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rfc:rfc369

Network Working Group J. Pickens Request for Comments: 369 UCSB COMPUTER SYSTEMS LABORATORY NIC: 6801 25 July 1972

                   EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES
                    January through March, 1972

ABSTRACT

 RFC #302, Exercising the ARPANET, described a group organized at UCSB
 to investigate the network resources.  The stated goals were to
 develop problem solving capability and, in the process, produce
 helpful criticism for the nodes investigated.  This report summarizes
 the group's experiences and finding and suggests network refinements
 to improve user satisfaction.
 The group's encounter with ARPANET included many unexpected problems
 and difficulties.  Most worthy of mention are software heterogeneity
 and inadequate documentation.
 From this first hand experience the group has formulated criteria for
 ease in use of network resources.  The report presents these criteria
 as well as suggestions for improved documentation, better utilization
 of current resources, and a plea for regular usage of inter-personal
 communications facilities.  Individual sites have been graded on
 reliability, response, and friendliness.  Comments regarding specific
 sites have been included to help in adapting to the needs of
 uninitiated users.
 Despite problems encountered in the initial nine week exposure,
 enough was learned of ARPANET resources to enable the group to write
 useful software.  Programs to effect automatic login, file transfer,
 and interprocess communication have been written and put to use.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

    BACKGROUND
       Approach.......................................  2
       Goals..........................................  2
    THE SURVEY
       Extent and Duration............................  3
       Statistical Results............................  3
    CRITIQUE OF ARPANET SERVICES
       A Site Measurement Parameter, "Friendliness"...  4
       Software Critique..............................  5
       Community Spirit...............................  5
       Economics......................................  6

Pickens [Page 1] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

    SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT
       Software.......................................  6
       Community Spirit...............................  7
    CONCLUSION........................................  8
    APPENDIX A
       Sample of Survey Questionnaire................   9
    APPENDIX B
       Grades and Comments for Specifics Sites.......  10

BACKGROUND

Approach

 The test group was organized from a group of Electrical Engineering
 graduate students in Computer Science.  Within the group was
 represented a substantial degree of experience with high level
 languages and time sharing systems (such as the Dartmouth BASIC and
 UCSB mathematical graphics systems).  However, no one had experience
 in exercising ARPANET, and few knew what resources the ARPANET
 represented.  After two weeks of presentation from Jim White and
 Roland Bryan, the group was turned loose for open experimentation.
 Enthusiasm was high as each group managed to locate and decode the
 login procedures for various nodes and began to learn how to use the
 available resources.  In fact, half of the weekly seminar time was
 devoted to sharing learned experiences and procedures.  Interest,
 however, lagged some as the quarter progressed due to poor network
 site reliability, few active nodes, and hard to locate documentation
 (only five out of fourteen students remained active after the first
 quarter).

Goals

 The primary goal of the group was to learn how to use and to evaluate
 network resources.  It was decided to be fair but direct in
 evaluating each site, including UCSB.  Since the level of networking
 experience was initially low, the evaluation criteria was dictated
 mostly by gut feelings.
 At the conclusion of the first quarter's effort, a questionnaire was
 given to the students (a sample of which is included in Appendix A).

Pickens [Page 2] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

 The group response is summarized for overall performance below.  Data
 for individual sites is presented in Appendix B. Some of the
 questions asked were the following:
    Estimate percentage of time spent in various trouble states
    Estimate the mean time to failure
    Describe personal experience with the network
    Suggest improvements
    Grade the investigated nodes on the factors of reliability,
    response, and friendliness

THE SURVEY

Extent and Duration

 During the period in which the major effort was expended (January-
 March, 1972) relatively few nodes were active.  Experimentation,
 therefore, concentrated most heavily on UCSB, BBN-TENEX, MIT-MULTICS,
 and SRI-ARC.  Minor investigation was performed of HARV-10, UCLA-NMC,
 and UCLA-CCN.  The remaining sites were either inactive or
 inaccessible for lack of documentation.
 Activity included the following:
    Game playing (e.g., chess, life, and doctor at BBN-TENEX)
    Text and file manipulation (e.g., COL, NLS, TECO)
    Inter-personal communication (LINK and SNDMSG)
    On line compilation (e.g., TENEX FORTRAN, MULTICS PL/1).

Statistical Results

 Figure 1 below summarizes the overall response to the questionnaire
 given to the group after nine weeks experience with the ARPANET.
 Individual exposure varied from ten to sixty hours, and twelve
 students responded.  Each survey item is presented as a group average
 (sum/12) and is supplemented with a low and a high value to show the
 range of response.  The questions were slightly ambiguous in that
 they failed to distinguish between node inactivity and local NCP
 inactivity.  Also, some figures may reflect individual students'
 inadequacy in understanding local and foreign procedures.
 Nevertheless, the data is interesting as a look into uninitiated user
 experience.

Pickens [Page 3] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

Figure 1

 Survey Item                                Average    Low    High
 % of time unable to log in any site         12,4%     2%     25%
 % of time unable to log into desired site   35.7      20     75
 % of time foreign site suddenly crashes     13        5      50
 % of time local site suddenly crashes       12.5      5      25
 % of time trouble free operation            35        0      80
 Approximate mean-time-between-failure       1h       5 min   2 hrs
 TOTAL TIME INVESTED                         32.3hrs  10 hrs  60 hrs
 First to be noted is that considering the entire ARPANET complex, no
 one approximated the mean-time-between-failure at more than two
 hours!  Secondly, the average time for "trouble free" operation was
 35%, a figure untenable for regular user usage.  In all fairness,
 however, some sites were much more "trouble free" than others, and
 individuals tend to define the term by the level of their own
 competence and experience, thus explaining the high of 80% and the
 low of 0%.

CRITIQUE OF ARPANET SERVICES

A Site Measurement Parameter, Friendliness

 Much discussed by the group was the concept of "friendliness",
 especially as it applies to on-line systems.  The following
 definition of friendliness is offered, based on direct network
 experience.
 Friendliness is:
    Concise, complete, and available documentation.
    Easy system usage (e.g., minimum numbers of keys for login
    system and job status readily available).
    Easy to reach help both on-line people and on-line files.
    No messages overkill (as sometimes unexpectedly occurs
    during login).
    Reasonable reliability and response time
    Concise, but informative error diagnostics
 The reader can probably think of more criteria, but these were the
 outstanding points of friendliness generated specifically by the
 group's experience.

Pickens [Page 4] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

Software Critique

 1) Initial experimentation concentrated on login procedures, canned
 scenarios (e.g., Abhay K. Bhushan's ARPANET scenario, RFC #254), game
 playing, and inter-personal communication.  As the effort continued,
 attempts were made to solve problems at various nodes.  One student,
 for example, programmed a Newton-Raphson root finder in PL/1 at MIT-
 MULTICS a blackbody problem in FORTRAN at BBN-TENEX and MIT-MULTICS,
 and in PL/1 at MIT-MULTICS; and a Discrete Fourier Transform in BASIC
 at BBN-TENEX.  It is the group's conclusion that small problems can
 be written in a half hour, entered and edited in fifteen minutes and
 debugged in another fifteen minutes.  For small problems the current
 ARPANET software resources are quite adequate.
 2) By far the most annoying difficulty was obtaining adequate
 documentation.  The resource notebook was found to be interesting but
 of limited utility.
 3) Information about each node's NCP, which was requested in
 February, 1972, is still unavailable.
 4) Significant variations in procedures were found in executing
 similar tasks on different nodes.  Consider, for example, the wide
 variety of text editors with unique file naming, editing, and
 manipulation commands (TENEX, TECO, COL, NLS...).  Consider, too, the
 wide variety of compilation, load and execute procedures (RJE for
 UCSB edit, save, compile, save, load, execute for TENEX systems).
 Even more disparate are the "executive level" commands with all their
 varieties (TENEX's "Control-C", UCLA-NMC's "X", UCSB's "RESET" ...
 all of which return to the "top-lvel").  Software heterogeneity is a
 stumbling block to the user.
 5) Residents of large nodes are hard pressed to find problems which
 should be solved outside of the local environment.  With UCSB's
 mathematical graphics on-line system and direct access to batch, the
 group experienced apprehensive twinges spending hours on the network
 solving problems which could be solved in minutes locally.

Community Spirit

 1) Individuals sometimes got the impression (erroneously it is hoped)
 that some researchers in the ARPA community had little desire to
 consult and/or help.  On the other hand, others bent over backwards
 in giving assistance.  The group had hoped for a more consistent
 response.

Pickens [Page 5] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

 2) There was difficulty in locating the source of responsibility for
 resource development.  It seemed to the seminar group that the
 complete distribution of responsibility negated incentive to locate,
 document, and create useful network resources.

Economics

 Network economics at levels above as well as the communications
 level, are a big user problem, e.g., if distributed computing is
 allowed, then distributed billing is a necessity.  It is frustrating
 to watch accounts randomly die at different nodes and have to spend
 weeks in monetary renovation.  This problem was experienced with a
 site which (a) randomly changed passwords and then (b) eliminated its
 free account.  Also there is a problem with double connect charges,
 e.g., $4.00 per hour at UCSB to sign on to BBN-TENEX at $8.00 per
 hour, which totals to $12.00 per hour!

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

 In spite of the many difficulties and frustrations, the class was
 impressed with the potential of ARPANET and produced several
 suggestions for improvement.

Software

 1) Working groups should be organized to define problems which
 require the use of a significant set of the network resources.
 2) The ARPANET represents a great resource already, even with TELNET
 as the only operational protocol.  More effort should be put in
 utilization of what currently exists.  Two illustrative examples
 follow:
    a) By combining the resources represented by UCSB's OLS and UCSB's
       TELNET, user programs were created to sign on automatically to
       the various sites.  Thus a network user need know only the
       sign-on procedure for UCSB; all settings of local/remote echo,
       character/line at a time, upper/lower case, etc. are taken care
       of automatically by the pre-written user programs.
    b) Combining the resources of TELNET PROTOCOL, PL/1 subroutine
       calls to the UCSB NCP, and 360 O/S multi-programming, a group
       of students created a batch-fed command language in PL/1 to
       communicate via telnet with foreign sites.  This program has
       been used successfully to investigate file transfer (NIC files
       are regularly copied on 8-1/2 x 11" white printer paper, and
       cards will soon be transferred to I4-TENEX), interprocess
       communication (a program was started at BBN-TENEX to be used as

Pickens [Page 6] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

       a subroutine locally; plans exist to initiate and monitor a
       chess game between BBN-TENEX and SU-AI), and data transfer
       (pre-formatted files of data have been transferred from UCLA-
       NMC to UCSB; UCLA-NMC will soon make available survey and
       measurement data ala TELNET PROTOCOL and through direct ICP!).
       Moe details of this program will be available in a future
       report.
 3) Documentation: A self-sufficient mini-user-manual (MINIMAN) should
 exist for each site and also for each function network wide, such as
 the FORTRAN compilers.  The MINIMAN would be similar in some respects
 to the resource notebook, but would be more oriented to helping the
 user run.  A site dependent MINIMAN would contain the following:
    Sign on procedure
    Simple file manipulation and editing commands
    Compilation and execution instructions
    TELNET access
    Brief (!) summary of programs and subroutines
    Direction on how to get help.
 Overall documentation of hardware, software and human resources
 should be more complete.  A documentation questionnaire should
 perhaps be circulated to authors of network programs, including the
 authors of Network Control Programs.  Merging information from the
 questionnaire with the Resource Notebook would facilitate the
 construction of a resource-location cross referenced index.  Such an
 index, perhaps on-line, would aid the network user in locating both
 software and hardware.  Whatever the final scheme, more planning is
 required to improve the user versus documentation battle.  The recent
 effort in this direction by Marshall D. Abrams entitled "Serving
 Remote Users on the ARPANET" (NIC 10606 RFC #364) is well timed and
 should be thoroughly considered.
 4) Finally, high level subroutine calls to each NCP, such as those
 offered by UCSB, should be universally available.

Community Spirit

 1) Networks have great though unexploited potential for inter-
 personal communication.  The communication resources (NIC's JOURNAL,
 NLS TENEX's SENDMSG, LINK; UCLA-NMC'S S_.MSG:C to name a few) are
 used today only by the proficient few, but should be utilized
 regularly by all.  Two symptoms of the current state of network
 communications from the group's point of view are that most
 procedural information was shared verbally in class and that many

Pickens [Page 7] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

 problems in locating documentation were solved by a last resort to
 that old standby, the telephone.  Improved communications will
 stimulate cooperation on joint projects.
 2) Names and interests of programmers/researchers willing to
 cooperate on joint projects and corresponding "blue sky" lists of
 software projects should be maintained.
 3) A network NEWS and NOTES should be published to inform and advise
 network participants of new resources and procedural modifications.
 Care must be taken, however, to keep this document concise (i.e.,
 avoid "message over-kill").  Perhaps a one page flier published
 weekly would meet this need.
 4) A network consulting center should be created, perhaps at the
 existing NIC, which would specialize in non-partisan matching of
 network users to network resources.
 5) A strong potential of the network is in Computer Science
 education.  Being exposed to many varieties of computer systems helps
 the student/user avoid the narrowness of experience and opinion which
 sometimes exists in centers of learning and computing.  In this
 respect the TIP user is probably the most benefited as, for little
 investment in local resources, many styles of systems are at his
 "finger-tips".  Yet even for service nodes, the network represents an
 inexpensive extension to local educational resources.  Current
 efforts to tap the educational value of ARPANET should be encouraged
 and extended.

CONCLUSION

 Existing site surveys measure and evaluate the performance of IMP
 hardware, host hardware, and host NCP programs, but little has been
 done to evaluate software performance.  The UCSB EE 210 graduate
 students attempted a primitive first pass evaluation of network
 resources in the period between January and March 1972.  Out of this
 effort have come definitions and criteria which would be useful to
 other individuals or agencies in developing evaluation schemes on the
 USER protocol level.  To this end, it is hoped that this report is
 useful.

Pickens [Page 8] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

APPENDIX A - Sample Student Questionnaire

ARPANET

 Grade Given:  A=Excellent                 Evaluation by:
               F=Bad
  1. ——————————————————————

SITE | RELIABILITY| RESPONSE | FRIENDLINESS | # HOURS | COMMENTS |

      |            |          |              |   USED   |          |
 -----|------------|----------|--------------|----------|----------|
      |            |          |              |          |          |
      |            |          |              |          |          |
                          ARPANET Evaluation
  1. - Indicate % of your sessions which were in the following categories:
            %               State
       +--------+-------------------------------------------+
       |        |  Unable to Log in to any site.            |
       |--------|-------------------------------------------|
       |        |  Unable to Log in to Desired site.        |
       |--------|-------------------------------------------|
       |        |  Foreign site suddenly crashes.           |
       |--------|-------------------------------------------|
       |        |  Local site crashes.                      |
       |--------|-------------------------------------------|
       |        |  Trouble free operation.                  |
       |--------|-------------------------------------------|
       |        |  Other                                    |
       +--------+-------------------------------------------+
  1. - Considering the performance of the local host, communication

network, and remote hosts, estimate the mean time to failure of

    ARPANET:
       Mean-Time-Between-Failure=___________
  1. - What was your total time invested in the ARPANET this quarter?

Total Time Invested=___

  1. - Describe your overall experience with the ARPANET (e.g., rise and

fall of personal interest factors involved, etc.).

  1. - What suggestions for changes or improvements or new capabilities

do you have to make to ARPANET hosts?

    (Use back side or other paper for these questions if necessary)

Pickens [Page 9] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

APPENDIX B - Specific Sites, Grades and Comments

 The following grades and comments are based on the two to four most
 representative questionnaire responses for each site.  Reliability,
 Response, and Friendliness are averaged grades and reflect subjective
 criticism.  Total Invested time is the sum total of the
 experimentation times reported by individual respondents.  It is
 hoped that future evaluations might be more specific and complete
 than the current efforts, yet the value of these initial efforts
 should not be underestimated.
 Grades:
       A=Excellent
       F=Bad
                                                  Total Time
 Site        Reliability  Response  Friendliness   Invested
 --------------------------------------------------------------
 BBN-TENEX       A            A         A             71 hours
 UCSB            B            B+        B-            36
 SRI-ARC         B            B         A             75
 HARV-10         C            A-        B             14
 UCLA-NMC        C-           C         D             14
 MIT-MULTICS     C-           D         C+            82
 --------------------------------------------------------------

Group Comments

    Site:  BBN-TENEX
       Very popular site
       Doctor, life and chess are stimulating and easy to use games
       Operators are very helpful
       Account problems kept site from being useful
       BASIC is well-written and easy to use
       FORTRAN is difficult to use because of the many steps to
       create-compile-execute.
    Site:  UCSB
       There are many problems with old key boards
       TELNET diagnostics are poor
       Online help files are sorely lacking
       Graphics are necessary for full utility
       Operator would not reload NCP when down
       List of TELNET site names are not current or complete

Pickens [Page 10] RFC 369 EVALUATION OF ARPANET SERVICES July 1972

    Site:  SRI-ARC
       Good documentation exists on NLS specifics, but general
         overview is lacking
       Inter-console link is convenient and often used.
       NLS-JOURNAL is useful but requires significant training
       Online perusal is difficult at terminals with small display faces.
    Site:  HARV-10
       Operator is readily available
       FORTRAN is straight forward
       Easy to use editor
       Couldn't get operator to put BASIC on.
    Site:  UCLA-NMC
       Self-explanatory ABACUS program is not self-explanatory
       System often disappears
       Hard to get past LOG ON* without TIMEOUT GOODBYE
       Message system is well organized.
    Site:  UCLA-CCN
       Always up, but nothing can be done (HELP is not supported)
       When RJS is executed, there is no response until correct signon
       procedure is entered (spurious death indication).
    Site:  MIT-MULTICS
       Response is very slow
       Automatic logout of autonomous user is excruciatingly painful
       Text editor is very easy and helpful
       PL/1 and FORTRAN are easy to use.
      [This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry]
   [into the online RFC archives by Hélène Morin, Viagénie 12/99]

Pickens [Page 11]

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