Produced by the Computer Board And Research Councils' Joint Network Team and Network Executive.
Work has recently started on a new Joint Network Team funded project for the specification and prototyping of group communication services based on OSI protocols. The overall goal of the project is to produce demonstration applications for services such as conferencing and bulletin board which, in turn, are based on emerging OSI services such as X.400 Message Handling and X.500 Directory. These applications will provide strong support for the distributed management of information and of the communication process itself. In addition, they will incorporate a number of more novel features such as support for multi-media messaging.
The project will run for two years and is to be carried out by members of the Communications Research Group at the University of Nottingham.
Three major observations have led to the formulation of this project at the present time:
1. Existing applications such as EIES. COM and USENET News have already demonstrated the vast potential of group communication services. These services have proved to be immensely popular and have provided a wealth of experience within a broad community. However, existing systems suffer from a number of limitations:
2. Recent research, such as that within the COST-11-TER funded AMIGO MHS+ project and Alvey funded Cosmos project, has demonstrated how group communication applications might be built on top of existing services such as electronic mail and directory. This work can be seen as laying the foundation for the development of a variety of OSI based group communication applications.
3. The UK Academic Community is in the process of migrating to the use of OSI protocols. In particular, pilot exercises involving both X.400 (PP) and X.500 (Quipu) services are planned for
the near future. In light of the above, this provides the ideal opportunity for the development and testing of complementary group communication services.
Given these observations, the new project aims to prototype group communication services to meet both the UK and broader European research communities future needs and to demonstrate how OSI services can be used for the provision of group communication. Specific goals of the project are:
It should be emphasised that this project is NOT about running USENET News over OSI protocols. Instead, the project aims to provide a broad framework for developing a wide variety of group communication services, some of which might include the functionality of USENET News.
It is intended to use USENET News as a rich source of information for testing purposes.
Consultation with the UK and European research communities is also an important aspect of the project (liaison with wider communities is. of course. welcomed). In particular, we recognise that there is a wealth of existing expertise and experience within these communities and that this can provide valuable input to the project (e.g. the NISS and UKC's experience with USENET). As a result, we welcome input from other researchers in the field and aim to provide a range of mechanisms for collecting this input and disseminating results. These include:
Steve Benford and Hugh Smith, The Communications Research Group, The University of Nottingham
A contract for the provision of a pilot Europe-wide interconnection of computer networks for researchers has been signed between the Commission, representing the partners in the EUREKA COSINE (Cooperation for Open Systems Interconnection Networking in Europe) project, and PTT Telecom of the Netherlands. The contract provides for a five month period of preparation and commissioning, starting in September 1989, followed by 12 months of full pilot service.
The Commission is to contribute the major portion of the funds on behalf of the Community and its member states from the budget of the ESPRIT programme, while the other COSINE states are to provide the remainder.
The Pilot International X.25 Infrastructure (IXI) Backbone Service is the first major activity of the implementation phase of the EUREKA COSINE project. PTT Telecom will be responsible for establishing, operating and managing the service in cooperation with other European telecommunications administrations.
The COSINE project aims to provide an open, standards-conformant computer communications environment for the European research community. Responsibility for technical aspects has been given to RARE, the European association of users and providers of research networks.
The research networks will be connected to the Backbone via 64 Kbps X.25 access points, with a possibility for later upgrade to a speed of 2 Mbps-The countries to be interconnected are Austria, Belgium (also providing access for Luxembourg), Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden (providing a connection to the other Nordic countries: Finland, Iceland and Norway), Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia.
Following RARE's specifications, the IXI pilot service will use data communications protocols that conform to the CCITT X.25(84) set of recommendations and will allow connectivity to X.25(80) subnetworks. It will allow not only improved connectivity between the participating organisations in RARE but also the possibility to investigate a number of the most important aspects of the management of pan-European X.25 interconnections.
During the project operation, steps v/ill be identified which are necessary to ensure continued availability of IXI or equivalent functionality for the full duration of the COSINE Implementation Phase, which is expected to start soon.
RARE Secretariat
The main thrust of COSINE is to develop OSI-based services for researchers. To this end, the majority of projects planned for the 3-year programme will be in. the applications area, and a number of services are foreseen. For 1990, effort is likely to be concentrated on electronic mail, file transfer, directory and information facilities. In the following years, there are plans for, amongst other things, virtual terminal support and (Europe-wide) gateways to North American research networks. So, over the lifetime of the project, the aim is to provide the means for academics and researchers in Europe to talk to each other and to other parts of the world using a single set of machine-independent communications protocols based on international standards. We would particularly like to hear from groups in the UK who have collaborations with groups in other parts of Europe in which they plan to utilise protocols like ISO 10021 / X(400)-88, FT AM and X.500
The timetable laid down for the IXI pilot phase is :-
The initial configuration will have major switches in Amsterdam and Berne, linked by multiple 64 Kbps links. There will be minor switches in several other countries, where multiple access links are required. Higher speed connections are foreseen when traffic levels justify them. JANET will be connected to the Amsterdam switch via ULCC, and the planned installation date for the 64 Kbps link is mid to late December. It should be possible to begin trials of user services early in the New Year. Much detailed planning is being carried out at present. Of course, the rate at which services can be established over the network will depend on cooperation between the participants, but a number of activities are already going on over other underlying transport mechanisms which could be moved over rapidly to the IXI, in particular, the current X.400 Mail and X.500 Directory pilots being operated by members of the RARE working groups.
The cost of international lines in Europe is very high. A number of low-speed (up to 64 Kbps) links already exist between the UK and other European countries, in general serving a subset of the users of JANET. As demand grows, and nothing is more certain than that it will, additional bandwidth will be required. However, because of the way that telecommunications links are priced, much more bandwidth can be obtained for the same money by combining all the current arrangements. This is our longer term aim for the IXI - that it provides a high-bandwidth cost-effective access path to Europe for all JANET users.
Of course, uncertainties still remain, the most important of these being what happens after February 1991, both in terms of funding and of capability. The COSINE Policy Group has confirmed its intention to make an X.25 service available throughout the 3-year life of the COSINE Project, and to ensure that facilities continue to be available beyond that time. Just how this will be done should be dealt with in the first half of 1990, in parallel with the establishment of the network itself. But to have got this far so quickly on such a major undertaking, with all its political and financial implications, is a major achievement. If the pilot is a success (and we in the JANET organisation are committed, as our European colleagues are, to making it so) then we believe that the remaining difficulties will be overcome so that this ambitious project continues and grows into the 1990s.
Ian Smith, Network Executive
Networkshop 1990 will be held at Newcastle from Tuesday 27th March until Thursday 29th March 1990. The format will be similar to Networkshop 17. The programme is currently being decided. Likely topics include:
Sessions on
Reports on
If there is a networking issue that you would like to see discussed that would be of general interest to those working in the Academic Community, please submit it to the organisers for consideration.
The organisers are:
Alan Hunter at Newcastle and Sue Weston for the JNT
Invitations to Networkshop will be sent out before Christmas. If you have not received an application form by mid January 1990 please contact NETWORKSHOP@UK.AC.NEWCASTLE.
There was a good response from suppliers in reply to my request for updates to the Protocol Table; the changes are listed below but first let me thank Sun Microsystems Ltd., Sequent Europe Ltd., Dell Computer Corporation, Apollo Computers Ltd., Torch FTM Communications and Amdahl (U.K.) Ltd. (though they had nothing to add) for their prompt responses. If you have any comments on the table, or new entries, please send them to me.
Sun Microsystems previously had their Sun-4 machines (running UNIX 4.2) X.25 capability listed as on field trial; it is now fully available. Their Sun-2, Sun-3 (also running UNIX 4.2) and Sun-4 machines all now have an Ether implementation conforming to the Pink Book Protocol available and in addition, all now have JTMP (Red Book) RJE and Server.
Torch FTM Communications XXX and Quad-X systems now have Yellow Book Transport Service over X.25 available and supported within the academic community, in addition to the TS29 PAD (Yellow/Green Book), FTP (Blue Book) and Mail (Grey Book). Previously, Torch's JTMP RJE (Red Book) capability had been noted as a product under development; this is now recognised to have been a mistake and the Red Book entry for both machines will now be blank.
Apollo Computer's JTMP Server capability is under development for Domain machines running either Aegis or UNIX.
Dell, making their first appearance on the table, have for their UNIX machines; X.25, Yellow Book Transport Service over X.25, Ether (Pink Book), X.29 PAD and HOST (Green Book) and FTP (Blue Book) all under development. Dell also had some entries for their MS-DOS machines but these will not feature here.
Sequent now have the following available and supported; X.25, Yellow Book Transport Service over X.25, X.29 PAD and HOST (Green Book), TS29 PAD (Yellow/Green Book), FTP (Blue Book) Mail (Grey Book) and JTMP RJE and Server, all for their Symmetry machines. The TS29 HOST and SSMP columns are now blank and Sequent still have the Ether (Pink Book) Implementation under development.
An up-to-date copy of the table is enclosed with this copy of Network News.
Chris Burns
Joint Network Team
Are you a user of JANET or its associated services? Do you have any comments on the services or the plans for new services? Would you like to see the services improved, or changed? Would you like the opportunity to comment on how the services are provided and managed?
If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you may be interested to know that there are active user groups which provide a liaison channel between the network users and the network providers. Each site with a connection to JANET is entitled to send two representatives to one of the seven Regional User Groups (RUGs). The normal practice is that one of the representatives should come from the Central Computing Service on the site, which is involved in providing access to JANET, and the other should be a network user. Each RUG sends two representatives to the JANET National User Group (JNUG) and the same balance in representation between site service suppliers and end users is encouraged. The Chairman of the JNUG is ex officio a member of the Network Advisory Committee which advises the Computer Board on networking policy and funding. It should be noted that both the past and present JNUG Chairmen. Professor Gordon Petrie and Dr. Ted Chance, are network users rather than computer service representatives.
The Terms of Reference of the JNUG are:
The Network Executive will provide secretarial support for the National User Group.
The Terms of Reference of the RUGs reflect those of the JNUG. The JNUG meets four times a year and RUGs meet at similar frequency.
If you are interested in the work of the RUGs and the JNUG and would like to be involved you should contact your local Computing Service and ask for details of how users on your site are represented. If your site is not active then you should contact the chairman of the RUG which serves your region. The North West RUG. which includes Northern Ireland and North Wales, is not currently active. Sites covered by this RUG who wish to participate in an active RUG are advised to contact the chairman of one of the other groups.
Shirley Wood
JANET User Support Manager
The aim of this project is to develop tools which will enable academics of all disciplines to use JANET for improved group communication and information dissemination.
The report on the initial assessment of the requirements of JANET users with regard to information services is now available. This survey was undertaken by means of interviews with a small number of individual users from different disciplines and with representatives of some of the groups using JANET. The purpose of this exercise was to test the water in order to give NISP an insight into the requirements of JANET users for information sharing. No attempt was made to carry out a definitive survey.
As the report contains tables, it is recommended that you obtain a printed copy if you do not have the facilities for printing from the online nroff or Postscript versions. A limited number of printed copies of this report are available from the JNT.
On-line versions of the report may be obtained from the experimental service nisp-info.
Please note that this report is, strictly speaking, the property of the JNT and the Computer Board. You are free to copy the document as long as the source is acknowledged.
The second stage of the project has now started. A functional specification of the information service and tools for user groups will be available for discussion within the next month. The specified system should enable a special interest group to mount their own information server and make it available across JANET to other members of their group.
A prototype server will be developed in parallel with discussions on the functional specification. The intention is to allow early access to an initial version of the prototype in order that the functional specification may be refined and the prototype improved in the light of comments from the JANET community.
Jill Foster, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The JANET National User Group, following requests from the Regional User Groups, asked the Network Executive if they would produce some introductory information about JANET and its associated services for new institutions joining JANET and new users of the network. This will also be of interest to existing users of JANET.
The Network Executive agreed, but due to their continued staff shortages did not have the resources to do the work themselves. They have asked Caroline Leary from the University of Sussex Computing Service to help. She is working half time for a year on the project, and started on September 1st.
The JANET Starter Pack aims to bring together in one place the various pieces of information that are needed when first encountering JANET. This will supplement the current learning process where these facts are discovered bit by bit from many different manuals, newsletters, mailing lists, meetings and over the grapevine.
So that the pack does not become too large and discouraging, the topics will be introduced fairly briefly but include instructions for obtaining further details. It will be written for people who are familiar with computers but are not networking specialists and hopefully will avoid unnecessary networking jargon.
The JANET Regional user groups have seen the proposed list of topics to be included in the Starter Pack, but comments and suggestions from al) other interested people would be most welcome, especially from recent new users of JANET.
Caroline Leary, Computing Service, University of Sussex
An implementation of the host end of SSMP is now available for VME. This means that suitably equipped terminals and microcomputers can take advantage of the screen mode facilities of the VME operating system. The development of SSMP for VME was undertaken by Bath University Computing Services under sponsorship from the Joint Network Team.
This development meets two main objectives, first to provide protocol conversion between SSMP and ICL's proprietary screen mode protocol and second to provide an application interface for SSMP-aware applications.
The importance of providing a mapping to ICL's own screen mode protocol is that this enables access to the many built-in screen mode features of VME such as screen mode command prompting with its integral help facilities and indeed to any application written for VME. This is expected to be particularly appropriate for the regional service provided by SWURCC at Bath University because access from an open community implies support for open community-wide standards. Additionally, where existing applications had been written with full screen mode handling in mind, it had not previously been possible to access them using simple X.29.
Equally, however, it is important to provide a platform for SSMP-specific applications such as CURLEW. In fact, CURLEW has been ported to VME thanks to Nottingham University and has been demonstrated successfully. One of the major design problems which was overcome here was the problem of running an SSMP application within an existing SSMP session.
SSMP/VME is implemented as a terminal sponsor under ICL's Flexible Terminal Handler (FTH). Version 101, the second production release, is now available for file transfer from SWURCC. Information on how to acquire SSMP/VME has been circulated electronically to the mailing list.
Andrew Dand, University of Bath
This article is an edited version of a message which was originally sent to the distribution list mailgroup@UK.AC.VCL.CS. No claims of originality are made for the software described or the facilities presented; indeed much of what we have done was suggested by earlier work at the University of Edinburgh. The article is intended simply to illustrate what is possible today for the electronic mail facilities of a typical higher education establishment.
We have a Sun 4 (UK.AC.NEWCASTLE) which acts as mail hub. It has X.25 connections to our CPSE for Grey Book mail to JANET, and to exchange mail with our current main computing service host (UK.AC.NCL.MTS). It has Ethernet connections to all of our UNIX hosts, and since Newcastle's Ethernet is linked to that at the University of Durham, it can potentially reach all UNIX hosts on both campuses. SMTP is used between the UNIX hosts and the hub; Grey Book for all external connections, UK.AC.NCL.MTS, and a couple of other hosts.
The software on the Sun 4 is a modified version of sendmail. Various parts of what we use are either standard Berkeley UNIX components or extras that were obtained from, or via, Brunei, Nottingham and Cambridge. The credit for putting it all together goes to Andy Linton. He has since left us to take up a post at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, so our current Postmaster and hub manager is now Chris Ritson.
The UNIX hosts represent quite a range of hardware. Most are Sun 3's, but there's a MicroVax, 2 Encores, and a Gould. The common link is that all run sendmail. A network of Xerox workstations is also linked to the mail hub via a gateway machine.
Mail facilities at Newcastle are a cooperative venture between both the Computing Science department and the Computing Service. Chris Ritson is attached to the former whilst I am part of the Newcastle team of the NUMAC Computing Service.
The mailers which sign plain <username>@<host> are just the standard UNIX elm and mail utilities. We do have one mailer, emu . which performs the resigning itself; it has access to a secure copy of the hub tables to do this.
The source data for the mail hub delivery and resignature tables is maintained with a file editor as a series of files at present, but we plan to augment this with a full-screen forms-filling utility for more convenient use by our computer operators or reception staff. The individual files are checked and used to generate the hub's online directories each night.
The great advantage we obtain from this set-up is that all of our users get simple addresses based on their personal name and a single host name. UK.AC.NEWCASTLE, rather than cryptic and unmemorable addresses of the form
XYZ123@UK.AC.NCL.SOMETHING
Re-signing of outgoing mail is a crucial part of this. Many systems provide a personal name address for incoming mail but sign user-unfriendly <username>@<host> addresses on outgoing messages.
It should be noted here that the University of Edinburgh have been performing hub resigning for some years, through the work of Sandy Shaw. A similar facility is available at the University of Reading, due to Adrian Pell (now at HP Labs, Bristol).
At present we have personal names registered for about 3000 users, a mixture of staff and students.
Newcastle is a medium sized university and hence has over 9000 registered students at any one time. We are fortunate in having access to machine-readable student records providing a mapping between personal name and student number. A simple algorithmic mapping provides the username of each student from their student number, allowing us to predict the <username>@<host > details for the computer account that they will be given. As a consequence we intend to register electronic mail names en masse for all of our students as from October/November 1989.
Exposure to information technology is encouraged by most departments, and in the Computing Laboratory use of electronic mail facilities is considered to be part of an undergraduate's education.
For University staff, names are registered on an individual basis. The staff member simply sends a message to Postmaster. He or she is encouraged to do this, because the mail hub will not allow mail off-campus for users who do not have a personal name registered.
For inbound messages, apart from the mandatory case-independent recognition, name matches must be exact to deliver. We have a community of several thousand users, and it wouldn't be a good idea to have, say, a professor's mail fall into the hands of an undergraduate through a misplaced fuzzy match.
Failure to match does invoke fuzzy match software, however. This is used to send a message back suggesting a list of addresses which might contain the intended recipient. A message to:
hunter@UK.AC.NEWCASTLE
would return an error report giving my e-mail address together with those of the other five of that clan. Again, Edinburgh and others have been doing this for a number of years; we claim no originality.
We have the capability to set up a personal name to deliver to any <username >@<host > address in the e-mail world. It is therefore a simple matter to arrange that mail is routed to the relevant local host when a staff member takes sabbatical or similar long-term leave.
Note that while most of our hosts are bsd UNIX based, they aren't all. In fact the system could work just as easily with VAX/VMS or VM/CMS if the relevant machines' NRS tables are set up to route all messages to the mail hub, and the mail hub has available the relevant resignature information.
We handle distribution lists through normal sendmail facilities on the hub. The source for each list is held in user-owned files in a special directory on another public UNIX host, and the changed versions are copied to the hub once an hour. We don't let anyone log into the hub itself other than to maintain the mail system.
Expansion of the list proceeds via a series of filters which add a Sender: field of <listname> -request, and, if not already present, a Reply-to: field.
One recent addition which might be of interest is that we now provide a Telex service for direct access by users. The software/hardware is a commercially available package running on a Microvax, though users don't need to know that. They just send to addresses like:
bntish.ambassador@telex.93S+20651-uk_rep
This is a fake address for a non-existent person on a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean. However, I think the ATTN: field, international and internal codes (938 + and 20651) and answerback field (UK REP) should be fairly obvious. Telex, being a very old facility, can reach many more parts of the world than academic and commercial e-mail. The outstanding connectivity outweighs the disadvantage of the restricted upper-case only character set.
Since it is a chargeable resource, Telex has an authorisation package associated with it. Only users specifically registered for Telex may send such messages, and these are never undergraduates, though we do allow students access to all other facilities.
For general information contact: Alan Hunter, Computing Laboratory The University of Newcastle upon Tyne
An X.400 connection has been set up between JANET and MicroLink, a public messaging and information service.
The MicroLink subscriber base is currently just over 10,000. of which about 7,000 are business and industrial users. MicroLink's messaging service provides electronic mail, outgoing fax, telex, telemessaging, international telegrams and radio paging. Its numerous value-added services include bulletin boards and gateways to around 1,200 databanks world-wide, many of them research-orientated.
MicroLink started life four years ago as System 72 on Telecom Gold, an arm of British Telecom and a subsidiary of Dialcom International. On October 1 this year, it switched to Istel Inet as its carrier. It is expected that the superior service will result in a considerable increase in the user base, especially in the commercial and industrial sectors.
Istel Inet is a joint venture launched this year between Istel, formerly the data processing department of British Leyland, and Bell Canada Enterprises, Canada's second largest company. Istel has established itself as a major supplier of computer services, particularly in the areas of travel, retail and health care.
Istel's own packet-switched network is Infotrac, with telephone access points at all speeds up to 2400 Baud dotted around the UK and Europe, and with direct links to Canada and Hong Kong. Infotrac is also indirectly accessible from over 70 countries. The move to Istel Inet thus effectively gives MicroLink the opportunity of changing its current position of being essentially a UK-only operation, a position which has been more or less imposed by Dialcom, to that of a genuinely international information and mail network. Direct connections to major information systems in the USA have recently been established, and access to European services, including the French Teletel (Minitel), are being planned for the new year.
The link to JANET is a natural move within MicroLink's new policy of increased connectivity. Users of public mail systems have so far been unable to mail to JANET users, and vice-versa, and all manner of private arrangements for file transfer have been the order of the day. The new X.400 connection offers to a growing section of the business community the opportunity of easier communications with its counterparts in academia. and has been welcomed by the Joint Network Team as a means of giving JANET users, for the first time, a link with a public commercial mail network.
To send mail to a MicroLink subscriber from JANET it is usually possible to use the recipient's name, viz;
<first-name> <surname > @gb. tmailuk.microlink For example
Gabriel Jacobs (MicroLink: MAG045)
Staff at Sun Microsystems in the UK can now be contacted by e-mail over PSS as Sun have recently commissioned a gateway machine which will receive Grey Book mail.
For example, if you wish to contact Graham Lovell, the address to use is
Graham.Lovell@UK.CO.SUN-MICROSYSTEMS. (The short form is UK.CO.SUN).
Note that the mail gateway does not permit delivery to anything other than names in the form firstname.surname. In particular, machine names within Sun's network are not accessible from outside, and countries other than the UK are not addressable (except in particular cases by agreement with Sun.)
Care should be taken in checking the username; make sure you get the difference between James.Smith and Jim.Smith right! (or, similarly Dave/David, Mike/Michael).
Sun Microsystems has reached an agreement with the JNT whereby academic users on JANET are now able to route electronic mail to Sun Microsystems through the UK.AC.EAN-RELAY without incurring network charges; the cost having been underwritten by Sun. In time, this link is expected to be upgraded from a Grey Book mail link to X.400.
My grateful thanks to the JNT for extending their gateway facilities to Sun. This month to-date Sun has processed greater than 500 mail messages amounting to more than 3 Mbytes of data. During the last week 64 messages had come in via the new relay mechanism.
Sun are also able to send and receive X.400 messages. For more information contact Graham Lovell at Sun Microsystems in Camberley.
Please check that you have the latest NRS database entry. The Salford NRS database was updated in the middle of November to reflect the new addressing capability through UK.AC.EAN-RELAY instead of via PSS.
Users experiencing any difficulties are requested to contact Sun, in the first instance Graham Lovell on (0276)62111.
Graham Lovell
Sun Microsystems Ltd.
Following on from discussions at the Warwick Networkshop, a new e-mail distribution list has been set up to allow discussion of operational problems encountered from running present-day UK electronic mail services. The list is:
uk-mail-managers@UK.AC.NEWCASTLE
To be added to the list send a message to:
uk-mail~managers-request@,UK.AC.NEWCASTLE
Please note that this is not a remote advisory service for users. It is intended that the members of the list shall, for the most part, be computer centre staff who operate e-mail services. Users should seek advice locally in the first instance, and the list used by the mail manager where local expertise is insufficient. It can also be used to discuss more general operational issues amongst mail managers.
Alan Hunter, Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon
Plans are underway to formulate standards within ISO for Remote Procedure Call (RFC). At Networkshop 17 some interest was shown in RPC by the community.
The JNT believe that it would be useful to set up an advisory group and a mailing list (RPC@UK.AC.RUTHERFORD) for people with an interest in RPC. Also, if you might be interested in doing some testing of RPC products then please join the group.
The group and the mailing list will cover open networking matters of interest related to RPC. After the initial interest in RPC is gauged it is planned to hold a meeting-Requests for additions are welcome. Academic Institutions will be added to the mailing list and invited to attend the RPC meetings. Commercial companies will not be added to the mailing list but could be offered the opportunity to come and give presentations to the meetings. These, and other enquiries about the list should be sent to RFC-REQUEST@UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.
Sue Weston, Joint Network Team
A survey conducted for the JNT by EUCS in 1988 examined the range of available X.25(80) PC bus adaptors for the IBM PC supporting MSDOS and PCDOS. Copies of the survey are available from the JNT.
Sue Weston, Joint Network Team
After many delays, three products are now available that implement the Asynchronous Transport Service (ATS). ATS is a means of providing Coloured Book protocols on personal computers connected to asynchronous lines. The CAMTEC ATS JNT-PAD acts as a gateway between ATS and JANET. PC implementations are available for MS/PC DOS and Unix machines and provide file transfer, mail and terminal access applications. Below are product announcements from the suppliers of the products.
From 1st November 1989, ATS will be available for the V4.0 JNT-PAD. The release of V4.0B ATS JNT-PAD will be the only ATS product from CAMTEC. It provides the standard V4.0 JNT-PAD features with the addition of the option of Asynchronous Transport Service on asynchronous lines. Asynchronous lines can dynamically operate in terminal or ATS mode giving access to X.25 networks in either capacity. The product allows gatewaying between the protocols and TS29/X.29 converters are included in the product.
To get your copy of the firmware please contact Mark Frankland on (0420) 541624. The cost of the upgrade is £200 for a V4.0 JNT-PAD site on Software Maintenance contract and £250 per V4.0 JNT-PAD for sites without maintenance agreements. Any JNT-PADs operating at a lower revision levels will, in addition, need to be upgraded to the current hardware level. This upgrade includes PAL changes necessary for ATS to operate - and modifications which CAMTEC recommend to improve the resilience of the product. A small charge will be made for the hardware alterations. Mark will be pleased to provide any further information.
The Rainbow package can currently utilise ATS and all the Rainbow applications (except Padprt) are available. The ATS versions do not currently utilise the standard TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) approach but instead need a different program from the other Rainbow executable files. We can make the ATS versions available to any site that wishes to have them and will put the executable files up on the RDS (Rainbow Distribution Service) if there is enough demand.
Work has already started to convert the ATS support to run as a TSR to enable ATS support to be identical to that provided by the other TSRs such as Pinkbook and Link2000. The TSR version however will not be available until early next year.
For further information contact Pat Moran at Edinburgh University Computing Services,
Unix ATS will run under the following versions of Unix - UTX/32 (Encore), SunOS (Sun) and SCO Xenix (PCs) and supports Blue Book file transfer and Grey Book mail.
Contact Alistair Munro at Bristol University for further information.
Mick Kahn, London Network Team Secretary ANIG
For several years regular meetings have been held between users (i.e. site network specialists!). Prime and Salford Software Services to discuss the ISOCEPT network product and more general network issues related to academic and research institutions. During that time we have seen considerable improvements in network products, although as always not as much or as fast as we would have liked. Recently it was agreed to amalgamate under the banner of the Prime Systems and Technical User Group (ex PERUG -Prime Educational and Research User Group). Meetings are held four times a year and the plan is to hold parallel morning sessions; one for Systems and Technical discussion; the other for Networking. In the afternoon the groups will meet jointly for presentations on topics of general interest. The morning network session centres around the ISOCEPT package, with discussion on problems. enhancements and new releases, but also covers other network products. Anyone interested in joining the group should contact their local Prime Systems and Technical Group representative or failing that myself (P.Mills@UK.AC.MCC). A mailing list, PRIME-COMMS@UK.AC.RUTHERFORD is also available for discussion of networking issues.
Pete Mills Chairman, Network Subgroup.
Scott Currie (EUCS) has produced a paper entitled FDD! Backbone LANs - The Bridging problem explained. The paper has been circulated to the FDDI Advisory Group. Copies of the paper are available from the JNT.
Sue Weston, Joint Network Team
The 1989-90 edition of the CHEST Directory of Software Discounts will be hitting the streets during the Christmas vacation period. The Directory contains details of over 700 commercially available software packages which are being offered to the UK Higher Education community at substantial discounts. Also included are articles on other national groups/services such as the NISS Bulletin Board, the Software Catalogue, the National Public Domain Software Archive and so on.
If you saw the 1988 Directory we hope that you will be pleasantly surprised by the improvements we have made this year. Not only are there something like 70% more product entries but we have gone to great lengths to maintain some degree of consistency across all of the entries. You should find it much easier to use the new directory, despite its 570+ pages, and because we have recently double-checked the discounts being offered, you should find that the information about prices remains accurate for some time to come. We have deliberately rejected software products for which there is no special educational discount, so perhaps this will encourage companies to consider a pricing policy for the academic community in the future. CHEST needs to know when better prices than those given in the Directory are obtained; such information should be mailed to B.E.Barker@UK.AC.SWURCC.
Complementary copies of the Directory are being distributed to the Computing Service, the Purchasing/Supplies Office, the Library within universities and, most importantly, to every academic department in the UK Higher Education community. We are targeting the secretary to each department with this year's mailshot in the hope that the Directory will find the most appropriate home.
The Directory will also be on sale in campus bookshops, price £25, and is published by Bath University Press (ISBN 0 86197 105 1).
The catalogue now has some 1000 records of various types, and is rapidly growing in size. A much improved user interface is being designed, and should be implemented before Xmas. Plans are currently being drawn up for the inclusion of the CHEST Directory and this should be available by mid-February.
Negotiations are well underway for the inclusion of records of the ESRC Data Archive and the VAX Applications Committee. Both activities are agreed in principle and are at the stage of establishing ways and means at a detailed level. The Catalogue is now registered with an NRS name NISS.CAT.
The NISS Bulletin Board service appears to be going from strength to strength! Although the underlying hardware has performed admirably during the last 12 months, while the average load has risen from 50 to 300 sessions per day, we are not sure how much longer the service will keep up with the demand. If you notice a significant deterioration in the speed of the service please tell us by using the MAIL option on NISSBB. We are currently investigating the financial feasibility of upgrading the hardware on which the Bulletin Board runs; our case will be strengthened if we have evidence that the current hardware can not do the job.
On the information side we can report that one or two of the Academic Discipline sections on NISSBB are beginning to take off: namely Chemistry (section N3), Modern Languages (P3), Physics (P6) and Pharmacy (P8).
Finally, the NISS Team at Bath has been undergoing some traumatic changes during the Autumn with the loss of three of the four team members - was it something I said? The good news is that we have successfully recruited Catherine Humphrey as NISSBB Administrator and are currently recruiting the other team members; normality (whatever that is) should be restored in the New Year.
Rob Armstrong
The Edinburgh University Computing Service (EUCS) has developed a UNIX driver for the Netcomm Link2000 X.25 card allowing up to 255 channels on an X.21/V.24 link running at up to IMbps.
The driver is for 386 based systems (such as Compaq and Dell) running either SCO XENIX or ISC System V UNIX and provides the following facilities:
In addition, the York NETIO software has been ported to provide FTP and MAIL.
The EUCS software is being marketed by Systems Reliability (Scotland) Ltd., information may be obtained from David Hearn on (0383) 736117.
Mark McIntosh, Edinburgh University
26 - 27 February 1990
This course is designed primarily for people responsible Tor setting up and running a computer service on an Ethernet local area network using ISO protocols (as approved by the Joint Network Team of the Computer Board). The course will be particularly suitable for those working in an academic environment.
Participant Profile
Participants should have some knowledge of data communications. Some familiarity with another networking environment (especially X.25) would be an advantage.
Programme
The course will cover the hardware aspects of an Ethernet, including cables, transceivers, repeaters, bridges and gateways to an X.25 wide area network in enough detail to enable a practical network to be designed.
It will also examine the use of X.25(1984) running over the Ethernet (the JNT Pink Book which conforms to the ISO standard) mainly with regard to addressing. This includes the use of NSAP's (Network Service Access Points) and LSAP's (Link Service Access Points) and how these can be used in conjunction with a gateway to a wide area network.
The course's practical element will include the configuration of some typical products, e.g. PADs and gateways from Camtec Electronics and Spider Systems, and PAD and file transfer software running on IBM compatible PC's. Some host computer implementations may also be covered.
The course is residential with full board and an evening session. The course starts at 10.00am on Monday and participants who require extra accommodation (on the Sunday and/or Tuesday nights) are requested to inform the Course Organisers in good time as accommodation is limited.
Cost: £300
Tutor: lan Campbell
For further details, please contact:
Roseanne Benn, Lecturer in Information Technology, University of Exeter
Aims and Scope:
The ESPRIT II Project ARGOSI - Applications Related Graphics and OS1 Standards Integration -arises from the observation that graphics, communications and other standards are being developed in isolation. Two specific objectives of the project are:
ARGOSI is preparing a Workshop to be held in Athens. Contributions are sought which combine the latest results in communication services and computer graphics. Additional contributions are sought regarding applications which are using graphical functions in a distributed environment. Areas of interest include:
The Workshop language will be English.
Full Papers:
Participation will be limited to encourage discussion. Selection will take place on the basis of full papers (up to 15 pages) reviewed by the Programme Committee. Please submit 4 copies to the address below. Papers and conclusions will appear in the workshop proceedings. Invitations, to submit revised versions for a book (EurographicSeminars series published by Springer-Verlag) will depend on the quality of the contributions.
Participation without submitting a paper may be possible in a few cases, if a position paper is submitted with your views on current issues in graphics and communications.
Dr D.A. Duce,
Informatics Department.
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,
