Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/ietf/mhsds/mhsds-minutes-93mar.txt

Text File | 1993-04-29 | 9KB | 224 lines

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Urs Eppenberger/SWITCH and Keven Jordan/CDC

Minutes of MHS-DS Working Group (MHSDS)

Minutes from the previous meeting were approved.  The updated Working
Group Charter was reviewed and approved, and action items from the
previous meeting were reviewed.  The status of these action items
follows:


Kevin Jordan        To write a Draft RFC providing an overview of the
                    main set of MHS-DS RFC's.  Status:  not yet done.
                    To populate the DIT with US ADMD's.  Status:
                    <SPACE> and ATTMail have been added.
                    To send mail to Erik Huizer when documents are ready
                    for progression.  Status:  no documents are ready
                    for progression yet.
Harald Alvestrand   To write pseudo code for the Routing Document.
                    Status:  not done, but a contribution from Australia
                    has been submitted, and Harald will consider it as a
                    basis for the pseudo code to be added to the Routing
                    Document.
                    To populate the DIT with Norwegian ADMD's.  Status:
                    <SPACE>, TELEMAX, and UNINETT added.
Jim Romaguera       To produce a document on ``other'' MHS-DS issues.
                    Status:  action item dropped.
                    To populate the DIT with Swiss ADMD's.  Status:
                    ARCOM has been added.
Sylvain Langlois    To populate the DIT with French ADMD's.  Status:
                    not yet done.
Panos Tsigaridas    To populate the DIT with German ADMD's.  Status:
                    <SPACE> and DBP added.


In addition to the ADMD entries described above, the DIT has also been
populated with the following ADMD entries:


    C=GB; A=' '
    C=GB; A=Gold 400
    C=GB; A=MARK400

    C=ES; A=' '

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    C=ES; A=MENSATEX

    C=US; A=TELEMAIL



Thus, the DIT has already been populated with basic information about
many X.400 ADMD's.  This establishes the initial infrastructure needed
to allow the MHS-DS pilot project move forward.

Discussion of New Issues

Kevin Jordan raised the issue of the need for defining a new object
identifier to identify the X.400/88 X.410 mode application context.
X.400/88 allows MTA's to establish X.410 mode connections using the RTS
protocol identifier 12.  There currently is no OID which identifies this
application context.  The Routing Document defines an OID for the
X.400/84 X.410 mode application context, but it doesn't define one for
the X.400/88 X.410 mode context (and neither does the standard).  Kevin
recommended that a new OID should be created for the X.400/88 X.410 mode
context, and that this new OID should be added to the Routing Document.
The recommendation was accepted.  Steve Kille will update the document
accordingly.

Discussion of the Pilot Project

Most of this MHS-DS meeting was devoted to discussion of the MHS-DS
pilot project, Project Long Bud.  Populating the DIT with ADMD entries
was an important accomplishment since the last MHS-DS meeting because it
establishes the infrastructure which allows Long Bud to progress.  A
productive discussion took place regarding how best to populate the DIT
with X.400 routing information and how best to progress the pilot
project.  The conclusions were:


  1. Steve Kille will update the following three documents and submit
     them for progression by May 1st:

       o Representing Tables and Subtrees in the Directory.
       o Representing the O/R Address Hierarchy in the Directory
         Information Tree.
       o Use of the Directory to Support Mapping Between X.400 and RFC
         822 Addresses.


  2. Initially, participation in Long Bud should be restricted to the
     GO-MHS community (the GO-MHS community is the Internet X.400
     community).  To simplify initial routing requirements, only MTA's
     willing to accept connections from all other MTA's will be eligible
     to participate.  In addition, all participating MTA's must be able


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     to reach all of the existing GO-MHS community.  We will start by
     adding a small collection of MTA's which are interconnected by
     RFC1006 and/or ISO CLNS. We will also configure the open routing
     tree such that an MTA at SWITCH is defined as a default X.400
     route.
     After the initial routing infrastructure is established and is
     being used successfully by the initial set of participating MTA's,
     eligibility restrictions will be relaxed.

  3. Some documents are needed to define the pilot project formally and
     provide guidance on how to participate.  Jim Romaguera agreed to
     coordinate and to help write these documents.  In fact, he
     assembled a team and generated rough drafts within hours after the
     MHS-DS meeting ended.  Kevin Jordan will edit the documents and
     distribute them as Internet-Drafts as soon as possible.


The need for MHS-DS tools was discussed.  The conclusions reached were
that the following tools need to be built:


  1. Routing information browser and verifier.  This tool would perform
     functions such as:

     (a) Verify that specified O/R addresses are reachable using routing
         information specified in the DIT.
     (b) Verify MTA connection information such as presentation
         addresses and credentials.
     (c) Chase references from one X.500 entry to another to ensure that
         there are no dangling pointers.

     Urs Eppenberger agreed to write the specifications for this tool.

  2. Route tracer.
     This tool would accept an MTA name and destination O/R address and
     use the DIT to produce the set of possible routes from the MTA to
     the indicated destination.


In addition, the following tools are also desirable:


  1. X.500 Perl
     This tool would be a version of Perl which would include built-in
     DUA functions.  This would greatly facilitate the development of
     other X.500-capable tools.

  2. Routing information DUA
     This would be a specialized tool facilitating the creation,
     maintenance, and management of X.400 routing information in the
     DIT.

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  3. Migration tools
     These tools would facilitate interworking between existing MTA's
     which are not X.500-capable and ones that are.  Panos Tsigaridas is
     already planning to build these tools.  His goal is to build a tool
     which accepts existing RARE routing documents as input (with
     possible enhancements for defining X.500 info) and generates X.500
     entries.  He is also planning to build a tool which pulls routing
     information from the DIT and creates RARE routing documents from
     it.  Panos estimates that these tools can be completed by June.


MTA Support for Long Bud

The PP 6.4 beta release contains support for X.500-based routing, so
this software can be used to participate in the pilot project.  PP 7.0
will also support X.500-based routing, as does ISODE Consortium Release
1.

Next Meeting

The next MHS-DS meeting will take place at the IETF meeting in Amsterdam
in July.  Erik Huizer suggested that an MHS-DS demonstration be
organized for that meeting.  The audience for the demonstration would be
MTA and DSA managers.  The demonstration would not need to be very
fancy.  It could simply be based upon a utility which browses the DIT to
show the routing information, and it would show one or two operational
MTA's which would actually be using the DIT to make their routing
decisions.

Attendees

Claudio Allocchio        [e-mail]
Harald Alvestrand        [e-mail]
George Chang             [e-mail]
Cyrus Chow               [e-mail]
Urs Eppenberger          [e-mail]
Roland Hedberg           [e-mail]
Jeroen Houttuin          [e-mail]
Barbara Jennings         [e-mail]
Kevin Jordan             [e-mail]
Marko Kaittola           [e-mail]
Mary La Roche            [e-mail]
Sylvain Langlois         [e-mail]
Ignacio Martinez         [e-mail]
Edward Reed              [e-mail]
Francois Robitaille      [e-mail]
Jim Romaguera            [e-mail]
Einar Stefferud          [e-mail]
Catherine Summers        [e-mail]
Louisa Thomson           [e-mail]



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