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TCP-IP Digest Vol. 1 No. 12
TCP/IP Digest Thursday, 14 Jan 1982 Volume 1 : Issue 12
Today's Topics:
Administrivia: Republication, Distribution, and Recipients
The Effect of Copyrights?
Comments on the Article in ComputerWorld
Comments on New Addition to the Masthead
TCP in RatFOR
TCP/IP Installation Report from Purdue University
To TCP or Not To TCP?
Continued Future for MIT ITS on the ArpaNet?
UK Joint Network Team Mail Specification
"Standard" Network Mail Addressing?
Multiple Networks and RFC733
----------------------------------------------------------------------
LIMITED DISTRIBUTION
For Research Use Only --- Not for Public Distribution
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mike Muuss <tcp-ip@brl>
Subject: Administrivia
Folks -
You probably noticed the new banner on the front of this issue
of the digest. While a copyright would be even better, the Government
can not hold a copyright, and the mechanics of having somebody else
copyright the Digest were just too much. So, the notice on the front.
The intention here is to warn readers of the digest that the material
contained herein is not for publication or other forms of public
distribution. At least this will ensure that if copies get to
the outside world (and they undoubtably will), at least they will think
twice before printing it. Authors of letters to the digest who want to
make a public statement may mark their submissions accordingly.
If this seems unnecessary, we can always be more informal later.
In addition, I intend to try and filter submissions from
unexpected sources, such as the copy of the InterNet Monthly which
I published pieces of several issues back. The intentions were all
good, but things didn't work out so well. Politics. Alas.
In summary, then, I hope to wrap up discussion of the administrative
side of the digest in the next issue or two, and resume our devoted
discussion of Networking!
I am interested in hearing from each USENET site which is
presently receiving the digest, to try and judge the size of the
readership. (Also from any other "multi-level indirect" network
which may be distributing the digest). Let's start hearing more
about networking concerns from the non-ArpaNet sites, too.
It seems that there has been some trouble with Digests sent to
one site being truncated. Each digest ends with "END OF TCP-IP DIGEST"
and a row of asterisks. Please let me know of any transmission problems.
A Happy New Year to All!!
-Mike
...!menlo70!hao!brl-bmd!tcp-ip
...!duke!brl-bmd!tcp-ip
TCP-IP@BRL
------------------------------
From: Bob Clements <CLEMENTS@BBNA>
Subject: TCP-IP Digest, Vol 1 #11
No, a copyright would not stop a news journal from printing anything
they consider "news", and rightly so, per the first amendment.
The moral is that whoever put that large section of a private
working discussion onto this journal made a serious error, and that
includes both the editor and the person who gave it to him.
Hopefully, they have learned from the error and won't repeat it.
/Rcc
------------------------------
From: Michael Muuss <mike@BMD70>
Subject: Comments on ComputerWorld
Here is a comment from the person who released the Digest to
Brad Schultz of ComputerWorld.
------ Forwarded Message #1:
BTW, I talked with Brad Schultz today, and he is aware now of the
potential impacts of his "quoting" from what is actually an off
the record source. He now regards it as such, and also he is not
getting any more information from the Digest, nor has he passed
on what his sources were.
He would be interested in conveying to the Digest participants
his concern over any inhibitions he may have initiated. In our
discussion today, we decided that you should head each issue of
the Digest with a statement saying that it is an off the record
publication, as far as use by the press is concerned. Perhaps we
should discuss with him exactly what the mast head disclaimer
should say so as to make very clear to anyone who sees it that it
is off the record and not to be used for quoting or direct
attribution by any member of the press.
----- End of forwarded messages
------------------------------
From: Christopher C. Stacy <CStacy at MIT-AI>
Subject: For Research Use Only --- Not for Public Distribution
The problem of ensuring that ARPAnet mail is not distributed outside
of the network community is a perpetual one, because many of the users
on the network are unaware of the restrictions on the material.
I beleive that the best solution is to educate the network community
to the problems which tend to arise when material is distributed
off the network.
There are several problems with people distributing material from the
network to the outside world.
There is always the threat of official or public accusations of misuse
of the network for certain mailing lists. This actually happened with
a list called WINE-LOVERS and Datamation, which was just a hint of the
magnitude of SFL. The fiasco nearly resulted in MIT being removed from
the network, and cost us several months of research time while we
fought legal battles to show why our machines should not be removed
from the ARPAnet. Of course, with a mailing list such as TCP-IP that
particular sort of problem is very unlikely to occur.
But there are still other problems. One of the problems involves legal
liability for statements and opinions published on ARPAnet mailing
lists. One of the classic scenarios of this sort of liability involves
the INFO-TERMS mailing list, which discusses and evaluates the
characteristics of various terminal devices.
Suppose someone were to state that Terminal Foo is better than Terminal
Bar, and that you should not bother with Terminal Bar. Imagine now
that the message is republished or even casually redistributed outside
the ARPAnet. The president of Bar Terminals Corporation sees the
message and writes to his Congressional representative for an
explanation as to why Government money from the taxpayer's pocket is
being used to induce people to buy his competitors product and not his.
Still further problems involve such issues as copyright and propriety.
The originator of a message to a mailing list does not expect that his
words will end up in Computerworld or elsewhere.
The Defense Communications Agency (DCA), which is responsible for
managing the ARPAnet has set down regulations and policies which are
designed to protect the network from some of these problems. Naturally,
most people who use the ARPAnet are unaware of the reasons behind the
policies (or even that such policies exist!). Here is a section from
a recent DCA memo on the subject:
"Files should not be FTPed by anyone unless they are files
that have been announced as ARPANET-public or unless
permission has been obtained from the owner. Public files
on the ARPANET are not to be considered public files outside
of the ARPANET, and should not be transferred, or their
contents given or sold to the general public without
permission of DCA or the ARPANET sponsors. Hosts which use
a "guest" or "anonymous" FTP login convention should inform
their local users about the ramifications of this convention
with respect to unprotected files, as the users are not
always aware that their files can be FTPed."
But "laying down the law" is a fairly useless way of solving this sort
of problem. The problem is one of awareness, cooperation and trust.
Only if people understand and care, will they take steps to protect a
fragile institution like the ARPAnet.
For the most part, the problem is that people are simply unsure about
releasing the material. Frequently a subscriber will ask before trying
to redistribute material, sometimes they only come forward after it is
too late. The only thing which a moderator can do is explain to people
individually, in the detail required by the particular situation, why
republishing the material is a bad idea.
I think that the explicit banner on the masthead of the Digest is a bad
idea, because this will cause many people to think that if such a banner
is NOT present (ie., on any other Digests or on future TCP Digests)
that it is alright to redistribute the material.
In short, we are all in the hands of our neighbors. The best thing to
do is to ensure that we are all educated as to how to take care of each
other and ourselves.
Cheers,
Chris
------------------------------
From: Jeffrey P. Golden <JPG at MIT-MC>
Subject: For Research Use Only etc.
Date: 14 January 1982 00:48-EST
From: Christopher C. Stacy <CStacy at MIT-AI>
Subject: For Research Use Only --- Not for Public Distribution
To: Tcp-IP at BRL, Mike at BRL
cc: DIGEST-PEOPLE at MIT-AI
...
I think that the explicit banner on the masthead of the Digest is a bad
idea, because this will cause many people to think that if such a banner
is NOT present (ie., on any other Digests or on future TCP Digests)
that it is alright to redistribute the material.
I don't agree. If SOMEONE uses the banner, then at least those people
who see it may stop and think about the issue, and other digests may
choose to use such a banner as well. If NO ONE uses it, then I think we
are more likely to perpetuate the kinds of problems CStacy mentioned
earlier in his note. I think elucidating by example is a fine thing,
and one usually doesn't wait for others to be consistent with one's
good idea.
------------------------------
From: Bob Amsler <AMSLER at SRI-AI>
That's acceptable to me, [The new addition to the Digest Masthead,
starting this issue -Mike] though it might be toned down a little after
a while. Another approach might be to just include a copyright notice...
though that smacks of assuming official standing. (By "toned down" I
mean explicitly the double row of -----'s might be eliminated or
reduced in size).
------------------------------
From: mo at LBL-UNIX (Mike O'Dell [system])
Subject: TCP in Ratfor
Tek Labs has done a TCP for the Cybers which is done in Ratfor.
If Clem Cole doesn't chime in with details, I can probably find
them.
-Mike
------------------------------
From: cak at PURDUE
Just a quick note to let you all know that the department of
Computer Science at Purdue University has brought Rob Gurwitz's
VAX TCP/IP implementation up on our Research VAX, as a beta-test effort.
(This is the VAX implementation from BBN. The work was done
as part of the CSNET effort here at Purdue.)
We are apparently the first site to come up straight off the tape.
There were some problems, both hardware and software, but Rob was
very helpful in solving these.
The implementation looks very clean, the distribution was very good,
and we are in general satisfied.
Rob mentioned the measurements he made on our system a couple of
issues ago, but I'll repeat them here:
Loopback through the IMP: 120Kbps
Transmission to BBN-VAX: 9.2Kbps
Please note that these are data rates only; add about 5% in each
direction for headers.
The first number measures DMA to and from the IMP; there is no
involvement with the net.
The second number should be considered with the fact that our
net links are 9.6Kbps lines.
We see about an order of magnitude increase in throughput over our
Greep 11/34 NCP front-end. (Not really surprising, though, since
it talks to the VAX via a 9600 baud line.) These numbers were
obtained on a 11/780.
We plan to bring up ProNet and Ethernet under this software in the
future for our own local use, as well as to continue to beta-test
future releases of the software.
Please direct inquiries about availability to Rob as gurwitz@bbn-unix;
I can't give it out.
You may not have Purdue in your host tables yet....we are host 0 on
imp 37 (decimal).
Looking forward to 56Kbps lines,
Chris
------------------------------
[ The following letter I wrote in response to a letter that I got
suggesting that SMTP will be too far away to help sites that transmit
to large mailing lists, and that the TCP/IP may never happen anyway.
-Mike ]
From: Michael Muuss <mike@BRL>
Subject: To TCP or not to TCP?
After having just about gotten over the 3-month mad dash to
switch to long leader LAST winter, I am not really looking forwards
to rushing into the conversion to TCP/IP, because of the work involved.
However, all up and down the line within the ranks of DoD management
inside both the Army and the Navy, everybody is backing up the decision
to stand firm with 1-Jan-83 for the conversion. This is putting the
heat on those of us who actually try to make these things happen, and
the pressure is uncomfortable, but we will probably be able to make it.
This type of edict is not uncommon when working for the DoD;
some manager will stipulate that something will happen "absolutely" by
a certain date. All the technical people start worrying, and screaming,
and carying on, claiming that "it can't be done in time". Management
usually dumps some enormous amount of money onto the project, and
wait and see. By this time, all the tech people have lost about
20 lbs (all brown), and are running around going crazy. Management
usually gets what it wants. Of course, there are the occasional
projects where things got cut just a bit too tight, and eveything falls
down in flames....
I happen to feel that TCP and IP are *good* protocols, and
certainly much better than what we are using now. It seems something
of a miracle that they have been adopted as a standard; usually
standards are things like COBOL that people go out of their way to
avoid. It is merely unfortunate that the conversion timetable is
so optimistic.
There exists AT LEAST one choice of software for UNIX systems
(all machines), T(w)enexes, Multics, and IBMs, so the majority of the
"ordinary" systems will at least be able to talk, even if not convieniently.
How we will get to MACSYMA on MIT-MC remains a mystery, unless some
briliant MIT student with a lot of time on his hands decides to power-code
a TCP/IP implementation for the ITS machines....
-Mike
------------------------------
From: Christopher C. Stacy <CStacy at MIT-AI>
Subject: To TCP or not to TCP?
-----
How we will get to MACSYMA on MIT-MC remains a mystery,
unless some briliant MIT student with a lot of time on
his hands decides to power-code a TCP/IP implementation
for the ITS machines....
-----
It is pretty clear that all the ITS machines will go off the ARPAnet
when TCP/IP is implemented, as we are not interested in investing any
time in developing new network software for those machines.
------------------------------
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: To TCP or not to TCP?
Is there some good reason that the ITS machines cannot be
gatewayed through a supported machine? Even little 11's like
the 24 should be able to run some sort of existing TCP/IP
implementation. Rand-Unix currently talks to the ARPANET over
a 9600 baud tty line via an 11/34 running the NCP.
--Lauren--
------------------------------
[ The remainder of this digest is devoted to a discussion of mail and
mail addressing in a multiple network / InterNet environment. Because
I mentioned that the British were adopting RFC733, it seems
appropriate to pass along this anouncement. -Mike ]
Date: 6 Jan 1982 1307-PST
From: UKSAT at USC-ISIE
Subject: JNT Mail Protocol spec available
A document describing the mail protocol which has been adopted as an
interim standard by the UK Joint Network Team (JNT) is online at ISIE.
<ucl-netwiz>usjnt.txt
This file may be copied using FTP with login to anonymous with password guest.
Steve Kille and Bob Braden
------------------------------
From: decvax!watmath!bstempleton at Berkeley
Subject: standard net address
Excuse me if I enter a little late in the discussion, but I only heard
of these plans of late.
It seems to me that userid@site.forwarder is much more sensible than
userid.site@forwarder. (this is a simple change that had better not
take more than 1 minute to implement in any already written code - or
else the code was badly done)
at sign is found rarely in userids, and almost never on the arpanet, if
at all. Dot is found commonly. It seems to make sense to say, you want
to join our net, here is a format for your site name, instead of "here
is a format for your userid names"
Aside from all that userid@location is much more readable than userid.location
if you ask me. Here, our plan is not to have explicit site names given
for waterloo computers, but rather have a mail-server figure out who
is where.
Where can I get details on the syntax of the internet mail systems?
------------------------------
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: RFC733 mistatement
[ I believe that the CSNET usage of User.Host@Forwarder is the RFC733
approved addressing format for sites which can't take User@Host@Forwarder.
The choice of the dot does seem rather unfortunate. The British have
adopted RF733 for their mail standard, but selected the percentage symbol
"%" rather than the dot ".". -Mike ]
RFC733 does not endorse this interpretation at all. USER.HOST@FORWARDER
(or USER.HOST@FORWARDER as used by Berkeley) is a legal RFC733 recipient
by virtue of the fact that "USER.HOST" is a legal RFC733 personid ("."
is not a special character at all) and FORWARDER is the host to send it
to. I know of no standard (other than local to one forwarder or
network) which officially adopts this syntax. I am not sure, but I
believe that the addresses of the form CSVAX.drb@BERKELY are simply
TOPS-20 login directory names which happen to have their mail forwarded
to CSVAX. [ Berkeley runs UNIX; syntax is LocHost.User@Berkeley -Mike]
On the other hand, see the description of host-indicator in RFC733 for
the FOO@BAR-HOST@BAZ-HOST syntax. If mailers stripping off the hostname
do their search from right-to-left and treat the rest as the string to
be passed to the FTP server, this syntax is trivially supported and
uniformly extensible.
Being new to this group, I don't know why this was brought up here, but
I hope you're not duplicating discussions which belong in MSGGROUP or
HEADER-PEOPLE.
[ I am asking around for pointers to earlier discussions about message
addressing, and will report the results here. -Mike ]
END OF TCP-IP DIGEST
********************
