EOF-7 meeting minutes

Hi,

I had promised to send out the final minutes to a wider audience
than to the EOF list only earlier, but it fell through the cracks
so some of this may be old news by now.  But here it is, anyway.
Note that the new proposed version of the EOF charter is appended
at the end of the minutes.

Regards,

- Håvard
							-*- Text -*-

European Operators Forum

Minutes of the 7th EOF meeting				Havard Eidnes

Held at KTH, Stockholm, Friday 14 July 1995		NORDUnet
							20 Jul 1995 v2 (draft)

------------------------------

Attendees:

Peter Lothberg		STUPI			roll@localhost
Havard Eidnes		NORDUnet		he@localhost
Keith Mithcell		PIPEX			keith@localhost
Anders Lowinger		SWIPnet			lowis@localhost
Per Bilse		EUnet			bilse@localhost
Rudiger Volk		Deutsche Telekom	rv@localhost
Marc Pichon		Transpac/RAIN		pichon@localhost
Eric Malmstrom		Transpac Sweden		eric.malmstrom@localhost
Magnus Risberg		Transpac Sweden		magnus@localhost
Willem van der Scheun	SARA			scheun@localhost
Francis Dupont		INRIA			Francis.Dupont@localhost
Wilfried Woeber		VUCC/ACOnet		woeber@localhost
Andrew Partan		UUnet/Alternat		asp@localhost
Daniel Karrenberg	RIPE NCC		dfk@localhost
Philip Bridge		Unisource Switzerland	bridge@localhost
Ola Johansson		Unisource Sweden	ola.johansson@localhost
Jan-Olof "Moon" Jemnemo	Telia, Sweden		moon@localhost
Tony Hain		ESnet			alh@localhost
Yakov Rekhter		Cisco			yakov@localhost
Elise Gerich		Merit			epg@localhost
Bernhard Stockman	KTH			boss@localhost

------------------------------

1. Welcome

   PL welcomed everyone to KTH.

2. Minute taker

   HE was volunteered to take the minutes.

3. Agenda bashing

   No noted additions to the agenda at this time.  AOB is still on
   the agenda.

4. Apologies

   None received.

5. Previous minutes

   Francis Dupont had noticed two typos in the attendance list.  No
   other comments, so the minutes were approved with these
   corrections.  The approved minutes will be re-circulated to the
   EOF and the RIPE lists.

6. European update

   Dante/EMPB

	There was noone present who could officially speak for
	Dante.

	The contract for the EMPB network expires in October -95,
	and Dante has during the spring had a call for tender out
	and has chosen British Telecom (BT) as the supplier of the
	follow-on network.

	The major uncertainty centered around whether the BT-
	provider follow-on network to EMPB would be a private
	network to be provided to Dante administratively managed by
	Dante or whether BT under the contract was free to add
	commercial customers to their network.

	Willem van der Scheun had got the impression that the model
	would probably basically be the same as today, i.e. it
	would remain a private network.

	Per Bilse had gotten the opposite impression, i.e. that BT
	could add other customers to the network if they might
	choose to do so, i.e. a model more similar to the old ANS /
	NSFnet model.

	Noone was present who could confirm or deny any of these.
	Theis item would probably be brought up during the IEPG
	meeting on Sunday, where hopefully someone with
	authoritative information would be present who could
	clarify this issue.

   EUnet

	EUnet has continued to upgrade it's network.  They now have
	2 x E1 to the US, and only a single international 64kbit/s
	circuit remains in Amsterdam (Portugal).  There has been a
	recent change in the management of EUnet.  Other than that,
	things are progressing more or less in the "buisness as
	usual" direction.

   EBONE
	
	Mostly buisness as usual.  There has been some recent
	upgrades: there are now 3Mbit/s (1+2) Stockholm - Paris and
	4Mbit/s (2x2) to Amsterdam.  EBONE is looking towards
	establishing an E3-based backbone.

   PIPEX

	Keith Mitchell presented an overview of the PIPEX network.
	Details can be found at

		http://www.pipex.net/network/connectivity.html

	Of notable international and european significance is 3 x
	T1 links to the US east coast, London-Stockholm at 256
	kbit/s and London-Paris at 2x128 kbit/s.  PIPEX is planning
	on using VSAT in the eastern countries.  They also have a
	link London-Johannesburg, and as far as they know they are
	the first ones to implement a European-African link.  They
	also have a planned link to Ghana.  The UK-internal network
	is now mostly 2 Mbit/s based.
	
	The notable grief they have at the moment is that they
	reach Dante customers and EUnet customers via the US.

   NORDUnet

	Havard Eidnes gave a brief update of NORDUnet's expansion
	plans.  The current intra-nordic network is based on
	2Mbit/s lines with 2 lines going to Finland (except Iceland
	which is at 256 kbit/s).  The central nordic region will
	approximately in October be operational with an 8 Mbit/s
	star out of Stockholm to Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen.
	We have also asked for a price quote for an upgrade of the
	line to Iceland to 1 Mbit/s.  In Iceland there are some
	organizational changes going on -- the former Suris
	cooperative is being replaced by a new company called
	"Internet Iceland" (IntIS for short) with basically the
	same constituency as the old Suris cooperation but with a
	more solid organization.

	NORDUnet will subscribe to the new BT-operated Dante
	network service at 2 Mbit/s.  NORDUnet is in addition
	thinking of implementing other international circuits in
	cooperation with other networks.

	Although not said explicitly at the meeting, it should be
	noted that NORDUnet is buying access to 24 Mbit/s of the
	new trans-atlantic 34/45 Mbit/s service and that the NSF is
	doing the same from the other end.

   RIPE NCC

	The RIPE NCC is currently getting it's main transit
	services from SURFnet who use the Dante services.
	However, they also peer with EUnet, Dante and EBONE
	directly to reach customers of those providers, and are
	willing to peer with anyone else showing up where the
	RIPE NCC is present.  Therefore, critisism that the RIPE
	NCC does not have a neutral position relative to service
	providers can now be laid to rest.

7. Ten34 impact on the non-R&D part of Europe

   The two persons who had been contacted by PL were unable to give
   a presentation.  Thus, noone present could talk in authority
   concerning the Ten34 initiative, so the following is based on
   second-hand information:

   In the 4th european research programme there will be funds
   available for implementing some sort of high-speed networking
   for R&D in Europe.  This combined with the general need for a
   better general intra-european infrastructure for R&D has spurred
   the Ten34 initiative.  The members of the Ten34 initiative are
   the major R&D networks in Europe.

   It should be mentioned that other parties are after the EU funds
   as well, notably the "James" initiative which is largely
   comprised of european PTTs who want to continue the current
   ATM-based pilot network.  The Ten34 constituency does not appear
   to think that the James initiative contributes a workable
   solution to the problem the R&D networks are facing (basically
   because ATM is seen as "too early" technology-maturity-wise, and
   what is needed is a production network).

   The EU has indicated that co-funding of a 34 Mbit/s based
   network could be forthcoming if offers for circuits at prices
   equal to 4 times 2 Mbit/s would be forthcoming.

   Should the Ten34 initiative be realized the network will have to
   maintain an AUP (or at least restrictions on direct "customer"
   connections) since it will receive public funds paying parts of
   the cost (at least initially).

   The concern raised by the group was how this would be integrated
   into the rest of the existing and forthcoming Internet infra-
   structure in Europe.  Firstly, it is probably premature at this
   stage to expect this detailed planning -- the rumours seemed to
   indicate Ten34 to be between 12 and 24 months away if it would
   be realized.  The group then suggested a short recommendation
   should be written expressing the issues to be taken into account
   in this arena when planning the network.

   ACTION: Keith Mitchell and Havard Eidnes to draft a document
   highlighting the issues to be considered concerning the impact
   of the Ten34 network on the general Internet in Europe.

8. Stockholm-US 34/45 Mbit/s service

   Peter Lothberg gave a short presentation of the details of the
   recently activated 34/45 Mbit/s service between Stockholm and
   the US.  The implementation work had taken approximately 24
   days, and was somewhat complicated.  Detailed pictures showing
   the equipment and cable paths were shown.

   PL is looking at getting backup of this circuit on the IP
   level with another european country with a high-speed link.

9. NY/Pennsauken Euro-NAP

   The 34/45 Mbit/s circuit terminates in the NY NAP facility in
   Pennsauken (New Jersey).  In order to make it possible for other
   european service providers to connect to the US at high speeds
   the circuit is not directly attached to the NY NAP switch but to
   a separate FDDI LAN.  PL expected another undisclosed european
   party to connect to the NY NAP at E3 speed sometime in
   September.

10. Connectint to the former USSR

   Tony Hain of ESnet is planning two links into Russia near Moscow
   at 64kbit/s via satellite to an european termnation point with
   64kbit/s onwards to ESnet, and wanted to get some impression of
   what others are doing wrt. networking into the former USSR.  The
   result was that the people present could inform of a number of
   links going into different parts of the former USSR from
   different service providers.  The picture is dominated by a lot
   of more or less un-coordinated efforts, which tends to leave one
   left with a mildly chaotic impression.  The solution recommended
   for the time being would thus be "do it yourselves".

   It was noted that RIPE has a working group collecting
   information about connectivity into the eastern and central
   european countries (the connectivity working group), they have a
   number of documents stored in the RIPE document store at the
   RIPE NCC, and the working group is still active.  If any new
   information surfaces, please submit it to the connectivity
   working group for inclusion in the RIPE document store.  Any
   questions about this should be directed to ncc@localhost.

11. European interconnects -- status

   LINX (London InterNet eXchange)

	The LINX had the initial members:

			Connected bandwidth
	PIPEX		10 Mbit/s
	JANET/UKERNA	18 Mbit/s
	BTnet		2 -> 10 Mbit/s
	EUnet/GB	512 kbit/s
	Demon		2 Mbit/s

	Recent requests and/or additions:

	Netkonect, Sprint International, Technocom, INSnet,
	CableTel.

	There has been lots more growth in the number of providers
	wishing to connect to the LINX than expected -- there comes
	in a valid new request about once every 14 days.  When it
	was first set up there was no formal organization to handle
	requests for new connections, this apparently needs to be
	fixed.

	Implementation-wise they have a Cisco Catalyst ethernet
	switch at the moment.  A second Catalyst and possibly an
	FDDI ring would be added soon.

	Other information about the LINX can be found at

		http://www.linx.net/linx/

	KM expressed his satisfaction with Telehouse as a
	facilities manager: they're not an ISP with it's own agenda
	in the Internet provider buisness and they are not a phone
	company with the traditional mindset and restrictions that
	implies.

   F-GIX (France)

	Noone from France Telecom or Renter were present, Mark
	Pichon gave a short orientation.

	There is currently an interconnect point where Renater,
	Oleane, and IN2P3 are connected.  Transpac/RAIN has tried
	to connect to the current exchange point but a response
	to this request has been unexplicably delayed.

	There is a proposal for establishing a new exchange point
	in Paris, however the location has not been decided yet
	(will probably be decided at the end of the month).

   Stockholm, D-GIX

	Currently implemented with 2 Cisco Catalysts and an FDDI
	ring with plans to add an FDDI switch.  Metropolitan Fiber
	Systems will connect to the exchange point in Stockholm
	with a layer-2 connection, and will thus be able to extend
	the geographical coverage of the exchange point to the
	other POPs MFS has in Stockholm.  (This is similar to what
	they have done at the MAE-East and MAE-West exchange
	points.)

	Rule for connecting: must have peer agreement with at least
	two of the others already present to connect.

   Amsterdam

	There is currently an initiative to add another exchange
	point in Amsterdam in addition to "IBR-lan".  Some of the
	motivation for this move is to not have a single ISP be in
	control of the exchange point.

   Geneva

	As noone present could talk authoritatively about the
	Geneva exchange point the following is at best second-hand.
	There was mention that at least part of the exchange point
	at CERN would be moved to BT premises -- this is in
	connection with the local implementation of the access
	ports to the BT-operated EMPB follow-on service from Dante.
	Whether this move includes the other parts of the CERN
	exchange point was not clear.

   Italy

	There are 2 exchange points currently: one with local
	co-location (in Milan?) and one using Frame Relay.  There
	has been little public information about these, DFK
	commented that this may stem from their culture which
	basically says "don't talk until your're ready".

   Germany

	There is or will be an exchange point between at least
	three German service providers.  The rules for connecting
	to the exchange point are at best unclear, some parties
	have been turned away with no explanation.  There is also
	an existing de-facto exchange point at the ECRC
	installation.  Ruediger Volk expressed his desire to press
	for someone to establish an open exchange point somewhere
	in Germany.

   Finland

	A message from Petri Ojala in EUnet/Finland had sent the
	following message to PL:

	FICIX (Finnish Commercial Internet Exchange)

	- Operational since December 1993.  National interconnect
	  point for finnish Internet service providers, current
	  members are EUnet Finland, FUNET, Datanet (Telecom
	  Finland), LanLink (Local PTT's Consortium) and Clinet
	  (since June 1995).  EUnet Finland has been appointed to
	  manage the FICIX.

	- FICIX operations has been smoothly and practically
	  trouble-free, currently BGP4 is used between all the
	  provider routers.  The FICIX media is being upgraded from
	  shared ethernet to switched ethernet.  FICIX members have
	  from 2 to 10 Mbit/s connectivity to their own backbones.

   Norway

	HE gave a short presentation.  The NIX (Norwegian Internet
	eXchange) has been in operation since the summer of 1993.
	The NIX is housed at the University of Oslo, which is also
	a Uninett POP (Uninett is the norwegian R&D network
	organization).  It currently connects Uninett, EUnet/NO,
	TelePost, Oslonett, DAXnet, and PowerTech, with at least
	one coming.  The purpose is to contain norwegian traffic
	inside Norway, one of the premises for connecting is that
	one have Norway-external connectivity via other means than
	at the NIX.

   Ireland

	There is a plan to set up an interconnect point and
	establish a local Irish operator's forum.  Contact: Mike
	Norris.

12. Focus on three initial exchange points in Europe?

   PL sketched the problem faced by international and inter-
   continental Internet service providers who would want to
   "connect to Europe".  To make it possible for such service
   providers to enter the scene the number of "top-level" Europan
   exchange point should be limited.  The idea is also partly to
   create a market by defining the product.

   DFK pointed out that while there is consensus that exchange
   points are a good thing and should be promoted, this issue fo
   the EOF designating 'major' exchange points had been discussed
   before and that it would probably be difficult to establish a
   consensus as most service providers would like to have an
   european exchange point "in their own backyard".  Some objective
   criteria and possibly metrics for choosing exchange points could
   be developed, however, setting the threshold would again be
   difficult.

   After a short discussion it was agreed that as a first minimal
   step today's system should be clearly and consistently
   documented and e.g. stored in the RIPE document store.

   ACTION: DFK to write up a proposal for a skeleton for describing
   an exhange point.

   ACTION: PL to write a recommendation or guidelines for
   intercontinental service providers who want to connect their
   networks in Europe.

13. EOF charter

   The EOF charter has not really been formally approved yet.  The
   July 1994 version was presented together with requests for
   additions or deletions from that round of comments (partly with
   these comments merged into the document).

   There were no comments to the modified charter.  The new
   modified charter is attached below.

14. Net-39 experiment

   Moved to IEPG meeting on Sunday

15. MBONE & PIM experiments

   Andrew Partan talked briefly about their experience in trying to
   use native multicast on the Cisco routers.  The basic goal for
   this excersise is to only get one copy of a given multicast
   packet on each link of their infrastructure.  They have partly
   tried to separate the unicast and multicast routing, and are
   doing this by running DVMRP in addition to PIM to establish a
   separate RPF lookup table (maintained by DVMRP).  Currently the
   service is CPU bounded on the Cisco routers since the multicast
   routing and fowarding is process-switched in the Cisco 10.3 code
   (11.0 will add fast-switching).

   Yakov Rekhter asked whether a knob to control the CPU
   consumption and/or bandwidth utilization on a given link caused
   by multicast to be controlled; the general answer was "yes, this
   would be useful" -- e.g. some parties already use the bandwidth-
   limiting feature in mrouted and the corresponding kernel
   multicast forwarding code.

   One conclusion from this excercise is that the tools for
   handling external multicast routing simply are not there yet.

16. Route flap damping

   Cisco has lately (in a branch of 10.3) implemented Curtiz
   Villamisar's proposed modifications to BGP to support dampening
   route flapping on the Internet.  The paper describing this can
   be found in

	ftp://ftp.ans.net/pub/papers/route-dampen.ps

   Andrew Partan reported that Alternet has turned on the feature
   ("router bgp xxx", "bgp dampen"), and both the algorithm and the
   implementation work.  The net effect of this code is to slow the
   propagation of changes for a given prefix if it has been
   flapping, so any changes (transitions up or down) will take
   longer to propagate to remote places.  It was noted that there
   is no "preferred state" for a route, so it can equally well be
   held down as being kept up longer than earlier.

17. Scaling issues: how small can an ISP be?

   Keith Mitchell reported his experiences in that several small
   sites and/or service providers are buying cheap circuits to the
   US and going to the LINX to be connected there.  This happens
   partly because of the disparity between the prices of
   international circuits going to the US as compared to intra-
   european circuits (again caused by the vast difference in the
   telecommunications regulatory regimes on the two sides of the
   Atlantic).

   Common for lots of these small sites is also that they are
   relatively uninformed of how to set up their service properly
   with external routing etc., and the issue was raised about how
   many such service providers the Internet could acommodate.

   DFK commented that 'regulation' of who can be a service provider
   at any level is impossible without being accused of anti-
   competitive practices or even worse encourage moves towards
   government regulation.

   The discussion on this and related points will continue at the
   IEPG meeting on Sunday.

18. AOB

   DFK asked about the "hall of fame" / "hall of shame" messages
   sent out recently concerning use of CIDR, and asked how often
   people would like to have them and for other suggestions for
   improvements.  It was agreed that the names of the ASes
   injecting the prefixes should be named and that these should be
   sent out monthly in connection with the host count statistics.

   DFK asked about how many actively maintained the contents of the
   RIPE routing registry, the response was "not very many".  There
   is currently no script to compare the actual BGP routing tables
   with the contents of the routing registry contents.

19. Next meeting

   The next RIPE meeting has been moved to October 11-13 (the dutch
   minister of education pulled rank and got the usual RIPE meeting
   room at NIKHEF), so the next EOF meeting would be held on the
   11th in Amsterdam.

------------------------------



                    European Operators Forum Charter

                              Glenn Kowack et al.

                                Version 1.1
                               14 July 1995


        Technical Mission

The mission of the European Operators Forum (EOF) is technical:  to provide
a continuing environment in which European national and international
service providers may meet as a group to discuss operational issues.  It
will also serve as the regional operators forum for Europe under the IEPG
umbrellar.

        Open Membership

Membership in the European Operators Forum (EOF) is open to any person
representing a national or international provider of IP services in the
European region.  As meetings will be very focused on the issues at hand,
persons with only educational interests should not attend.  It is hoped
that all service providers will actively participate in the EOF.
Participating organizations are encouraged to send only a few
representatives to each meeting, and to maintain as much continuity of
representation as possible.

        Open Process

The EOF does not formally create policies, standards, or requirements.
It's activities are limited to discussion and consensus building.  All EOF
minutes and documents will be in the public record.

        Organisation

As present there is no plan for a formal structure, secretariat, or dues,
save for the appointment of a Chairman.  It is expected that support will
be provided by member organisations and the RIPE NCC.  EOF meetings will be
held as required.

        Relationship to RIPE and other Organisations

The EOF will work in cooperation with RIPE as a working group. In addition,
the EOF will act as the European part of the IEPG. It is critical that no
single organization or type of network service provider have undue
influence on EOF activities or directions.