14-Jan-82 12:03:42-PST,19376;000000000001 Mail-from: ARPANET host BRL rcvd at 14-Jan-82 1202-PST Date: 14 Jan 82 6:38:28-EST (Thu) From: Mike Muuss To: list: Subject: TCP-IP Digest, Vol 1 #12 Bcc: 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 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 The intention here is to warn readers of the digest that the material contained herein is not for publication or other forms of public distribution.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 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 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 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 Subject: For Research Use Only etc. Date: 14 January 1982 00:48-EST From: Christopher C. Stacy 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 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 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 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. 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 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 ********************