Conference 7.286::digital

Digital Confidential, For Internal Use Only            November 23, 1992


Electronic Mail (E-mail) at Supercomputing '92
A Post Conference Summary 

Drafted by:

   Gene Haag, Network Consultant, Digital Equipment Corporation
      Internet: [email protected]
   Greg Scott, Software Consultant, Digital Equipment Corporation
      Internet: [email protected]






Preface 

   Since the Supercomputing '92 (SC92) conference ended on 11/20/92 we have 
   received dozens of E-mail messages commenting on the E-mail services 
   provided at the conference. Also, during the actual conference we 
   received literally hundreds of comments from attendees about the E-mail 
   system. Those comments were extremely positive and provided excellent 
   insight in how to provide even better E-mail services at future large 
   scale conferences. We would like to personally thank each of the 
   attendees of SC92 who took the time to share their views with us.

   This report summarizes the input we received in the following order:

   1. Management Overview - brief overview of this entire report.
 
   2. Attendee Feedback - comments and quotes from conference attendees.
   
   3. Improvements for Future Conferences - recommendations that would make 
      	 any future E-mail services even better.

   4. How it All Came About - overview of how E-mail services came about for
      	 SC92 and key players.
   
   5. Overview of Technology Used - technical overview of hardware, 
      	 and software used during SC92.

** 6. Feedback on Digital - summarizes the views/comment conference 
   attendees provided us on Digital's strategies, products, and our	    
   corporate efforts at becoming more customer focused/driven.


** This section summarizes customer feedback and is the only section in this
   report that is Digital confidential. This section has been removed from 
   the copies of this report that were sent to conference attendees outside 
   of Digital.




1. Management Overview

   Over 1,200 SC92 attendees (about 1 in 4 of all attendees), from all over 
   the world, used the E-mail services that were available at the 
   conference. Those users generated many G-bytes of E-mail traffic with 
   the 50 devices (10 workstations and 40 terminals) available at the 
   conference.

   Our primary objectives for the E-mail systems were to provide a 
   production like environment that was simple, easy to use, and delivered a 
   very high degree of performance and reliability. Those objectives were 
   met with "off the shelf" hardware and software. Although the systems 
   required no code development, the primary user interfaces were customized 
   to simplify ease of use.  Several conference attendees actually used the 
   workstation X-Window displays to write C code and execute intense 
   graphical applications across the Internet during breaks in the show.

   Key factors to the success of E-mail at SC92 included:
   
   1. Close, cooperative efforts between Digital Equipment Corporation, the 
      Minnesota Supercomputing Center, and US West Enterprises. Each 
      provided hardware, software, and/or expertise.			    
   
   2. Digital's early and positive support in acquiring the necessary 
      equipment and providing the needed Digital technical support (us) to 
      help achieve the objectives of E-mail at SC92.
   
   3. The Minnesota Supercomputing Center (particularly John Weaver - Email: 
      [email protected]) for providing routing equipment, access to Domain Name 
      Servers, and consulting expertise. We worked closely with John and MSC 
      personnel throughout the design, implementation, and actual running of 
      the E-mail systems at the show. 
   
   4. US West Enterprises provided the necessary bandwidth (dedicated T1 
      link for the E-mail) to ensure the E-mail systems would perform up to 
      our expectations. At no time during the show did this link fail; nor 
      was it ever saturated.
    
   
2. Attendee Feedback

   Attendees obviously felt that E-mail provided an extremely valuable tool 
   at the conference. The number of attendees that used the E-mail systems, 
   and those that used it repeatedly, testify to it's usefulness. Some 
   comments we noted include:

   "...let me say this is by far the best operation I've seen set up yet at 
   this or any other conference."

   "This is great! The room had plenty of terminals and connections were 
   easy. Thanks for setting this up. I have never been to a conference where 
   I was able to login to remote computers without waiting in a line!"

   "You guys did and are doing a great job at SC92.  This is 100's of times 
   improved over last year."

   "I just wanted to thank you and all the others who provided the resources 
   for the email terminal room.  This is a wonderful idea."

   "Checking email from SC92 back to here has been a breeze. I ran my window 
   based xmailtool with surprisingly little degradation. Good work!"


3. Improvements for Future Conferences 

   We received several comments on how to improve upon the E-mail services 
   that were provided at SC92. In general, these improvements would be 
   relatively (technically speaking) easy to implement at any future show. 
   They include: 
      
   a. Dial-In capabilities from the hotels in the host city. Several       
      attendees expressed an interest in dialing in from their hotel rooms    
      with their laptops and performing E-mail functions locally. Some       
      locations around the world, surprising, do not support Dial-In. And       
      one gentleman did not have a credit card and did not want to run up a    
      huge phone bill.
   
   b. Provide an IBM compatible Windows/MS-DOS device with 3� and 5� 
      diskette drives. A number of attendees carried information they needed 
      to reference on MS-DOS PC diskettes. 
   
   c. Provide an Apple MACintosh PC with appropriate disk drives. For the same  
      reason as listed above. 
   
   d. Provide printing (dot matrix and laser) facilities for emergencies. On 
      several occasions attendees and speakers needed to retrieve information 
      from their home systems and required hardcopy at the show. 
   
   e. Coordinate building user accounts locally so that conference attendees
      can exchange E-mail with each other without using the Internet. This    
      one would be a little more work than the previous items but certainly    
      possible to do. Perhaps the biggest trick would be to provide a set of    
      E-mail user agents (and corresponding user interfaces) that most 
      attendees would be comfortable with. 

4. How it All Came About 

   E-mail for SC92 was kicked off with a memo to the Minneapolis/St. Paul 
   Digital sales office on 8/13/92 from John Weaver, Network and System 
   Administration Group, Minnesota Supercomputing Center, Minneapolis, 
   Minnesota. This memo requested that Digital provide equipment and 
   expertise to create an E-mail system that, from the users standpoint, was 
   as direct and simple as possible. This approach was required to prevent 
   any major problems and/or extensive training. 

   We decided early on that "off the shelf" products would be used and that 
   the software environment would be simple and all but invisible to the 
   users. The equipment was ordered early in September and arrived in it's 
   entirety at the Minnesota Supercomputing Center (MSC) on 11/2/92 - two 
   weeks before the show. MSC provided a room to stage, test, and customize 
   the environment. The vast majority of the work was accomplished in 15 
   hours. All the equipment was running and connections to the worldwide 
   Internet network were tested. 

   During the first hours of the show several minor keyboard mapping problems 
   arose (primarily <esc> and <ctrl> sequence issues) which were quickly 
   resolved through efforts of Digital, MSC and conference attendees. Everyone 
   wanted the E-mail system to run well so everyone pitched in. The system ran 
   nearly flawlessly for the remainder of the week. At the completion of the 
   conference we created backup tapes of the software. Re-creating such a 
   system for another conference (such as SC93 in Portland next year) would 
   be as they say ...a piece of cake!.

5. Overview of Technology Used 

   Hardware

   At SC92 E-mail and application displays were viewed from two hardware 
   platforms - simple character cell terminals and high performance 
   workstations (all donated by Digital). The terminals were standard ASCII 
   character cell devices (VT-420s). The workstations were in two flavors. 

   First, the VAXstation VLC devices (10 total) were used as X-Window 
   display devices. These workstations had 16MB of memory, internal disk 
   drives that were used for local paging and swapping, and 17 inch Sony 
   high resolution color monitors. Secondly, two VAXstation 4000/90 
   workstations were used as servers and backup load hosts for the VLCs and 
   the terminal servers. These servers were equipped with 64MB memory, 
   internal disk drives and CD ROMs, and high resolution Sony monitors.

   The VT420 terminals were connected to the network via Digital's DEChub 90 
   and DECserver 90TL products. The DECserver 90TL's were LAT/TELNET 
   terminal servers housed in the DEChub 90 cabinet. For SC92 the DEChub 90 
   contained 5 functioning 8 port DECserver 90TL terminal servers, 1 
   DECbridge 90 to filter various traffic, and 1 additional backup terminal 
   server (just in case). US West Communications donated the use of a 
   dedicated T1 link between the Minneapolis Convention Center and the 
   Minnesota Supercomputing Center. This link provided systems at the 
   SC92 show access to the worldwide Internet network. Internet access was 
   donated courtesy of the Minnesota Supercomputing Center. 

   Software

   The DECserver 90TL terminal servers were downline loadable from either of 
   the VAXstation 4000/90s with DECnet's MOP or TCP/IP's BOOTP protocols. 
   The terminal servers performed flawlessly throughout the show and never 
   required a re-boot. Users of the VT420 terminals connected to their home 
   systems directly through the use of TELNET protocols in the DECserver 
   90TLs.

   All of the workstations ran OpenVMS V5.5-2, DECwindows MOTIF V1.1, and a 
   TCP/IP "stack" donated by TGV Multinet, Inc. One of the VAXstation 
   4000/90s and all 10 of the VLC workstations were satellites in a VAXcluster 
   that was served by the remaining VAXstation 4000/90. Users of the satellite
   workstations were presented a customized environment based on DECwindows
   Motif V1.1 that isolated them from the underlying operating system.  

   We set up a single login account to use as a gateway to the Internet.  By 
   removing the local window manager from the autostart list, we allowed users 
   to start their own window managers on their home systems across the Internet 
   to display on the VLCs in Minneapolis.  This allowed a diverse group of
   people to operate in their home environments with which they were most
   comfortable.  In this environment, users accessed mail and X-Window 
   applications from around the world. 

   And to top it off: A good time was had by all!!!!!!!!!!

6. Feedback on Digital (this section Digital confidential)

   The seemingly tireles VMS vs UNIX debate came up early. At least 2 people 
   commented on Digital's "half-hearted" attempt to become a serious player 
   in the UNIX community. They said they were tired of their local Digital 
   people constantly trying to sell them "VAX, VMS, and DECnet," and stated 
   they were happy Digital chose to use real UNIX workstations in the E-mail 
   room. These same people expressed genuine surprise when we told them they 
   had been using a VAXcluster with VAXstation VLCs, running OpenVMS, for 
   their TCP/IP X-Window sessions across the Internet. Both agreed that we 
   proved OpenVMS can get along in the UNIX and Internet community just as 
   well as anybody's UNIX offering.

   We generated a lot of good will with a valuable and positive Digital 
   presence at the SC92 show. We used this good will to engage attendees in 
   discussions on Digital's strategies, products, and general directions. We 
   asked a series of questions to literally dozens of very senior personal from 
   all over the world representing major governments and industries. These 
   questions were asked in a very informal, comfortable environment. However, 
   we made sure that we worked a specific set of questions into each 
   conversation.

   Everyone we talked to stated that their computing environments contained 
   equipment from Digital. Some stated they had large amounts of Digital 
   hardware and software installed. The perception of Digital by nearly all 
   personnel we talked too had positive and negative aspects. The negative and
   comments were, we believe, honest and straight forward. They are summarized
   as follows:

   1. Question: What are your biggest concerns about Digital today?

      One comment that was echoed by nearly everyone we talked to was the
      "uncertainty that Digital may make too many cuts or the wrong cuts
      and won't be able to support me in future efforts". This message was
      loud and clear. The alarming aspect of this uncertainty is that nearly
      everyone made reference to "future" efforts. 

   The next two questions rarely had to be asked. They were generally worked 
   in as part of the continuing conversation from question #1.

   2. Question: In light of your response to Question 1 has Digital's 
      support for you been affected to date?

      Over � (more than 30) of the personnel said yes, and negatively. We 
      asked specifically in what areas. The responses covered about 
      everything: hardware, sales, software, etc. Over � of the individuals 
      could not name their current sales representative. About � of the 
      individuals stated they were not sure if they were experiencing any 
      changes in support. The rest said no, it's pretty much business as 
      usual.

   3. Question: Do you understand Digital's product and service strategies 
      and why our restructuring is necessary to achieve those strategies?

      Nearly everyone had heard about Alpha. However, outside of Alpha 
      there was a lot of confusion. Many laughed at the question. That hurt,
      but was understandable. Most of the people we talked to understood
      that some restructuring was necessary. However, most also felt a clear
      set of goals to be achieved by the restructuring was needed to help
      them plan where Digital will fit into their future.

   There were other less important questions that were asked. However, it 
   was plainly, and painfully, clear that this very influential set of 
   personnel from all over the world was/is utterly confused about were we 
   are going. Confused to the point where they are taking a wait and see 
   approach with Digital. Very few had timeframes when they could foresee an 
   end to this "wait and see" policy. As stockholders, this scares us.

   At no time did we feel these individuals were simply bashing Digital for 
   the sake of bashing. While we can't rule that out, it is our belief that 
   the vast majority were sincere and honest. The environment for these 
   discussions was one of openness and cooperation, not competitive or 
   confrontational. Nearly everyone stated, more than once, they wanted to 
   see Digital survive and grow. 

   Indeed, the single largest positive comment from the attendees was that 
   they felt Digital would survive the current challenges. They are just 
   concerned about what we will look like when the dust settles. 

    Re .-1
    
    What's the surprise in finding out that customers don't know what
    Digital's strategy is? Hell the people that know (assuming there is
    senior management that knows, I sometimes wonder) won't even share it
    with employees.
    
    Dave

    re:.1
    While I generally agree with the sentiments, I am a bit concerned about
    the way the "Folgers' switch" was pulled with the VMS Xterms.  I also a
    Unix-non-fan, and regularly use TCP/IP over VMS via Motif, including
    using DWDOS to bring up DECterms using DR-DOS on my home 386 from my
    office VAXstation.  But if I found out that Digital had pulled the wool
    over my eyes, and I were a Unix weenie, then I'd probably not say,
    "Hey, this VMS is pretty good stuff!  I think I'll buy some!"  Instead,
    I'd say, "Hey, these DEC guys are incorrigible!  They've even managed
    to put a front end on it that looks like Unix, and tried to fool us
    here at SC92!  How can we ever trust them for Unix support?"
    
    Of course, judging by the way the company's been acting lately, our
    Unix support may soon be no better than that.

    re. .3
    
    Nobody pulled the wool over anyone's eyes - intentional or otherwise.
    We handed out a brochure in the mailroom that decribed everything -
    H/W, S/W, Networking. The people that were surprised assumed they were
    using UNIX and never read the brochure. I don't believe ANYONE who was
    at the conference would tell you we tried to snooker them in any way. 
    
    NO ONE!
    
    Gene.

    re:.4
    Hey, no offense intended!
    
    From the way it was described, I didn't read it as being something in a
    brochure that people didn't believe.  Indeed if you say out front that
    it's VMS, then it's all the better.
    
    Just to prove the point, in places like this, I'd like to see both VMS
    and Unix mixed together.  With labels so people can tell them apart,
    but the labels placed so that they have to look.  "Hmmm, let me guess. 
    (looks under keyboard) Hey, it's VMS!"  OR something like that.
    
    I must have misunderstood the report...

    re .3 and .5
    
    Hang on a second - you need to remember why we did this whole thing in
    the first place!  
    
    The report was about the e-mail room, not a trade show booth.  The
    e-mail room was not a marketing showcase or marketing arena.  The
    marketing happened down on the trade show floor.  In our e-mail room, 
    people did real work on their systems back home without *any* marketing 
    hype.
    
    Gene and I and a bunch of other people provided a service for
    conference attendees to use.  We chose what products to use based on a
    bunch of important factors:
    
    	o what we could get
    	o what we knew how to make work
    	o what wouldn't cost an arm and a leg
    
    Nobody fooled anybody or pulled any wool over anyone's eyes.  We
    provided X-window and electronic mail access to the home systems of
    conference attendees.  This was a service, not a product demonstration. 
    The products we used to provide this service are really irrevelevent to
    a user, except for an academic discussion.
    
    - Greg Scott

I noticed you had no X terminals. Next time, take some VXT 2000's.
They require less configuration than workstations, and are cheaper.
We should show these, too. They are quite capable of talking TCP/IP.
You could have both virtual (uses InfoServer for paging) and physical
(no paging) terminals available.

    re. .7
    
    I'll defer the "why no X-terminals?" question to Greg Scott. He is the
    one who decided on the VLCs. He should be in here in a day or so. One
    of the overidding decisions on why the VLCs was that they could more
    easily be re-sold. At order time I knew of two local accounts that were
    interestd in buying some VLCs around the end of Nov.
    
    Gene.

    The reason I didn't want X terminals is, they are a real pig on their
    host.  You just can't put enough memory in your host to support a large
    number of X terminals.  And when your page file fills up, the whole
    world just dies.
    
    We had a VAXstation model 90 with 64 MB memory for a boot server.  With
    10 VXT X-terminals, each with one DECterm window, Motif Session Manager,
    and whatever else needed for a Motif session, we would have sucked down
    that 64 MB on the boot server really fast.  So to fix that, we would
    have needed more memory on the server - maybe something like 128 MB or
    so.  (OK, so maybe 128 MB is overkill at 8 MB per user times 10 users -
    but better a little too much memory then a little bit not enough!)  We
    also needed a backup server in case the primary failed.  So this would
    have needed more memory also.  
    
    CPU-wise, I don't believe we would have seen much gain in logins or
    performance by having an X terminal farm.  DECwindows login is an
    intense exercise.  My gut feel is, 10 of 'em concurrently would have
    put a good sized load even on a M90.  As it was, the VLCs we used were
    not speed demons for login, even with a bunch of sharable images
    installed in DECram.  (I probably didn't install enough of 'em.  It's
    amazing how many sharable images depend on how many other sharable images!)
    
    The compromise would have been to have 2 or 3 "hosts", along with maybe
    a spare, all LAVC'd together.  We could have spread the X terminal load
    over these hosts and had an acceptable configuration.  But now we would
    still have had to configure a cluster *and* we would have had the added
    complexity of the X-terminals.  I didn't spend any time doing
    performance modeling or detailed cost analysis, but my gut feel says
    the price for this configuration would have been close to the price of
    the config we chose.  
    
    - Greg

    
    >Sometimes DIGITAL SHINES!!
    
    reminds me of a dictionary definition...
    
    nova  n., pl.- vae or vas
    
    A variable star that suddenly becomes very bright and then dims over a
    period of time.
    

re Note 2250.1 by HAAG::HAAG:

>    All of the workstations ran OpenVMS V5.5-2, DECwindows MOTIF V1.1, and a 
>    TCP/IP "stack" donated by TGV Multinet, Inc. 

        I note that you used TGV Multinet's TCP/IP rather than
        Digital's own Ultrix Connection (UCX) (or whatever it's now
        called).

        What is the reason?  Does this weaken the message?

        Bob

    re .-1
    
>        I note that you used TGV Multinet's TCP/IP rather than
>        Digital's own Ultrix Connection (UCX) (or whatever it's now
>        called).

>        What is the reason?  Does this weaken the message?

    No, it strengthens the message.  There really *is* a third party market
    for products that run under OpenVMS.  Customers have a choice of
    several TCP/IP packages they can run under OpenVMS and each choice
    gives certain good capabilities.  That's what "OPEN" is all about.  We
    should be willing to try competing third party software products when
    we believe they have capability for a particular job that our product
    lacks.
    
    That's why we we didn't use UCX.  It didn't have all of the
    capabilities we needed for this job.  
    
    We chose TGV Multinet because it's really popular at the University of
    Minnesota and everyone there told us what a great product it is.  The
    Minnesota Supercomputer Center (MSC) hosted SC92, and MSC is affiliated
    with the University of Minnesota.
    
    Lots of people gold Gene and I that Multinet has all the goodies
    expected from a robust TCP/IP implementation and that they really work. 
    We found alot of 'em.  For example, TRACEROUTE.  This is a nifty little
    command to trace the path to any host on the internet.  Really useful
    when people can't get to their home systems - just TRACEROUTE over
    there and see where the hang-up is along the way.  We found problems on
    the east coast one day due to storms.  San Diego and southern
    California had problems another day.  We had some people from computer
    vendors who couldn't get in; found they had gateways that guard the
    entry into their internal networks just like we do.
    
    In general, when somebody couldn't get to their host system - and most 
    systems were 10-30 hops away - TRACEROUTE would prove that our end of
    things was OK and would help diagnose the problem between our end and
    the remote end.
    
    All in all, I think we made the right choice.
    
    - Greg

    My reply about X-terminals caught the attention of the VXT folks.  For
    the record, I didn't mean to slam their product.  I don't have any
    experience with the current products, the VXT2000s.  I've heard from
    several sources that our VXT2000s are great products and I believe
    that.  But I can't say first hand either way because I haven't had an
    opportunity to try one.
    
    My estimate of 8 MB per X-terminal user may have been a little high -
    OK, maybe a lot high.  I've never been one to skimp on memory or disk.
    After looking on my workstation at the processes required for an
    X-window session, it looks to me like it would take 3-5 MB per head.
    
    Anyway, without any experience with VXTs, and being the natural
    arch-conservative I am, I decided to use what I knew would work and
    work well.  I still think it was the right call.
    
    - Greg

    
    ....and how much more equipment could we sell if the sales people
    knew ALL our products?  Because they haven't "had the opportunity
    to try one".
    
    We could be selling "solutions", not just hardware!
    
    No offense to sales people, I know there are too many products for
    them to know everything....but then isn't that what RSS was supposed
    to be for?