Subject: APPN Connectathon

From: [email-masked] (John Palombo)
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 12:33:17 +0000

Erika,

Sorry it has taken so long to respond to your APPN Connectathon
email.  The delay has been  due to lack of bandwidth rather than
lack of interest through the busy pre-Christmas period.

We remain very enthusiastic about attending such an event.  Our
thoughts on the parameters we would need to decide before the
event are as follows.

1.   Duration

     The experience from the Interop Hot Stagings is that 3 - 5
     days (perhaps sub-divided to allow NN vendors to establish
     the backbone before EN and LEN implementations start
     testing) is required to do any worthwhile testing.

2.   When

     We could attend any time.  March / April would be good - I
     do not know what other industry events are happening around
     that time that would dictate the timing.

3.   Where

     We would be happy to consider hosting an event in the UK
     (although if there are any more people than attend the Hot
     Stagings we may have trouble finding space)!  More
     practically a US site is required - are IBM able to offer
     some space in their labs again?

4.   Entry Criteria

     It is probably necessary to require some minimum level of
     stability in the implementations that are allowed into the
     test.  This should be something that it is easy for all
     participants to check before the event, such as the ability
     to successfully establish sessions to a shipping APPN
     product such as Communications Manager/2.

     We also strongly recommend that all participants are able
     to install fixes to their systems whilst testing during the
     event.  The experience from the Hot Stagings is that the
     most progress was made with implementations that could be
     changed on the fly to cope with interoperability problems.

5.   Definition of the tests

     This is probably the hardest one to define.  The two ends
     of the spectrum are as follows.

     -    Free-for-all - no rules about the network topology or
          what tests to try.  This can find a lot of
          interoperability problems quickly, but it is difficult
          to gauge what progress is made.  Also different tests
          tend to interfere with each other, and it can be
          difficult to recreate and diagnose certain problems.

     -    Rigid definition of the tests to be performed.  It is
          hard to see this being productive with ~10 - 20
          vendors in a room together.

     The right approach must be somewhere in between with some
     loose definitions of the network topologies and the tests
     to run (eg. define a basic backbone of Network Nodes and
     networks, and allow other NNs, ENs and LENs to attach into
     the backbone wherever they want).

     We also need to consider what applications to use - perhaps
     APING, John Q Walker's CPIC Random tester, etc. (....and
     there's always Mandelbrot!).

6.   What is the output of the tests?

     At the last Hot Stagings we used a matrix to indicate which
     implementations had "interoperated".  We suggest we collate
     a similar matrix for the Connectathon, but include better
     definitions of what level of interoperability is achieved
     (for example APINGed successfully, established CP-CP
     sessions OK etc.).

I guess the first thing we need to establish is whether there
are enough vendors interested to make any further discussion
worthwhile.  Erika, is it worth polling any vendors who have
previously participated in an Interop APPC/APPN solutions
showcase and who aren't on this mailing list?

Regards, John.

-- 
==============================================================
John Palombo ([email-masked])
Data Connection Limited
Telephone:   +44 81 366 1177
Fax:         +44 81 367 8501
==============================================================