gross             CNRI/FEPG       [email protected]
       Christopher Harvey      CNRS, SPAN      [email protected]
       Christian Huitema       INRIA           [email protected]
       Daniel Karrensberg      EUUG/EUnet      [email protected]
       Peter Kirstein          UCL             [email protected]
       Barry Leiner            IAB             [email protected]
       Kees Neggers            RARE/SURFnet    [email protected]
       Torben Nielsen          PACCOM          [email protected]
       Rebecca Nitzan          NASA            [email protected]
       Jaime Perez Vidal       CEC, Brussels   [email protected]
       Ira Richer              DARPA           [email protected]
       Sven Tafvelin           NORDUnet        [email protected]
       Enzo Valente            RARE/GARR/INFN  [email protected]
       Tony Villasenor         NASA/FNC        [email protected]

3. European Developments

The RIPE initiative was started in September 1989 to coordinate IP within
Europe.  (It will become an official part of RARE during the RARE/EARN meeting
later this month.)  This is a healthy effort, since it gives voice and structure
to those within Europe hoping for a pragmatic well-engineered IP infrastructure.
For a variety of reasons, those active in RIPE are often not from the official
government-blessed networking activities, but there seems to be slow-but-steady
convergence.  RIPE needs our support.

EASInet, funded by IBM Europe, managed by GMD-Bonn, is aimed primarily at
3090 sites within Europe.  It has a T1 line to Cornell.  There is considerable
ambiguity about the breadth of appropriate access to EASInet.  (This may be
cleared up by now.)  In the view of many, this T1 is the only true trans-
Atlantic `fat pipe'.

Ynet, funded by the EC, is aimed at making European R&D organizations more
competitive in the world networking market.

The Eureka COSINE Project started its 3-year implementation phase in February
1990.

EARN traffic is now running over X.25, including private, public, and IXI,
since about December 1989.

EARN has permission to connect to East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and the Soviet Union.

4. American Developments

The attendance of a representative from Mexico at the recent NACCIRN meeting
was noted.

CA*net is scheduled to start this June.

The Federal Networking Council is formed by Bill Wulf (acting as chair for
networking of FCCSET) on 4-Jan-90.  Its purposes are to provide some federal
direction for the NREN and to coordinate agency networks.  Its members are
designated by their agencies.  They are concerned with several protocols,
including IP, OSI, and DECnet-IV.
 Charles Brownstein of NSF is Chair; Bill Bostwick is Exec. Director.
 Members include DARPA, NSF, NASA, DoD, DoE, OSTP, GSA, NIST, HHS, OMB, DCA,
NTIA, USGS, and NOAA.
 Tony Villasenor chairs the Engineering and Operations working group.
 Ira Richer chairs the Research working group.
 The NREN agencies (NSF, DoD, DoE, and NASA) coordinate their budgets.

5. Pacific Developments

Australia: AARN becomes operational this month at 64kb/s, moving to 2 Mb/s.
The hub site is in Melbourne; administration is done in Canberra.

Japan: WIDE, TISN, ICOT, and ISR use four 64-kb/s circuits.

Korea: SDN/KAIST operational this month.

New Zealand: UNINET now connects all the universities.

PACCOM is becoming a consortium and will participate in CCIRN.

6. CCIRN Terms of Reference

The only difficult issue was the extent of explicit support for the EC party
line on support for international standards.  We moved in this direction, but
not in a manner that seems to exclude IP.  The full text, as revised from the
early-1989 Geneva draft, is included as an appendix.

7. CCIRN Guidelines on International Leased Lines

The primary difficult issue was how to articulate the widely held view that
costs should be shared in a fair way.  The Americans are eager to use this
document as a carrot to secure European action on improving the trans-Atlantic
networking situation.  The Europeans are eager to get the Americans to pay for
a share of whatever needs to exist.  The full text, as revised, is included
as an appendix.

8. Security Issues

Chris Harvey briefed us on the international system of CERT.  Chris runs the
European CERT.  Kevin Mills is the FNC CERT Representative.  The CERT is now
run out of NIST.

9. Status of the `Fat Pipes'

This term is applied to two federal trans-Atlantic lines.  The general idea
is to combine a `mission' need with an `infrastructure' need to allow for
better trans-Atlantic bandwidth.  The American end will be an IP router at
a FIX.  The European end will be an IP router at some site.  There are two
specific instantiations.

The UK fat pipe is aimed at operational status during July 1990.  Its gross
512 kb/s bandwidth is MUXed into several distinct logical lines:
       128 kb/s: NASA mission
        64 kb/s: MoD to DARPA IP
        64 kb/s: NSF to JAnet -- infrastructure
       256 kb/s: such applications as conferencing over ST
The utility of the infrastructure portion of this line is limited by JAnet.

The German fat pipe will come later this year.  Its mission channels will
connect to a defense site in Germany.  Its infrastructure channel will connect
an ESnet site at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to DFN/WIN.  The
utility of this line is again limited by the nature of DFN/WIN.

These two fat pipes will support both IP and connectionless OSI (CLNP).  This
is needed both for intrinsic reasons and to conform to the EC desire to support
international standards.

10. IP Coordination in Europe

RIPE began about one year ago, and became more active and structured about six
months ago.  It has task forces on Routing, Domain Naming, Management,
Coordination, and Monitoring/Performance.

There are about 500 IP networks in Europe, with about 400 system managers.  They
have a backbone that connects four cities.

The Italians propose a 256kb/s line to the US, as part of RIPE.

The RARE/EARN workshop will be a key focus for working such issues as
number coordination, domain name servers, routing, and usage.

The American participants expressed deep interest and encouragement for RIPE's
efforts.

11. Improved Connectivity

The Americans keep hoping that the official European structures will form an
analog to our FEPG, but it keeps not happening.

12. Time/Place of the Next Meeting

Santa Fe, New Mexico:
       22-23 Oct 90: FEPG/RIPE workshop on topology engineering.  Phill Gross
               and Bill Bostwick will write the terms of reference.
       24-25 Oct 90: CCIRN meeting.
       26 Oct 90: Technical workshop on High-speed Networking.

France, near Paris:
       21-22 May 91: CCIRN meeting.

13. Planning of Workshops

Two topics seem particularly well motivated.

X.500 International White-Pages Service.  We are doing X.500 on both sides of
the Atlantic.  Coordination seems needed.

Transport-level Gateways.  Interoperability between CONS, CLNP, and ISODE at
the application level could be improved by advanced transport-level gateways.

Appendix A: CCIRN Terms of Reference

   Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN)
                   Revised, Sophia-Antipolis, 11 May 1990.

                            Terms of Reference

The purpose of the CCIRN is to agree and progress a set of activities to
achieve interoperable networking services between participating entities
(currently North America and Europe) to support open research and scholarly
pursuit.  Policy, management, and technical issues will be examined, based
on agreed requirements.  More precisely, the committee aims to:
 o stimulate cooperative intercontinental research by promoting enhanced
   interoperable networking services, specifically
   - promoting the evolution of an open international research network in line
     with official policies on the use of international standards, and
   - coordinating and facilitating effective use of the international networks
     to enhance the quality of research and scholarship.
 o optimize the use of resources and to coordinate international connections of
   the networks represented on the CCIRN
 o coordinate development of international network management techniques
 o exchange results of networking research and development

                                Membership

CCIRN members should represent an organisation with an active interest in
developing a continental network with the aims described above in the `Terms
of Reference'.

In North America these organisations are Federal Agencies which form the Federal
Internet, initially: DARPA, NASA, DHHS, DoE, NSF, and an advisor from the IAB
and a representative from the Canadian Research Ministry.  The North American
CCIRN takes responsibility for assembling the appropriate members.

In Europe these organisations are those which promote cooperative international
networking, initially: RARE, COSINE, EARN, EUnet, HEP-CERN, SPAN-ESA, CEC, and
the ICB.  The RARE Executive Committee takes responsibility for assembling the
appropriate members.

Observers may be invited at the discretion of the co-chairs.

Appendix B: CCIRN Guidelines on Intercontinental Leased Lines

At its meeting 10/11 May 1990 in Sophia-Antipolis, the CCIRN adopted the
following guidelines.

1. The CCIRN considers that improved coordination of the ordering and operation
of intercontinental leased lines will have significant benefits in terms of cost
saving and improved service levels for the research community.

2. It expects its members to inform and consult the CCIRN on the future plans of
the organisations which they represent, in respect to the above.  The CCIRN
would expect proposals for new leased lines to take account of the following
guidelines:
 a. Leased lines should be shared to the extent that this is permitted by the
    applicable national and international regulations and the policies of the
    funding organisations.

 b. To the extent that intercontinental links are considered infrastructural,
    an equitable (not necessarily equal) sharing of the costs should be
    negotiated, taking into account all costs involved in network connection
    and operation.  In such negotiations, appropriate weight should be given
    to the benefits of international infrastructure.

    To the extent that links are established for specific projects, they should
    be funded by these projects.

 c. Links that are used for infrastructural purposes should be connected at the
    highest appropriate level in the `network hierarchy'.

 d. The proposal should include a technical review of the effect the link is
    expected to have on the interconnected networks.

 e. Operation of the link should be on the basis of an agreed written document.
    It is preferable that, if possible and appropriate, day-to-day management
    should be the responsibility of a single organisation.

3. The application of these guidelines to existing leased lines will be
considered in the light of experience.

Explanatory notes:
 1. A link is a service operated over a leased line and a leased line may well
    carry several links.
 2. For the purposes of this paper, infrastructural links are those which are
    available for general purposes.

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