#411 A CMP Publication- July 13, 1992

SteppDg in as a mediator betweenrival electronic-mail camps, theX.400 Application Program Inter­face Association last week said itwill develop a single API that canbe used by an software develop­ers to integrate desktop applica­tions with E-mail.

That speed the availabil-of maiI-enabled applications

from vendors that had beenforced to work with one or both ofthe competing approache - Mi­crosoft Corp.'s Messaging Appli­cation Programming Interface andthe Vendor-Independent essag­ing API championed by Lotus De-

E- ., page 62

By Jeffrey Schwartz

By Saroia Girishankar

Reveals work onmaster protocol forintemet routing

With aim of simplifying inter-ark rou· and manage-t, Digital Equipment Corp. is

dev'eIoI..· 12 a master routing pro­tocol that will support OSI,TCPIIP, AppleTalk, IPX and oth­er protocols.

The master protocol is actuallyan expanded version of the Inte­grated Intermediate System-to­Intermediate System protocol,

today upports OSI andTC lIP .. DEC bas nearly

ComputerT protocol to Inte­

grated IS-IS and plans to add 0­

ven Inc.'s Internetwork PacketExchange protocol, DEC officialstold Communiaztions Wuk.

Route, page 61

munications link to a Unix-basedCR 3B2 server. Each of the

50 state representatives votingwill have a PC that has beenprogrammed with the number ofdelegate votes for that state.When an issue comes to ballot,the state representative wiDvote and the appropriate numberof delegates will be tallied at the

Convention, page 62

"Politics is always very vola­tile. Technology is very volatile.When you push the two togeth­er you have quite a combinationon your hands," Schneider said.

The setup irrludes 189 milesof cable, an on-site AT&T G3iPBX am a 5ESS central officeswitch supporting 6,<XX> voice anddata lines (see related story, page31). Convention attendees willhave access to 250 Wmdo ­based PCs on three LANs run­ning Microsoft Corp. 's LAN Man­ager network operating system.

The tedmlogy that will drawthe roost attentioo is a netw<x'k

and other hanced databaseing systems. which are now SQL

All features in the new product Group compliant.are already included in the TCPIIP TCPIIP, page 61

,

orget the old politicalhomilies - the mostdown-to-earth side of

this week's Democratic ation­al Convention will be its high­tech computer and communica­tion network.

The communications infra­structure here at the site of theconvention, Madison SquareGarden, wa created by RogerSclmeider, director of technol­ogy for the Democratic ationalConven . Committee.

Bowing to user demands for mul­tivendor interoperability, DigitalEquipment Corp. last week un­veiled a beefed-up version ofTCPIIP software for its widelyused S operating system.

The new software includesfeature . red e tial foropen-sy tema in 0

U

, New TCPI/P softwarefor VMS to improvemultivendor links

LZ

Calif., and fonner chainnan of theInternet Engineering Task Forceworking group on the Simple et-

ork Management Protocol.Rose was reacting to an lAB

draft recommendation, issuedearlier this month, to replace theexisting Internet Protocol with anupdate, IP Version 7, based onthe Open Systems Interconnec-tion's ConnectionIess eProtocol. The board .that IP wiD not be able to upportthe Internet's addressing needsas the number of users on theinternational network grows.

The II-member lAB will pre­sent its plan to the IETF this

eek at an IETF meeting in Cam­bridge, Mass.

Rose said the board did notthoroughly examine the technicaland co t-related issues of replac­ing IP with CLNP. And he criti­cized the lAB for not fully evaluat­ing alternative proposals.

Rose and others said they be-lieve that lAB did DOt aDo

, /NJ6r 62

By Saroia Girishankar By Stan y Gibson

1 ZZ

The Internet Architecture Bcmdfoond itself in the hot seat lastw as angry users am develop­ers aiticized its plan to change theInternet's addressing scheme.

uH they start making irrespon­s1bIe decisions, the lAB basicallybas signed its own death warrant.

COIIDDunity will simply haveto get rid of them," said MarshallRose, principal of Dover BeachConsulting Inc., ountain Vi ,

I~w· ~. IManagement Protocol, page 8

er XAPIA will adopt the charterwe're pursuing in VIM. But e'Dcontnbute to this."

Suzan Fine, Microsoft's MAPIproduct manager and a member ofthe XAPIA executive amnittee,said develqing a cormnon~send API "solves the problem us­ers have expressed, and that's hav­ing multiple APIs." •

for the convention.The .. to link each ter-

minal to the server using directRS-232 connections rather thanon a LAN was based on cablingconsiderations, Goldberg said.The primary erver will residedirectly under the podium andalso will be linked to a videowall to display the results.

n'Each touch-screen PC will pro­

infonnation and perform er­tasks, unlike the

ystem used at1JeII00CI~tic' ational

. "Fouryears ago they ere dumb termi­nals. ow they are PC programsthat store [and send] the informa­tion," Goldberg said.

The voting terminals of fouryears ago were noS-based, re­quired the use of a keyboard andwere not easy to use, Schneidersaid. Also, issues foc the baI10tshad to be programmed in advance.

With this year's touch-screentwork, tho authorized can

add a topic to be voted on at anytime. "Literally all someone hasto do is type in the new issue andtart vote:' Goldberg said.

The three LANs to be used bycunrentil'[)O attemees are located in

MacmlOll SquareGarden, the Dermcratic headquar­ters nearby, and a local 00te1. Theywill be used for applications such astracking costs, research, checkingcredentials and writing meroos.

At the 1988 convention, a singlefiber backbone connected 10 0­

veO Inc. LANs. This year, the PCsare on CR StarLANs that useunshielded twisted-pair wiring. •

, . alsoDet1V01'k arcbitect at BB

COIlmmlDicltiolllS, tried to assuaget by the lAB's actions.

e don't' ue edicts, but is­proposals that we think are

best," Chapin said. "No proposalcan succeed without the supportof the community." •

server. Another 10 of the PCs willbe available for backup.

Votes will be stored on an In­formix Software Inc. Run Tune4GL Structured Query Languagedatabase management systemthat operate on the voting tenni­nals and the server.

For added redundancy, therebe extra er on-prem-

mf-ll'eDlu'es .

Frrma page 1

lyst at the Yankee Group, Bos­

ton. "This could open up a realhornet's nest," he said.

Most users have little interestin the battle lines, Zagaeski said."It' like little kids throwing mudbaDs at each other," he said. 'The

axmuity OOesn't care. TheySOOlething that works."

UQIIpaIIl;Y., manager of de­reIaI:ims b' oommunica-

IrOdIucts at Lotus, hisaxnpany thesend API developed byPIA. "It . to be

"They [lAB] are .that they could havehope they backrecommeOOation ammore time to evahate

ofCraig Parbridgetist at BB COIlnrmlDicltiollSCambridge,area director ofgroup on tral:aspoll1 protocols

Those disgruntledlAB's actions seemed to farnumber supporters.

offer such functions as policy rout­ing and route caching. Policy rout­. Ie define vamos param-

rooting data; route each-DI'C"'ides data.

que8,tiooing both

If ftftIil...... riYIIlrieI behreenthe two groups ,agreeing on a simple-send APIcould take from nine months to ayear, said Paul Zagaeski, an ana-

pie," . XAPIA omanJanie Chang. Chang' an execu­tive at Osiware Inc., a Vancou­ver, British CoImnbia, manufacturer of X.400 E-mail software.

Steve Griesmer, a member clthe XAPIA executive conmittee,said, "It's a first step toward mak­ing the functions of the currentAPIs available to 00Il:-mesu,!PDIappications." Griesmer is also ­pervisor for applications standardsat AT&T BeD LaboraUries Ioc.

The association will exploretechnical guidelines for establish­ing the API at a meetingweekin~.~ ,~-

mancl XAP clwork-group software atcc:Mail division, said the API wiDincorporate the XAPIA's existingX.400 API. The group will deter­mine the other components of theAPI at the meeting, he said.

"Many members of [the] VIMand Microsoft [camps] are mem­bers <'i the XAPIA, am it· assumedwe will have their input in creatingthe simple-send function," Owenssaid. "We hope we're not taking ona task that can't be done. Both VIMand MAPI have a simple-serxl ftmc­

'D leave' to thetecblical U»oOOllJittee to if

Group to Develop Common API

enough .the . of'

"Something of .nititude can't beconsiderable thought and .sion through the [lETF] workgroups. We need to look beforewe leap," said Louis Mamakos,assistant manager of network in­frastructure at the University ofMaryland, College Park.

Mamakos also had tedmicalconcerns. IP Versm 7 will be "in­compatible with IP and with CLNP,and we should reaDy oot start offwith any existilg baa&e that,"he said. Further, CLNP does not~ multicasting, oc the abilityto seud a message simuItaneoosIyto multiple destinations, he said.

Rose said CLNP also does not

• The API will, atminimum, support a'simple send'capability

• XAPIA to developan API to integratedesktop apps withE-mail

portceive and imple de teo

"The whole point of a simpIe­send messaging API is to pick out20 percent of the functions thatwill be most useful to most peo-

• API development tocompleted within

thr e months

Plan Riles Users, Developers

Frrma poge 1

velopment Corp.The association said it expects

to complete the API within threemonths.

At the very least, the interfacewill support a " . send" capa­biIity, which wiD let a user senddata from a desktop application,such as ordPerfect Corp.'sWexdPerfect oc Lotus 1-2-3, via E­mail witIwt having to exit the ap­plication to do 90. Depending oninput from users that the associ-

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I Communications W Jufy 13, 1992