CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Gene Hastings/PSC NJM Minutes There was discussion about the means to distribute timely up/down reports. Dale Johnson of Merit solicited comments on the value of Network Status Reports, as the Merit mailings take extra effort. The general opinion is that they are still valuable but there is the hazard of becoming inundated if everyone started posting campus up/down messages. Several results came of the discussion: o As an interim practice, operators continue as before, pending any observed instance of too much data. o Attempts will be made to use standard mail templates to issue messages from multiple places. o SURAnet will start posting messages about the status of FIX-East. o Participants will start to analyze and evaluate the possibilities of a database-like mechanism (X.500 was one such proposed) so that a network operator may query for status without needing to examine and classify messages for relevance simply to have context when the information is needed. News, Comments: o X Drawing Tool: X based MacDraw work-alike: idraw from Stanford U. Anon ftp Interviews. Stanford.Edu) report courtesy Erik Sherk @ Cornell o Watch out for Byzantine Routing: Gene Hastings observed in November that connectivity is becoming rich enough with multiple mid-levels serving some regions that unexpected routing can result. A specific example was a DuPont facility in Delaware whose path to the University of Delaware passed through at least four states: DuPont -> PSInet (Delaware -> Reston, Va. -> Ithaca, NY -> NSFNET -> SURAnet (College Park, MD.) -> Newark DE -> U. of Delaware. There was once a time when such a path was considered extremely undesirable due to limited resources in the backbones. In this example it may be moot, as the round trip times were fairly low. The major concern is that it is a likely harbinger of other 1 peculiar paths and that network operators must be aware of this situation in order to be productive when debugging. Please Note: Sue Hares, as part of her examination of backbone routing changes would like to hear any reports of other unexpected paths; please send such reports to njm@merit.edu. o Mac document translations: An issue of MacUser this past fall had an article and guide to document conversion tools, describing a number of utilities which can convert between different Macintosh graphics format. In addition, there is a new version of DrawOver (3.0) released with Adobe Illustrator 3.0 New Business: o Ted Brunner - Map Edit: Ted gave an update on the map editor/topology database he and others have been working on at Bellcore. This is an application and tools to create and store database entries on the behavior and configuration of a network (number and kind of interfaces, etc.). He showed the results of a prototype map editor which reads this database and draws a map based on that knowledge. Copies of this software may be available to interested operators. Versions exist for Sun 3, Sun 4, and DEC RISC. If interested call or mail to Ted. o Sue Hares - Routing Stability: Sue gave a presentation on route slop in the backbone, as seen by changes in the number of nets a given AS announces. In some cases one could see individual nets toggling back and forth between alternate ASes announcing them to the backbone. The first question raised is ``what does this mean''? Is it affecting service to users? This behavior is a general concern since frequent changes DO consume resources in the backbone and attached regionals. In some cases it was possible to characterize a specific campus or net's activity as being a lousy line, with no desire or budget to correct it, or known itinerant service. The implication of known sources of frequent routing updates raises the question of whether there is value in having ``pseudo-static'' routes, or the ability to set some hystereis on known sources of routing noise. Attendees Theodore Brunner tob@thumper.bellcore.com Tom Easterday tom@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu Fred Engel Vince Fuller vaf@Standford.EDU 2 Jack Hahn hahn@umd5.umd.edu Susan Hares skh@merit.edu Eugene Hastings hastings@psc.edu Dale Johnson dsj@merit.edu Ken Jones uunet!konkord!ksj Dan Jordt danj@cac.washington.edu Darren Kinley kinley@crim.ca Walter Lazear lazear@gateway.mitre.org Marilyn Martin martin@netcom.ubc.ca Matt Mathis mathis@pele.psc.edu Bahaa Moukadam David O'Leary oleary@noc.sura.net Mark Oros oros@nmc.cit.cornell.edu Joel Replogle replogle@ncsa.uiuc.edu Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil Timothy Salo tjs@msc.edu Tom Sandoski tom@concert.net Bernhard Stockman boss@sunet.se Paul Tsuchiya tsuchiya@thumper.bellcore.com Kannan Varadhan kannan@oar.net Carol Ward cward@spot.colorado.edu Linda Winkler b32357@anlvm.ctd.anl.gov Dan Wintringham danw@osc.edu Cathy Wittbrodt cjw@nersc.gov David Wood dcmwood@spot.colorado.edu Sze-Ying Wuu syww@thumper.bellcore.com 3