rfc1709.txt

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Network Working Group                                         J. Gargano
Request for Comments: 1709               University of California, Davis
FYI: 26                                                        D. Wasley
Category: Informational               University of California, Berkeley
                                                           November 1994


                    K-12 Internetworking Guidelines

Status Of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
   this memo is unlimited.

I.  Introduction

   Many organizations concerned with K-12 educational issues and the
   planning for the use of technology recognize the value of data
   communications throughout the educational system.  State sponsored
   documents such as the California Department of Education's "Strategic
   Plan for Information Technology" recommend the planning of voice,
   video and data networks to support learning and educational
   administration, but they do not provide specific technical direction.

   The institutions that built the Internet and connected early in its
   development are early adopters of technology, with technical staff
   dedicated to the planning for and implementation of leading edge
   technology.  The K-12 community traditionally has not had this level
   of staffing available for telecommunications planning.  This document
   is intended to bridge that gap and provides a recommended technical
   direction, an introduction to the role the Internet now plays in K-12
   education and technical guidelines for building a campus data
   communications infrastructure that provides internetworking services
   and connections to the Internet.

   For a more general introduction to the Internet and its applications
   and uses, the reader is referred to any of the references listed in
   the following RFCs:

   1392    "Internet Users' Glossary" (also FYI 18)
   1432    "Recent Internet Books"
   1462    "What is the Internet" (also FYI 20)
   1463    "Introducing the Internet - A Short Bibliograpy of
           Introductory Internetworking on Readings for the Network
           Novice" (also FYI 19)





ISN Working Group                                               [Page 1]

RFC 1709            K-12 Internetworking Guidelines        November 1994


II.  Rationale for the Use of Internet Protocols

   In 1993, the Bank Street College of Education conducted a survey of
   550 educators who are actively involved in using telecommunications.
   (Honey, Margaret, Henriquez, Andres, "Telecommunications and K-12
   Educators: Findings from a National Survey," Bank Street College of
   Education, New York, NY, 1993.)  The survey looked at a wide variety
   of ways telecommunications technology is used in K-12 education.
   Their findings on Internet usage are summarized below.

        "Slightly less than half of these educators have access
        to the Internet, which is supplied most frequently by a
        university computer or educational service."

        "Internet services are used almost twice as often for
        professional activities as for student learning
        activities."

        "Sending e-mail is the most common use of the Internet,
        followed by accessing news and bulletin boards and gaining
        access to remote computers."

   The following chart shows the percentage of respondents that use each
   network application to support professional and student activities.


   Applications                    Professional             Student
                                   Activities              Activities

   Electronic mail                 91                      79

   News or bulletin board          63                      50

   Remote access to other          48                      32
   computers

   Database access                 36                      31

   File transfer                   34                      19


   The value of the Internet and its explosive growth are a direct
   result of the computer communications technology used on the network.
   The same network design principals and computer communications
   protocols (TCP/IP) used on the Internet can be used within a school
   district to build campuswide networks.  This is standard practice
   within higher education, and increasingly in K-12 schools as well.
   The benefits of the TCP/IP protocols are listed below.



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RFC 1709            K-12 Internetworking Guidelines        November 1994


   Ubiquity        TCP/IP is available on most, if not all, of the
                   computing platforms likely to be important for
                   instructional or administrative purposes.  TCP/IP
                   is available for the IBM compatible personal
                   computers (PCs) running DOS or Windows and all
                   versions of the Apple Macintosh.  TCP/IP is
                   standard on all UNIX-based systems and
                   workstations and most mainframe computers.

   Applications    TCP/IP supports many applications including, but
                   not limited to, electronic mail, file transfer,
                   interactive remote host access, database access, file
                   sharing and access to networked information
                   resources.  Programming and development expertise
                   is available from a wide variety of sources.

   Flexibility     TCP/IP is flexible, and new data transport
                   requirements can be incorporated easily.  It can
                   accommodate educational and administrative
                   applications equally well so that one set of network
                   cabling and one communications system may be
                   used in both the classroom and the office.

   Simplicity      TCP/IP is simple enough to run on low-end
                   computing platforms such as the Apple MacIntosh
                   and PCs while still providing efficient support for
                   large minicomputer and mainframe computing
                   platforms.  TCP/IP benefits from over twenty years
                   of refinement that has resulted in a large and
                   technically sophisticated environment.

   Capacity        TCP/IP supports local area network and wide area
                   network services within the entire range of network
                   data rates available today, from dial-up modem
                   speeds to gigabit speed experimental networks.
                   Communications can occur reliably among machines
                   across this entire range of speeds.

   Coexistence     TCP/IP can coexist successfully with other
                   networking architectures.  It is likely that offices
                   and classrooms that already have networks may be
                   using something other than TCP/IP.  Networks of
                   Apple Macintosh computers will probably be using
                   Appletalk; networks of PCs may be using any of the
                   common network operating systems such as Novell
                   Netware or LANManager.  Mainframe computers
                   may be using IBM's System Network Architecture
                   (SNA).  None of these proprietary protocols provides



ISN Working Group                                               [Page 3]

RFC 1709            K-12 Internetworking Guidelines        November 1994


                   broad connectivity on a global scale.  Recognizing
                   this, network technology vendors now provide many
                   means for building networks in which all of these
                   protocols can co-exist.

   Multimedia      TCP/IP networks can support voice, graphics and
                   video as part of teleconferencing and multimedia
                   applications.

   Compatibility   All of the major Universities, as well as
                   thousands of commercial and governmental
                   organizations use TCP/IP for their primary
                   communications services.  Commercial networks
                   such as Compuserve and America Online are also
                   connected to the Internet.  Many State Departments
                   of Education have sponsored statewide initiatives to
                   connect schools to the Internet and many K-12
                   school districts have connected based upon local
                   needs.

   NREN            The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 and
                   the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act
                   of 1992 provide the foundation for building the
                   national telecommunications infrastructure in
                   support of education and research.  The National
                   Research and Education Network (NREN) will be
                   based upon Internet technology.

   The benefits of internetworking technology have been demonstrated
   through twenty years of use by thousands of organizations.  This same
   experience also provides tested technical models for network design
   that can be adapted to K-12 campuswide networking in schools of all
   sizes and technical development.

III.  A Technical Model for School Networks

   The vision of a modern communications network serving all primary and
   secondary schools has been articulated and discussed in many forums.
   Many schools and a few school districts have implemented ad hoc
   network systems in response to their own perception of the importance
   of this resource.  This section of the Internet School Networking
   (ISN) Working Group RFC presents a standard network implementation
   model to assist county offices of education and school districts in
   their planning so that all such implementations will be compatible
   with each other and with national networking plans intended to enrich
   K-12 education.





ISN Working Group                                               [Page 4]

RFC 1709            K-12 Internetworking Guidelines        November 1994


   The future goal of "an integrated voice, data, and video network
   extending to every classroom" is exciting, but so far from what
   exists today that the investment in time and dollars required to
   realize such a goal will be greater than most districts can muster in
   the near term.  We suggest that a great deal can be done immediately,
   with relatively few dollars, to provide modern communications systems
   in and between all schools around the nation.

   Our present goal is to define a highly functional, homogeneous, and
   well supported network system that could interconnect all K-12
   schools and district, county, and statewide offices and that will
   enable teachers and administrators to begin to use new communications
   tools and network-based information resources.  It takes considerable
   time to adapt curricula and other programs to take full advantage of
   new technology.  Through the use of standard models for
   implementation of current network technologies, schools can begin
   this process now.

   Many states have already developed communications services for their
   schools.  A notable example is Texas which provides terminal access
   to central information resources from every classroom over a
   statewide network.  Modem-accessible systems are available in many
   states that serve to encourage teachers to become familiar with
   network resources and capabilities.  Although modem-access may be the
   only practical option today in some areas, it always will be limited
   in functionality and/or capacity.  In anticipation of emerging and
   future bandwidth intensive information resource applications and the
   functionality that they will require, we believe it is essential to
   provide direct network access to the National Research and Education
   Network (NREN) Internet (The Internet is a "network of networks" that
   interconnects institutions of higher education, research labs,
   government agencies, and a rapidly growing number of technology and
   information vendors.) from computers in every classroom.

   The Internet communication protocols, commonly known as "TCP/IP," are
   the "glue" that will allow all computers to communicate.  As noted
   above, software that implements Internet protocols is available for
   all modern computers.  These protocols support a very wide variety of
   applications, from electronic messaging to client/server data access.
   The use of Internet protocols will ensure that all networked
   computers will have direct access to the vast range of existing
   information and education resources on the Internet, as well as to
   the emerging National Information Infrastructure.