CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Sue Hares/MERIT OSINSAP Minutes Agenda o Introductions o Status of pending RFC: o ``OSI NSAP Address Format for Use in the Internet'' o ANSI Registration for NSAPs o Review of: ``Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in the Internet'' Status of NSAP Structure RFC Ross Callon reported that the RFC has been reviewed and approved by the IESG. However, the IAB approval is held pending additional descriptions. The IAB seems to desire the solution to all possible problems with the ISO addressing format prior to approving the document as an RFC. Few people had obtained the last copy of the document. Ross Callon read the guts of the document. Richard Colella solicited comments. Juha Heinanen suggested some corrections in the sentences regarding European additions. Richard collected all the comments and will re-publish the document by the 9th of January. All comments should be into Richard with the last weeks of December. ANSI Registration People can now obtain organization IDs from ANSI for use in NSAP addresses. ANSI assigns organization IDs for NSAPs that have the ISO DCC format and the United States country code. ANSI currently is only registering the numeric form of the organization ID. Registration of the alphanumeric form is expected in the first quarter of 1991. The fee for a numeric organization ID is $1000. Assignment of a name will be made within 10 working days. Previously, ANSI had a queue of 800 requests for organization IDs. ANSI will ask all these people to re-apply using the new procedures. ANSI expects the re-application to happen in a manner that will allow them to maintain their 10-day turn-around time. 1 A copy of the application form was available at the meeting. Anyone wishing a copy of the form or other information regarding ANSI registration can contact ANSI. ANSI Organization Name Identification Code Assignments 1430 Broadway New York, NY 10018 voice: (212) 642-4976 fax: (212) 302-1286 Review of ``Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in the Internet'' Ross Callon gave a general overview of the paper ``Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in the Internet''. People who had attended the ANSI X3S3.3 Working Group noted that ANSI had elected to suggest a DSP format for the ANSI DCC code that was identical to the GOSIP 2 format. (This format is the one selected in ``OSI NSAP Address Format for use in the Internet,'' RFCXXX.) The ANSI format under the US DCC would be: | AFI | IDI | <-- DSP --> | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | 39 | 840 | ORG ID | DFI | Rsvd*1 | RD | Area | ID |sel| ------------------------------------------------------------------- No. of bytes: 3 1 2 2 2 6 1 This DSP format is identical to the GOSIP 2 format. *1 - GOSIP calls this field `Reserved'. However, `Reserved' has a different meaning in ANSI than as used in GOSIP. In both cases, this field needs to be set to a par- ticular value and the users need to ignore the value for now. The DSP Format Identifier (DFI) allows alternative DSP formats to be defined by ANSI in the future (this is identical to the DFI field in GOSIP 2). 2 After the basics had been covered, the NSAP Working Group spend a great deal of time discussing issues of assigning NSAPs to three different types of Routing Domains: 1. Zero homed - routing domains not attached to anyone. 2. Single homed - routing domains only attached to one regional network. 3. Multi-homed - routing domains attached to several regional networks. The ``Guidelines for OSI NSAP Allocation in the Internet'' proposes a carrier-based NSAP assignment plan. Many people attending the Working Group wanted to see this contrasted with a geographical based NSAP assignment plan. Ross and Richard lead a discussion of how each of these types of routing plans work for the three types of Routing Domains. Due to the richness of the discussion, the note taker could not capture the full discussion. I've attempted to capture some of the discussion below. If I've missed somone's comment, please send the additional information to the mailing group. Discussion of NSAP Allocation Richard described a zero-homed routing domain as: 1. No connections into regional networks. 2. Private point-to-point links using leased lines or dial-up used as unadvertised back-door links. 3. Routing information is not sent to the rest of the internet (essentially, an isolated Routing Domain). Single Homed Routing Domains 1. May have multiple links into a regional network. 2. Only attache to one regional network or directly to one national backbone. Discussions on the actual status of regional networks broke into richer descriptions of the types of routing domains: 3 The phone companies use a phone number based on local carrier. It seems to be geographical due to the structure of the phone companies. Ross Callon suggests that the geographical nature of the phone system is simply due to the fact the phone company maps its logical topology onto a physically geographic topology. It is the logical/carrier-based topology that is really being used. [A great deal of discussion centered on this point.] Regional networks are not geographic in nature. Sue Hares noted the case of the state of Idaho where half of the colleges are served by Westnet and half by Northwestnet. The reason for the split was the high cost of the inter-state phone lines. It was noted that geographically-oriented routing may tend to create a flat space of routing domains, rather than a hierarchy of routing domains. Vint Cerf noted that this discussion of geographical versus carrier-based has been a long-standing discussion dating back some 25 years. A mid-ground in the discussion might be using the classic idea of default: 1. If you don't know where to send it, push it up the hierarchy. 2. Hierarchical knowledge puts the burden on the national networks who have more resources. Vint Cerf also asked that any allocation plan try to look at the sources and sinks of traffic. Juha Heinanen noted that we were talking about three alternatives: 1. Flat data space for NSAP - such as the Internet has. 2. Subscription (or carrier) based addressing. 3. Area Code space. Ross Callon noted that use of the geographical naming has extreme problems when a national corporation connects to three different carriers. The national corporation may want to send traffic to the nearest exit to their private network which spans the United States. Guy Almes cautioned that we must not confuse explicit route with a 4 particular Address format. Phil Almquist brought up the idea of a default carrier so the national corporation would default to a particular carrier. Vint Cerf indicated it might be fruitful to look at how ISDN selects a terminating host. The use of IP in the ISDN world brings up issues that may have some bearing on the Internet. As time was running out, Richard tried to gather specific changes to the NSAP guidelines document. The following are my collection of changes: o Add information about the zero-homed routing domain. o Add more about multiple links into a single homed routing domain. o Possibly put in an appendix a list of unanswered issues. o Put in examples using real life network topologies. o Indicate how this type of NSAP allocation will support future changes to the Internet. Guy Almes indicated that the structure of regional network may change. o Ross Callon's example of how a NSAP prefixes work in each of the three cases for MEGA Big Incorporated. A separate paper on geographical versus carrier-based OSI NSAP allocation was suggested. The IAB needs some description of these issues if it is to discuss them. Such a paper would focus on the pros and cons of each type of NSAP assignment. It would need to examine past work on the subject, current topology and future needs. There were no volunteers to author this paper. Attendees Steve Alexander stevea@i88.isc.com Guy Almes almes@rice.edu Philip Almquist almquist@jessica.stanford.edu William Barns barns@gateway.mitre.org Ross Callon callon@bigfut.enet.dec.com Lida Carrier lida@apple.com Vinton Cerf vcerf@NRI.Reston.VA.US Richard Colella colella@osi3.ncsl.nist.gov Curtis Cox zk0001@nhis.navy.mil Steve Deering deering@xerox.com Dino Farinacci dino@esd.3com.com Debbie Futcher dfutche@relay.nswc.navy.mil 5 Martin Gross gross@polaris.dca.mil Robert Hagens hagens@cs.wisc.edu Tony Hain alh@eagle.es.net Susan Hares skh@merit.edu Juha Heinanen jh@funet.fi E. Paul Love Jr. loveep@sdsc.edu Andrew Malis malis@bbn.com David Marlow dmarlow@relay.nswc.navy.mil Tony Mason mason+@transarc.com Cyndi Mills cmills@bbn.com Daniel Molinelli moline@trw.com James Mostek mostek@cray.com Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu Fred Ostapik fred@nisc.sri.com Theresa Senn tcs@cray.com Keith Sklower sklower@okeeffe.berkeley.edu Linda Winkler b32357@anlvm.ctd.anl.gov Dan Wintringham danw@osc.edu Cathy Wittbrodt cjw@nersc.gov Richard Woundy rwoundy@ibm.com 6