ÿþ<htmlL> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/> <meta name="Author" content="Julio Andrade"/> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.01 [en] (WinNT; I) [Netscape]"/> <title>CCIRN Working Group on Mbone</title> </head> <body> <font size="1"><center><b>&nbsp;CCIRN Working Group on Mbone</b></center> <center>June 23, 1997, 11am to 12:30</center> <center>Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia</center> </FONT><P>Draft Notes<P>I.&nbsp; Participants<br/>Michael Behringer, DANTE<br/>Suzanne Burgess, DynCorp/FNC<br/>Woohyong Choi, KAIST<br/>Kilnam Chon, APAN/KAIST<br/>John Dyer, TERENA<br/>Lawrence Law, HARNET<br/>Ingrid Ledererova, Czech Republic<br/>Bill Manning, USC/ISI<br/>Kevin Meynell, TERENA<br/>Bohumila Mullerova, Czech Republic<br/>Forencio Utreras, REUNA<br/>Karel Vietsch, TERENA<P>II.&nbsp; Action Items<br/>- Propose a meeting after December IETF (in WDC) to identify and coordinatecurrent mbone operations, multicast deployment, and associated tools.&nbsp;Explore funding options for this meeting. (NSF, Terena)<br/>- Contact RIPENCC and report to the CCIRN lists with information onEuropean mbone and topology. (Dyer, Behringer)<br/>- Report to the mail lists where multicast exists on the Asian/Pacificand Latin American&nbsp; research networks (Utreras, Chon)<br/>- Contact vBNS regarding their efforts to become "multicast aware"and report back to the mail lists.&nbsp; Send to mail list informationon mbone efforts in NGI and I2. (Burgess)<br/>- A working group chair needs to be appointed.&nbsp; (CCIRN)<P>III. Proceedings<br/>A.&nbsp; Asian and European Mbone Initiatives<br/>Currently, Asian research networks are not doing as much mbone workas desired.&nbsp; If the planned APAN connection to the STARTAP in Chicagois completed, the physical topology for mbone would be simple and mbonepossible.&nbsp; In Europe, the ad hoc coordination done by the RIPENCCcontinues and bilateral contacts are made to configure tunnels.&nbsp; TEN34,a consortium of European research networks, will be multicast aware, butthe exact timing of that is not known.<P>B.&nbsp; North American Initiatives<br/> In the US, plans are underway to make the vBNS multicast aware (run mroute D, native multicast).&nbsp; Information on the current vBNS multicast work is available at http://www.vbns.net/multicast/status.txt and the network is working with its provider, MCI, to ensure transport with minimum packet loss.&nbsp; In CA*net, there is sufficient bandwidth for multicast, and their web site (http://www.canarie.ca/c2) has information on mbone. <P>C.&nbsp; Ease of Use and Mbone tools<br/> The group discussed the current state of Mbone and possible steps to make it more accessible. The perspective is that mbone is a tool of researchers, but not accessible to the average Internet user.&nbsp; Current obstacles to use include lack of easy-to-use tools, lack of clear hierarchy, and changing network topology.&nbsp; To overcome the last obstacle noted, NLANR s work in mbone visualization (http://www.nlanr.net/Viz/Mbone/) was cited.&nbsp; It was felt that if input and solutions were not developed for these areas, the commercial development of multicast technology would move forward without fully addressing these problems in a non-proprietary manner. <P>The lack of mbone monitoring tools was cited as another impediment.&nbsp;Those familiar with mbone can setup tunnels, which eat up bandwidth, andslow the network down.&nbsp; Network administrators need some set of monitoringtools to identify the mbone tunnels as opposed to the ad hoc detectionmethods currently used.&nbsp; There is some work being done on the trainingof local campus administrators, but additional documentation of detectionmethods is required.&nbsp; The group briefly discussed the use of Perlscripts to do packet trace and the use of IPv6 for mbone.&nbsp; While therehave been no tests of mbone across the 6bone, it is thought that IPv6 willallow prioritization of transmission, and thus, better service.<P>The question of push technology was briefly discussed, as was the TERENAproject&nbsp; DEVISE, which is looking at Internet tools for videoconferencing.<P>D.&nbsp; CCIRN Working Group proposal<br/>In response to the need for network monitoring tools, it was felt thatthe CCIRN could play a coordinating role in collecting body of knowledgeof where multicast monitoring tools exist on the Internet, and distributethem. Each research network was asked to report on its multicast effortsand any tools currently used (see above action items).&nbsp; To furtherdisseminate this information, a workshop on multicast was proposed.<br/>&nbsp; </body></html>