Return-Path: To: members@farnet.org Cc: com-priv@psi.com Subject: NSF Testimony Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 13:33:15 EST From: Stephen Wolff Testimony of Dr. A. Nico Habermann and Dr. Stephen S. Wolff Committee on Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Science March 12, 1992 Part 1: Testimony of Dr. A. Nico Habermann Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee today to provide information about the exciting program in networking supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several other agencies of the U.S. government. I am privileged to serve as the Assistant Director of the NSF for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, which has responsibility for broad national research, infrastructure and facilities programs in computer, communications, and information sciences and engineering. Included among my responsibilities is leadership of the overall NSF High Performance Computing and Communications(HPCC) Program with its important components in national Supercomputer Centers and the NSFNET, the subject of our discussion today. In this latter respect, I am pleased to be accompanied by my colleague Dr. Stephen S. Wolff, Director of the Division of Networking & Communications Research & Infrastructure (NCRI). Dr. Wolff has provided leadership for this division since its inception and in this capacity has lead the creation and development of the NSFNET and the emerging NREN program. Before turning to Dr. Wolff, to elaborate on the NSFNET, I would very much like to place this activity in the larger context that it impacts. Background The President's High Performance Computing and Communications Program, which was announced on February 5, 1991, consists of four components, one of which is the National Research and Education Network (NREN). The NSFNET activity is part of the NREN component. The NREN is also a major subject of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194) that was signed by the President this past December. This Act, that your Committee was instrumental in drafting, provides important impetus to the presidential HPCC initiative. Leadership and direction for the HPCC Program is provided by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, through the FCCSET Committee on Physical, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences (PMES). The High Performance Computing, Communications, and Information Technology (HPCCIT) subcommittee is chartered under the PMES and is composed of an executive council and four task groups to coordinate science and engineering computing, computer research and development, Federal networking and communications, and education. Since October 1991, I have served as the Co-Chairman of this Networking activity. As described in the Supplement to the President's FY 1993 Budget, "Grand Challenges 1993: High Performance Computing and Communications", NSF is designated as the coordinating agency for the NREN program. As the NREN title indicates, to quote from the Grand Challenges report, "The NREN program is both a goal of the HPCC Program and a key enabling technology for success in the other components. The NREN is the future realization of an interconnected gigabit computer network system supporting HPCC." If we are successful in deploying this technology for the research and education community, then aside from supporting current science and technology Grand Challenge Applications that are important to federal mission agencies, it will broadly influence communications technology development. However, it is important to bear in mind, that the government program, as its name implies, primarily supports computer and communications networking for research and education, not general purpose usage. Nonetheless, the NREN component incorporates important testbeds and research for new communications technologies. The NREN component is dedicated to promoting communications among researchers, educators, and students in the U.S. The NREN activities contribute directly to the goals of the High PerformanceComputing and Communications Program in three ways: 1) by extending U.S. technological leadership in computer communications; 2) by enhancing the dissemination and application of computer and communications technologies to enable advances on applications such as, Grand Challenges; and 3) by demonstrating innovative new means of communication to spur gains in U.S. productivity. In order to achieve these goals, the NREN program consists of two sub-components: one that supports the development and enhancement of network backbone services, which serves the purpose of connecting a large number of regional research and education networks - the Interagency Interim NREN; and a second sub-component, which supports basic and experimental research in the design of large-scale, high-speed networks for future use (gigabit networks R&D). The first NREN sub-component, developing connections between existing and growing regional networks, includes three network backbones supported by NSF, DOE and NASA. The backbone currently supported by NSF is the NSFNET, which connects a large number of regional networks at a variety of educational and research institutions throughout the U.S. The NSFNET backbone, all of whose services are competitively procured from the private sector, provides a networking superstructure that enables scientists and educators to communicate across the boundaries of their regional networks. The second NREN subcomponent, supporting networking research, includes a collection of five gigabit testbed networks, connecting experimental sites across the entire nation. At each step of the development of the NSF NREN program, we must ask ourselves why the government should continue to be involved with the private sector in developing computer network infrastructure to support the research and education community. Although the private sector plays an increasingly important role, there are indeed cogent reasons why the government should stay involved in important aspects of a host of activities in network development and research. In order to put further discussion regarding NSF's role in networking in perspective, it seems proper to list here the main reasons, as we see them, for NSF's continued involvement in support of technology development and deployment. The proper and effective use of very high speed computer networks, and the connection between networks will require innovative research across various disciplines and technologies that government, industry, and academia working together are uniquely capable of providing. It is certain that the capabilities of networks can be increased at least a hundred-fold to support a mode of interaction we can only dream of today. (Imagine, for example, the impact of a hundred-fold increase in both aircraft speed and passenger capacity on travel, military, and on airports, etc!). To meet these challenges, industrial and academic R&D, coordinated and focused by the Federal Government, will concentrate on the advanced generic technologies required to realize a very high speed network. Since there is practically no limit to further development of networking technology, the research and education community should be stimulated to find and explore innovative ways of communicating with each other and with growing information sources. At this time, we think that the development will lead to the use of networks for remote, interactive, real-time computing. However, experience with the ARPANET, designed in the mid-seventies, has shown that the outcome may well be both broader and richer than our original expectations. Networks help broaden the participation for the entire country by providing equal access to advanced computer facilities, such as, the supercomputer centers, for remote and relatively isolated parts of the country and similarly help increase the involvement of minorities and under-represented groups in the research and education enterprise. This enables all scientists and students to more fully participate in leading-edge research and education opportunities that otherwise might not be affordable. My final point supporting NSF involvement in this technology development and deployment relates to the need to encourage all educational institutions, including K-12, to explore the networking capabilities that allow them to access and use the tools that researchers develop and utilize in the work on the Grand Challenges. This can lead to more excitement in education and may stimulate more students to enter science and engineering. NSF welcomes the opportunity to work with the private sector on these and all other aspects of networking to the benefit of our science and education community in the interest of the Nation's future. And now with your permission, I would like to turn to my colleague Dr. Stephen Wolff to provide an overview of the current state of NSF's networking program and summarize the management and development plan and associated policy issues. Part 2: Testimony of Dr. Stephen S. Wolff Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to appear today before this committee to discuss the NSFNET and related activities. There are three parts to my testimony. I will discuss first the current state of the NSFNET Backbone project, including its relationships to other networks that actually, or potentially connect to it, and also the management controls the NSF has in place with its awardee, Merit, Inc. Second, I shall report on the progress we have made in implementing the Project Development Plan for continuation and enhancement of NSFNET Backbone services which was approved by the National Science Board in November last. Finally, I shall briefly discuss the relationships between the NSFNET and NREN programs, including the interagency management structure now evolving for the NREN as an Administration program with a legislative authority. Current State, Other Networks, and Management Controls a. Current State The five year cooperative agreement between the Foundation and Merit, Inc. for management and operation of the NSFNET Backbone was signed in November, 1987, after a five month period of competitive announcement and merit review of proposals. Merit, and its partners IBM and MCI, put in place a 1 3-node, 1.5 mb/s (million-bits-per-second), or T1, network in a very short time. The new Backbone began to carry traffic in August, 1988. In that month, traffic doubled over the July figure for the original Backbone network that the new one supplanted. Since August, 1988, traffic on the Backbone has increased more than fifty-fold, from 200 million to 11 billion packets per month. This increase in traffic has been accommodated by hundreds of minor engineering improvements to the network and two major upgrades. The first upgrade increased the number of links in the network from 14 to 19. This increased the robustness of the Backbone by multiply connecting all 13 nodes, and it increased capacity as well. The second upgrade increased the number of Backbone nodes from 13 to 16 (the three new nodes were competitively selected), and raised the transmission speed from T1 to T3 (1.5 to 45 mb/s). All the engineering improvements and both major upgrades were clearly foreseen and discussed in Merit's original farsighted proposal to the NSF. Such are the economies of scale in telecommunications that the upgrades to accommodate a fifty-fold traffic increase have been achieved with only a doubling in cost to the Foundation - from the original $14 Million over five years to the present five-year project cost of $28 Million. The NSFNET Backbone is the linchpin of the overall NSFNET project, which includes establishment of and assistance to regional networks that deliver Backbone service to every state in the union. Other significant measures of the size and success of the NSFNET project include: More than 600 of the 3-to-4,000 two-year and four-year colleges and universities in the nation are interconnected, including all the schools in the top two categories of the Carnegie Foundation classification of major research universities. Several hundred high schools are also connected, but the exact number is difficult to determine since regional networks have widely leveraged NSF funds to connect the smaller institutions without NSF's direct involvement. Many industrial research organizations and commercial establishments that support the nation's scholarly enterprise are connected; indeed, the so-called ".COM" domain is the fastest growing segment of the network. The NSFNET Backbone is the default infrastructure for the nation's research and education community. It carries, for example, ten times the traffic of the Department of Energy's ESnet Backbone which interconnects many NSFNET client sites with national laboratories and other DoE facilities. By selecting a proven set of open communication protocols ("TCP/IP") and mandating their use in the NSFNET, the Foundation catalyzed an entire industry in which there are now upwards of a half dozen US manufacturers. US made packet switches and gateways dominate the world market, and a T1 packet switch can now be bought for well under $10,000. (By contrast, before NSFNET, the most widely used network packet switch operated at a speed of only 56,000 bits per second and was priced at $120,000. A further effect has been to substantially increase the connectedness of the scientific community as several other large networks, e.g., MFENET, the forerunner to ESnet, and European HEPNET, the European High Energy Physics network, have switched in recent years from their own proprietary communication protocols to those (TCP/IP) compatible with the NSFNET.) NSFNET's selection of TCP/IP has led to it becoming the most widely used set of open communication protocols in the world. Procedures for transporting these protocols over emerging telecommunications services, such as the Switched Multi-megabit Data Services (SMDS) and Frame Relay have recently advanced to Draft Standard status. Because of this, NSFNET and the Internet will be able to benefit from whatever economies may be available fromusing the new offerings of the telecommunications carriers. Scientists and educators on NSFNET can now collaborate over the network with their peers in 39 countries on 7 continents, and every month brings new requests for connection to the US network of which the NSFNET and its Backbone is the principal component. b. Other Networks Another measure of the success and influence of the NSFNET project has been the emergence and rapid growth of private sector offerors of TCP/IP network services. These include: UUNET Technologies, which indeed predated the NSFNET, but has grown rapidly in recent years; Performance Systems International (PSI), a spinoff from the NSF funded regional network NYSERNET; Advanced Networks and Systems (ANS), who provide NSFNET Backbone Services under contract to Merit; US Sprint; InfoNet, a multinational TCP/IP provider; and CERFnet, which functions as a regional network in Southern California. Several of these private providers have formed a cooperative for interchanging traffic known as the Commercial Internet Exchange, or CIX, of which Mitch Kapor is Chair. The NSFNET Backbone is limited to uses compatible with the NSF enabling legislation, as amended. There is an "NSFNET Backbone Services Acceptable Use Policy" (the "AUP", a copy of which is attached to this testimony) which was developed in consultation with an NSF Advisory Committee and the NSF General Counsel and expresses this limitation. The general principle is worth stating, "NSFNET Backbone services are provided to support open research and education in and among U.S. research and instructional institutions, plus research arms of for-profit firms when engaged in open scholarly communication and research" By contrast, the private providers, have no such limitations. Although much of the traffic on their networks need not conform to the AUP, it is NSF policy to allow the private providers to use NSFNET Backbone services to exchange AUP-conformant traffic between their customers and NSFNET clients. However, the NSFNET Backbone may NOT be used by the private providers as a "transit network" - i.e., to interconnect their fee paying customers. In this traffic sharing environment, ANS occupies an especially sensitive position since NSF indirectly, through Merit, is one of its customers. Accordingly, NSF has made special arrangements with Merit to monitor the quality of service afforded to NSFNET and to ensure that the traffic of ANS' private customers does not adversely impact NSFNET Backbone services. c. Management Controls The NSF participates with Merit, IBM, MCI, the State of Michigan, and (since its formation in 1990) ANS in three series of regular meetings which collectively form the primary means of oversight and control. There is a biweekly "Partner Conference Call" which functions at the tactical level, a monthly "Engineering Meeting" for technical desiderata, and a quarterly Executive Committee meeting which considers strategic issues. During the transition from the T1 Backbone to T3, the Executive Committee also scheduled weekly conference calls. As provided for in the Cooperative Agreement with Merit, NSF convened a blue ribbon review panel of academic and industry experts and conducted a two day long review of Merit's Backbone performance at the eighteen month anniversary. The panel rated Merit's performance "excellent". The Project Development Plan In November, 1991, the National Science Board (NSB) approved a plan for continuation and enhancement of NSFNET Backbone Services beyond the expiration of the current cooperative agreement with Merit in November, 1992. The NSB also approved an extension of the agreement for a period not to exceed eighteen months in order to allow new providers to be competitively selected and to provide for an orderly transition. A copy of the Plan is attached to this testimony. The Plan was developed after more than a year of external consultation. During this year of consulting the external community, NSF supported two workshops at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard - one in March 1990 and the second in November, 1990. These workshops involved university networkers, economists, specialists in public policy (especially telecommunications policy), telecommunications carriers, and others. NSF's sister Federal agencies involved in the NREN were consulted at a meeting convened for this purpose in July, 1991, since the NSFNET Backbone is the most heavily used Backbone network among the several agency networks that are developing the NREN. The Foundation sponsored a workshop in August, 1991, by the Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET), a trade association that was inaugurated in 1987 to act as the voice of the regional networks, the "users" of Backbone services. The workshop was also attended by all the private providers of Backbone services, as well as telephone company representatives. In addition, the Networking & Communications Research & Infrastructure Division Advisory Committee was consulted at its meeting in November 1991. That Committee includes leading researchers in the communications and networking field, private network providers, and telephone company representatives. Moreover, NCRI staff participated at public meetings of the networking community, such as meetings of the Internet Engineering Task Force (sponsored by industry), Net '90 and Net '91 (sponsored by the academic and user community), and others. The Plan has a schedule that includes release of a draft Solicitation in February 1992, a three month period for public comment, followed by release of the final solicitation in May. Owing to unexpected delays in releasing a separate but related solicitation, and the technical complexity of the proposed new NSFNET Backbone architecture, it has not been possible to adhere to the original schedule. The other solicitation has been released, NSF's engineering experts have been consulted, and it now appears the draft solicitation will be ready at the end of March, so the schedule has slipped by about eight weeks. We believe there is still adequate time to accomplish the solicitation-review-award-transition process within the eighteen month extension authorized by the NSB. The technology permits a planned, gradual, and orderly transition of traffic from one provider's facilities to another's. The transition, now in progress, of moving traffic from the T1 Backbone to T3 provides practical experience for the future. The Plan provides for a degree of continuing competition among two or more TCP/IP service providers in furnishing NSFNET Backbone Services. There will however be no significant changes in the rules for access to NSFNET Backbone Services by commercial service providers. The Acceptable Use Policy, developed in consultation with the NCRI Division Advisory Committee and the NSF General Counsel represents, in the opinion of Counsel, the most liberal interpretation possible under the NSF enabling legislation, as amended. This current policy allows access to commercial services for the support of open scholarly research and education under the General AUP Principle stated above. NSF believes the next award will clarify the issues in free and open competition for the provision of Backbone services, and will conclude with at least two fully qualified and experienced providers of bulk services. It is likely, therefore, that NSFNET Backbone funds may - after the end of the next award (i.e., by FY 1996) - be distributed competitively to those organizations (currently the regional networks) who require Backbone services so that they may procure them competitively on the open market and free of Federal intervention. NSF had wished to employ this model at the expiration of the Merit award, but was advised at the FARNET workshop that the regional networks (the "users") were unprepared for that degree of operational complexity on their part. Moreover, sister Federal agencies felt in addition that such a procedure would, at the current state of technology, result in serious routing instability in the network, prejudicial to the accomplishment of their missions, since they depend heavily on the NSFNET to reach many of their grantees and contractors. NSF will continue working with the regional networks and the sister Federal agencies to overcome these obstacles. In a separate, but closely related activity, the NSF has just released a competitive solicitation for Network Information and Registration Services. These are services which have traditionally been provided for the worldwide Internet by Network Information Centers (NlCs) associated with the major US Backbone networks (i.e., ARPANET, NSFNET, ESnet, and the NASA Science Internet) as well as by Centers operated by NSF regional networks, by campus network organizations, and by the private TCP/IP network providers. The principal NIC, however, was for many years operated by SRI International under contract to the Defense Communications Agency (now the Defense Information Systems Agency, DISA). In a recent re-competition held by DISA, SRI lost the contract to another firm. DISA is funding the new contractor, GSI, to serve only the Defense Data Network; accordingly, NSF is funding GSI on a month-to-month basis for service to the rest of the Internet (including, of course, its largest component, the NSFNET) until NSF's recently released solicitation can result in a new Network Information Center. During the month-to-month funding, NSF is closely monitoring GSl's operation. It is interesting to note that the commercial users of the Internet, many of whom are clients of the private TCP/IP providers, form the largest single user class of GSl's services. Relation to NREN Finally, I would like to turn briefly to the relation of the NSFNET to the overall NREN program that is part of the HPCC Program described earlier by Dr. Habermann. The planning process for the HPCC Program is coordinated by the HPCCIT Subcommittee. This subcommittee meets regularly to coordinate agencies' HPCC programs through information exchange, common development of interagency initiatives, and review of individual agency HPCC proposals and budgets. This process provides for agency participation through agency proposal development and review, budget crosscut development and review, and interagency program coordination. Agency programs are reviewed against a set of evaluation criteria for merit, contribution, readiness, linkages to industry, and other factors. During 1990, in order to provide for broader and more inclusive coordination of research and education communities, the NSF, as part of its HPCCIT network task group activities, created the Federal Networking Council (FNC) and initiated the creation of an FNC Advisory Committee (FNCAC) as an NSF advisory committee. The FNC consists of representatives from Federal agencies that have requirements for operating and using networking facilities, mainly in support of research and education, and for advancing the evolution of the Federal portion of the Internet. Membership lists of the FNC and FNCAC are attached to this testimony. Achieving the goals of the NREN will require close coordination of the NSFNET, NASA Science Internet (NSI) and Energy Sciences Network (ESNet) programs to meet the expectations of scientists working on the Grand Challenge problems. At the same time, however, the NSFNET program will vigorously pursue wider NREN goals of developing the technologies that will enable access by libraries, use for lifelong education, and connection to health care systems, etc. The NSF will continue to involve the private sector to the greatest extent possible for meeting the goals of public policy in this arena in the most cost-effective and technically responsive way. NSF is participating with the other agencies in the FNC in the drafting of the NREN report required of the Office of Science and Technology Policy by the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194.) ----------END OF FORWARDED MESSAGE(S)