CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Marsha Perott/PREPNet Minutes Network Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (NISI) Agenda o Introductions and Agenda Modifications o NIC-profiles Status o Net-help Status o Coordination with New InterNIC Information Services o New Projects o New Goals and Milestones o Summary and End NIC-profiles Since the last meeting, three volunteers (Marsha Perrott, Bill Yurcik, Charlotte Mooers) have been working to populate this database of information about NIC contacts. They have sent email to many NIC sites asking contacts to fill out an information template. There are now about forty-five entries in the database. The database is currently maintained at Merit. To access the information there, send a message to x500test@merit.edu with ``help'' as the subject of the message and you will be returned access directions. The template will be put on-line at merit.edu in /pub/nisi/nic-template. The future home of the database is not clear. Some discussion with Susan Calcari of the new InterNIC prompted ideas such as eventually having each NIC maintain a template of information locally which an archie-like service would update and make available for distributed access. Or possibly the whole database would just move to the new InterNIC. Certainly, it was agreed that the most important goal at this time is simply to collect the information. Jerry Martin of Ohio State mentioned that he had been doing something similar in trying to poll university computer centers for NIC contacts, and he has already collected information on abut sixty-two sites. He kindly agreed to forward that information to merit. Net-help After having this project stagnate for a couple of meetings now, ye olde co-Chairs were going to vote to boot it off of the ol' goals and milestones. The suggestions received before the meeting for 1 implementing the idea (which, ``btw'', is for a simple command to allow a user to see a referral to local help for network questions), seemed to involve quite a bit of change to network software, etc., or to demand quite a bit of a knowledge base from users before they could even issue a query. In mid-boot however, a couple of good suggestions were given as to easy ways of getting and providing the information. Susan Calcari. suggested that since the registration folks were just now making changes to their net registration templates, that it would be a relatively simple thing to ask them to add a ``NIC Services Contact'' to the template. That way, everyone requesting a new number would need to provide that information and any user doing a whois on his network can see it. Since whois is a common application, an extension to that seemed easier than inventing a whole new command. Plus there was a suggestion to implement a common address that anyone could telnet to, i.e., telnet help.merit.edu. Several other ideas were kicked around. We recognize that ``any'' effort in this area does assume that the user knows ``something'' to type first to get that NIC contact information, which is rather a leap of faith. But we do have to start somewhere. It is clear that this project is still alive and will probably require that NISI communicate with the Applications area and figure out what to do next. Coordination with New InterNIC Information Services We took some time drawing pictures to make sure we clearly understood the relationships between the InterNIC, existing NICs, and the NISI Working Group. We were especially trying to make sure that overlaps between NISI and the InterNIC were avoided. No problem. Basically the InterNIC is on a par with other NICs, e.g., the DDN NIC, the JNIC in Japan, the RIPE NCC, etc., while NISI is a forum outside of the NIC structure for people working in information services and user support to develop policies, procedures, and tools that would be generally useful for them all. One area of effort that would seem to be really useful is to develop more formal procedures for coordinating user response between NICs, rather in the sense of a trouble ticket system that could be used among NICs when a user problem or question requires a coordination of services. New Projects and New Goals and Milestones Given the discussion during the meeting, new goals and milestones were created for the Group based on existing tasks and on new ones suggested by the Group. Possible tasks were identified as: 2 o Implementing net-help o Writing an informational paper describing the current structure and interrelationships of the various NICs (because, after all, if *we* were confused!...) o Developing guidelines for NIC hand offs and feedback re user questions o Developing a guide to NICs This last was seen to possibly overlap with IRG/Directory efforts and the nic-profiles, so it has been tabled for now until the Group has time to clarify it better and act on it. Of the others: o Net-help - Talk to NSI regarding adding a hook for NIC POC to their registration template. Done. - Have NIC point-of-contact info show in WHOIS. May 30th. - NISI Group to campaign for information to be added to this field retroactively for those sites that already have their net number. Start by May 30th. Susan Calcari and the Group will be working on this. o NIC Structure Paper - Define scope of paper, write outline. April 30th. - Write draft. June 15th. - Get feedback on paper by or at the next IETF. July IETF. April Marine, Susan Calcari and Maria Gallagher have been assigned to this task. o NIC Hand-off Procedures. - Review UCP work. July IETF. - Modify the UCP documents to fit NIC rather than NOC interaction. July IETF. - Come up with an outline by July IETF. April Marine, Pat Smith, Joyce Reynolds, Martyne Hallgren, Susan Calcari, and Jerry Smith will be working on this. The above action items are the new goals and milestones for the Group. Well, of course, the milestones will be extended beyond the ``draft'' 3 stages of these papers. The Group also approved the minor change to the Charter that was sent to the mailing list before the meeting. Attendees Corinne Carroll ccarroll@bbn.com Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Cynthia Clark cclark@cnri.reston.va.us John Curran jcurran@nic.near.net Thomas DeWitt tdewitt@osi.ncsl.nist.gov Marcello Frutig frutig@rnp.impa.br Maria Gallagher maria@nsipo.nasa.gov Martyne Hallgren martyne@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu Deborah Hamilton debbie@qsun.att.com Susan Harris srh@umich.edu Susan Horvath shorvath@merit.edu Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov Erik Jul jul@oclc.org Mary La Roche maryl@cos.com Ronald Lanning lanning@netltm.cats.ohiou.edu Daniel Long long@nic.near.net Gary Malkin gmalkin@xylogics.com April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov Jerry Martin jerry+@osu.edu Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu Jim Naro jnaro@nic.near.net Judy Nasar jdnasar@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Bruce Nelson bnelson@novell.com Clifford Neuman bcn@isi.edu Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Bradley Rhoades bdrhoades@mail.mmmg.com Francois Robitaille francois.robitaille@crim.ca Jennifer Sellers sellers@nsipo.nasa.gov Patricia Smith psmith@merit.edu Craig Todd ctodd@desire.wright.edu William Yurcik yurcik@dftnic.gsfc.nasa.gov 4