Subject: AIW 5 Minutes

From: "Charles H. Brotman 919-254-7204" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 94 19:08:03 EDT

Hello All,

I've been out for the last two weeks, moving into my new house, so
I have been tardy in getting out the overview minutes for AIW 5.
Please find them below.

I would like to thank, again, all the people who helped make AIW 5
the success it was: the IBM AIW team, the SIG, RIG, and BOF Chairs,
Editors, and Notetakers, and all the AIW attendees. Also, we
appreciate the efforts of those of you who completed and turned in
your feedback forms. We hope to use your valuable feedback to further
improve the AIW.

Thanks to you all!

Best regards,
Chuck Brotman - AIW Chair

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=================
: AIW 5 Minutes :
=================

The Advanced Peer to Peer Networking (APPN) Implementers Workshop (AIW)
held its fifth meeting on Monday June 27, 1994 through Wednesday
June 29, 1994.

On Monday afternoon, several tutorials were given. An APPN Overview
was presented by Dave Bryant of 3Com Corp. Louise Herndon Wells of
Internetwork Technology Institute discussed Data Link Switching
(DLSw). Marcia Peters, of IBM, addressed High Performance Routing
(HPR). Dependant Logical Unit Requester (DLUR) was covered by Ed
Tremblay, also of IBM.

Also on Monday afternoon, the DLSw Related Interest Group (RIG) had
its first of three sessions. The Systems Network Architecture
Data Link Control Management Information Base Birds Of a Feather
session (SNA DLC MIB BOF) also met.

On Tuesday, Lee Rafalow announced that he was changing jobs within
IBM and would no longer serve as AIW Chair.  The group expressed
its thanks with a warm round of applause.  Thanks Lee, for giving
birth to the AIW and seeing to its initial upbringing.  Chuck Brotman
was announced as the new Chair of the AIW.

Steve Walker of Household Finance Corp., United Kingdom (HFC UK)
shared his experiences with APPN at HFC UK during the previous six
years. Steve talked about why APPN was the right strategic choice,
how it helped HFC UK meet its business and networking objectives, and
some things which could be done to improve APPN in the future.

Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corporation, presented an "Unbiased View
of Users' SNA Directions". Defining an "unbiased view" as one that
offends everyone, Tom shared with the AIW the results of his survey
of networking practices. His results indicate that SNA is, by far,
the predominant networking architecture today, that it has a strong
future, that APPN has a role in that future, and that the popular
perception that TCP/IP is taking the corporate computing world by
storm is somewhat overstated. Needless to say, this generated some
interesting questions and comments by AIW attendees.

Kevin Tolly, President and CEO of the Tolley Group, told us of the
difficulties of networking benchmarking, explained the techniques his
lab uses to measure APPN implementations, and shared the results of
testing the 3COM router.

Erika Lewis, of IBM, gave an overview of the outcome of the APPN
Multivendor Connectivity Test which was held at IBMs Research
Triangle Park site in Raleigh, NC from June 21 - June 24, 1994. The
following vendors, all AIW members, participated: 3COM, Attachmate,
Cabletron, Data Connection Limited, IBM, Insession, Northern Telecom,
Systems Strategies, Inc., WallData, and Wellfleet Communications.
These vendors ran on 17 product platforms, in over 150 APPN
connection combinations, and successfully completed hundreds of test
scenarios.

Ralph Case, leader of the APPN Architecture team at IBM, chaired the
APPN Architecture Reference SIG, with help from team members Candy
Elder, Tim Hefel, and Tom Moore. The Reference SIG discussed
clarifications, fixes and minor enhancements to the APPN
architecture. Topics covered included: ODAI Use, Adaptive BIND
Pacing, CP-CP Session Activation, SS Processing of CDinit on Locate
Message, LU 6.2 Security, APPN Format Handling, Modifications to
Session route Building, Assigning FRSN Values to Resources During
Topology Exchange, Calculating Routes Through VRNs, TRS
Clarifications, DLC Clarifications, and Message Transport Services
(proposed by Dave Bryant of 3COM).. Of these topics, six were changes
to the APPN architecture; the rest were suggestions for future
changes or enhancements, or were architecture clarifications.

The day was capped off, for many, by the Durham Bulls baseball game.
The Bulls won in an exciting, high scoring game.

On Wednesday, Mike Allen, of IBM, and Dierdre Kostick, of Bellcore, held
the APPC MIB RIG. There were many new attendees at the meeting and an
impromptu educational session occurred.

Jim Fletcher, of IBM, shared his ideas for Dependent Primary Logical
Unit support with a large, interested audience.

Over lunch, Don Banks, of Tandem, ran the Fault Tolerant BOF, while Mark
Peters of IBM presented the APPC Application Suite status and plans.

Marcia Peters chaired the HPR SIG, where it was agreed that the
HPR specification should be at Approved Direction (AD) status,
a major milestone!

Another major milestone was reached in the DLUR SIG where SIG Chair
Ed Tremblay recommended that the DLUR specification should be at
Closed Pages (CP) status and the SIG members agreed. Additionally,
since the work of the SIG was complete, the SIG also declared itself
closed. Any future work on DLUR will occur in the Reference SIG.

In the closing session of the AIW, Louise Herndon Wells, the DLSw RIG
Chair, reported that the RIG had made great progress towards Approved
Direction (AD) status for its Release One specification. The group
set themselves an aggressive schedule to reach AD and Approved Pages
(AP) status electronically this summer and Closed Pages (CP) at AIW 6
in October.

Also during the closing session, the AIW ratified AD status for HPR
and CP status for DLUR. DLUR was declared to be Architecture of
Record.  This means that licensed vendors may now implement and ship
DLUR function in their products.

This AIW was the first one run fully under the membership rules.
This meant that only signed AIW members were allowed to participate
in matters of idea submission or consensus.  Currently, there
are 38 signed member companies and individuals.  The membership list
is included at the end of these minutes.

If you would like to become a member of the AIW please contact
Tresa Schirmerhorn at IBM and she will send you signature
copies of the AIW Membership Agreement.  There is no fee for
membership.  Tresa's internet ID is [email-masked],
her phone number is (919) 254-7857.

The next AIW, AIW 6, is planned for the middle of October 1994.
We will have the exact dates shortly, so that you can make your
travel plans as early as possible.

-------

Notes:

 - The final version of the DLUR specification is now available.

 - Further details on many of the above topics may be found
   in the minutes of the various SIGs, RIGs, and BOFs on
   their respective mail exploders.

 - A complete list of AIW 5 attendees was recently posted
   on aiw-general.  Thanks to Susan Venderbush for that.

=============================================
+ AIW Signed Members:   as of July 26, 1994 +
=============================================

  Adv. Computer Comm.
  Ascom Timeplex
  Attachmate
  BBN Systems & Tech.
  Cabletron Systems
  CIMI Corp.
  Cimi Corp.
  Cisco Systems
  CrossComm Corp.
  Data Connection Limited
  DataCom Systems, Inc.
  Digital Technology
  Eicon Technology
  Harris-Adacom
  Hewlett Packard
  Hypercom
  IBM Corp.
  InSession (Australia)
  McData Corporation
  Memorex-Telex Corp.
  Metaplex Inc.
  Netlink, Inc.
  Northern Telecom
  OpenConnect Systems
  Proteon Corp.
  RADLINX Ltd.
  Robin Callender
  Robin Layland
  Routerware
  Sync Research
  SynOptics Communications
  Systems & Comm. Sciences
  Systems Strategies/Apertu
  Tandem Computers
  Wall Data, Inc.
  Wandal & Goltermann Tech
  Wellfleet Comm.
  3Com