Subject: AIW Newsletter

From: "Lee M. Rafalow 919 254-4455, tl 444/4455" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 11:28:05 EDT

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* AIW  Newsletter            Vol. 1, No. 3                  7/14/93   *
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  Contents
  --------
  September AIW date change
  June AIW minutes

* September AIW date change

  Due to circumstances beyond our control (hotel space availability), we
  have changed the date for the next AIW to September 28-30.  Workshop
  details will be sent when they become available.  Sorry for any
  inconvenience.

* June AIW minutes

  The second APPN Implementers' Workshop was held in conjunction with
  the APPC/APPN Platform Developers' Conference (PDC) June 21-24, 1993
  at the Sheraton Hotel in Research Triangle Park, NC.

  Jane Munn, IBM NS manager of Networking Architectures, began the
  meeting by restating the goal of the AIW: to facilitate
  fully-interoperable, high quality APPN products from a wide variety
  of vendors.  She presented an outline of the procedures proposed for
  use in the AIW.  The meetings are to be open to those with a serious
  interest in APPN.  A membership agreement will be available in
  August.  Procedural emphasis is placed on reaching consensus in a
  timely manner to support aggressive product development schedules and
  priorities.  A detailed description of the proposed procedures will
  also be available in August.  Lee Rafalow acted as chair for this AIW
  meeting.

  In response to questions and concerns at the first AIW, Jane also
  announced the availability of a EN technology licensing package.  For
  those vendors interested in a simple alternative to a negotiated
  cross-license agreement, you may license IBM APPN intellectual property
  needed for APPN EN and LEN implementations.  Information about the
  licensing options is available from John Lytvinenko at (919) 254-6922;
  fax at (919) 254-5410.

  There were several SIGs and BOFs as well as Platform Developers'
  Conference sessions related to the AIW.

  There were two half-day AIW sessions of APPN architecture education
  aimed at implementers of the architecture.  A meeting summary has been
  sent to the aiw-appn-reference mail exploder.

  An SNMP MIBs session was held to begin to enhance the efforts of the
  IETF by working together both in the AIW and in the IETF to expedite
  the development and acceptance of industry-standard MIBs for APPN and
  APPC.  A meeting summary has been sent to the aiw-snasnmp mail
  exploder.

  An overview of the recently-released Dependent LU Requester
  specification was presented.  A detailed technical review was started
  and will continue over internet.  A DLUR SIG meeting summary has been
  sent to the aiw-sig-dlur mail exploder.

  The second day began with Louise Herndon-Wells presenting an overview
  of the SSCP-dependent LU requirements and alternative approaches in a
  PDC session.  Another PDC session with speakers from several
  different companies addressed the issues and their experiences with
  three different classes of network testing: connectivity,
  conformance, and interoperability.  IBM announced an interoperability
  test service to assist interested vendors in testing their APPN
  products.

  An APPN testing BOF explored ways in which the AIW might help vendors
  meet their APPN testing needs.  A meeting outline has been sent to the
  aiw-bof-validation mail exploder.

  The Data Link Switching SIG began by establishing RFC 1434 as the base
  upon which the SIG would make agreed upon extensions.  Louise
  Herndon-Wells was then appointed as SIG chair.  Due to the great level
  of interest and participation, seven "SIGlets" were established to
  organize the technical work.  The siglet coordinators represent five
  different vendors.

  For those that want to relive the Data Link Switching SIG experience, a
  rough transcript has been sent to the aiw-sig-dlsw mail exploder.  (I
  don't think Marcia got it exactly, but, hey, she must have burned the
  paper taking the notes.)  There will soon be a summary sent to the same
  mail exploder.  In addition, there are now mail exploders for each of
  the SIGlets: aiw-sig-dlsw-capacities, aiw-sig-dlsw-conformance,
  aiw-sig-dlsw-connect, aiw-sig-dlsw-flowcontrol,
  aiw-sig-dlsw-loopprevention, aiw-sig-dlsw-mib,
  aiw-sig-dlsw-prioritycos, and, for SIGlet coordinators,
  aiw-sig-dlsw-coordinators.

  There were a series of AIW-related PDC sessions on the morning of the
  third day.  John Klonowski discussed recent VTAM APPN and APPC
  improvements.  Blaine Gillcoat discussed an APPN network design tool;
  NETDA/2 was also demonstrated with the other PDC demonstrations.  David
  Finnie, Insession, discussed their experiences implementing an APPN End
  Node; and John Lazar, Data Connection, discussed their experiences
  implementing an APPN Network Node.  In the last PDC session of the
  morning, Jim Martin discussed SNA over Async; a BOF has been proposed
  for the next AIW.

  Each of the SIGs and BOFs gave a short report of their activities.
  That was followed by a question-answer session with architecture &
  product development panelists from Data Connection, IBM, Insession,
  System Strategies and 3Com.  Ray Bird and Lap Huynh discussed, at more
  depth than the last AIW, the APPN/HPR architecture.  The architecture
  documentation will be available prior to the next AIW and there will be
  a session to discuss it further.  Lastly, there was further discussion
  about the AIW process.

  On the following morning, Mike Allen discussed APPN management services
  and how developers might determine their needs.

  54 companies were represented at the combined PDC and AIW with over 200
  attendees.

Lee Rafalow & Ralph Case