SIGWAIS/SIGNIDR III:
What This Meeting is About
(R. P. C. Rodgers, Lister Hill Center)

S pecial
I nterest
G roup for
N etworked
I nformation
D iscovery and
R etrieval

OBLIGATORY OPENING JOKES (NETWORK TO THE RESCUE!)

• Cartoon
• Lawyer jokes

GOALS

• Of this talk: lay groundwork for what is to follow
• Of SIGNIDR III
  • Provide a broad survey of current art, and a peek into the near future
  • Reach as many interested attendees as possible
  • Challenge presenters as well as attendees

ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS AT SIGNIDR III

• Ban traditional AV aids
• Integrate the technology we talk about into the meeting
• New faces at the front
• Broadened scope
• Transmit over the Internet via MBONE
  • Virtual network, uses Internet
  • Multicasting technology
  • Experimental -- not HDTV!

ACTUAL & POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

• Rapidly evolving technology
• Rapidly changing level of training among attendees
• For presenters: working on an "alien platform" in an "alien environment"
• The usual potential hardware/software glitches
• Will have to be somewhat superficial, allowing for discussion of complexities during question time
• Less emphasis on outside demonstrations
• Staying on schedule!

SUMMARY

• Ignore the occasional technological corpse
• Bear with the presenters
• Colleagues and I will be hovering nearby for technical assistance
• Don't be afraid to ask questions -- if you don't understand something, chances are there are many others in the audience in the same boat
• Presenters: enter into the question periods

NATURE OF AUDIENCE

• Work sector: Federal or other government, Government contractors, Education, Industry, Other?
• Primary computer platform: UNIX, PC, Mac, Other?
• Internet access?
• History of use of tools: email, ftp, telnet, gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web?
• Now many Developers/Publishers?

THEME? WE DON"T NEED NO STINKIN' THEME...
(NEVERTHELESS, ONE SNUCK UP ON US)
INTEGRATION

• Integration of dispersed information sources (networking)
• Integration of disparate types of information (multimedia)
• Integration of different information service mechanisms (gateways; multi-protocol clients)
• Integration of intellectual resources (building the network software infrastructure)
• Integration of social resources (building a physical network infrastructure)

THE INTERNET

• Cover, editorial: "Make way for multimedia"
• Article: "The tangled webs they weave"
  • [...] before the network can offer anthing at all, it has to be built. The speed at which that happens will largely depend on the least high-tech force of all: government.
  • [...] "killer applications" will probably not come from boffins. Instead, they will come from a new breed of high-tech bohemians -- call them techno-bohos.
  • [...] in multimedia, the chromosomes are being configured now.
• Science & Technology: "Knit your own superhighway" (National/regional networks)
• Arts, Books and Sport: "Roll over Gutenberg" (1993 Frankfurt Book Fair)

WHAT IS THE INTERNET?

• Collection of packet-switched networks (NSFNET, MILNET, NASA Science internet, ...)
• Shared name and address space (DNS, Domain Name Service)
• A (generally) shared protocol: TCP/IP (excludes BITNET, other networks)
• Evolved hand-in-hand with UNIX, but does not require UNIX
• Makeup of the Internet (as of 1992)
  • > 100 countries (counting email connectivity)
  • > 39,000 networks
  • > 1,000,000 hosts
  • > 5,000,000 users
• Organizational Infrastructure
  • "No one is in charge" (decentralized)
  • Governmental bodies (esp. NSF)
  • Internet Society
    • Internet Architecture Board
    • Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); 8 "Areas"
      • User Services Area
        • Integration of Internet Information Resources (iiir)
        • Networked Information Retrieval (nir)
        • Uniform Resource Identifiers (uri)
        • User Services (us-wg)
        • Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (wnils)
      • RFCs (Requests for Comments); some humorous, some informational, some de facto standards
  • Security bodies (FIRST: CERT, DoE CIAC, DDN SCC, NIST CSRC, NASA CNSRT)

We reject kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.

      Dave Clark (IETF, Columbus[?], 1992)
           (as printed on back of commemorative teashirt at Houston IETF)

Human Interest Sidelight:
Jules Aronson and I had trouble with our return reservations when we attended the Houston IETF (November 1993); thankfully, NASA helped out.

OPEN STANDARDS

• Term much debased by commercial misrepresentations
• Publically available specification which anyone can use to implement

PROTOCOLS & STANDARDS OF NOTE

• File Transfer Program (ftp) Protocol
• Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
• Network News Transfer Protocol (nntp)
• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (smtp)
• Current "Big Three" in Information Retrieval:
  • Gopher Protocol
  • World Wide Web:
    • Hypertext Transport Protocol (http)
    • Hypertext Markup Language (html)
  • Z39.50 (ZIG; NISO; LOC is maintenance agency)

CONNECTIVITY

• Telephone (0-45MB)
• Packet radio
• Ham radio (KA9Q)
• Satellite
• Non-institutional end-user connectivity a problem (Integrated Services Digital Network, or ISDN, ~300KB, slow in deployment)