RFC 131

Okay bestie, this is the April 1971 reply from E. Harslem and J. Heafner at Rand 🦋 It's RFC 131, titled Response to RFC #116 (May NWG Meeting). They're the authors, and the header has no category, obsoletes, or updates info, so it doesn't claim to replace or change anything else 🧚

Phase One ✨

Software Status of 360/65 💻

1. ngl this one's giving glow-up 💅 Their software is currently being changed to match the new NCP protocol from RFC #107. Those changes will be done before the end of May 🌸
2. They're building a logger that, after an automatic ICP dialog, can be driven from a local console 🎀 Messages can go in or out in EBCDIC, ASCII (8), or as binary streams. The whole point is to let sites checkout remote log in procedures. No production services will run on the 360/65, so the logger is strictly experimental 🧪 It'll be finished before the end of May too.
3. Lowkey no TELNET plans yet 🙈 They'll implement both server and user TELNETs once a specification is generally accepted. Implementation should take about two weeks ⏳

Transition from 360/65 to PDP-10 🚀

1. They're moving from the 360/65 to a PDP-10 👑 Rand will offer Network services on the PDP-10, and its hardware and software status will be reported later.
2. The 360/65 Network connection is sticking around for a while because another ARPA-sponsored Rand project uses it in production 💜 The 360/65 network software will still get maintenance for as long as the connection lives, but no new programs will be built on it after September. Main character energy for the PDP-10, ngl 🦋

Network Related Activities 🌈

1. The UCSB/Rand Network activities were reported recently in RFC #113 and earlier in RFC #78 📚 The Climate Dynamics Project (CDP) at Rand will keep using this facility, and even more heavily in the future 🍓
2. Alongside that facility, the Rand Network team planned and built a front-end graphics program 📊 It lets reduced data from UCSB be displayed and interacted with locally as graphs, contours, plots, and lists. It'll be used about three months after an intermediate program, which the CDP personnel are writing, is finished ✨

Phase Two 🫶

Experimental Data Reconfiguration Service (Form Machine) 🧩

1. There was a recent working session at Rand about the Data reconfiguration Service (DRS) 💖 The results have been drafted and the participants are editing them now. They'll be published as an RFC soon. Eric Harslem will be ready to give an oral report on the DRS at the NWG meeting 🎤

Protocol Manager 🔥

1. They plan to submit a positional paper on a proposed Protocol Manager 🦋 It would allow flexibility in both experimental and production use of connection protocols. It'll be presented as a Request for Comments on a software package Rand intends to implement on its PDP-10. For example, it should obviate a fixed logger on the forthcoming PDP-10 🧚‍♀️

Phase Three 👑

Comments on Goals and Organization of the NWG 💬

1. Rand has always been a proponent of the collective NWG as a forum to raise issues and as a general information transfer mechanism for what sites are doing and thinking 🌸 More recently, small working groups and committees have been formed to generate specific specifications like TELNET and the new NCP protocol. Rand favors keeping these methods, as long as any site with willingness, interest, and contribution isn't excluded from any group or committee 🫶 They expect these groups to stay a small functional size from the start, since they're aimed at special interests.

The long lead time between forming such a group and getting its final output (and then implementing the plan) has been accepted by the NWG Technical Chairman, but it's rather disconcerting 😭 The NCP glitch cleaning committee is an example of expedient work. UTAH, for example, has already implemented the new NCP protocol 🔥 Other groups, including the DRS, haven't been as responsive. Maybe the technical problems other groups are tackling are more complex, and their solutions aren't as urgent as the NCP glitches. Rand doesn't have a nice solution, except that maybe some guidelines should be set up about timely publication of reports 💅

2. On the long range goals of the NWG, Rand doesn't think the NWG is the right body to set them 🙈 When they say long range goals of the NWG, they're really (in part) talking about long range goals of the Network. Rand feels the Principal Investigators are better positioned to see long range Network goals than NWG members are ✨ One suggestion for turning their views into NWG tasks is to have the NWG Technical Chairman host a one day opinion session of the Principal Investigators, then report those views to the NWG so the implied tasks can be generated 🧠

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