APCCIRN-033

Minutes from the IEPG meeting at NIKHEF

Amsterdam April 26, 1993

Bernhard Stockman

Participants

Guy Almes ANS <almes@ans.net>

Peter Dawe PIPEX <peter@pipex.net>

Elise Gerich Merit <epg@merit.edu>

Daniel Karrenberg RIPE NCC <daniel.karrenberg@ripe.net>

Peter Lothberg EBONE <roll@bsd.stupi.se>

Olivier Martin CERN <martin@cearn.cern.ch>

Jun Murai WIDE <jun@wide.ad.jp>

Bernhard Stockman EBONE <boss@ebone.net>

Claudio Topolcic FEPG <topolcic@cnri.reston.va.us >

1. Opening

1.1 Welcome, appointment of scribe

EG and BS welcomed the participants.

EG volunteered to chair the meeting and BS volunteered to take the

minutes.

1.2 Approval of agenda

The agenda was approved after two additions:

- Presentation of European GIX by PD, added at agenda point 3.

- Future meetings planning by BS, added at agenda point 6.

1.3 Approval of the previous minutes from the IEPG/GIX meeting,

March 31, 1993 Columbus, Ohio, USA.

Previous minutes were updated with proposed changes and was

approved.

2. Global Link and Routing Coordination

After April 1994 the NSFNET backbone as we know it might no longer

carry transit traffic. This includes all transit traffic and all

primary traffic within NSFnet.

Networks dependent on NSFnet for their traffic should be aware of

the consequences. Communities reachable via NSFnet such as part of

Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Equador, Central America will be

affected. US midlevel networks will obtain global connectivity as a

result of the fourth part of the anticipated NSF solicitation. This

might include using backbone providers or direct connectivity to the

GIX, or other options they might propose.

A transition plan has to be presented by the bidders and to be

worked out with the current NSFnet. The time-frame is unknown but

probably around May 94.

The meeting agreed on a recommendation that the only short term

solution is the GIX. Guy Almes proposed the following text:

"If every network operator arranges that, either directly or

indirectly, they can both exchange packets and exchange routes at

the Washington GIX, then we can expect that no global

discontinuity will occur upon the April 1994 NSFnet transition."

The statement will be discussed on email and sent to the IEPG list

for approval and when finalized sent to CCIRN as a recommendation.

3. GIX Status

3.1 Presentation of European CIX by PD

Internet is today an anarchy. The changes over the next year are

such that people are uncertain on its status. There is a need for a

global authority to regulate plans of the global internet. There

are today several bodies like RIPE, RARE, CCIRN/IEPG, each of which

covers a subset but not one that covers everything so one has to go

to all these meetings.

A group could attain authority by achieving and having the control

over the GIX. PD proposes by this that IEPG should be given this

authority

There is a need for regulation of Neutral Interconnects, *IX's. If

not neutral there is a risk of abuse. Issues of charging models has

to be addressed. There is also a need for regulation of peering on

various levels.

With the implementation of the European CIX the inter-CIX

connectivity has to be 100 percent paid by the Europeans which is a

seen as a problem.

PD proposes that IEPG is asked to be become such authority under

supervision of IAB and that IEPG takes ownership of the GIX and uses

that to assert its authority of global interconnectivity. The

proposals could take the form of RFC's.

The proposals were discussed.

A centralized authority may create a potential threat to some

network providers which may give loss of support for the GIX and by

that be counterproductive. We may achieve the same fairness in

coordination without enforcing authority.

Bilateral peering agreements are sometimes not fair taking into

account already existing agreements. If new providers comes on, this

may lead to unfairness if not already there. We got the to get the

regulation to assure that some does not abuse.

Regulations by authority may be to go to far and could be achieved

by recommendations. For this to work we need that providers

documents their needs so that the system is possible to

troubleshoot.

Conclusions:

There was much discussion on the difficulty of achieving PD's vision

without inappropriately seeking more power than the community may be

willing to grant. PD will submit his proposal to the IEPG list for

further discussions.

We could stimulate the forming of a group to set the regulatory

environment to which providers can subscribe similar to a trade

association.

3.2 GIX status

In total 6 routers installed at GIX and the Euro-RS is up and

running. RIPE NCC is working on implementations to make it

functional. The RS will initially be used as primary routing source

for some networks. The plan is currently one month behind schedule.

Merit RS is one month behind schedule. Merit is developing a program

that will take the NSFnet database primary AS's to be used as info

and base for the Merit RS.

Asia:

AP-NIC welcomes the RS initiative. At a January meeting it was

decided to continue the work in this area. JP-NIC has been formed

and got the necessary resources.

At the question whether statistics will be made available, it was

pointed out that statistical gathering in a commercial environment

may have legal implications which must be addressed.

The ripe-82 paper explains the routing concept for the GIX. The

paper is available via anonymous ftp from the RIPE document archive,

archive.ripe.net.

Multiple Interconnected GIX's

There will be multiple points of gravity in the Internet whether we

like it or not. Talks about multiple GIX are already happening and

the issue has to be addressed. Multiple routing cores and cost

sharing are important issues to be addressed. In essence we are

already facing the problems of multiple GIX's as there are multiple

routing authorities.

We need a paper discussing whether it is useful to talk about more

than one GIX. There may be other efforts trying to build more GIX's.

There can however never be more than one final top-level destination

for resolving routes not resolvable at any, routingwise, lower

instance.

It will be necessary to establish a top level registry as we need

one registry describing how providers talk to each other. By that

the routing topology is defined.

What we could try to define is where peer and transit occur.

At this point PL presented his Internet eXchange Facility (IXF)

model. A paper describing the IXF model is under preparation and

will be distributed to the IEPG list for further discussion.

Some remarks from the presentation:

The GIX functionality can be divided in two parts:

- The GIX packet exchange part (PX)

- The GIX routing registry system (RR)

Technical Requirements for a PX

- PX organizations are independent of each other

- PX organizations collaborate with the RR

- PX organizations can not be part of any service provider.

- A minimal PX has two service providers connected

- No usage restrictions are enforced by the PX's as such

The group agreed that multiple PX are likely to happen and must be

addressed. PX can interconnect via service providers providing

transit or several SP's joining for shared resource.

Registry part

Multiple PX's can only work if there exist a coordinated system of

RR's. We have to guarantee that the RR's are actually used by the

SP's connected to the PX's. This may be self-regulatory as SP's not

registered will not get any packets.

We can not get all to buy in to this but we can try to align ongoing

efforts to create such a global information. It will be necessary

to find as neutral as possible organization to provide the RR

functionality.

We will need a global database. For the Global RR system to work

there is a need for a agreed format for this global database. Work

is going on within RIPE and MERIT with a Policy Description Language

(PDL) as was presented at the previous IEPG meeting.

Conclusions:

On PX's

Multiple PX will exist. Peters paper will be discussed at the

mailing list distinguishing between the technical and administrative

parts.

On RR's

There is a need for distributed RR system. Necessary with a RR-PDL

to make this work. The RR-PDL current proposals are not necessary

what we want in the end but collaboration among the people involved

is encouraged.

4. Scaling and Forecasting

The Internet growth under-estimated. European growth is today

faster than within the US.

What can we measure:

It would be useful to have the CIDR core members publish there

routing table size statistics. CIDR core router resource

consumption statistics are needed. One metric would be historically

give memory usage vs network numbers to be able to forecast resource

utilization.

This can probably not be achieved on a voluntary basis. It will be

necessary to find resources to accomplish this.

CCIRN have asked feedback on recommendations for critical projects

to be funded by CCIRN member organizations and this project seems to

be a good candidate.

EG will put together a draft project proposal to be sent to the IEPG

mail list for discussion and, when finalized, sent to CCIRN.

5. Operational Impacts of IP Next Generation Transitions

We should start to worry about the need for renumbering. We need

tools for dynamic host configuration to make renumbering

transparent. This could be another candidate proposal for a project

to CCIRN. It was noted that a request for a renumbering scheme

should not be made public premature as this could create a lot of

worry. We need the tools to be there first.

Conclusion:

Whatever comes out look at number-space. We also need to look how

to build in IXF's to make the whole architecture scale.

There is not an immediate need to act now. The issue will probably

be addressed within IETF and IEPG could await that to bring

additional value to the table. The current process is possible to

influence in the IETF.

To minimize the CIDR entropy of CIDR renumbering is possible.

Automatic renumbering could be done via IPX's.

EG will draft a proposal to be discussed at the IEPG mailing list.

6. Any Other Business

Announcement of IDPR project.

The project have received policy statements from NSFnet NASA and

TWBnet. IDPR has thus initiated a pilot project to evaluate the

concept.

IEPG meetings

It was agreed that IEPG meetings shall happen in conjunction with

other major global events such IETF and INET. We should be in

charge of our own meeting facilities not to come in conflicts with

other meeting organizers. Sunday meetings are preferable.

INET's have so far been starting on Tuesday so, when piggybacking on

INET conferences Mondays are also possible. As there tends to be

more Asians being able to attend INET conferences then IETF's the

priority is INET's and to meet the day prior to the conference

start.

The week after the INET-93 there is a proposed joint CCIRN/IEPG

meeting. The meeting place is already decided to be Bodega Bay

outside of San Francisco.

The meeting saw it as useful to have two joint sessions, one on

Monday afternoon and the second on Wednesday morning. The IEPG

chairs will send a proposal to the CCIRN.

7. Closing

EG and BS thanked the attendees and the host (NIKHEF) for a

productive and well organized meeting.