Network Working Group E. Harslem - Rand Request For Comments: 131 J. Heafner - Rand APRil 1971
Response to RFC#116 (May NWG Meeting)
Phase One
Software Status of 360/65
1) Our software is currently being changed to reflect the new NCP protocol delineated in RFC#107. These changes will be completed before the end of May.
2) We are implementing a logger that, after an automatic ICP dialog, can be driven from a local console. Any desirable messages can be sent or received in EBCDIC, ASCII (8), or as binary streams. The purpose of the logger is to allow sites to checkout remote log in procedures. Since no prodUCtion-oriented services will be offered on the 360/65, the logger is for eXPerimental purposes only. It will be completed before the end of May.
3) We have not planned a TELNET. We will, however, implement both server and user TELNETs once a specification is generally accepted. Implementation time will be on the order of two weeks.
Transition from 360/65 to PDP-10
1) We plan to move from our 360/65 to a PDP-10. Rand will offer Network services on the PDP-10. The hardware and software status of the PDP-10 will be reported later.
2) The 360/65 Network connection will remain for some time due to its production use by another ARPA-sponsored project at Rand. Maintenance of the 360/65 Network software will be provided for the lifetime of the connection but no new programs will be developed on the 360/65 after September.
1) The UCSB/Rand Network activities were recently reported in RFC #113 and earlier in RFC#78. The Climate Dynamics Project (CDP) at Rand will continue to use this facility (more heavily) in the future.
2) In conjunction with the above facility, the Rand Network team has planned and implemented a front-end graphics program to allow the reduced data from UCSB to be displayed and interacted with locally as graphs, contours, plots, and lists. This will be used in about three months after an intermediate program, being written by the CDP personnel, is completed.
Phase Two
Experimental Data Reconfiguration Service (Form Machine)
1) A working session was held recently at Rand on the Data reconfiguration Service (DRS), the results of which have been drafted and are being edited by the participants. These data will be published soon as an RFC. Eric Harslem will be prepared to make an oral report at the NWG meeting on the DRS.
Protocol Manager
1) We plan to submit a positional paper on a proposed Protocol Manager, which will allow flexibility in both experimental and production use of connection protocols. This will be presented as a Request for Comments on a software package that Rand intends to implement for its use on the PDP-10. For example, it should obviate a fixed logger on our forthcoming PDP-10.
1) We have been proponents of the collective NWG as a forum to raise issues and as a general information transfer mechanism of what sites are doing and thinking. More recently small working groups and committees have been formed to generate particular specifications such as TELNET, the new NCP protocol, etc. We favor continuance of these methods as long as any site with a willingness, an interest, and contribution is not excluded from any group or committee. We feel that these groups will limit themselves to a small functional size a priori because they are directed toward special interests.
The long lead time between the formation of such a group and their final output (and subsequent implementation of the plan) has been accepted by the NWG Technical Chairman and is rather disconcerting. The NCP glitch cleaning committee is an example of expedient work. UTAH, for example, has already implemented the new NCP protocol. Other groups (including the DRS) have not been as responsive. Perhaps the technical problems addressed by other groups are more complex and the needs for their solutions are not as immediate as the NCP glitches. We offer no nice solution except that perhaps some guidelines should be established concerning timely publication of reports.
2) Regarding long range goals of the NWG, we do not think that the NWG is the right body to establish the long range goals. By long range goals of the NWG, we are really concerned (in part) with long range goals of the Network. We feel that the Principal Investigators are in a position to have a better perspective of long range Network goals than the NWG members. As a suggestion, one way of converting their views into NWG tasks is to have the NWG Technical Chairman host a one day opinion session of the Principal Investigators, then report these views to the NWG for the generation of their implied tasks.
[ This RFCwas put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFCarchives by Jim Thompson 4/97 ]
