ISODE INTERNALS

Overview

The concept of **open systems**, those which interoperate, regardless of
manufacturer or model, has proven quite popular.  The Internet suite of
protocols (commonly referred to as TCP/IP) demonstrates quite well the
demand for interoperable computer-communication products.  Given its
deep market penetration, the Internet suite of protocols is often
referred to as today's **de facto** standard for computer-communications.
However, for various technical and political reasons, many expect that
an **internationally** standardized suite of protocols, based on the
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, will join and eventually
displace TCP/IP as the off-the-shelf commodity of choice for building
infrastructure in the computer networking world, becoming the **de
jure** standard.  Of course, it is not enough to simply mandate the **use**
of OSI, as has been done in numerous national and regional contexts.  Rather,
OSI must be **implemented** before it can be used!  Whilst a rather
self-evident statement, the history of OSI, starting in the late 70's,
has not recorded much success in this regard.

This course describes an implementation of the core aspects of OSI
called The ISO Development Environment (ISODE).  The ISODE is
interesting in four respects:

      - it provides extensive automatic tooling for the development of OSI
	applications;
      - it supports OSI applications on top of both OSI and TCP/IP-based
	networks;
      - it provides a novel approach to the problems of OSI coexistence
	and transition; and,
      - its source code is openly available (non-proprietary).

What You Will Learn

Attendees will gain a thorough understanding of what the ISODE is and
how to put the ISODE to good use.  In particular, emphasis is placed on putting
the ISODE to work: bringing it up, running it, and modifying it for
particular environments. 

Syllabus

  o History and Introduction -- why the ISODE project was undertaken,
    the design and implementation policy, underlying abstractions

  o Lower Layer Infrastructure -- the transport service, the transport-switch,
    adding a transport-stack, "typical" site configurations

  o Upper Layer Infrastructure -- application service elements, presentation
    abstractions, defining a new service

  o Implementing new services -- a model for distributed applications,
    the RO-notation, static facilities, dynamic facilities

  o Network Management (SNMP) -- core routines, agent implementation,
    exporting MIB modules, prototyping NOC applications

  o Directory Services -- introduction to the Directory, introduction
    to QUIPU, the QUIPU DSA, a White Pages Service

//o Message Handling Services (Postie Pat) -- design philosophy,
//  configuration, running a mail service

  o Future Directions -- the ISODE consortium

Who Should Attend

This course is targeted to applications programmers and system managers
who need to better understand how to install, configure, and modify the
ISODE.  Attendees must have a good understanding of the C programming
language, user-level programming for UNIX, and the rudiments of OSI.
Please note that this is not an introductory course to any of these
topics!

Instructor

Marshall T.~Rose works on OSI protocols and network management.
He is the principle implementator of the ISO Development Environment (ISODE),
an openly available implementation of the upper layers of the OSI protocol
suite.

He has sought to actually deploy OSI services.  For example, while
Principal Scientist at Performance Systems International, he championed
a White Pages pilot project, a large, distributed information service
involving administration by multiple organizations, based on the OSI
Directory Service (X.500).  The service is the first production-quality
field test of the OSI Directory (containing over 150,000 entries), and
the first large scale production application of OSI technology on top of
the Internet suite of protocols.

During the Internet network management wars, with Keith McCloghrie, he
co-authored the Internet-standard SMI and MIB documents.  He also chaired the
committee which produced the document defining the network management
protocol, the SNMP.

He is the author of **The Open Book: A Practical Perspective on OSI**,
a professional text discussing OSI in both theory and practice,
and **The Simple Book: An Introduction to Management of TCP/IP-based
internets**, a professional text discussing the Internet-standard
Network Management Framework, both published by Prentice-hall.

Rose received the Ph.D. degree in Information and Computer Science from the
University of California, Irvine, in 1984.  His subscriptions to **The
Atlantic** and **Rolling Stone Magazine** are in good standing.