User Services Area Director(s): o Joyce Reynolds: jkrey@isi.edu Area Summary reported by Joyce Reyolds/ISI Eight working groups in the User Services Area of the IETF met in San Diego. Two of the eight are newly formed working groups: Internet School Networking (ISN) and Internet Anonymous FTP Archives (IAFA). Below is a summary of ISI's User Services IETF activities. Directory Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (DISI) The DISI Working Group, Chaired by Christopher Weider was established to provide a forum for defining user requirements in X.500. It is an offshoot of the OSI Directory Services Group and is a combined effort of the User Services Area and the OSI Integration Area of the IETF. Three papers were published as FYI RFCs: o Lang, R., and R. Wright, ``A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations'', FYI 11, RFC 1292, January 1992. o Weider, C., and J. Reynolds, ``Executive Introduction to Directory Services Using the X.500 Protocol'', FYI 13, RFC 1308, March 1992. o Weider, C., Reynolds, J., and S. Heker, ``Technical Overview of Directory Services Using the X.500 Protocol'', FYI 14, RFC 1309, March 1992. In DISI's Charter, they had some additional documentation they wanted to produce. There was a discussion of what other documents to write in addition to those that are listed in the charter. There were five different topics presented by Working Group attendees. An advanced usages document, how to get registered, where do I belong, how to keep your X.500 up to date, your directory up to date, a pilot project catalogue and a DSA setup guide. The general consensus was an ``advanced usages'' draft, a ``how to get registered'' document and a ``where do I belong'' draft would be the next endeavors that they would like to do. Second in priority would be the ``pilot project catalogue'' document. Writing assignments and volunteers were tasked to go off and create drafts before the next IETF in Boston. Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group (IAFA) This Group is Chaired by Peter Deutsch and Alan Emtage. This is a new 1 Working Group which met for the second time in San Diego. The IAFA Group is chartered to define a set of recommended standard procedures for the access and administration of anonymous FTP archive sites on the Internet. The IAFA Working Group brought in a rough draft of a guide to FTP site administration which had been worked on via electronic mail in the last few months. This is what this Working Group primarily focussed on during their session. Discussion included data formatting issues and FTP extensions, caching, mirroring, redundancy and resources. Internet School Networking Working Group (ISN) The ISN Working Group is Chaired by John Clement, Art St. George, and Connie Stout. This is also a new Working Group which met for the second time in San Diego. The Internet School Networking Working Group is chartered to facilitate the connection of the United States' K-12 (Kindergarten-12th Grade) schools, public and private, to the Internet, and school networking in general. ISN's session gathers educators and Internet folks together. ISN also had a rough working draft. The draft presents multi-generic connectivity models for schools. Their focus is primarily on IP connectivity. ISN's document and intent is not to recommend to schools any one model, but to present various suggestions and various models for school systems to look at. Then the school systems can take these models, choose one for their needs, their students' needs, and also how much they have in their budgets to contribute to equipment and software. Internet User Glossary Working Group (USERGLOS) USERGlOS is Chaired by Gary Malkin and Tracy LaQuey Parker. The USERGLOS Working Group is chartered to create an Internet specific glossary of networking terms and acronyms for the Internet community. A draft document was ready for review at this session. USERGLOS had a two marathon sessions, one in the morning, and since they were going so well, they took a break and came back from 4:00 to 6:00 and continued to work on the glossary. This Group got an enormous amount accomplished in one day and those participants are to be commended for their stamina! They specifically worked on finding Internet specific terms that are needed in this glossary and weeded out a lot of words that were not pertinent. Network Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (NISI) This Group is exploring the requirements for common, shared Internet-wide network information services. The goal is to develop an understanding for what is required to implement an information services 2 ``infrastructure'' for the Internet. One paper was published as an FYI RFC: o Sitzler, D., Smith, P., and A. Marine, ``Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure, FYI 12, RFC 1302, February 1992. NISI's session focused on discussing what more there is to do. The NISI chairs feel that there's a lot more that they could contribute and they did not necessarily did not want to go dormant and come back out at a later time. The two topics that emerged were nethelp and a list of services. The two groups were tasked with volunteers, about five or six in each group, that are going to discuss what they need to develop in these two areas before the next IETF. NOC-Tool Catalogue Revisions Working Group (NOCTOOL2) NOCTOOL2, is Chaired by Robert Enger and Darren Kinley. The ``Son of NOCTools'' Working Group are updating and revising their catalog to assist network managers in the selection and acquisition of diagnostic and analytic tools for TCP/IP Internets. The NOCTOOL2 Working Group has been a little slow in getting the entries in. Entries are continuing to slowly arrive, but Bob and Darren are going to push hard on final document compilation and completion for an Internet-Draft. Bob and Darren have pledged to get a document out in the next two months. User Documents Revisions Working Group (USERDOC2) USERDOC2, chaired by Ellen Hoffman and Lenore Jackson. The User-Doc Working Group is preparing a revised bibliography of on-line and hard copy documents, reference materials, and training tools addressing general networking information and how to use the Internet. The target audience includes those individuals who provide services to end users and end users themselves. USERDOC's original bibliography was published in August of 1990. It is sorely out of date. This is the new revised Working Group. It has a revised charter. They met during the User Services Working Group session as they had time constraint problems. Items discussed included what items should included in the outdated document, and what items should be deleted in revising the bibliography. User Services Working Group (USWG) The USWG Group is Chaired by Joyce K. Reynolds. USWG provides a regular forum for people interested in all user services to identify and initiate projects designed to improve the quality of information available to end-users of the Internet. 3 User-Doc Working Group took up about half the session in their discussions. We also had a two reports, one on the RIPE meetings in Amsterdam in January, and the FARNET meeting in February. RIPE was originally chartered as a technical community. They have realized that user services is now something very important they should focus on, especially with East Central Europe and what is going on in Russia right now in user service needs. They have now just formed a User Information Services Working Group in the RIPE community. The FARNET meeting focussed on, ``Hardening of the Interim NREN''. FARNET meeting participants that were at the USWG session were asked to briefly describe the meeting in their own words. We also had round table discussions on how to connect to the Internet. ISOC has tasked the USWG to look upon ISOC Secretariat training programs. We also discussed DNS cookbooks and other types of topics the User Services Area could do in the future. 4