Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/nisi/nisi-minutes-93mar.txt

Text File | 1993-04-30 | 8KB | 219 lines

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 [e-mail] 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

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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:



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   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''

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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          [e-mail]
Jodi-Ann Chu             [e-mail]
Cynthia Clark            [e-mail]
John Curran              [e-mail]
Thomas DeWitt            [e-mail]
Marcello Frutig          [e-mail]
Maria Gallagher          [e-mail]
Martyne Hallgren         [e-mail]
Deborah Hamilton         [e-mail]
Susan Harris             [e-mail]
Susan Horvath            [e-mail]
Lenore Jackson           [e-mail]
Erik Jul                 [e-mail]
Mary La Roche            [e-mail]
Ronald Lanning           [e-mail]
Daniel Long              [e-mail]
Gary Malkin              [e-mail]
April Marine             [e-mail]
Jerry Martin             [e-mail]
Keith Moore              [e-mail]
Jim Naro                 [e-mail]
Judy Nasar               [e-mail]
Bruce Nelson             [e-mail]
Clifford Neuman          [e-mail]
Marsha Perrott           [e-mail]
Mark Prior               [e-mail]
Joyce K. Reynolds        [e-mail]
Bradley Rhoades          [e-mail]
Francois Robitaille      [e-mail]
Jennifer Sellers         [e-mail]
Patricia Smith           [e-mail]
Craig Todd               [e-mail]
William Yurcik           [e-mail]



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