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-
- INTERNET-DRAFT
- Network Working Group A. Marine
- Request For Comments: XXXX NASA NAIC
- FYI: XX June 1993
-
-
- Current NIC Interrelationships
-
- Status of This Memo
-
- This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
- documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas,
- and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
- working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft
- documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet-Drafts may be
- updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It
- is not appropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to
- cite them other than as a "working draft" or "work in progress."
-
- Comments on the following draft may be submitted to
- April Marine (amarine@atlas.arc.nasa.gov).
-
- This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
- not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
- unlimited.
-
- Abstract
-
- Recently there have been significant changes in the manner in which
- Internet information services are provided. The goal of this
- document is to provide a brief snapshot of the roles and
- relationships of current Network Information Centers (NICs).
-
- Acknowledgments
-
- This document reflects the work of the Network Information Services
- Infrastructure (NISI) working group in the User Services area of the
- IETF. Because the working group participants represent a cross-
- section of existing Internet NICs, the opinions expressed herein are
- representative of groups currently providing information services
- within the Internet community.
-
- Special thanks....
-
- Introduction
-
- The recent growth of the Internet over the last several years has
- been accompanied by a trend toward a distributed system of
- information services providers. Long gone are the days of one
- centralized NIC for the whole Internet. Today almost every entity
- in the world that supports internetworking, be it a government agency
- or a private access provider, provides its users with some type
- of NIC. Recently, the National Science Foundation in the U.S.
- awarded its "NSFNET and NREN Information Services" contract to
- three cooperating companies, each of which has responsibility
- for a different general task (information services, registration
- services, or directory services). The structure of this award
- has added some confusion to the question of where the scope of
- one NIC ends and another's begins.
-
- This question is of vital importance to the participants in the
- Network Information Services Infrastructre (NISI) working group. A
- consensus of agreement between NISI WG members is essential to
- furthering our goal of establishing and supporting cooperative
- bonds between NICs of all types. We thought that, if NISI members
- were confused on this question, others in the Internet community
- would probably also be confused, and that a synopsis of our
- agreements on this topic would be of interest to the community.
-
- Two points need to be clear. First, when we refer to a "NIC" or a
- "center" we mean some group who has as all or part of its function
- the task of providing information services. Such "centers" can be
- as informal as one person on staff who has as one of her job
- responsibilities the task of keeping up with Internet services and
- answering local questions about them.
-
- Second, often such centers, be they large or small, formal or
- informal, have responsibilities in addition to information
- services. The primary example of such an additional task is
- providing support for Internet registration services, such as the
- local assignment of IP network numbers or the maintenance of domain
- names. Directory services, such as the registration of white pages
- information in a server, is another task that many NICs undertake.
- Many NICs also double as Network Operations Centers (NOCs). Each
- separate task a NIC undertakes draws it into a distinct web of
- relationships among other providers of that service and under
- those responsible for coordinating such services, if any such
- coordination exists. This paper focuses on the web of relationships
- an Internet NIC experiences with the task of providing information
- services.
-
-
- The Situation Today
-
- The main impetus for the NISI WG considering this question was the
- recent creation of the InterNIC, the term used to designate the
- three cooperative agencies awarded the NSF service provider
- contract. The information services portion of this contract was
- awarded to General Atomics/CERFNet. The question was, "How does
- the InterNIC information services provider relate to the NICs
- already established?" After some discussion, we agreed that
- the InterNIC provider was a peer to the other Level 2 NICs.
-
- A Level 1 NIC is a center whose primary responsibility is answering
- questions posed by network users. A Level 2 NIC is a center whose
- primary responsbility is supporting Level 1 NICs. Each Level 2
- NIC, however, will inevitably support some Level 1 activities, i.e.
- answer questions directly from users. (Entities other than Level 2
- NICs provide Level 2 support to NICs, by the way. The User
- Services Area of the IETF, the RARE Information Services and User
- Support (ISUS) group, and the NISI working group are also Level 2
- activities.)
-
- So, if you're a user, how do you know if "your" NIC is a Level 1
- NIC or a Level 2 NIC? The answer is that it doesn't matter--just
- ask your question and trust the NIC to handle it appropriately.
- The distinction just means that some NICs are tasked to support
- others. For example, the InterNIC information services provider
- acts as a resource for other mid-level NICs in the NSFNET hiearchy.
- NASA's Network Applications and Information Center (NAIC) is
- tasked to provide similar support to NICs at NASA Centers.
-
-
- A Picture
-
- Here is the picture the NISI working group agreed represented
- the current relationships for information services. The top
- level only shows a few representative NICs; there are many
- more there.
-
-
- ----------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------- --------------
- |InterNIC |<->| DDN |<->|RIPE |<->|NASA |<->|JNIC |<->| APNIC|<->|"Commercial"|
- |info svcs| | NIC | | NCC | |NAIC | | | | | | NICs |
- ----------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------- --------------
- / / \ \ / / \ \ / / \ \ / / \ \
-
- mid-level NICs country NASA Center constituent
- campus NICs NICs NICs NICs
-
- \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
-
- users
-
-
- In fact, this picture might better be drawn "upside down", with the
- "users" at the top of the picture, because this design does not
- represent a hierarchy of importance of influence, but rather a
- foundation of support. Users ask for help as locally as possible;
- many of these local NICs have the support of Level 2 NICs. All
- NICs have the support of such groups as NISI and ISUS. Therefore,
- the ultimate benefit is that the user has the support of this whole
- system of interrelated NICs and NIC support functions. It is this
- system of relationships the NISI group is chartered to foster and
- formalize.
-
-
- Finding Out More About NICs
-
- One of the ongoing projects of the NISI working group has been
- the collection of NIC Profile information so that both NICs
- and users can more easily find out what services are available
- to them.
-
- <info from Pat re collecting and accessing NIC Profiles>
-
-
- Security Considerations
-
- Security considerations are not considered in this memo.
-
-
- References
-
- RFC 1302 "Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure"
-
-
- Authors' Addresses
-
- April Marine
- Network Applications and Information Center
- NASA Ames Research Center
- M/S 233-18
- Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
-
- Phone: 415 604 0762
- Email: amarine@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
-
-
-
- This Internet Draft expires December 30, 1993.
-