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 <NIC.MERIT.EDU>                                             12 March 1992
      /internet/legislative.actions/hearing.12mar92/wolff.testimony


 Testimony of

 Dr. A. Nico Habermann and Dr. Stephen S. Wolff

 Committee on Science, Space and Technology

 Subcommittee on Science

 March 12, 1992


 Part 2: Testimony of Dr. Stephen S. Wolff

 Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to appear today before this
 committee to discuss the NSFNET and related activities.

 There are three parts to my testimony. I will discuss first the current
 state of the NSFNET Backbone project, including its relationships to other
 networks that actually, or potentially connect to it, and also the
 management controls the NSF has in place with its awardee, Merit, Inc.
 Second, I shall report on the progress we have made in implementing the
 Project Development Plan for continuation and enhancement of NSFNET
 Backbone services which was approved by the National Science Board in
 November last. Finally, I shall briefly discuss the relationships between
 the NSFNET and NREN programs, including the interagency management
 structure now evolving for the NREN as an Administration program with a
 legislative authority.

 Current State, Other Networks, and Management Controls

 a. Current State The five year cooperative agreement between the Foundation
 and Merit, Inc. for management and operation of the NSFNET Backbone was
 signed in November, 1987, after a five month period of competitive
 announcement and merit review of proposals. Merit, and its partners IBM and
 MCI, put in place a 1 3-node, 1.5 mb/s (million-bits-per-second), or T1,
 network in a very short time. The new Backbone began to carry traffic in
 August, 1988. In that month, traffic doubled over the July figure for the
 original Backbone network that the new one supplanted.

 Since August, 1988, traffic on the Backbone has increased more than
 fifty-fold, from 200 million to 11 billion packets per month. This increase
 in traffic has been accommodated by hundreds of minor engineering
 improvements to the network and two major upgrades. The first upgrade
 increased the number of links in the network from 14 to 19. This increased
 the robustness of the Backbone by multiply connecting all 13 nodes, and it
 increased capacity as well. The second upgrade increased the number of
 Backbone nodes from 13 to 16 (the three new nodes were competitively
 selected), and raised the transmission speed from T1 to T3 (1.5 to 45
 mb/s).

 All the engineering improvements and both major upgrades were clearly
 foreseen and discussed in Merit's original farsighted proposal to the NSF.
 Such are the economies of scale in telecommunications that the upgrades to
 accommodate a fifty-fold traffic increase have been achieved with only a
 doubling in cost to the Foundation - from the original $14 Million over
 five years to the present five-year project cost of $28 Million.

 The NSFNET Backbone is the linchpin of the overall NSFNET project, which
 includes establishment of and assistance to regional networks that deliver
 Backbone service to every state in the union. Other significant measures of
 the size and success of the NSFNET project include:

   More than 600 of the 3-to-4,000 two-year and four-year colleges and
 universities in the nation are interconnected, including all the schools in
 the top two categories of the Carnegie Foundation classification of major
 research universities.

   Several hundred high schools are also connected, but the exact number is
 difficult to determine since regional networks have widely leveraged NSF
 funds to connect the smaller institutions without NSF's direct involvement.

   Many industrial research organizations and commercial establishments that
 support the nation's scholarly enterprise are connected; indeed, the
 so-called ".COM" domain is the fastest growing segment of the network.

   The NSFNET Backbone is the default infrastructure for the nation's
 research and education community. It carries, for example, ten times the
 traffic of the Department of Energy's ESnet Backbone which interconnects
 many NSFNET client sites with national laboratories and other DoE
 facilities.

   By selecting a proven set of open communication protocols ("TCP/IP") and
 mandating their use in the NSFNET, the Foundation catalyzed an entire
 industry in which there are now upwards of a half dozen US manufacturers.
 US made packet switches and gateways dominate the world market, and a T1
 packet switch can now be bought for well under $10,000. (By contrast,
 before NSFNET, the most widely used network packet switch operated at a
 speed of only 56,000 bits per second and was priced at $120,000. A further
 effect has been to substantially increase the connectedness of the
 scientific community as several other large networks, e.g., MFENET, the
 forerunner to ESnet, and European HEPNET, the European High Energy Physics
 network, have switched in recent years from their own proprietary
 communication protocols to those (TCP/IP) compatible with the NSFNET.)

   NSFNET's selection of TCP/IP has led to it becoming the most widely used
 set of open communication protocols in the world. Procedures for
 transporting these protocols over emerging telecommunications services,
 such as the Switched Multi-megabit Data Services (SMDS) and Frame Relay
 have recently advanced to Draft Standard status. Because of this, NSFNET
 and the Internet will be able to benefit from whatever economies may be
 available fromusing the new offerings of the telecommunications carriers.

   Scientists and educators on NSFNET can now collaborate over the network
 with their peers in 39 countries on 7 continents, and every month brings
 new requests for connection to the US network of which the NSFNET and its
 Backbone is the principal component.

 b. Other Networks Another measure of the success and influence of the
 NSFNET project has been the emergence and rapid growth of private sector
 offerors of TCP/IP network services. These include: UUNET Technologies,
 which indeed predated the NSFNET, but has grown rapidly in recent years;
 Performance Systems International (PSI), a spinoff from the NSF funded
 regional network NYSERNET; Advanced Networks and Systems (ANS), who provide
 NSFNET Backbone Services under contract to Merit; US Sprint; InfoNet, a
 multinational

 TCP/IP provider; and CERFnet, which functions as a regional network in
 Southern California. Several of these private providers have formed a
 cooperative for interchanging traffic known as the Commercial Internet
 Exchange, or CIX, of which Mitch Kapor is Chair.

 The NSFNET Backbone is limited to uses compatible with the NSF enabling
 legislation, as amended. There is an "NSFNET Backbone Services Acceptable
 Use Policy" (the "AUP", a copy of which is attached to this testimony)
 which was developed in consultation with an NSF Advisory Committee and the
 NSF General Counsel and expresses this limitation. The general principle is
 worth stating, "NSFNET Backbone services are provided to support open
 research and education in and among U.S. research and instructional
 institutions, plus research arms of for-profit firms when engaged in open
 scholarly communication and research"

 By contrast, the private providers, have no such limitations. Although much
 of the traffic on their networks need not conform to the AUP, it is NSF
 policy to allow the private providers to use NSFNET Backbone services to
 exchange AUP-conformant traffic between their customers and NSFNET clients.
 However, the NSFNET Backbone may NOT be used by the private providers as a
 "transit network" - i.e., to interconnect their fee paying customers.

 In this traffic sharing environment, ANS occupies an especially sensitive
 position since NSF indirectly, through Merit, is one of its customers.
 Accordingly, NSF has made special arrangements with Merit to monitor the
 quality of service afforded to NSFNET and to ensure that the traffic of
 ANS' private customers does not adversely impact NSFNET Backbone services.

 c. Management Controls The NSF participates with Merit, IBM, MCI, the State
 of Michigan, and (since its formation in 1990) ANS in three series of
 regular meetings which collectively form the primary means of oversight and
 control. There is a biweekly "Partner Conference Call" which functions at
 the tactical level, a monthly "Engineering Meeting" for technical
 desiderata, and a quarterly Executive Committee meeting which considers
 strategic issues. During the transition from the T1 Backbone to T3, the
 Executive Committee also scheduled weekly conference calls. As provided for
 in the Cooperative Agreement with Merit, NSF convened a blue ribbon review
 panel of academic and industry experts and conducted a two day long review
 of Merit's Backbone performance at the eighteen month anniversary. The
 panel rated Merit's performance "excellent".

 The Project Development Plan

 In November, 1991, the National Science Board (NSB) approved a plan for
 continuation and enhancement of NSFNET Backbone Services beyond the
 expiration of the current cooperative agreement with Merit in November,
 1992. The NSB also approved an extension of the agreement for a period not
 to exceed eighteen months in order to allow new providers to be
 competitively selected and to provide for an orderly transition. A copy of
 the Plan is attached to this testimony.

 The Plan was developed after more than a year of external consultation.
 During this year of consulting the external community, NSF supported two
 workshops at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard - one in March
 1990 and the second in November, 1990. These workshops involved university
 networkers, economists, specialists in public policy (especially
 telecommunications policy), telecommunications carriers, and others. NSF's
 sister Federal agencies involved in the NREN were consulted at a meeting
 convened for this purpose in July, 1991, since the NSFNET Backbone is the
 most heavily used Backbone network among the several agency networks that
 are developing the NREN. The Foundation sponsored a workshop in August,
 1991, by the Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET), a trade
 association that was inaugurated in 1987 to act as the voice of the
 regional networks, the "users" of Backbone services. The workshop was also
 attended by all the private providers of Backbone services, as well as
 telephone company representatives.

 In addition, the Networking & Communications Research & Infrastructure
 Division Advisory Committee was consulted at its meeting in November 1991.
 That Committee includes leading researchers in the communications and
 networking field, private network providers, and telephone company
 representatives. Moreover, NCRI staff participated at public meetings of
 the networking community, such as meetings of the Internet Engineering Task
 Force (sponsored by industry), Net '90 and Net '91 (sponsored by the
 academic and user community), and others. The Plan has a schedule that
 includes release of a draft Solicitation in February 1992, a three month
 period for public comment, followed by release of the final solicitation in
 May.

 Owing to unexpected delays in releasing a separate but related
 solicitation, and the technical complexity of the proposed new NSFNET
 Backbone architecture, it has not been possible to adhere to the original
 schedule. The other solicitation has been released, NSF's engineering
 experts have been consulted, and it now appears the draft solicitation will
 be ready at the end of March, so the schedule has slipped by about eight
 weeks. We believe there is still adequate time to accomplish the
 solicitation-review-award-transition process within the eighteen month
 extension authorized by the NSB. The technology permits a planned, gradual,
 and orderly transition of traffic from one provider's facilities to
 another's.

 The transition, now in progress, of moving traffic from the T1 Backbone to
 T3 provides practical experience for the future. The Plan provides for a
 degree of continuing competition among two or more TCP/IP service providers
 in furnishing NSFNET Backbone Services. There will however be no
 significant changes in the rules for access to NSFNET Backbone Services by
 commercial service providers. The Acceptable Use Policy, developed in
 consultation with the NCRI Division Advisory Committee and the NSF General
 Counsel represents, in the opinion of Counsel, the most liberal
 interpretation possible under the NSF enabling legislation, as amended.
 This current policy allows access to commercial services for the support of
 open scholarly research and education under the General AUP Principle
 stated above.

 NSF believes the next award will clarify the issues in free and open
 competition for the provision of Backbone services, and will conclude with
 at least two fully qualified and experienced providers of bulk services. It
 is likely, therefore, that NSFNET Backbone funds may - after the end of the
 next award (i.e., by FY 1996) - be distributed competitively to those
 organizations (currently the regional networks) who require Backbone
 services so that they may procure them competitively on the open market and
 free of Federal intervention. NSF had wished to employ this model at the
 expiration of the Merit award, but was advised at the FARNET workshop that
 the regional networks (the "users") were unprepared for that degree of
 operational complexity on their part. Moreover, sister Federal agencies
 felt in addition that such a procedure would, at the current state of
 technology, result in serious routing instability in the network,
 prejudicial to the accomplishment of their missions, since they depend
 heavily on the NSFNET to reach many of their grantees and contractors. NSF
 will continue working with the regional networks and the sister Federal
 agencies to overcome these obstacles.

 In a separate, but closely related activity, the NSF has just released a
 competitive solicitation for Network Information and Registration Services.
 These are services which have traditionally been provided for the worldwide
 Internet by Network Information Centers (NlCs) associated with the major US
 Backbone networks (i.e., ARPANET, NSFNET, ESnet, and the NASA Science
 Internet) as well as by Centers operated by NSF regional networks, by
 campus network organizations, and by the private TCP/IP network providers.
 The principal NIC, however, was for many years operated by SRI
 International under contract to the Defense Communications Agency (now the
 Defense Information Systems Agency, DISA). In a recent re-competition held
 by DISA, SRI lost the contract to another firm. DISA is funding the new
 contractor, GSI, to serve only the Defense Data Network; accordingly, NSF
 is funding GSI on a month-to-month basis for service to the rest of the
 Internet (including, of course, its largest component, the NSFNET) until
 NSF's recently released solicitation can result in a new Network
 Information Center. During the month-to-month funding, NSF is closely
 monitoring GSl's operation. It is interesting to note that the commercial
 users of the Internet, many of whom are clients of the private TCP/IP
 providers, form the largest single user class of GSl's services.

 Relation to NREN

 Finally, I would like to turn briefly to the relation of the NSFNET to the
 overall NREN program that is part of the HPCC Program described earlier by
 Dr. Habermann. The planning process for the HPCC Program is coordinated by
 the HPCCIT Subcommittee. This subcommittee meets regularly to coordinate
 agencies' HPCC programs through information exchange, common development of
 interagency initiatives, and review of individual agency HPCC proposals and
 budgets. This process provides for agency participation through agency
 proposal development and review, budget crosscut development and review,
 and interagency program coordination. Agency programs are reviewed against
 a set of evaluation criteria for merit, contribution, readiness, linkages
 to industry, and other factors.

 During 1990, in order to provide for broader and more inclusive
 coordination of research and education communities, the NSF, as part of its
 HPCCIT network task group activities, created the Federal Networking
 Council (FNC) and initiated the creation of an FNC Advisory Committee
 (FNCAC) as an NSF advisory committee.

 The FNC consists of representatives from Federal agencies that have
 requirements for operating and using networking facilities, mainly in
 support of research and education, and for advancing the evolution of the
 Federal portion of the Internet. Membership lists of the FNC and FNCAC are
 attached to this testimony. Achieving the goals of the NREN will require
 close coordination of the NSFNET, NASA Science Internet (NSI) and Energy
 Sciences Network (ESNet) programs to meet the expectations of scientists
 working on the Grand Challenge problems. At the same time, however, the
 NSFNET program will vigorously pursue wider NREN goals of developing the
 technologies that will enable access by libraries, use for lifelong
 education, and connection to health care systems, etc. The NSF will
 continue to involve the private sector to the greatest extent possible for
 meeting the goals of public policy in this arena in the most cost-effective
 and technically responsive way. NSF is participating with the other
 agencies in the FNC in the drafting of the NREN report required of the
 Office of Science and Technology Policy by the High Performance Computing
 Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194.)