P A R A D I S E I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E P O R T
N U M B E R 2
N O V E M B E R 1 9 9 1
Table of Contents
(by country)
National Representation & Contact Points
Directory Statistics
Country Reports
1. National Representation & Contact Points
A U S T R A L I A
Organisation: AARNet Directory Project
Contact: Graham Rees
The Prentice Centre
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Queensland 4072
Telephone: +61 7 365 4143
E-mail: G.Rees@cc.uq.oz.au
aarn-ds@cc.uq.oz.au
A U S T R I A
Representative: ACONET
Contact: Florian Schnabel
Technische Universitat Graz
EDV-Zentrum Steyrergasse 30/1
A-8010 Graz
Telephone: +43 31 68 736 255
Email: schnabel@edvz.tu-graz.ada.at
B E L G I U M
Representative: University of Brussels
Contact: Nils Meulemans
ULB, IIHE - Groupe HELIOS-B
CP 230 - Bd. du Triomphe
B-1050 Brussels
Telephone: +32 2 641 35 53
Email: nils@elem4.iihe.ac.be
B R A Z I L
Representative: CNPq
Contact: Eduardo Tadao Takahashi
Rede Nacional de Pesquisa - CNPq
Rua Dr. Antonio Augusto de Almeida, 334
Cidade Universitaria
13083 Campinas SP, Brasil
Telephone: +55-192-39-4141
Email: tadao@ethos1.ansp.br
C A N A D A
Organisation: University of Western Ontario
Contact: Peter Marshall
CCS, Room 203, Natural Sciences Building
University of Western Ontario,
London, Canada N6A 5B7
Telephone: +1 519 661-2111 6032
Email peter.marshall@uwo.ca
D E N M A R K
Representative: DKnet
Contact: Steen Linden
Department of Computer Science
University of Copenhagen
Universitetsparken 1
DK-2100 Copenhagen
Telephone: +45 31 39 64 66 x222
Email: steen.linden@dkuug.dk
E U R O P E
Representative: PARADISE
Contact: PARADISE Helpdesk
ULCC
20 Guildford Street
London WC1N 1DZ
Telephone: +44 71 405 8400 x 432
Email: helpdesk@paradise.ulcc.ac.uk
F I N L A N D
Representative: FUNET
Contact: Petri Ojala
FUNET c/o VTKK
PO Box 40
SF-02101 Espoo
Telephone: +358 0 457 2005
Email: ojala@funet.fi
F R A N C E
Representative: OPAX
Contact: Paul-Andre Pays
Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne
158, Cours Fuariel
42023 Saint-Etienne Cedex 2
Telephone: +33 77 42 01 74
X.400: s=pays;o=emse;p=emse;a=atlas;c=fr
rfc822: pays@emse.fr
G E R M A N Y
Representative: DFN
Contact: Karl Bonacker
GMD
Postfach 1240
5605 St Augustin 1
Telephone: +49 22 41 14 27 21
Email: bonacker@f3.gmd.dbp.de
G R E E C E
Representative: Network Ariadne
Contact: Yannis Corovesis
NRC Demokritos
15310 Attiki
Telephone: +30 1 65 13 392
X.400: s=corovesis;o=ariadne-t;p=ariadne-t;c=gr
rfc822: korov@grathdem.bitnet
I C E L A N D
Organisation: University of Iceland
Contact: Marius Olafsson
University of Iceland
Sudurgotu
107 Reykjavik
Telephone: +354 1 694932
Email marius@rhi.hi.is
I R E L A N D
Representative: Trinity College Dublin
Contact: Donal O'Mahony
Computer Science Department
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Telephone: +353 1 7021261
Email: omahony@cs.tcd.ie
I S R A E L
Representative: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Contact: Juliana Solomon
Computation Center
Taylor Building, Givat Ram
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Telephone: +972 2 584539
Email: juli@shum.huji.ac.il
I T A L Y
Contact: CNUCE
Representative: Giovanni Armanino
CNUCE - Istituto del CNR
Reparto Infrastrutture di Rete per la
Ricerca Via S. Maria, 36
56126 Pisa
Telephone: +39 50 593246
Email: giovanni@rirr.cnuce.cnr.it
J A P A N
Representative: WIDE Project/ISODE Working Group
Contact: Hideki Sunahara
Dept. of Computer Science
The University of Electro-Communications
1-5-1 Chofugaoka
Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182
Telephone: +81 424 83 2161 ext.4122 or 4172
Email: suna@cs.uec.ac.jp
L U X E M B O U R G
Representative: RESTENA
Contact: Theo Duhautpas
RESTENA
6, rue Coudenhove-Kalergi
L-1359 Luxembourg-Kirchbourg
Telephone: +352 42 44 09
X.400: s=duhautpas;ou=restena;p=restena;a=pt;c=lu
T H E N E T H E R L A N D S
Representative: SURFnet BV
Contact: Erik Huizer
Netwerkontwikkeling
Postbus 19035
3501 DA Utrecht
Telephone: +31 30 310290
Email: huizer@surfnet.nl
N E W Z E A L A N D
Representative: Victoria University Wellington
Contact: Andy Linton
Victoria University
Wellington
Telephone: +64 4 471 5328
email: andy.linton@nz.ac.vuw.comp
N O R W A Y
Representative: UNINETT
Contact: UNINETT Directory Project
c/o University of Oslo/USIT
POB 1059 - Blindern
0316 Oslo
Telephone: +47 2 453470
Email: directory-adm@uninett.no
P O R T U G A L
Representative: Universidade do Minho
Contact: Joaquim Macedo/Fernando Pinto
Departamento de Informatica
Universidade do Minho
4719 Braga
Telephone: +351 53 612257 ext 432/1
rfc822: macedo@uminho.pt
X.400: s=macedo;p=uminho;a= ;c=pt
S P A I N
Representative: IRIS Programme/FUNDESCO
Contact: Celestino Tomas
RedIRIS/FUNDESCO
Alcala 61
E-28014 Madrid
Telephone: +34 14351214
Email: tomas@iris-dcp.es
S W E D E N
Representative: SUNET
Contact: Roland Hedberg
SUNET
Umdac, S-90187
Telephone: +46 90 165 204
Email: roland@umu.se
S W I T Z E R L A N D
Representative: SWITCH
Contact: Thomas Lenggenhager
SWITCH
ETH-Zentrum
CH-8092 Zurich
Telephone: +41 1 261 8178
Email: lenggenhager@verw.switch.ch
U N I T E D K I N G D O M
Representative: Joint Network team
Contact: Directory Project Manager
X-Tel Services Ltd
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD
Telephone: +44 602 412648
Email: x500@xtel.co.uk
U N I T E D S T A T E S
Representative: White Pages Project
Contact: PSI Inc.
5201 Great American Parkway
Suite 3106
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Telephone: +1 408 562 6222
Email: wpp-manager@psi.com
Y U G O S L A V I A
Representative:
Contact: Marko Bonac
University of Ljubljana
Jozef Stefan Institute
Jamova 39
61000 Ljubljana
Telephone: +38 61 159199
X.400: s=bonac;o=ijs;p=ac;a=mail;c=yu
rfc822: bonac@ijs.yu
2. Directory Statistics
A U S T R A L I A
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Anaconda
DSAs: 23
Organisations: 29
Entries: 30,321
A U S T R I A
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Piranah
DSAs: 3
Organisations: 18
Entries: 1516
B E L G I U M
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Woolly Spider Monkey
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 1
Entries: 8
B R A Z I L
Implementation(s): QUIPU 6.8
Master DSA: Tanager
DSAs: 1
Organisations:
Entries:
C A N A D A
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Beluga Whale
DSAs: 11
Organisations: 11
Entries: 21,285
D E N M A R K
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Axolotl
DSAs: 2
Organizations: 340
Entries: 920
E U R O P E
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Giant Tortoise
DSAs: 3
Organisations: 3
Entries: 1000
F I N L A N D
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Jaguar
DSAs: 16
Organisations: 17
Entries: 11,316
F R A N C E
Implementations: PIZARRO, QUIPU
Master DSA: opax-dsa
DSAs: 10
Organisations: 11
Entries: 1015
G E R M A N Y
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Puma
DSAs: 23
Organisations: 130
Entries: 7237
G R E E C E
Implementation: QUIPU 6.8
Master DSA: None
DSAs: 0
I C E L A N D
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Elephant Seal
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 28
Entries: 250
I R E L A N D
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
MasterDSA: Irish Elk
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 1
Entries: 1500
I S R A E L
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Dorcan Gazelle
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 1
Entries: 10
I T A L Y
Implementations: QUIPU 7.0, DirWiz
Master DSA: Black Widow
DSAs: 2
Organisations: 2
Entries: 20
J A P A N
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Japan Master
DSAs: 13
Organisation: 13
Entries: 2100
L U X E M B O U R G
Implementation: QUIPU 6.0
Master DSA: None
DSAs: None
T H E N E T H E R L A N D S
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Hornero
DSAs: 3
Organisations: 7
Entries: 2128
N E W Z E A L A N D
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Kakapo
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 1
Entries: 100
N O R W A Y
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
MasterDSA: Electric Eel
DSAs: 9
Organisations: 426
Entries: 15,934
P O R T U G A L
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Zebu
DSAs: 1
Organisations: 1
Entries: 10
S P A I N
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Iguana
DSAs: 5
Organisations: 10
Entries: 170
S W E D E N
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSAs: Hummingbird
DSAs: 6
Organisations: 37
Entries: 19,000
S W I T Z E R L A N D
Implementation: QUIPU 7.0
Master DSA: Chinchilla
DSAs: 9
Organisations: 7
Master Entries: 24,152
U N I T E D K I N G D O M
MasterDSA: Giant Tortoise
DSAs: 48
Organisations: 40
Entries: 54,387
U N I T E D S T A T E S
Implementations: QUIPU 7.0, CUSTOS
Master DSA: Alpaca
DSAs: 117
Organisations: 78
Entries: 227,263
Y U G O S L A V I A
Implementation: QUIPU 6.8
Master DSA: None
DSAs: 0
S U M M A R Y
EUROPE
DSAs Orgs Entries
Europe 3 3 1,000
Austria 3 18 1,516
Belgium 1 1 8
Denmark 2 340 920
Finland 16 17 11,316
France 10 11 1,015
Germany 23 130 7,237
Greece - - -
Iceland 1 28 250
Ireland 1 1 1,500
Israel 1 1 10
Italy 2 2 20
Luxembourg - - -
Netherlands 3 7 2,128
Norway 9 426 15,934
Portugal 1 1 10
Spain 5 10 170
Sweden 6 37 19,000
Switzerland 9 7 24,152
United Kingdom 48 40 54,387
Yugoslavia - - -
---------------------------
TOTAL 144 1,080 140,573
THE WORLD
DSAs Orgs Entries
Australia 23 29 30,231
Brazil 1 - -
Canada 11 11 21,285
Japan 13 13 2,100
New Zealand 1 1 100
United States 117 78 227,263
---------------------------
TOTAL 166 132 280,979
GRAND TOTAL 310 1,212 421,552
3. Country Reports
A U S T R A L I A
The AARNet Directory Project has been in existence officially
for nearly a year, and is currently preparing a report on
Directory Services to the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee
(AVCC) and the AARNet community, which will be presented at the
forthcoming Australian Networkshop in Hobart in December 1991.
During 1991 the Australian DIT has grown enormously. This
growth has not only come from the project member institutions,
giving confidence that this growth will continue as more
organisations within the AARNet community choose to run their own
DSAs.
A number of different machines are currently being used to
support the Directory in Australia, some of which (such as the
Directory Project machines) are dedicated to this task. The
Directory Project members use Digital's DS-3100s, but also SUNs,
a Solbourne and even a Mac running AUX are used by other
organisations in Australia. Currently QUIPU is the only
implementation used, but it is hoped that Unisys, using their own
DSA over a pure OSI stack, will be welcomed to the pilot soon.
A QUIPU DSA was demonstrated at the Townsville Winter
workshop in July using a local DIT of around 200 people,
connected into the national DIT. For this demonstration a new
attribute type was created, using simple encoding and public
domain software to display the images. Around 100 colour
photographs were captured on a Apple Macintosh II via a S-VHS
video camera. The picture images were then converted on the
Macintosh before being transferredd to the DECstation for final
conversion. A typical 2" by 3" colour photograph rendered with
200 colours occupied around 70kbyte of disk, and took about 5
seconds to display locally on a range of hosts and X-terminals.
Although display over the WAN wasn't feasible, it has to be
stressed that colour imaging, like voice, is a very immediate way
to grab peoples attention, and is a way of "selling" the
directory that is really hard to beat. Despite being labour
intensive, and somewhat clumsy, it is intended to repeat this
demonstration in Hobart, hopefully incorporating direct video
capture onto the DIT-hosting workstation.
We have recently obtained an officially registered OID under
the auspices of the AVCC and will be using this to encode new
AARNet-wide attributes (as well as migrating our existing
attributes) to supplement the Internet/COSINE attributes we are
already using. Once we have decided on any new attributes we will
attempt to promote them within the wider global Directory
community. Standards Australia (SAA) has produced it's own
standard for directory naming, and AARnet intend adopting this
structure as much as possible. To this end AARnet intend applying
to SAA for bulk registration of all Australian Universities to
ensure that they can occupy the national namespace, as well as
applying for a NSAP address and PRMD name for AARNet.
To try to reduce traffic over the international link we have
investigated the loads associated with "shadowing" the data for
all of the QUIPU-based countries at the top level. This has
revealed some shortcomings of the X.500 model, since without
formally "slaving" the data, there is no way to permit other
localised DUAs and DSAs to contact us, instead of the real owner.
Also, the memory costs of this data are quite extreme, and it is
feared that with other countries joining the Directory this can
will become too cumbersome. However, AARnet will be shifting to
formally slaving this data soon, which should reveal better
patterns of usage of the link.
Related to this, AARnet experiences wildly unreliable access
to the JANET network via Giant Tortoise and False Cobra, and may
try and avoid direct use of these servers where more reliable and
faster-accessed DSAs exist in the United States.
In early 1992, it is intended to produce an architecture
neutral binary distribution kit for a range of "common" machines.
Experience has shown many sites find it difficult to get
started, especially those with limited exposure to ISODE and the
Directory. By producing binary kits we hope that many more sites
will be able to easily install the system and investigate the
benefits of Directory Services.
AARnet would like to particpate more within the various
Directory working groups, but the time and cost of travel makes
this prohibitive. Video conferencing is seen as a solution, but
only once there is a more readily available technology.
A U S T R I A
Austria runs three QUIPU DSAs. The master DSA for Austria is
located in Graz and holds general information about all the
universities in Austria. Additionally, it stores detailed
information about the staff of the University of Technology in
Graz, eg e-mail, addresses, phone and fax numbers, and postal
addresses. The University of Vienna and the University of
Technology in Vienna have had theirs own DSAs since October, and
have started to gather and store information about their local
staff.
The X.500 project of ACONET is entering its second stage
now. The first stage concentrated on the establishment of an
X.500 service focussing on technical, functional and inter-
communicational aspects. The second stage will focus on the
development of an Information System for Universities, and so
concentrate on organisational and structural issues as well as
user interfaces: ACONET expects to have to develop its own user
interface.
The senior administration at the Graz University of
Technology (the Rector and the Director) decided to establish an
information service, with the purpose of giving the University as
a whole the possibility of representing itself in an electronic
way. The information system is therefore composed of
contributions - for example, about institutes or the
administration, which have to be delivered and maintained by
these parties.
Some parts of the information to be stored, and their
structures respectively, are pre-defined and mandatory, others
are optional and can be added freely. Fixed parts relate to:
research, staff and education.
Institutes of Graz University have had to deliver their
research activities once every two years for paper publication.
It should be possible in future to extract this information from
the information system.
The section on staff is to hold information about postal
addresses, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. At the
moment there exists no centralised information base about people
who are paid by an institute autonomously, and so there is no
chance to get their phone numbers or e-mail addresses.
The information base on an institute's educational
activities is intended to comprise at least the title of lessons,
seminars with details such as where, at what time and by whom
they are given as well as descriptions of course content and
subject matter.
Questionnaires are to be distributed to be filled in by the
institutes on a regular basis on behalf of the Ministry of
Research. Graz is also considering storing information with
relevance to the international projects "TRACE" and "ERASMUS"
All the above information will be stored in a way, that it
can be read by Hyper-G-Systems, and on a system that can read
Hyper-G-Information in a limited way. Additionally there will be
a Hyper-G-Interface to the Graz information system, based on the
considerable work already done on this at Graz.
With the intention of making this information system
available in the X.500-world, Graz will provide a sort of gateway
to X.500, able to offer all or at least essential data of the
local information system to X.500. This particular software will
be required to extract information from the information system
and convert it into an X.500-form notation.
B E L G I U M
The HELIOS group at the University of Brussels (ULB) are running
a QUIPU DSA which is reachable over X.25, and since the end of
July have mastered the country entry for Belgium. There are plans
to run IP on top of X.25 between ULB and the University of Leuven
(KUL), who have international IP connectivity. KUL are also
setting up a QUIPU DSA, and, if all goes well KUL will be the
slave DSA for Belgium.
BIM are interested in running a DSA and will soon
participate in the pilot, as well as a number of small/medium
size enterprises (SMEs).
DG XIII of the European Commission is currently installing
the PARADISE DSA/DUA package, which is based on QUIPU 7.0. It is
hoped that they will soon be able to join the PARADISE pilot.
B R A Z I L
The first Interamerican Networking Workshop took place in the
first week of October in Rio de Janeiro, and attracted
representatives from a host of Latin American countries. At the
moment, the primary concerns of this group are to get a global
policy in transport protocols and electronic mail systems.
However, though it's too early for real interamerican X.500
projects, a great deal of interest in ISODE and X.500 was shown
at the Networkshop among people from Brazil and Argentina. Some
of them had already worked with ISODE 6.8, and recently upgraded
to ISODE 7.0. A representative from Spain configured a DSA and
DUA over TCP/IP in a SUN Workstation, and was able to make a
connection to the global Directory via DAP from Rio to a DSA in
Madrid, and so look at the DIT. This DSA was configured to
simulate c=BR, and it is hoped that in Brazil at least, the
rapid evolution of interest in Directory Services, including the
development of prorietary X.500 implementations, will generate
some university-based projects leading to a more comprehensive
approach to piloting by mid 1992.
C A N A D A
The ONet (Ontario Regional Research Network) pilot distributed
Directory System project currently involves the central
computing organisations at the University of Western Ontario, the
University of Waterloo, Queens University and York University.
The major purpose of the pilot is to allow users at any
participating site to access Directory information at all other
participating sites, using their local Directory system as an
interface. The hope is that we can expand this service to a
general offering for all ONet members.
As part of the project, The University of Western Ontario
took over the operation of the Canadian DSA from University of
Toronto who were unable to continue its support.
The pilot study is exploring the interactions between
various X.500 implementations (at least QUIPU and CUSTOS) as well
as experimenting with various user interfaces. A major part of
the study's purpose is to discover mechanisms at the various
participant sites to feed corporate data into the X.500 database.
The long term direction may be towards using the X.500 Directory
as the "master" database for certain kinds of corporate data.
ONet also hope to explore various protection mechanisms with the
intention of only providing a subset of internal Directories to
external users where appropriate.
D E N M A R K
Two DSAs are running in Denmark over TCP/IP. The root DSA is run
by DKnet and masters 340 organisational members of DKUUG (Danish
Unix Users Group) along with the contact persons for each
organization. The other DSA is a second-level DSA running at the
Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, and
masters information about 576 students and employees.
A public Directory access point has been established at
login.dkuug.dk (129.142.96.43, login: ds). The DUAs available are
DISH, FRed and SD. The PARADISE DUA, de, will replace this
access point in the near future. The Directory can also be
accessed by sending electronic mail to a mail-responder at the
address ds@dkuug.dk.
Danish organisations wishing to register in the Directory or
connect own DSAs to the Danish pilot should contact the above
address. Further information can also be obtained there.
E U R O P E
After much discussion in the PARADISE Operations group (POPS), it
was decided in July 1991 to pilot an experimental locality node,
l=Europe at the country level in the DIT below the ROOT. The
intention of l=Europe was to enable supranational European
organisations or associations to register in their "natural"
place in the Directory.
The current entries under l=Europe are:
o the COSINE project, which, though its management unit, the
CPMU, are based in Amsterdam, is effectively a pan-European
association of national governmental and policy group
representatives, as well as national IXI, MHS and X.500
managers and contact points. Also included in the o=COSINE,
entry are details of COSINE sub-projects and services, and
the CPMU. In addition to this European entry, it is intended
that each COSINE country in Europe should register beneath
the country level an entry for COSINE, giving specific
details of its national COSINE representatives and service
managers.
o ESPRIT projects: a request was made by the Compulog project,
co-ordinated by ECRC in Munich, to register its consortium
details in the X.500 Directory under l=Europe as this was
both a more logical and natural domain for a multi-national
projects to be located. The SAM (Speech Assessment
Methodologies) project, based at University College London,
completed its consortium entry of 28 laboratories across
eight countries, including Norway and Sweden.
As part of its demonstration at ESPRIT Conference Week, the
PARADISE project will be encouraging ESPRIT consortia to
register their projects under this node.
o the European Space Agency (ESA) commisioned BRINE S.A. to
prototype an X.500 Directory based on QUIPU to contain in
the first place an organisation chart for the ESA Operations
Directorate and for administrative staff located at ESOC in
Darmstadt, as well as a network administration directory for
ESAinet, its IP-based operations network. ESA has four main
sites: Paris (HQ), Darmstadt (ESOC), Noordewijk (ESTEC) and
Frascati (ESRIN); tracking locations on about six locations
mainly in Europe, and a number of small regional offices.
ESA have plans to run an experimental pilot before
concluding whether to scale up to a full operational
directory service across the whole of the ESA network.
The success and problems inherent in providing this service will
be reviewed on a regular basis by the PARADISE project.
F I N L A N D
The Finnish master DSA is based at the Tampere University of
Technology and runs QUIPU 7.0 over the Internet on behalf of
FUNET, the Finnish University and Research Network Project. The
Finnish Directory contains the five universities, two technical
universities, Hewlett Packard, VTKK (the Finnish PTT,
headquarters in Helsinki), the Technical Research Centre of
Finland (VTT) at Espoo and several small commercial
organisations. VTT Telecommunications Laboratory have developed a
Unix-based X.500 DSA called CVOPS (C-language Virtual Operating
System) with its own DUA. To date, this implementation is not
connected to the PARADISE pilot, though it is known to interwork
successfully with QUIPU.
Telecom Finland are subcontracted to PTT Telecom, UCL's
subcontractors in the PARADISE project.
F R A N C E
PARADISE activities are closely related to the ARISTOTE
association, in the sense that some members of this association,
which includes academic and industrial research organisations,
decided in June 1991 to set up a working group devoted to X.500
technology. This working group was originally created by members
of the already existing MHS working group with the aim of
applying Directory Services to the X.400 area as a medium term
goal. However, such has been the interest that already a much
wider range of applications are now being considered.
ARISTOTE, by and large, is deeply concerned by the
exploration of practical usage of products implementing
international standards. In the same vein, OPAX (Operation
Pilote X.500 dans le cadre Aristote) is currently investigating
applications of Directory Services such as:
o the registration of university campus networks;
o the registration of networked devices together with their
owners's identity for various types of system and network
admninistration;
o Network Information Centres (NICs) support;
o application of hypertext-like facilities to Directory User
Agents;
o support for documents archiving and retrival;
One of the first exercises attempted by OPAX was to create a
White Pages service within the OPAX working group itself, and
the French Unix Users' Group which is conducting a similar
project. This simple service has the extreme advantage of being
both a practical playground for getting technical understanding
of the technology as well as providing a useful service at the
same time.
Potentially, French organisations participating in the
PARADISE/OPAX effort will be heavy users of Directory Services in
the very near future. As such, the OPAX working group has taken a
very proactive role in the process of enabling the transfer of
research activities into the industrial world: offering X.500
tutorials, organising multi-vendor demonstrations, and putting a
lot of effort into interoperability testing of existing products.
OPAX members are today using three different commercial or
public domain implementations of X.500 protocols and more
are expected in the very near future. OPAX also aims to provide
guidance in two directions:
o as representing a non-negligible community of users, it
wishes to express these users' needs in influencing the
development of products towards these needs: users know
which features they need. To some extent OPAX wishes to make
sure that commercial products will satisfy these needs;
o as an early user of Directory Services, the OPAX working
group will gain some skill in administering and operating
these services in a research environment. This knowledge
should then later be taken into account when private
operators start offering X.500 services on a commercial
basis.
Participating in a European wide project is also a serious means
of exercising OPAX members' skills and extending them. It is
also an ideal way of sharing views, results and opportunities.
The so-called universality of the Directory needs yet to be
proved and experimented with: whilst European and worldwide
piloting of X.500 will certainly highlight the many positive
aspects of the technology, it will also underline and demonstrate
its deficiencies which need to be understood as soon as possible.
The OPAX project now has ten DSAs: six are know to be stable
and operational, whilst the other four are used as test DSAs. A
public DUA is now in pre-operational phase and can be reached at
the X121 address 2080-42060408211. The number of entries is
estimated to be over than 1,000, though no practical test has
been made to estimate this figure with any greater accuracy. It
is hoped that a larger service will be deployed at the beginning
of 1992.
The French subtree currently contains entries for AFUU,
Telecom Paris, INRETS, INRIA, CNET, REUNIR, CICB, CNRS, EDF, E3X
and EMSE. Plans exist to involve French universities in the
pilot, drawing on the experience of other university piloting in
Europe.
G E R M A N Y
The VERDI projects (VERDI = VERteiltes DIrectory) are funded
by the German Ministry for Research and Technology as a DFN
(Deutsche Forschungnetz) project, and carried out by the GMD.
These projects were given the task of building up a pilot
distributed directories service within the DFN, with the
intention that it become a general use service at the end of
1992. The VERDI 1 and VERDI 2 projects lasted until June 1989;
VERDI 3 will finish in July 1993.
The aims of the project are to:
o pilot X.500 in the DFN;
o produce a requirements analysis;
o evaluate Directory Service support for MHS, FTAM and other
DFN services;
o make an evaluation of X.500 products/software;
o enable the establishment of a Directory Service in Germany;
o establish a common DFN Directory Service (most DFN members
are running DSAs or are registered in the Directory)
There has been no DSA development within the project, as
either avaliable software (QUIPU) or other vendors' products are
to be used. However, there has been development of a graphical
user agent for linking the Directory to ONTOS (object oriented
database) at GMD Birlinghoven, as well as the development of a
user agent for linking MTA systems to the Directory providing
global availability of updated routing tables, and searching for
O/R addresses within the Directory.
The German Directory subtree is based on two central QUIPU
7.0 DSAs at GMD Berlin and Birlinghoven on a SUN SparcServer 330
with 64 kbit X.25 (IXI) and Internet access. There is also a
central DUA service offering different User Interfaces available
at IXI address 204362430303. Mail access to the Directory is
provided via special MHS-UA at O/R-Address:
s=ds-server;ou=fokus;ou=berlin;p=gmd;a=dbp;c=de
DFN also runs a telephone helpdesk on +49 30 254 99 232.
In addition to the central machines there are 19 other QUIPU
DSAs (based on releases 6.1, 6.8, and 7.0) at universities in the
west part of Germany as well as many universities and research
organisations in the east part of Germany which are expected to
participate in the pilot project with 15 or more QUIPU 7.0 DSAs.
Some of the organisational data in the German Directory is
incomplete as it is derived from an old DFN nameserver, and not
yet administered by organisations themselves.
At present the only implementation being used is QUIPU on
both SUN and HP-9000/HP-UX platforms, though SNI
(Siemens/Nixdorf)) have been invited to participate with their
products.
As long as the Directory service is funded by DFN, there is
no cost for service users. Usage statistics are collected for the
two backbone DSAs with a tool from UCL. The Deutsche Bundespost
are not currently involved in the pilot project, but have plans
for provision of X.500 services in the future.
G R E E C E
The ARIADNE project is still hoping to start a Directory pilot
for Greece at the beginning of 1992 on behalf of its network of
50 universities and research institutes across the country.
I C E L A N D
Since late 1989, Iceland has beeen running its single DSA on a
SUN 3/60 at the University of Iceland. The implementation used
is QUIPU 6.8 and there is access via the Internet. The DSA, which
masters c=IS, holds 28 organisations and about 250 entries.
However, because of the lack of good DUAs, there is little use
made of the Directory.
Although there is no pilot project or funding for X.500 in
Iceland, work is being carried out on the implementation of
registration and query options to the Elm mail system.
I T A L Y
CNUCE/CNR have plans to run a QUIPU-based pilot directory service
for Italy on behalf of GARR, the Italian Research and Academic
network. In November 1991, using a SUN Sparc IPC, they took over
the management the c=IT node from Systems Wizards, the Ivrea-
based company who are running an experimental DSA with their own
implementation DirWiz. The CNUCE activity will be part of the
establishment of a Network Information Service (NIS) for GARR
and CNUCE is currently organising a group of people who will look
after this project in Pisa. This will be carried out as a
specific task of the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerca), a GARR
member organisation. Generally speaking, CNR is goverment
funded, but at present there is no specific budget for the NIS
activity.
There is an agreement with another GARR member, CSATA,
located in Bari, to carry out X.500 experimentation. CSATA have
their own X.500 implementation running on a Hewlett Packard
machine, which at the moment shows a number of incompatibilities
interworking with QUIPU. It is hoped that another GARR member
organization in Bologna will join the pilot once it is started,
and manage their own QUIPU DSA below c=IT. CNUCE expect their
country-level DSA to be operational before the end of 1991.
Since CNUCE also are the same group running the Italian
Internet Domain Name Server (top level), it is their intention to
experiment using X.500 to store domain information. They would
also like to exploit the capabilities of X.500 for storing
information about network services, databases, yellow pages
services etc, in conjuntion with database experts.
CSELT, in Turin, participate in the CTS2 Project by
providing a reference X.500 DSA for both DSP and DAP Conformance
Testing.
I R E L A N D
The root node for Ireland consists of the cn=Irish Elk DSA
operated on a voluntary basis by Donal O'Mahony of Trinity
College Dublin. It joined the PARADISE pilot in April 1991 by
using a locally ported version of ISODE to access the global
Directory via the IXI network from an ULTRIX machine. Some
months later, the availablity of an Internet connection allowed
access over both networks simultaneously, but upgrading to QUIPU
7.0 meant that traffic was restricted to Internet-only for an
interim period.
The DSA is now being migrated to a SUN with X.25 access
which will allow c=IE to be accessed over Internet, IXI, Janet
and international X.25 networks. Two additional DSAs are
expected to operate under c=IE once this is achieved.
Over the last six months, the number of "people" entries
stored under c=IE has grown from 30 to over 1500, together with
over 100 photograph attributes. The absence of funding, however,
has meant that coverage cannot be extended outside of the local
site. Trinity College Dublin has been selected to pilot the use
of combined X.400 User agents and Directory User Agent software
as part of the national X.400 pilot work. This will involve the
addition of more entries and MHS-related information.
It is hoped that in the coming six months, c=IE will grow to
at least three or four DSAs and up to 3,000 entries. Enhanced
network connectivity coupled with the increased reliability of
QUIPU 7.0 should have a dramatic improvement on availability.
The integration with the X.400 pilot work will establish the
Directory as an integral part of a mainstream networking service
which will provide the user-demand required for full service
provision.
I S R A E L
The Israeli X.500 pilot project is intended to provide directory
services for the academic community. The master DSA, named Dorcan
Gazelle, is a QUIPU 7.0 implementation, and is run on a DEC
ULTRIX machine with TCP/IP connectivity at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.
The Israeli DSA is connected to the PARADISE pilot, and
information in this DSA is accessible from any DUA. Most of the
DUA interfaces available from ISODE 7.0 have been checked on
different machines. They can be connected to the pilot, and one
can access the information on any pilot entry. There are still
problems using X window-based DUA interfaces with dxwm - the
DECwindows Window Manager.
At the moment the Israeli Directory subtreee is a prototype,
and contains only a few entries. Once legal approval is obtained
to set up the system, it is hoped to incorporate most members of
the Israeli academic community.
J A P A N
X.500 Directory experimentation began as a project in May 1991,
and is coordinated by the ISODE Working Group of the WIDE
Project. Currently, 13 organisations are participating in the
pilot, and, as of the first week in November, Japan joined the
international pilot.
One of the more important topics in the WIDE project is the
handling of the Japanese charactor set in X.500. Currently, they
use T.61 with ISO 2022, and, after making a simple modification
of QUIPU, are designing attributes in Japanese.
The project is planning to build a directory service for
software information of anonymous ftp and to manage dynamic
information with other network applications. There is also
interest in experimenting with X.400 and FTAM.
On the commercial front, both Hitachi and Fujitsu are
developing their own X.500 implementations.
L U X E M B O U R G
The Luxembourg national educational network, RESTENA (Reseau
Teleinformatique de l'Education Nationale), are currently setting
up connections to other networks, and intend to start an X.500
pilot project in 1992. RESTENA have installed an X.400 system on
a VAX (MRX400), and are reachable over IXI by the COSINE MHS.
They will probably become a node of the WIN next year.
The study carried out by Logica (UK) on behalf of DG IX of
the European Commision is now concluded, having carried out some
partially successful interworking tests using Siemes and ICL
software. As a result of this study, there are plans for some
experimental piloting in 1992.
T H E N E T H E R L A N D S
The Dutch pilot X.500 Directory Services project based at
SURFnet ended on 30 September 1991, and, as was predicted in the
May 1991 PARADISE report, the project was not able to achieve two
of its intended goals:
o create a multi-product X.500 infrastructure;
o perform a small data management test.
Its achievement was a technical infrastructure currently
comprising three DSAs all of which are QUIPU-based.
In the meantime a follow-up project proposal for a three
year pilot, mainly concentrating on data management and
interworking of multi-product X.500, has been approved. This
project will start 1 January 1992.
Funding has also been found to keep the Dutch master DSA
up-to-date, and active within the PARADISE project in the
intermediate period up to the start of the new X.500 pilot
project.
PTT Telecom (the Netherlands), subcontractors to UCL and so
part of the PARADISE project, will also participate in the new
Dutch X.500 pilot project.
N O R W A Y
UNINETT provides OSI, TCP/IP and DECnet based services to
research and educational organisations in Norway. UNINETT is
organised as a project under the Royal Ministry of Education and
Research, but is expected to be reorganized as a foundation in
the near future. UNINETT currently has approximatly 80 member
organisations with an estimated 10,000 users connected to the
network.
UNINETT has been activly working to establish a national
academic directory service since 1988. In November 1991, 45 of
its member organisations had registered basic organisational
information in the Directory and given local users of electronic
mail access to the Directory. Through the user interfaces UNINETT
provides, between 300 to 600 queries are seen per week. During
the last 18 months approximately 1200 people have used the
directory service themselves. A conclusion based on the variety
of queries being put forward is that the Directory is actively
being used within UNINETT for finding white pages information.
The Norwegian directory currently contains information on
over 400 organisations. The majority of these are public service
organisations, as well as governmental and regional bodies that
have been bulkloaded into the directory. This information is
maintained centrally, and the fact that there is no further
information associated with the organisations is clearly
indicated. The UNINETT member organisations that register
themselves have to provide basic directory information on their
organisations; users are then free to register personal
information through a mail responder. Currently more than 1000 of
the person entries have been entered in the Directory by
individuals themselves through the mail responder. In addition to
this method of data management, one university has established a
scheme to maintain and manage its directory entry updated with
information on its employees.
As well as providing white pages information, the Norwegian
directory also contains information on distribution lists. The
contents of the interest-groups file - a widely used collection
of references to distribution lists - has been loaded into the
Directory. (It can be found under c=NO, o=Distribusjonslister.)
Because of the way this information has been structured, it is
available through user interfaces currently being used for the
white pages directory service.
The main tool used by end-users to access and update
information in the Directory is a mail responder developed by
UNINETT which has in use since April 1990. It was originally
developed as a replacement for the EAN electronic mail directory
server. The format used for the request messages is a superset of
the format used by EAN, while the responses have been completly
reworked. The responses are quite "textual" which it is believed
has proved a success. The naming scheme used is a three-level
heirarchy: person, organisation, country.
In addition UNINETT has developed a Unix-program, simply
called "directory", which provides Unix-users with the same set
of EAN-type commands. This program also contains quite a lot of
documentation and hints for new Directory users. For users to
whom neither of these options are available, comprehensive
documentation on how to formulate queries to the mail responder
is available.
Some organisations also let their users have access to the
interactive user interfaces available in the ISODE package.
The University of Oslo has incorporated usage of the
Directory into their electronic mail to fax gateway. When
messages pass through the gateway, information based on the
sender is found from the Directory based on their electronic mail
address, so allowing information from their Directory entry can
be used on the cover page of the fax message.
UNINETT's medium term goal is to build a national academic
white pages directory service containing information on all
persons associated with UNINETT member organisations. It is
anticipated that, as its understanding grows, additional goals
for using the Directory will be formulated.
UNINETT has developed a two-phased strategy to acheive its
goals for a white pages service. These phases characterise how
each organisation will relate itself to the Directory. Through
the first phase, each UNINETT member organisation can make
available the Directory service to all its users of electronic
mail without the need for any local competence in X.500. Users at
organisations that are in this phase will have the ability to
look up information in the directory and to register personal
information. These services are realised by the central
mail responder operated by UNINETT. Directory information for
organisations in this phase will be stored by UNINETT in one of
its backbone DSAs.
To enter phase one, organisations have to register their
basic organisational information in the Directory by completing
and returning a UNINETT pro forma. After the information has been
entered into the Directory, UNINETT sends a package with
information material, including suggestions for promoting the
Directory to local users, to the organisation. UNINETT currently
strongly encourages all its member organisations to enter this
phase.
It is expected that as each organisation's competence in and
experience with the Directory grows, they will want to proceed to
more advanced usage of the Directory. Organisations in phase two
will give all local computer users access to interactive
user-interfaces, and also make sure that information about all
employees is made available: they are also expected to run their
own DSA.
UNINETT is currently developing tools to support
organisations in phase two, and it is expected that they will be
available in the near future. These tools includes interactive
user interfaces, tools to do data-maintainance and tools to
install and run a DSA. UNINETT is also developing a Macintosh
user-interface to the Directory (dubbed "AddressFinder"), and a
screen orienter, cursor-based program to manually maintain data
in the Directory. The basis for these tools is a C++-based DAP
programmers interface developed by UNINETT. A binary distribution
of QUIPU as well as a tool to oversee QUIPUs operation has also
been developed. The University of Oslo has developed tools to
bulk-load information into the Directory, and it is hoped that
UNINETT can use this software as a basis for a general tool at a
later stage.
UNINETT has solved the relevant legal issues when operating
a directory service, and produced a report discussing the issues.
The UNINETT white pages directory service is an operational
service with significant usage. Providing an easy way to start
using the Directory for organisations at the same time as
reaching a large number of users has proved to be a success. It
is expected that interactive usage of the Directory will pick up
in the six months up to May 1992, and that a number of
organisations will organise registration of employes in the
Directory.
P O R T U G A L
The Portuguese Pilot Directory Project is managed at the
University of Minho, Data Communications Centre of the Department
of Informatics, under a contract with FCCN (Fundacao de Calculo
Cientifico Nacional), the National Foundation in charge of the
Portuguese R&D Network (RCCN).
The Pilot Directory Project formally started on 1 October
1991, and its plan consists of four phases:
o the installation of a master DSA for Portugal, local
connectivity tests with DSP and DAP protocols, interfaces
with e-mailers and connection to the PARADISE pilot (October
- November, 1991);
o preparation phase: the definition of the DIT structure,
collection of information for the pilot service on a
limited and selected scope and the gathering of experience
in the management of the service (November 1991 - February
1992);
o distribution phase: set-up of DSAs in other sites
(Universities and R&D Laboratories) and connectivity
tests (February - June 1992);
o production phase: use in the RCCN (July 1992 - ...)
The master DSA for Portugal is already connected to the
global Directory as of the beginning of November. To date it only
maintains one organisation (University of Minho) with a few
local entries.
Work is now progressing in the following areas:
o e-mail access to the Directory (starting with the use of the
EAN nameserver commands and similar Unix scripts for
SendMail); and
o the set-up of DUAs for anonymous access from the RCCN.
These two services will be made available as a pilot during
November and December.
S P A I N
The Spanish directory pilot has been running since March 1990
through the IRIS program which is a part of the national research
and development plan and funded by the government of Spain. The
pilot has evolved through various stages of development to
facilitate the distribution of this new service among all IRIS'
university and research institutions. It became fully operational
in May 1991. IRIS' strategy was to site SUN 4/330's in places
with good communication links, and at present, IRIS manages four
DSAs in Spain:
o Madrid, at IRIS headquarters
o Barcelona (Cataluna) where there is a metropolitan network
connecting the city's three universities;
o Sevilla (Andalucia) which has a regional network;
o Tenerife (Canary Islands), in the Instituto de Astrofisica
de Canarias, where there is a plan to build up a network
connecting the astrophysics observatories and the University
of La Laguna.
In addtion the Spanish directory registers the University of
the Balearic Islands, an Institute of Astronomy in Guadalajara,
CIEMAT in Madrid, as well as an entry for Concurrent Computer
Corporation who are registered elsewhere in the Directory under
several other countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom,
Netherlands, and Australia).
The information currently held in the Directory is still
limited but is expected to grow rapidly with the inclusion of
other centres, and efforts are being made to improve the quality
of data in the present Directory entries.
S W E D E N
SUNET, the Swedish University Network, has for some years been
running an X.500 pilot, but now feels that the time is ripe to
provide something more like a service. To this end SUNET has
recently put forward a proposal for implementing such a service.
The way that SUNET has chosen to start is by using a small number
of backbone DSAs with responsibility for several University
sites, whereby managers in each individual University can
maintain and manage their own data.
During spring 1992 additional backbone DSAs will be put in
place, and each one will take responsibility for the
universities within that region. From early autumn 1992,
management tools will be made available for keeping
organisational data up to date. From the beginning of this pilot
service, SUNET will aim both at supplying its users with white
pages information, but also study how X.500 can be used as a
nameserver for NSAP's together with the DECdns servers.
Today the Swedish master DSA is based at the Univerisity of
Umea, and runs QUIPU 7.0 over public X.25 and Internet on behalf
of SUNET, though soon both IXI and ISO CLNS will be available.
At present the Swedish directory contains entries for
everyone who is registered in the SUNET e-mail catalogue as well
as the complete list of employees at the University of Umea and
at the Chalmers University of Technology. This means that almost
all large and small universities in Sweden are represented in the
DIT. But, as only people with e-mail addresses are registered,
except in the case of the University of Umea and the Chalmers
University of Technology, so far the majority of people working
at universities in Sweden are not in the directory. The
intention is that this will change during 1992.
A few research councils and other funding bodies plus some
commercial companies are also represented in the Swedish
directory. It also includes Televerket, the Swedish PTT, who are
experimenting with their own X.500 implementation, Direct.500
which is only deployed within the company at present whilst
experimentation is carried out.
S W I T Z E R L A N D
Since October 1991, SWITCH (the Swiss Academic and Research
Network) has maintained the national part of the directory tree
on its own machines. This job was taken over from a research
group at ETH Zurich which is engaged in the development of new
DSA and DUA concepts.
SWITCH operates the national multi-protocol backbone with
support of value added services on top, which today comprises
mainly X.400 electronic mail. Since SWITCH actively promotes
migration to OSI services where available, X.500 will be an
important lever to support and glue the other applications and
network services together. The national master DSA is connected
to the Internet, public X.25 and to IXI, whereas the
organisational DSAs have today either only Internet or public
X.25 access.
At present, there are seven operational DSAs, all running
QUIPU 7.0, and two experimental DSAs. The platforms used are
mainly SUN-3 and SUN-4 with SunNet X.25, but there is also a
DECsystem 5800 and a microVax II, both with Ultrix.
The research group at ETH Zurich has developed a
QUIPU-derived DSA which implements the data storage component on
top of a relational database management system (Oracle) to store
locally managed data. The same group also developed a simplified
DUA using HyperCard on the Macintosh. This DUA uses TCP/IP
sockets to communicate with Dish running on a UNIX machine. It is
specifically designed for the unexperienced user. It graphically
assists them in navigating through the DIT and supports the
possibility of formulating search queries without knowing any
details about the information model.
PTT Switzerland participates in the pilot by funding the
X.500 research activities at SWITCH, and by actively co-operating
with PTT Telecom, the Netherlands in PARADISE. They also maintain
their own organisational DSA with data about employees. They
store some data about electronic mailboxes and telephone users
with a view to gaining experience in handling entries for
residential persons.
U N I T E D K I N G D O M
The UK directory pilot is entirely QUIPU based at this time, with
28 DSAs running the latest version (ISODE 7.0). This has been
partly facilitated by a set of upgrade scripts made available to
UK Academic sites by X-Tel.
In the past six months, there has been a 25% increase in the
number of organisations represented in the pilot: 30 academic,
eight industrial and two government (RAL, JNT) sites.
Strangely, although the number of sites has increased, the
number of entries at pilot sites has remained around the same, or
dropped. This is partly due to an improved counting mechanism
(data from long term unavailable DSAs is now not counted), and
partly due to many sites undertaking data reorganisation in the
light of experience. Some sites have had to remove data due to
concerns about personal privacy issues, despite compliance with
the UK Data Protection Act.
The data available in the British directory is starting to
include a number of application entities; for example, entries
representing OSI FTAM services. The FTAM implementation in ISODE
is being used on the UK academic network, and makes use of the
information in the Directory to identify remote FTAM servers.
X.400 Distribution lists are also being stored in the Directory,
and can be expanded by the PP mail system.
The UK pilot is heavily X.25 based, and so makes extensive
use of the PARADISE DSA relay service to access DSAs on the
Internet (95% of DSAs outside the United Kingdom are on the
Internet). The converse is also true: the other pilots need to
configure the relay service in order to access the UK pilot. It
has been noted that in some cases this configuration is
incorrect. Ways of easing configuration are being looked at, and
suggestions will be fed back into the development of QUIPU. If
other pilots are not based upon QUIPU software, use of a relay
may not be possible.
The use of IXI in the UK pilot is increasing: 16 of the 35
DSAs in Europe with IXI access are in the UK. Wider European use
of IXI would greatly enhance the visibility of the UK pilot.
A pilot UK name registration authority has been set up
called DISC. This enables organisations to register, amongst
other things, Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs). This pilot
will be monitored closely, and it may become a requirement for
sites joining the pilot to show evidence of their DISC
registration.
At the beginning of November, British Telecom's research
laboratories in Martlesham expressed interest in running a QUIPU
DSA in the pilot.
U N I T E D S T A T E S
The FOX Project (Field Operational X.500) is funded by DARPA to
provide a basis for operational X.500 deployment in the Internet.
The role of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) during
the past several months has been to facilitate communication
between the various FOX contractors and to formalize the highly
dynamic FOX requirements. One of the most visible activities is
the co-ordination and distribution of the Directory Services
Activities Report (DSAR.) which reports on the activities of
standards groups and pilot projects for X.500 directories
throughout the US, and internationally through PARADISE. It is
released each month in a self-contained edition as well as a
subsection of the Internet Monthly.
Merit have been busy with a number of FOX sub-projects.
Perhaps the foremost of these is the development of numerous DIT
entry types:
o the Information Resource;
o the K-12 Educational Resource;
o the NIC Profile; and
o the Site Contact record.
These resources store phone numbers, addresses, physical and
e-mail, and the names of key personnel for the entities which
they define. While the initial implementations of these items are
currently being revised, they can all be located in the DIT under
@o=Internet. Other Merit work includes:
o the development of an e-mail based query-and-update tool for
K-12 and NIC Resources;
o work with Dixie as a lightweight alternative to the DSA
access protocol found in QUIPU;
o the implementation of an automatic-alias-lookup feature for
mail travelling through the Sprintmail gateway; and
o the demonstration of Merit X.500 work at Interop '91.
Performance Systems International (PSI) has been working on
providing DIT support for RFCs and other documents. They have
designed many tools for this purpose. The foremost of these are:
o a tool to convert RFC-INDEX.TXT documents to EDB entries;
and
o the x5ftp tool which searches a portion of the DIT for
document references, and subsequently retrieves the
document, currently RFCs and FYIs.
PSI also wrote the "usconfig" program, a modification of
"dsaconfig" which has knowledge of NADF naming recommendations
and produces US-specific configurations.
SRI International has been heavily involved in providing
X.500 access to DDN WHOIS information, a frequently used
information resource in the Internet. SRI maintains this access
through a DSA they operate as part of the White Pages Pilot
Project. Recently, the responsibility for the DDN Network
Information Centre transferred from SRI to Government Systems,
Inc (GSI). SRI has begun work with GSI to keep the X.500 data up
to date based on GSI's data.
Converting DDN WHOIS data to X.500 has met with some
compatibility problems. Specifically, the postalAddress attribute
is insufficient for a large number (47%) of the WHOIS addresses.
Alternatives are being investigated by SRI and the NIST OSI
Directory Services SIG (Special Interest Group).
SRI has also written a DUA to access the WHOIS data in
X.500. Called X5WHOIS, it maintains an identical interface and
nearly identical data to its NIC counterpart. X5WHOIS is
currently running on an experimental basis at SRI. It can be
accessed by
o remote-WHOIS,
ie "whois -h inic.nisc.sri.com <argument-string>,"; or
o telnet,
ie "telnet inic.nisc.sri.com 43."
The IETF OSI Directory Services convene for two basic
purposes:
o to report on the progress of various X.500 pilot projects;
and
o to develop RFC's and standards to guide the growth of X.500.
In the past several months, OSI-DS has applied itself to:
o numerous documents on various aspects of X.500, several of
which will soon become RFCs. Currently, however, they are
all Internet drafts, ie they are working documents only and
subject to revision at any time. All of these documents are
available by anonymous ftp from nic.nordu.net,
ftp.nisc.sri.com and cs.ucl.ac.uk:
o the creation of the Directory Information Services (pilot)
Infrastructure Working Group (DISI) - see below.
o the initiation of the Directory Services Activities Report
(DSAR).
Several issues continually recur in OSI-DS discussion and may
find their way to RFCs in the near future. Perhaps the most
central of these are:
o the maintaining of experimental OID's (object identifiers);
o mechanisms for user-friendly naming;
o joint COSINE and Internet pilot requirements;
o devising a strategic plan for deploying an Internet
Directory Service;
o DSA naming;
o development of QOS (Quality of Service);
o the new format for "photo" attributes; and
o the incorporation of DNS (Domain Naming System) by the DIT
(Directory Information Tree.)
DISI was chartered in March, 1991 and its purpose is to
facilitate deployment in the Internet of Directory Services based
on implementations of the X.500 standards. DISI pursues this end
by producing informational RFCs intended to serve as a Directory
Services "Administrators Guide." These RFCs are intended to
relate the current usage and scope of the X.500 standard and
Directory Services in North America and the world. They will
contain information on the procurement installation and operation
of various implementations of the X.500 standard.
DISI has turned out an Internet-Draft entitled "A Catalog of
Available X.500 Implementations." Co-authored by SRI and LBL,
this document is useful to those responsible for obtaining and
installing an appropriate X.500 implementation. A second paper,
an "Executive Introduction to X.500", was written and reviewed at
the July IETF DISI meeting. Co-authored by JvNCNet, ISI and
MERIT, it was withdrawn for revisions as it tended to blur the
distinction between X.500 and QUIPU. The third document
mentioned in the charter, on "Advanced Usages", was put on hold
as it was decided that two other documents needed to be produced
first:
o "How to Join a Pilot Project"; and
o "How to Set up a DSA".
The writing assignments for these two papers have not yet been
made.
The PSI White Pages Pilot Project continues to grow at a
linear rate, with 78 organizations currently participating in the
pilot. In the past few months, the pilot has seen a number of
changes:
o an upgrade to QUIPU 7.0;
o a transition to the naming scheme proposed by the NADF;
o the rehoming of the Fruit Bat DSA to help with robustness
problems.
As experience is gained with the deployment of X.500-based
Directory Services in the Internet, it is anticipated that
further changes will occur.
Pilot system robustness continues to be a problem, with some
sections of the DIT in the US suffering from chronic
unavailibility problems. To this end, in parallel with the
transitions being performed in the pilot, problems that detract
from pilot robustness are being studied by the sponsors to
identify areas that may require further work. Specific work being
done in this area include:
o the moving of the Fruit Bat DSA;
o the insertion of knowledge information into the c=US entry
to facilitate the use of the multi-valued referral
capability of the QUIPU; and
o systematic probing of pilot DSAs in order to determine
availability.
The North American Directory Forum (NADF) met twice in 1991
- in San Francisco in July, and in Bethesda, Maryland in October.
At these meetings, discussions on a future Directory Service were
held, with agreements being reached on naming and data sharing.
NADF members have also agreed to stage an experimental pilot, in
which all members will participate, to test these, and other
agreements reached during the forum's quarterly meetings.
At the last NADF meeting, the NADF also began examining
security and privacy issues related to the offering of directory
services, with a new subgroup being formed that will focus on
such issues.
The revised version of NADF-175 has been released as an
informational RFC.
The OSI Implementor's Workshop (OIW) has met regularly with
more vendors than users participating.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is
involved in several X.500 activities: standards, pilot deployment
and the development of an X.500 implementation, Custos. The
objective is to see X.500 widely deployed and used in the US
government.
NIST and GSA are collaborating in the creation of a US
government X.500 deployment. Significant progress has been made
towards refining a draft schema developed by NIST. Once the
schema is complete, agencies will begin collecting data for
loading into the Directory. Initially, NIST will offer to host
agency data on Custos DSAs running at NIST. Eventually, agencies
are expected to obtain and operate their own DSAs.
The NIST X.500 public-domain implementation, Custos, is
implemented on ISODE, although it otherwise bears no relation to
QUIPU. One of its more interesting features is that the DBMS
interface is SQL, and a simple DBMS is provided as part of Custos
to support the DSA. Information can be optionally loaded into
memory, and the memory usage is reasonably efficient on a
per-entry basis.
NIST has released Custos version 0.1.1 for beta-testing
purposes. It implements the read, add, compare and list
operations, along with a significant amount of "infrastructure"
code that applies to all operations. It facilitates DAP
interoperability with QUIPU, and the OSIWARE X.500 product.
Search, access control and schema management are currently
under development. This is the additional functionality for
Custos version 0.2, yet to be released.
Y U G O S L A V I A
The Directory project is in a "frozen" state. After an X.500
project was prepared some months ago and approved, providing
money for an additional post and equipment, the war came and the
plans were shelved. However, the project will probably be
"unfrozen" in the new year, and it is hoped that real work will
begin in January with funding approved for 1992 and 1993. In
1992 it is hoped to set up a QUIPU DSA for two organisations -
the Jozef Stefan Institute and the University of Ljubljana, with
approximately 2000 entries.
The Slovenian PTT is also interested, and in 1992 they will
examine closely the pilot project and prepare a study about the
suitability of data to be included in their own future Directory.
It is unclear at the moment about the activities of a group
at the University of Zagreb, or the interests of a similar group
in the Inter University Centre, Dubrovnik.