Editor's Note: Minutes received by 12/9/92
CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Brien Wheeler/MITRE
Minutes of the MHS-DS Working Group (MHSDS)
Agenda
o Minutes of Boston Meeting
o Action Item Review
o Revision of Charter
o MHS-DS Pilot Project Planning
- Project Coordinator
- Project Participants
- Software
o Document Review
o Adjournment
Minutes of Boston Meeting
The minutes of the Boston meeting were approved as written.
Action Item Review
o Update of Charter (Kevin Jordan) - Done.
o Produce MHS-DS Overview Document (Kevin Jordan) - Not done.
o Revision of MHS-DS Documents (Steve Hardcastle-Kille) - Done.
o Production of Pseudocode for Routing Document (Harald Tveit
Alvestrand) - Not done.
o Produce Document on Other MHS-DS Issues (Jim Romaguera) - Not done.
Revision of Charter
Kevin's revised Charter was discussed and approved.
Harald noted that some people have exhibited confusion as to whether or
not user support is within the scope of MHS-DS. His opinion was that we
should explicitly state in the Charter that that is not MHS-DS'
function. Steve felt that there may be cases, particularly in the
upcoming pilot, where MHS-DS may need to provide some user support.
MHS-DS Pilot Project Planning
Kevin stated that to make this pilot successful, we need people who have
the resources and motivation to take key coordination roles. A list for
indicating interest in participating in the pilot was circulated. Steve
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indicated that the PARADISE project has a deliverable in piloting the
use of directory, so that they may be prepared to manage the MHS-DS
pilot. David Goodman would be a good point of contact for pursuing
this. Kevin pointed out that initial coordination of the pilot may not
demand much time and effort, and that it can probably be accomplished
via email, so he volunteered to be the coordinator.
Others who volunteered to participate in the pilot project include:
o Harald Tveit Alvestrand
o Allan Cargille
o John Dale
o Arlene Getchell
o John Hawthorne
o Kevin Jordan
o Sylvain Langlois
o Mary LaRoche
o Steve Hardcastle-Kille
o Jim Romaguera
o Panos Tsigaridas
o Karen Petraska-Veum
o Peter Yee
o Yung Yu
The question was raised as to whether Quipu 8.0 supports all the new
attribute syntaxes defined within the MHS-DS attributes. Additionally,
will the final public release of PP use these new attributes and
algorithms?
Steve informed the Group that the situation is ``unfortunate but a
little complex.'' ISODE 8.0 was distributed in July, with a schema
aligned to the then-current Internet-Drafts. This may cause certain
problems in pilot use, but most likely only in complicated messaging
situations. An alpha release of PP was made in August that was aligned
to the July version of the MHS-DS documents. A beta release also
aligned to the July documents will be both integrated into the ISODE
Consortium beta release, and be released by X-Tel as a test under the
auspices of JNT. It is expected that this release will evolve into the
final public distribution of PP. The ISODE Consortium will be focusing
on other aspects of the system, while X-Tel will concentrate on the use
of directory aspects. X-Tel expects to make this release by the end of
the year.
Harald raised the question of the relationship between local tables and
directory information. Steve replied that there is a minor problem in
the PP implementation in that there is not a strict one-to-one
relationship between information in the directory and table information,
so that people have to configure PP differently if it is using the
directory.
Harald raised the question of the precedence of local routing
information and directory information. Steve replied that currently no
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intelligence exists within the software to facilitate this, but reminded
everyone that this software is of recent origin, and it will be
evolving.
The question of putting the COSINE tables into the directory arose.
This led to a discussion of automated tools for directory configuration.
The conclusion is that at this time, no one can commit to developing
these tools now, but some sites may be able to fund development projects
later. In particular, the German research network, DFN, is planning to
fund such development beginning early in 1993 (contact Panos
Tsigaridas). Meanwhile, MHS-DS is encouraging sites to put their own
configuration information into the directory. Specific participants
will be responsible for adding the necessary infrastructure entries
(i.e., ADMD and PRMD entries) to the directory in order to allow other
participants to add their routing and configuration information
independently.
After lunch, Kevin gave a presentation on ``LONG BUD,'' the new MHS-DS
pilot project (Lightweight Open Naming with Global Bearing Using
Directory). LONG BUD has the following goals:
o Wider connectivity and greater direct connectivity between pilot
MTAs.
o Provision of address mapping information as well as routing
information.
o Reduction in complexity of participating in X.400 pilots.
o Support for X.400 communities without X.500 access (i.e., ADMDs and
the COSINE MHS WEPS). This will require the development of some
tools.
o Elimination of the need to distribute routing tables manually among
pilot participants
LONG BUD will be international in scope, with participants already
identified in DE, FR, NO, UK, and US. Other possible near-term
participants include CH, IT, and FI. Further resources that may be able
to help advance this pilot include the DFN (GMB) MHS-DS project, the
ISODE Consortium, and the JNT UK project.
This pilot will run at least through the July 1993 IETF, with directory
population of participant information being a defined goal for the March
1993 IETF meeting. Success can be declared when two main goals are met:
tables are no longer used by directory-capable MTAs, and the directory
is the principal source for routing information.
Certain pieces of functionality have been identified as critical to the
success of LONG BUD: programs to extract routing information from the
directory for table-based MTA's, an email interface to the directory
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(DFN) for end-users, and the ISODE Quipu and directory-capable PP
software.
The distribution list for LONG BUD will be the MHS-DS discussion list,
mhs-ds@mercury.udev.cdc.com (anonymous ftp archive server
quixote.css.cdc.com), and Kevin Jordan (kej@mercury.udev.cdc.com) will
be the Pilot Coordinator.
Action Item Jim Romaguera will populate the Swiss portion of the
DIT with ADMD names.
Action Item Kevin Jordan will contact Wengyik Yeong about
populating ADMDs under c=US.
Action Item Harald Tveit Alvestrand will contact the appropriate
person about populating the ADMDs under c=NO.
Action Item Sylvain Langlois will contact the appropriate person
about populating the ADMDs under c=FR.
Action Item Panos Tsigaridas will contact the appropriate person
about populating the ADMDs under c=DE.
These people will be points of contact for management of the PRMD
namespace within their respective countries. Peter Yee will be the
point of contact for registering PRMDs under ADMD=TELEMAIL, c=US.
Document Review
o Representing Tables and Subtrees in the Directory
This document will be progressed with minor editorial changes as a
Prototype Standard.
o Representing the O/R Address Hierarchy in the Directory Information
Tree.
This document spurred a discussion of the problem of alias
proliferation due to alternate names and underspecified O/R
addresses. It was agreed that this issues bears on the routing
document, and not the mapping document. This document will be
progressed with minor editorial changes as a Prototype Standard.
o Use of the Directory to Support Mapping Between X.400 and RFC 822
Addresses.
This document will be progressed with minor editorial changes to a
Prototype Standard.
o A Simple Profile of MHS Use of the Directory.
Although no changes were made to this document, its progression
will be postponed so that it may be published with the routing
document it profiles.
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o MHS Use of Directory to Support MHS Routing.
This document went through some technical revision at the meeting,
and hence will remain an Internet-Draft until at least the March
1993 MHS-DS meeting.
Action Item: Kevin Jordan will send mail to Erik Huizer when the
indicated documents are ready for progression.
Adjournment
Next meeting: The Spring 1993 IETF will be held in Columbus, Ohio,
March 28th - April 2nd.
Attendees
Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no
George Chang gkc@ctt.bellcore.com
John Dale jdale@cos.com
Daniel Fauvarque dfauvarq@france.sun.com
Raphael Freiwirth 5242391@mcimail.com
Ella Gardner epg@gateway.mitre.org
Tony Genovese genovese@es.net
Arlene Getchell getchell@es.net
Alf Hansen Alf.Hansen@delab.sintef.no
Steve Hardcastle-Kille s.kille@isode.com
John Hawthorne johnh@tigger.rl.af.mil
Erik Huizer huizer@surfnet.nl
Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov
Kevin Jordan kej@udev.cdc.com
Marko Kaittola marko.kaittola@funet.fi
Mary La Roche maryl@cos.com
Sylvain Langlois Sylvain.Langlois@der.edf.fr
John Myers jgm+@cmu.edu
Karen Petraska-Veum karen@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov
Jim Romaguera romaguera@cosine-mhs.switch.ch
Panos-Gavriil Tsigaridas Tsigaridas@fokus.berlin.gmd.dbp.de
Brien Wheeler blw@mitre.org
Peter Yee yee@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
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