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ANEWS-2 August 1980
ARPANET NEWSLETTER
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TOPIC: TIP Login Addendum. Send replies to DCACODE535@ISI, (202)692-6175
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The following is further discussion from Maj. Joseph Haughney at
Defense Communications Agency (DCA) regarding TIP Login.
Regards,
Jake
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ADDENDUM TO 1 July 1980 DCA Newsletter
We have received several messages from users who are concerned
with our TIP Login development efforts. We hope this message will
clarify or allay a number of these concerns. The ARPANET is
comprised of a large number of sophisticated users. We appreciate
their interest and advice on possible network improvements and will
take these into consideration in making network decisions. The
ARPANET Newsletter was published in part to obtain user reaction and
in light of comments received, it has achieved it's purpose.
The ARPANET currently has an operational budget of approximately
$5,000,000 per year and represents and investment of over $50,000,000
in hardware and software by the government. TIP Login is a method to
control access to resources so that they can be more effectively
utilized. Our initial efforts are directed to controlling access to
the TIPs to prevent unauthorized users from dialing in. It will
permit publishing of TIP phone numbers and allow users to be given
access to several TIPs as long as they have authorization for those
TIPs in the TIP Login data base. This concept will be of great
advantage to those authorized users who travel a lot, since they
would have a list of phone numbers that they can call anywhere in the
country, and, if their data base record contains the proper
authorization, they can access any local TIP. This is one advantage
of the TIP Login. Other advantages are:
a. Accurate representation of network users. This information
will increase the accuracy of the WHOIS program and provide
readily available management information without the necessity
of the user surveys which we now require.
b. Development of regional TIPs to support the many users who are
not associated with TIP sponsoring organizations. With the
present situation, we cannot spread the TIP access load among
several TIPs in the same geographical area. Knowing who the
dial in users are, would enable us to shift them to TIPS that
have spare capacity or justify a regional TIP if the load is
too heavy.
Another area of TIP Login which is of concern to some users is
our mention of the inclusion of controls similar to TIP login for
hosts. The first point to be made is that TIP Login will study what
needs to be done and what can be done to control host terminal
access. From our viewpoint, we wish to control unauthorized dial-in
access to the ARPANET through the Host front ends. We are not trying
to provide a statment of requirements or a design at this time. As
part of the design effort we need to know the magnitude and types of
users, so that we can make reasonable decisions on what can and
should be done. That is the reason behind our request for accurate
input data.
In conclusion, TIP Login is being developed to provide the
authorized user with improved services. We have attempted to reduce
administrative overhead while improving management control. Some
thought was given to introducing a charging system similar to
commercial networks (e.g. by packet, or access period). Such a
system would add economic realism to network use. However, such
mechanisms would be costly to implement and add a lot of needless
administrative overhead to the ARPANET. TIP Login will be designed
to support the middle road between minimal network controls that
presently exist on the network and complete network access and
billing controls as might be found on a commercial network.
