09/12/96

On September 12th, 1996 the DCE Users Group of Michiganmet at the University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI).The meeting was sponsored by the "Client/Server Exchange", A joint partnership of IBM and the University of Michigan promoting open, client/server computing.

Hosting the meeting was Janani Janakiraman of UofM/CITI. Brad Smart - Nortel, volunteered to take the minutes.

The agenda of the meeting was as follows:

• Janani: New Focus for this group
• Bob Riddle: U-M CITI - Big 10 Joint Project
• Jonathan Chinitz (Intellisoft, Chairman DCE SIG) :
  -- DCE/Snare, A transparent security gateway for TCP/IP apps.
  

Attendees:

Kenn Dany - Chrysler, Michael Leekofsky - Wayne State, Al Johnson - Chrysler,Brad Smart - Northern Telecom, Alex F. - Chrysler, Tish Lehman - U/M, Neda Gholizadeh - U/M, Lisa Wyatt- EDS, Tim Campbell - EDS, Gary Pirkola - UM/ITD,Dave Detlefs --UM/ITD, Craig Berkowitz - Transarc, Ian Smart - Ford, Steve Freeman - IBM, Ik Kim - Chrysler, Mary Pearce - U/M, Zoe Gurevich -- U/M, Krishnam Subraminam - Ford, Bob Brandt - Ford, John Kroll - Ford, Janani Janakiraman - UM-CITI.

The next meeting will be on November 14, 1996.
Tentative Agenda:

• OSF RI DCE related activities ...... Tom Sanfillipo, OSF RI
  
• Praseidium ..... Hewlett Packard

Proceedings:

New Focus

The first order of business was the new focus of the group. This group is currently sponsored by Client Server Exchange. At the end of this year CSE will end. Should this group dissolve or change focus and continue?

Craig Berowitz suggested that the group increase its scope to include other client server technologies in addition to DCE. Lisa Wyatt suggested that we focus on DCE + WEB + OOT. There was some additional discussion, but no conclusions. Janani suggested that this will be decided at the November 14 meeting. Please send your feedback on this to Janani at <dugm-request@citi.umich.edu>.

Big 10 Joint Projects

Bob Riddle spoke on the Big 10 Joint Projects. A Web page for these projects is at:http://usfs2as.us.ohio-state.edu/big10/btjp.htm.Bob explained a little about the project team. He said it primarily is a cross institutional team of technical "gadflys" looking at technology for the future. Bob talked about three separate projects involving DCE:

Not Speedy

• This is a project for securely transmitting student transcripts between universities. It requires a DCE cell at each campus.

Secure Web

• The purpose of this project is to develop a secure web architecture for transaction processing on the web utilizing Gradient's DCE-Web and SDG products, Netscape SSL, NCSA Basic Authentication, Kerberos, and other technologies.

A CIC (Committee on Institutional Co-operation) project for library resource access by authorized users. I did not catch the name of this project.

• Is there a way to leverage investments between institutional libraries?
• Make traditional materials available electronically - but enforce user authentication - and licensing (charge for services).These could be electronic copies of journals, etc. (use your imagination).
• No assumptions can be made about the browser on the client or the "content provider" (server). Neither can be required to have DCE runtimes installed.
• How to identify that a person is authorized for access without having to duplicate all user ids in every domain. Basically, has someone "vouched" for you? Local credentials will actually be mapped into a very small number (1-3) of credentials at the client end and placed into a special "EPAC" for transmission. DCE will only be required at the outer "edges" of the participating networks, not on the actual browser or the actual "content provider" (although nothing precludes its being there either).
• Some of this went over my head. There seemed to be a lot of interest, and there was Q&A with Bob and a lot of discussion. Basically, the goal is to prove:
• An "Inter-Institutional Authentication Solution".
• There is a CIC projects page at " http://www.cic.net/projects.html ".

DCE/Snare - Jonathan Chinitz <jec@isoft.com>

IntelliSoft Corporation was founded in 1992. It is a DCE focused company. Up until this year their business has been DCE training and consulting. 1996 marks the introduction of their DCE product line. IntelliSoft's web page is http://www.isoft.com/.

DCE/Snare™

• A Transparent Security Framework for TCP/IP and Legacy Applications
• TCP/IP has become the de facto standard
• TCP/IP is not a secure protocol.
• Corporations require scaleable, reliable, interoperable security framework.
• DCE/Snare™ allows existing TCP/IP applications to leverage DCE security framework with 100% transparency.
• Provides capability for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
• Requires absolutely no application changes.
• Jonathan went into a lot of detail on architecture of the product. The slides will be made available electronically at this web site. The white paper which was provided to attendees can be found at:http://www.tiac.net/users/jec/snarewp/snarewp1/snarewp1-contents.html.
• There was a lively Q&A following the presentation with no time left to discuss DCE/Sleuth™. Handouts were provided.

DCE Users Group of Michigan (DUGM)
Author: Janani Janakiraman
Revised: 10/14/96
URL: http://www.citi.umich.edu/dugm