An Introduction to the
ISODE Consortium
S.E. Hardcastle-Kille
March 12, 1992
Abstract
The ISODE Consortium has been founded to support further
development of the ISODE as a package on which vendors can
build OSI products and as a package which continues to be used
in the research community. The ISODE Consortium will provide
the vendor-neutral architectural and administrative leadership
that is required to make this work. The ISODE Consortium will
aggressively evolve the ISODE, with particular focus on
Directory Services and Message Handling Services.
The ISODE Consortium is a not for profit organisation,
which is self supporting through membership fees and product
royalties. Membership is open to any organisation in any
country. In addition, there is a special class of non-voting
Individual Membership.
This document gives a brief overview of why the ISODE
Consortium is needed, how it will be set up and organised, and
its technical goals.
1 The ISODE
The ISODE is an implementation of selected OSI protocols and
applications, which runs on a wide range of UNIX and UNIX-like
operating systems. The key components of the ISODE are:
o Connection Oriented Transport Service (COTS) over vendor stacks:
-- TP4/CLNS
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-- X.25 or CONS
-- TCP (using RFC 1006)
o Transport switch to allow simultaneous working over multiple
stacks.
o The Connection Oriented OSI upper layers: Session and
Presentation.
o Selected Application Service Elements (ASEs): Association Control
(ACSE); Remote Operations (ROS); Reliable Transfer (RTS).
o OSI File Transfer Access and Management (FTAM): protocol
libraries; server and responder.
o OSI Directory Service (QUIPU): DSA and selected DUAs.
o Message Handling Services (PP): A Message Transfer Agent, suited
to volume switching and protocol conversion.
Over a hundred people and organisations have contributed to the ISODE,
and there is not space to credit all of the here. The ISODE was
originated by Marshall T. Rose, and the current source tree is managed
by Julian Onions and Colin Robbins. Organisations which deserve
special mention are: The UK Joint Network Team (for providing
funding); Northrop Corporation; The Wollongong Group; University
College London; University of Nottingham; Mitre Corporation; X-Tel
Services; Brunel University; CSIRO; University of Michigan.
2 ISODE Successes
ISODE was originally developed as a ``development environment'' to
experiment with the OSI upper layers. The original ISODE was ``Openly
Available'', which is effectively public domain, and spread rapidly
through the research community and into many commercial organisations.
It has been used for a very wide range of work, and is the most widely
deployed OSI implementation. It has succeeded impressively in meeting
its original goals.
Although the original ISODE was targeted primarily at programmers, the
largest uptake has been by organisations wishing to use ISODE
applications to run services. This is particularly true of the X.400
and X.500 components, but also FTAM to a lesser extent. The PP X.400
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MTA is being used at an increasing number of mail gateways for its
protocol conversion facilities between RFC 822 and X.400 and its
suitability for high volume message switching. It is also being
adopted by an increasing number of organisations as a ``mail hub'',
due to its advanced management facilities.
The QUIPU X.500 implementation has been closely tied in with the pilot
deployment of X.500 in the research community. This pilot now
encompasses over half a million entries in over four hundred DSAs
(Directory System Agents) in twenty countries. This includes the PSI
White Pages Project in the US, and the PARADISE Project in Europe.
QUIPU is the dominant DSA implementation used for this piloting, and
QUIPU based DUAs are used extensively.
3 The ISODE Consortium
The ISODE Consortium is being set up in response to the success of the
ISODE, and is intended to give the ISODE a firmer base so that it can
continue to evolve and thrive. The ISODE Consortium intends to build
on the successes of the current ISODE, and to address the weaknesses.
The ISODE Consortium will evolve the ISODE to make it more attractive
and straightforward to build products on the ISODE, by tackling issues
which could not effectively be met with the earlier setup. By
focusing on system components, such as layer services and MTAs, the
ISODE Consortium will allow vendors to take building blocks, which are
complex and costly to build, and focus efforts on user interfaces to
provide product differentiation. The cooperative approach being
facilitated by the ISODE Consortium will allow for more cost effective
development than would be possible for a vendor working alone.
The ISODE Consortium will take the ISODE out of the public domain, and
commercial organisations will gain access to the source by joining the
ISODE Consortium. This will later provide the ISODE Consortium with
revenue from product royalties, and thus ensure the long term
viability of the ISODE Consortium. The ISODE Consortium will also
retain and strengthen links with the research community. The ISODE
Consortium will make the ISODE available to academic organisations and
government or not for profit organisations with research as their
primary purpose by means of a simply administered zero cost licence.
The ISODE Consortium will also work closely with organisations such as
RARE and IETF.
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4 Product Focus
The major goal of the consortium is to evolve high functionality
OSI-based applications, which can be used directly and as a basis for
products. The development will be done by a mixture of direct work by
the consortium, subcontract, and contribution from members. This
combination will provide rapid and effective technical evolution.
The key components which the ISODE Consortium will work on will be
application level components of networked applications. The major
focus will be on ``system'' components such as MTAs (Message Transfer
Agents) and DSAs (Directory System Agents). These complex components
are a major strength of ISODE, and a fundamental component of any
product. There is relatively low potential for value added function
compared to user interfaces, and so it is very attractive for vendors
to buy in this technology. This split means that APIs will be
critical. All APIs used by the ISODE Consortium will be clearly
defined, and will in general be publicly available. Work will be done
in a way which retains independence of lower layers, and the ability
to use multiple stacks. Support for use over TCP/IP will be promoted
in parallel with use over OSI lower layers.
Message Handling Services and Directory Services will be the main
focus of the ISODE Consortium, particularly in the first few years.
They are seen both as useful end applications and as key building
blocks, and the areas discussed below will be particularly focused
onto these applications. Tracking standards, and conformance will be
fundamental, as well as adding in new functionality and improvements.
The OSI protocols will be a core component, but the overall system
will include components for interoperability with non-OSI systems and
private extensions where appropriate. A major change to the X.500 DSA
will be to define a database API, so that new databases and mappings
onto proprietary databases may be offered as value-added products.
5 Technical Direction
Conformance There has been substantial work on interoperability
testing with the ISODE components, but almost no work on conformance
testing. Conformance testing, and the specification of PICS to define
conformance levels will be a key aspect of early ISODE Consortium
work.
Configurability Whilst the current components provide high
functionality, they are too complex to configure, and there will be a
transition to ``plug and play''.
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Management Application management is a key problem, and the ISODE
Consortium strategy has three basic components: The X.500 Directory
will be used extensively; The industry standard SNMP will be used for
overview monitoring of large numbers of components; Application
specific management will be used for some purposes.
Security Addition of effective security to the ISODE Applications is
an important medium term goal. Use of X.509 public key based security
is the technology most likely to be used.
Performance Whilst broadly in line with performance of similar
products, improving the performance of the ISODE will be a high
priority. Three complementary areas will be worked on: ASN.1
compilers; Careful tuning of the full OSI Stack for the key
applications; Use of a lightweight stack, with mappings onto COTS,
CLTS, TCP, and UDP.
Integrating New Applications The issue of introducing new technology
is important. In general, this will be done by a request for
technology. X.400 Message Store is a likely candidate for early
addition.
6 Membership
The consortium will raise revenue primarily by membership fees and
product royalties. There are several types of membership, which are
summarised here.
Commercial This is for commercial organisations, who may be vendors
or users of OSI products. Membership rate is determined by the
annual revenue of the organisation.
Research This is for Academic/Educational organisations, and for
not-for-profit and government organisations with research as their
primary purpose. There are two rates, with the lower being for
academic institutions, and organisations with less than 150
members.
Non-Commercial This is for not-for-profit and government
organisations which do not fit into the research category. There
are four rates of membership, based on the size of the
organisation.
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User This is for organisations that will gain access to the ISODE by
using products from ISODE Consortium members.
Research Consortia This is for organisations which are consortia
which support research organisation. Research networks are
typical members of this type. There are three rates of
membership, determined by consortium size.
Individual A low cost membership for individuals.
7 Organisation
The ISODE Consortium has been established as a professional non-profit
corporation (US 501.c(3)). This initial startup was achieved by
funding from MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Technology
Corporation), which is a research consortium of primarily US
companies. MCC's objective is to act as a technology transfer agent
between academic research and industry.
The president of the ISODE Consortium is Steve Hardcastle-Kille, who
is also currently a Senior Research Fellow at University College
London, and has played a key role in the design and evolution of the
ISODE. This will be a full-time position when full operation starts.
The ISODE Consortium will establish a US office in May 1992 in the
Washington, DC area. The ISODE Consortium will have a strong presence
in Europe, and startup of the European office is planned for early
1993.
The initial board of directors of the ISODE Consortium is: Phil
Cannata (MCC); Lyman Chapin (BBN); Dave Farber (University of
Pennsylvania); Dan Lynch (Interop); Hugh Smith (X-Tel Services). The
board will be elected by the membership. Members will participate in
the Policy Steering Committed and Technical Steering Group to
determine strategic and tactical direction for the ISODE Consortium.
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8 Contact Information
US Office European Office
Address: ISODE Consortium ISODE Consortium
c/o MCC P.O. Box 505
P.O. Box 200195 LONDON
Austin SW11 1DX
TX 78720 UK
USA
Phone: +1-(512)-338-3340 +44-71-223-4062
Fax: +1-(512)-338-3600 +44-71-223-3846
Email
RFC 822: ic-info@isode.com
X.400: S=ic-info; O=ISODE Consortium;
PRMD=ISODE; ADMD=0; C=GB;
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