🚀 go-pugleaf

I am sending this to the whole list, plus -request because I think it is
important to immediately press a vital issue, as follows:

The entire globe needs yet anotehr new protocol like it needs 5 billion
new holes, one each in the heads of the earth's 5 billion people.  

We have seen much effort put into development of the new OSI stuff
(ISO/CCITT/NBS/...).  I would much prefer to see you and others put
their efforts into spreading the new OSI stuff around and making it
available and useful on lower order machines of the class we commonly
call PC's today.  In particular this includes the use of dialup public
switched telephone connections to pass Mail, Transfer Files, and do
Remote Logins.  

There is a reasonably large gap in the ISO/CCITT OSI suite in this
special area.  Use of DialUp connections is very hard to accomplish.  

But, at the higher levels (Session, Presentation, ASN.1, ROSE, ACSE,
FTAM, et al) much of the desired work has been done.  Much, but not all
is freely available to the public (almost but not quite public domain).
X.400 Mail Handling Systems are already available for MSDOS for prices
under $500 per copy.

I would propose that this revived PCNET effort be focused on taking this
existing body of OSI stuff and porting it down to PC Class machines.
And then add to it the ability to use DialUp connections at the Network
Layer, under TP0 for use by Session and the other Higher Layers.  

You can freely obtain copies of the relevant ISO Development Environment
stuff from several sources in the US and Europe.  See my attached notice
of a new FTAM Service that is offered in the UK.  

OIn shoort, there is a really massive movement already underway, and it
is my proposal that you all work to take advantage of it by hooking the
PCNET effort to it to make it available tro the masses of Isolated PC
Class Systems out there in the DialUp World.  

------- Included FTAM Service Announcement 

Date:    Sat, 22 Aug 87 11:27:59 +0100 
Subject: FTAM Service at UCL
From:    Steve Kille <steve@cs.ucl.ac.UK>
To:      rare-wg2%vax.runit.unit.uninett@cs.ucl.ac.UK, 
	 rare-wg1%vax.runit.unit.uninett@cs.ucl.ac.UK, mailgroup@cs.ucl.ac.UK, 
	 osi-tg%aucc.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.UK, isode@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.COM
cc:      service@cs.ucl.ac.UK

I am pleased to announce an experimental FTAM service at UCL.

Let me explain what I mean by this, and why I have sent this message to
such a large group of people.   

By FTAM, I mean the ISODE implementation, which is to DIS, with a few
pieces of critical information taken from the IS.

By service, I mean that from now on, we intend to make all public files
at UK.AC.UCL.CS (currently available by NIFTP), also available by FTAM. 
I believe that the software we have is now in a state where this will
start to be useful to some sites.  We have already shipped many
megabytes over PSS, and have some confidence that this system is usable.
To start with, the following are available:
 1) UCL Service documents and guides
 2) RFCs (the UCL collection, which is substantial, but not complete)
 3) Mailgroup documents
 4) ISODE Sources
 
The service is available on PSS (23421920030016) and on Janet
(0000051160016).   It is also available on the Internet, at
CS.UCL.AC.UK on the ISODE socket.   The transport selector is 256,
which should be ASCII encoded (we do also accept the rather bizarre
US GOSIP encoding).  There are no other selectors.

Username "anon" will give public access.  The locations of the files
should be "obvious".

Why announce this now?  

1) This so far appears to be the only DIS FTAM implementation around.
I do not really believe this, and hope that this may encourage some of
the others to creeep out of the woodwork.   Interworking tests are
clearly desirable.   Perhaps I should note here, is that UCL's interest is
in promoting and using OSI.  We are not intending to do FTAM
development.

2) The timing is so that this topic may be
discussed at the RARE WG1 and WG2 meetings, where it is relevant.
In particular, I believe that this system is appropriate for an
experimental RARE service, perhaps along the lines of the EAN
experimental MHS service that has been emerging.   This could be a core
activity for WG2.  WG1 have a need for document and table update.

3) It might be useful to someone

What is the software?
The ISODE software is written in C, and targetted initially for  UNIX
(it is aimed to be as independent of UNIX as possible).   There will be
a new release (ISODE 3.0) available in the near future.   This will
contain support for three different X.25 interfaces:
	SUN (Sunlink)
	Vax (CAMTEC Dexpand)
	Vax (DMF 32 + UBC interface)
Announcements will be made to the ISODE list (contact
isode-request@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com).  Europeans may be added to the
European expansion of this list (contact isode-request@cs.ucl.ac.uk).  

Who is responsible:
Most of the system has been written by Marshall Rose of Northrop.
Credit should also go to John Pavel of NPL and George Michaelson of UCL
for making the X.25 fly, and to George for setting up the service.


onward with OSI!

Steve

------- End of included FTAM Service Announcement