OSI Integration Area
Director(s):
o David M. Piscitello: dave@sabre.bellcore.com
o Erik Huizer: Erik.Huizer@surfnet.nl
Area Summary reported by Dave Piscitello/Bellcore and Erik
Huizer/SURFnet
The OSI Integration Area of the IETF is attempting to bring OSI to the
Internet. OSI applications, especially The Directory, offer features
that are necessary to sustain the astonishing growth of the Internet;
Message Handling Services and Office Documentation offer features that
are both new and complementary to existing Internet applications.
Working groups in the IETF, in collaboration with RARE working groups,
continue to experiment with and deploy these applications in production
networks, over OSI as well as TCP/IP.
During the early deployment of OSI applications, hybridization of OSI
and TCP/IP was necessary and has proven to be useful in obtaining
experience and acceptance for OSI. Experimentation with OSIs transport
services is important as well; the continued efforts of the NOOP Group
to expand CLNP connectivity across regional and international networks
may well prove essential to the growth of the Internet. Currently, this
effort requires hybridization of a different sort: SNMP management over
OSI is as desirable here as X.500 over TCP/IP. For this reason, and the
more far-reaching need to integrate additional protocols and
architectures into the Internet, the first multi-protocol Working Group
was formed under the joint directorship of the SNMP and OSI Integration
Areas. Based on the success of the Working Group, it may not be the
last of its kind.
Introduction
The OSI Integration Area currently consists of the following working
groups, (working group Chairs/affiliation in parentheses):
o Network OSI Operations (Sue Hares/Merit)
o X.400 Operations (Alf Hansen/SintefDELAB, Rob
Hagens/Univ.Wisconsin)
o OSI Directory Services (Steve Hardcastle-Kille/UCL)
o Office Document Architecture (Peter Kirstein/UCL)
o MHS-DS (Kevin Jordan/CDC, Harald Alvestrand/Sintef DELAB)
o SNMP over a Multiprotocol Internet (Theodore Brunner/Bellcore)
o OSI General (Ross Callon/DEC)
The DISI Working Group, in the User Services Area, also has strong ties
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into the OSI Integration Area.
The following BOFs related to the OSI Integration Area were held in San
Diego:
o MIME to MHS Mapping BOF (Marshall Rose/DBC)
o Wais and Directory integration (Steve Hardcastle-Kille/UCL)
Network OSI Operations Working Group (NOOP)
The NOOP Group continues work towards compiling a compendium of OSI
support -- applications and in particular, support of CLNP -- in
regional networks. The existing questionaire was reviewed and revised.
Work continues on the compilation of a list of available OSI diagnostic
tools (Tools RFC), and requirements for OSI support in the SNMP. The
Working Group heard presentations from John Curran of NEARNet (New
England Academic & Research Network) and Steve Deering NEARNets on OSI
NSAP address assignment plans. Work continues as well on the Security
RFC, in particular, on an OSI Packet Filtering document that discusses
the issues associated with filtering OSI by application type in the
context of using packet filtering to restrict OSI connections (i.e., to
establish firewalls).
The Working Group is investigating sharing test suites and coordinating
test pilots with RARE, especially for inter-domain routing and
applications.
X.400 Operations Working Group (X400OPS)
The composition of the Working Group that met in San Diego illustrates
the increasingly international flavor of the IETF. Among the 29
participants were 7 Europeans and 3 Koreans.
The routing coordination document has been reviewed again and was now
judged suitable for submission as an experimental (or if possible as a
prototype) RFC.
Three other documents are still under discussion and need another round
of review:
o ``Operational Requirements for X.400 Management Domains''
o ``Mapping between X.400 (1984/1988) and Mail-11 (DECnet mail)''
o Use of DNS to store RFC -987 mapping data
Experiments with the protocols described in these last two drafts are
under way.
The Working Group will produce several documents in the very near term,
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including:
o Minimum Level of Service
o Table update procedures
o National Character set usage in X.400
In addition, two documents in the standards track are under review by
the IESG/IAB and on the verge of becoming proposed standards:
o ``X.400 1988 to X.400 1984 downgrading''
o ``Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822''
During the Working Group session, there was an extensive discussion on
MHS communities. Noteworthy was that there was participation from a
public service provider.
OSI Directory Services Working Group (OSIDS)
The Working Group met in San Diego with the following results:
Several documents were reviewed and are to be submitted to the IESG for
consideration a draft RFCs:
o ``Naming Guidelines for Directory Pilots''
o User Friendly Naming
o String representation of Distinguished Names
Experiments continue (and reports were given) in the following areas:
o Quality of service parameters
o JPEG photo attribute
New experiments to be started:
o European character sets in X.500
o DIT counting
Other noteworthy decisions and discussions:
o Naming Schema document maintenance is now moved to a small
committee
o The naming schema document will be restructured
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o Discussion on deployment of DNS through X.500
o O=internet will be put directly under the root
o Discussion on registration vs Listing
o Discussion on Skinny OSI stack, Lightweight protocols and Simple
OSI Stack.
Office Document Architecture Working Group (ODA)
The ODA Working Group met at San Diego with the following results:
It was reported that 5 Implementations are available and under test. So
far these implementations run only on top of X.400. Service is to be
launched during next few months.
MHS - DS Working Group (MHSDS)
This Working Group met for the first time in San Diego.
There were two input documents:
o PP use of directory Services (implementation specific)
o The ISO proposal on this issue.
After an extensive debate, it was proposed that seven documents be
drafted based upon the PP input document:
1. Table and tree handling by DS
2. O/R name representation as Distinguished Name
3. Routing info in DS
4. X.400/822 mapping tables in DS
5. tMailing list expansion using DS
6. RFC-822 routing based on DS
7. Simple application profile
The next Working Group meeting will be in Innsbruck, Austria in May
1992.
SNMP over a Multiprotocol Internet Working Group (MPSNMP)
The Working Group was chartered with defining the mapping and SNMP
encapsulation for three transport domains -- OSI, Appletalk, and
XNS/IPX. Since it was envisioned that at a future time, additional
transport domains might be identified, the Working Group agreed to
produce a how to RFC, identifying a checklist of issues to consider in
specifying an encapsulation of SNMP.
The Working Group considered three existing documents:
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o The informational RFC 1298, entitled ``SNMP over IPX'',
o The internet draft (draft-ietf-appleip-snmp-00.txt) entitled ``SNMP
over AppleTalk''
o The experimental RFC 1283, entitled ``SNMP over OSI''
In all cases, the committee determined that a connectionless TS similar
to UDP was desirable (architecturally appropriate). Security, maximum
packet size, and addressing considerations for each transport domain
were discussed. Authors of each of the documents were present, and
agreed to make appropriate changes, and further agreed to post the
documents to the mailing list for a three week review. If a consensus
is reached following the posting period, the Working Group agreed that
the three SNMP over foo documents be submitted to the IESG for
consideration as draft RFCs.
OSI General Working Group (OSIGEN)
This Working Group did not meet in San Diego.
The Area Directors will propose that this Group will disband.
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MIME to MHS Mapping BOF (MIMEMHS)
There were two input documents for this BOF on mapping between MIME and
X.400. A third one was announced but not tabled.
There was a consensus that the mapping could be easily constructed for
some of the bodyparts and not be constructed for others. It was
therefore proposed to create a short lived Working Group to create two
documents:
o Basic mapping
o Specific bodypart mapping
This deals with an initial set of registered conversions. The
registration will have to be maintained.
WAIS and Directory Integration BOF (WAIS)
This meeting followed discussion at the ``Living Documents'' BOF the
previous evening, and was more focussed in its discussion.
The WAIS, World-Wide Web, Prospero systems for network information
retrieval (NIR) were presented (the Gopher protocol was presented in
plenary the following day). The X.500 Directory was presented in the
light of NIR needs, as were two proposals to use the directory to refer
to documents. A discussion followed as to how to allow these systems to
interoperate, and on requirements for name spaces. A working group was
proposed to define the format for a generalized printable format for a
name or address in any of these systems.
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