Allan.Cargille@pilot.cs.wisc.edu (Allan Cargille) (01/12/91)
On November, 28, 1990, the NSF X.400 Pilot Project hosted a meeting to
discuss the organization of X.400 in the U.S. Internet. For this
initial meeting, participants were invited from agencies which provide
backbone services and technical leadership in the Internet.
These minutes are being widely distributed in the interest of
broadening participation in future discussions. These topics will be
addressed in the future by the new IETF OSI X.400 Operations Working
Group (see agenda item 8).
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Minutes of Internet X.400 Organizational Meeting (IXOM)
Madison, Wisconsin November 28, 1990
prepared by Allan Cargille
1. Participating Organizations.
Argonne National Labs:
Linda Winkler b32357@anlvm.ctd.anl.gov
CNRI:
Vint Cerf vcerf@nri.reston.va.us
ESNET:
Arlene Getchell getchell@ccc.nersc.gov
Bob Aiken aikenRJ@es.net
Lawrence Berkeley Labs:
Russ Wright wright@lbl.gov
Merit Computer Network:
Chris Weider clw@merit.edu
The Mitre Corporation:
Judy Messing messing@gateway.mitre.org
NASA-Ames:
John Yin yin@trident.arc.nasa.gov
Peter Yee yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov
NASA-Goddard:
Gary Dorman dorman@dstl86.dnet.nasa.gov
NSF:
Raleigh Romine romine@nsf.gov
University of Wisconsin:
Alf Hansen Alf.Hansen@pilot.cs.wisc.edu
Allan Cargille Allan.Cargille@pilot.cs.wisc.edu
Larry Landweber lhl@cs.wisc.edu
Marvin Solomon solomon@cs.wisc.edu
Rob Hagens hagens@cs.wisc.edu
2. Welcome (Rob Hagens).
3. All attending organizations made short presentations on their
current activities and plans for X.400. All are serious about
supporting X.400.
4. Rob Hagens led discussion on the overall organization of X.400 in
the Internet. There was discussion about the role of the Internet as a
PRMD or an ADMD. The consensus of those attending was that the U.S.
Internet will be a collection of cooperating PRMDs.
The lack of an ADMD/PRMD registration authority in this country was
identified as a serious problem. Attendees agreed that it is important
to have the ADMD and PRMD values in the U.S. drawn from the same name
space and be unique. Currently this goal may not be achieved when
ADMDs register PRMD names under them without checking for conflicts.
Attendees discussed the role of a PRMD in the U.S. Internet. There
was a consensus that PRMDS:
o can be directly connected to each other
o will not all be interconnected
o Every PRMD can route to every other PRMD (at least next hop)
o may be connected to 0 or more ADMDs
o must have a unique name in the U.S.
o can act as a naming authority
o assumes responsibility for message delivery
o may provide external connectivity
o defines specific policies (security, routing)
Action items: PRMD XNREN will collect PRMD names that people would
like to register. Vint Cerf will work on getting the official path for
registration identified and implemented. [Note -- these issues are
being addressed by the U.S. C.C.I.T.T. Study Group D MHS-MD
subcommittee.]
5. Allan Cargille led a discussion on the structure of Real O/R Addresses.
There was a consensus that O/R addresses for X.400 users should reflect
organization structure. These names need not be derived from existing
domain names (although they may be). For example,
/OU=cs/O=UW-Madison/PRMD=xnren/
reflects organizational structure better than
/OU=cs/OU=wisc/O=edu/...
6. Alf Hansen led a discussion on representing Internet RFC822
addresses in X.400. The two common strategies are using the
RFC-822 domain defined attribute or mapping components of an RFC822
address into standard elements of an O/R address.
The problem was divided into two parts: first, identifying the RFC822
community or a specific RFC987 gateway, and second, enclosing the
RFC822 address. Attendees agreed that a solution which forced routing
to a specific gateway was undesirable. This will be a major topic of
discussion at the next meeting.
In general, the high components of an O/R Address are used to identify
a gateway or community. For example,
Identifies Gateway: /C=uk/PRMD=ac.uk/O=relay/
Identifies Community: /C=us/PRMD=RFC-822/
In general, lower components of the O/R Address are used to identify
the RFC-822 user. The RFC-822 address can either be "exploded" into
O/R Address fields, or "encoded" intact inside a domain-defined
attribute field. For example,
Exploded address: /O=edu/OU=wisc/OU=cs/S=user/
Encoded address: /DD.RFC822="user(a)cs.wisc.edu"/
7. Vint Cerf led a discussion on connectivity to Commercial Carriers.
He presented the existing agreements between the U.S. Internet and
commercial carriers. It is hoped that agreements to carry X.400 can be
modeled on existing agreements. Currently carriers are carrying
traffic internally in private formats, and translating their format to
X.400 for exchange between carriers. All carriers are now using 1984
X.400. No carriers have announced plans to use 1988 X.400. They may
wait until 1992 X.400 is released to upgrade.
There was also discussion about Privacy Enhanced Mail in the Internet,
and the possibility of Internet users receiving "paid" services from
commercial carriers (example: email sent out as fax). The only
obstacle to these paid services is authentication for billing
purposes.
NASA already has X.400 connections to SprintMail.
8. Future Plans. A IETF working group for X.400 Operations was
proposed, and was later announced at the recent IETF meeting in
Boulder. Alf Hansen is leading the working group. The first meeting
will be held near San Jose February 4-6. Requests for information
on the group or to join the mailing list may be sent to
ietf-osi-x400ops-request@pilot.cs.wisc.edu, or in X.400 to
PN=ietf-osi-x400ops; OU=cs; O=uw-madison; PRMD=xnren; ADMD= ; C=us.