edgar@OSI.NCSL.NIST.GOV (Carol A. Edgar) (06/16/90)
The following provides an overview of OSINET and contacts for
more detailed questions.
OSINET Profile
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OSINET is a community of vendors, users and government agencies,
located mainly in the United States, which was established in
1984 to expedite the development and use of OSI products by
facilitating the testing and demonstration of emerging OSI
products.
Vendors join OSINET to do interoperability testing of their
products on the networks. Many users also join because they
find that by actively participating in OSINET testing, they can
monitor the progress that the vendors are making in bringing
OSI products which meet their needs to the marketplace.
OSINET has currently 46 participants and the membership is
growing. The current members are the USAF Communications
Command, U.S. Army Communications, Allied-Signal, AT&T, Boeing
Computer Services, Bull HN Information Systems, Consumer
Software (Canada), Control Data, CONVEX Computer Corp.,
Corporation for Open Systems, Cray Research, CSIRO (Australia),
Data General, Defense Communications Agency, Defense Logistics
Agency, Digital Equipment Corporation, Electronic Data Systems,
General Motors, GTE Government Systems, Grumman Data Systems,
Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Jupiter Technology, McDonnell
Douglas, MITRE, NASA, National Institute of Standards and
Technology, Department of Navy, NCR, Northern Telecom, Pratt &
Whitney, Prime, Retix, Rockwell International, Sequent Computer
Systems, Sun Microsystems, TASC, Telenet, TITN, Touch Communica-
tions, TRW, Unisys, Wang Laboratories, The Wollongong Group and
Xerox. U.S. Sprint and AT&T have recently connected their re-
spective packet networks and provide the current X.25 backbone
for OSINET.
Much of the early testing on OSINET involved the research and
development testing of OSI products and research and development
continues to play an important role on the network. However, in
the near future, OSINET will also be providing a Testing and
Registration of Announced Products service for OSI users. Vendors
will perform interoperability testing of their products using
approved tests and test procedures. If both vendors agree that
the results were successful, they will record those results on a
data base which users can access free of charge. Users will be
able to query this data base on-line and determine, for example,
whether Company X's MHS implementation has interoperated with
Company Y's implementation. This will give users more confi-
dence in the new OSI products as well as provide the vendors
with an effective marketing tool. The participating vendors are
paying all costs associated with the development of this service.
OSINET maintains a document entitled, "OSINET General Agreements
and Information Document". OSINET also has interoperability
test suite documents for both MHS and FTAM. Persons interested
in receiving any of these documents, may contact the address
or the persons listed below.
Issued on behalf of OSINET, OSINET Steering Committee, NIST,
Building 225, Room B217, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.
Inquiries to : Jerry Mulvenna, 301-975-3622
Carol Edgar, 301-975-3613