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Transition to New Standards

Aspects of the COSINE X.500 Pilot Project

Peter FLYNN Computer Centre, University College, Cork, Ireland (Tel.: + 353 21 276871 ext2609; Fax: + 353 21 277194; E-mail:

pflynn@oaxl, ucc.ie)

Abstract. As part of the contract for the execution of the COSINE implementation phase, RARE is undertaking to establish a pilot X.500 project in Europe. This paper reports on the progress towards the project to date and summarises the position in those RARE member organisations where informa- tion is available.

Keywords. RARE, COSINE, European, X.500, directories, pilot project.

Peter Flynn was born in 1953 and built his first computer in 1969. He has worked as a wallpaper salesman, disc-jockey, printer, and truck driver, but has spent the last fifteen years in the computing industry as data analyst, programmer, DP manager, technical consultant, and project manager. He now runs the academic and research computing service at Univer- sity College Cork, Ireland. He is Secretary of RARE Working Group 3, Deputy Director of EARN Ireland, and is computer consultant to a variety of European research projects.

North-Holland Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 19 (1990) 261-264

1. Introduction

X.500 is the Internat ional S tandard for the specification and structuring of directories in- tended to operate over I S O / O S I networks. Such directories can hold data on, for example, people, objects, and events with indications of where to find them, for use by people and machine processes on the network.

Dur ing the period of the specification phase of COSINE, R A R E Working G r o u p 3: Directories and Informat ion Services (WG3) carried out some prel iminary work which established the need for and technical requirements of a pilot project for pan-European collaborat ion of the existing and proposed national X.500 pilot services [1]. It is well-recognised that wi thout a directory service, it will not be possible to present the other services of C O S I N E (e.g. MHS, F T A M ) efficiently to users. It is known empirically f rom other network en- vironments that a major restriction on non-exper t use of, for example, E-mail is the lack of a facility for intended users to locate the addresses of peo- ple with w h o m they wish to correspond [2].

There are some non-X.500-compl iant existing directory services on the academic and research networks, such as N E T S E R V U D S and N A M E - S E R V @ D R E W on E A R N , and the unreleased L I S T S E R V U D D , bu t these are not widely used by non-experts.

The X.500 directories should eventually provide several services to users, the mos t significant of which are

(1) lookup of an individual 's details ("whi te pages" service),

(2) lookup facility to retrieve and locate services (" yellow pages" service),

(3) background rout ing of messages and files using X.400 and F T A M ,

(4) lookup of the presentat ion address of OSI applications. The project will investigate and set up a pan-

Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

262 P. Flynn / Aspects of the COSINE X.500 pilot project

European pilot X.500 directory service in col- laboration with national directory pilot projects, and as a result to deal with interoperability issues.

However, many technical and administrative problems remain which the pilot project will help to identify more accurately, so that eventually full service can function properly.

2. Current Position of the Pilot Project

This proposed pilot project has now taken con- crete form as COSINE project P2.1 as outlined in the COSINE Project Proposal [3]. The iCPMU published invitations to tender at the end of February. A total of about 130 copies of the project invitation were distributed to interested parties on the COSINE register. The deadline was 12th, April and the response has been satisfactory. An evaluation of the tenders has been successfully concluded, and a shortlist is being drawn up.

The objective of the pilot project is to demon- strate the feasibility or otherwise of running a managed X.500 directory service on the COSINE infrastructure within Europe, and to gain experi- ence, so that a future operational service can be put in place (COSINE service s5). Participants will initially be those RARE member organisa- tions who are in a position to run an X.500 database, make it available via the network, and contribute to the running of the pilot project.

3. Current Status of X.500 Implementations

There are several implementations of the X.500 protocols from both private and public sources. The principal one in use in the existing and planned national services which comprise the pilot project is on the ISODE tape and is called QUIPU. This was developed at University College, London as part of the INCA project. Other implementa- tions include the software generated as part of the T H O R N project (not originally X.500-compliant, but now converted); a French product from IN- RIA called PISARRO; EAN from the University of British Columbia; and commercial products from companies such as RETIX. DEC and IBM

have non-X.500 directories but are reported to be developing X.500-compliant systems as well. WG3 also has unconfirmed reports of other unnamed X.500 products either in use or under develop- ment in various countries, but no further informa- tion is available on these.

The majority of implementations are for the UNIX operating system, although versions for VMS are being developed in Oxford, Barcelona, and New Zealand. The hardware most commonly used for the UNIX implementations seems to be Sun workstations, although QUIPU is running on several microVAX systems as well. The general prerequisite for interworking is a connection to the public X.25 network brought up to Session level, but use of T P O / T C P is also possible.

The two principal components of an X.500 system are the Directory Server Agent (DSA), which is the database containing the directory information; and a Directory User Agent (DUA), which is the user's interface to the DSA. Most of the implementations mentioned above are only DSAs, but there is considerable work in progress at Brunel University in the U K on a variety of DUAs, again mainly for UNIX, but reported to include at least one for MS-DOS.

The DSA database can be structured to include a comprehensive set of fields (attributes) belong- ing to the entry. Obvious ones are surname, fore- names, organisation, address (home, office, e.mail and X.121), telephone number, fax number, and telex; and also more detailed information such as job title, building, floor, room number, work area, and special interests. In theory, there is also no reason why social data cannot also be included such as hobbies, favourite drink, and make of car!

Registration in a directory would normally be undertaken in bulk by administrative authorities such as the DSA manager (with the consent of the subject) from data provided by organisations, and bulk loading tools are under development. Sub- jects would of course retain the ability to review, modify, and (subject to organisation constraints) delete their entry. From verbal discussions with DSA operators, the general consensus appears to be that certain fields will be end up being com- pulsory (such as name and E-mail address), and that others will be voluntary, but no formal agree- ment exists. In some countries, there are also restrictions on the nature of personal data which may or may not be stored in this manner.

P. Flynn / Aspects of the COSINE X.500 pilot project 263

Many technical questions remain to be re- solved. Among these are (in no particular order):

(1) The need to provide adequate routing in- formation for a call which traverses a private X.25 network, where there is a potential for address conflicts.

(2) The bandwidth required to operate a full service needs careful attention. If we take the current and historical levels of directory enquiries on the public telephone network, and then allow for the fact that there is not (and may never be) a paper version of an X.500 directory as a sub- stitute, it is clear that the levels of access and response demanded in future by a society using computers as a principal means of communication is likely to be very large indeed.

(3) Support for national character sets needs to be determined. There are several existing and emergent standards in this field, and the current efforts in the pilot project will be directed at T61 for latin-alphabet support, with a move towards ISO 8859 in the future.

(4) Interoperation with Domain Name Server (DNS) systems from non-X.500 sources also needs to be evaluated. Some of these are temporary (stopgap) systems; others are heavily manufac- turer-specific.

(5) Connectivity to an X.25 network will be required for those users on other networks which do not currently operate X.25. The use of mail responders may be a temporary solution to this.

(6) X.500 will not be extensively used until there is easy availability of end-user DUAs, with adequate documentation and integration into the X.400 mail systems.

Beyond the technical problems of getting the software, hardware, and networks to cooperate lie some administrative and political problems of in- ternational co-operation between servers, sites, and the PTTs. Again, in no particular order:

(1) The provision by the F I T s of a mechanism for the chargeback of directory calls placed on a remote user's behalf by an intermediate DSA in another country, where access is being made across the public data network.

(2) There is the question of the funding of the calls themselves for the end user: for a service to be acceptable, it must be affordable by the indi- vidual or the organisation funding the usage.

(3) A concern is being voiced that open access

to computerised directories in effect permits any user to download the entire contents of a directory for use in some other system such as a direct-mail database. This potential use would seem at first sight to conflict with the prevailing legislation on data privacy, but it is argued that a user, by consenting to the inclusion of name and address details in a public database, is waiving any claim to confidentiality: the conventional telephone di- rectories already have some of this kind of infor- mation and are used for this purpose already.

(4) It seems almost superfluous to mention that a user must give consent to the inclusion of details in a computerised directory, under the terms of most data protection legislation. However, it may be acceptable (although as yet untested at law) for the default to be inclusion, and exclusion to be possible only on explicit instructions, signed by the user to that effect. Even with explicit consent, some states' data protection legislation prohibits the exchange of personal data between computers under certain circumstances, and it appears that the legislation was probably drafted without tak- ing the existence or potential of computerised public directories into account. There may, there- fore, be an hiatus between the technical possibility of an X.500 service in these states and its realisa- tion for users.

Table 1 List of known DSAs in participant RARE member tions. (source: RARE Working Group III)

organisa-

Country DSAs System on X.25

AT 1 QUIPU 1 BE 2 - 0 CH 3 QUIPU 1 DE 3 QUIPU 3 DK 1 QUIPU 1 ES 2 QUIPU 2 FI 6 QUIPU 2 FR 4 THORN, PISARRO 4 GB 15 QUIPU 1 GR 0 - 0 IE 0 - 0 NL 4 QUIPU 1 NO 4 QUIPU 2 SE 6 QUIPU 5 YU 0 - 0

Total 50 23

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4. National Status of X.500 References

A list of country DSAs, system(s) used and how many are attached to the public X.25 network is shown in Table 1.

[1] Minutes of meetings, RARE WG3, passim. [2] J. Quartermain, The Matrix (Digital Press, Bedford, MA,

1990). [3] COSINE Policy Group, The COSINE implementation

phase project proposal, CPG/89/0083, COSINE, 1989.