Attendees: Tony Johnson, Les Cottrell, Dennis Wisinski,
Edgar Whipple, Laurie Gennari, Paul Raines, Charlotte Hee,
Bebo White, John Halperin, Ruth McDunn, Charlotte Hee, Harvey Galic,
JOan Winters, Brian Lalor, Neal Chatterjee
Agenda:
- 24x7 Web Server Support
- Security Policy Update
- Alta Vista
- Netscape Server
- New CERN Server
- Web Database Products
- AOB
24x7 Web Server Support
Harvey Galic pointed out that SPIRES gets a lot of his early mornings (Pacific
time). He showed that 5am-6am they get 410 searches, 6-7am 502 searches.
7-8am 698 searches, 8-9am 757 searches. Pat asked Edgar what his plans are
for Web 24x7 support. Currently it is a best effort. A major cause of
crashes is due to CGI scripts, so we will need to review what to do with
scripts (e.g. review them, check for robustness, security). In case of
unscheduled outages the distributed interconnectivity of services makes it
difficult to know exactly what affects what. For scheduled outages how does
one notify the right people of how they will be affected. Today this
is mainly done by email to comp-out and netnews.
It was agreed:
- John & Tony will look at known CGI script problems.
- Tony will produce a document for the coordinators to help them identify
what may be causing Web problems.
- Talk to Sandra Crawford about how to bring the Web server onto 24 hour
by 7 day support. This includes what we mean by support and what level of
availability is required.
- Pat will work with Edgar to provide a first pass at the support policy for
the central Web server.
Security Policy Update
Now approved by the ADCCs. We will post it with a warning that it is currently
under implementation. The question came up as towhether we should block
port 80 ASAP. Edgar will come up with a plan ASAP for implementation of
the security policy, at which time we will decide when to block
port 80.
Alta Vista
The Alta Vista Forum server has died due to bugs in the software. These have
been reported to DEC. Dennis is pursuing
Netscape Server
To be worked on.
New CERN Server
Was backed out due to incompatibilities with hypernews. John pointed out that
we could run the new CERN server for the regular Web and the old CERN server
for hypernews. The new CERN server allows you to write your own HTTP status
messages.
Web Database Products
Anrea & Co have considered Oracle's, Livewire and Net Dynamics.
Oracle's is not available (supposed to available March 1997)
yet. Bob Boeninger put up Livewire but is is difficult to use. Net Dynamics
looks nice but is costly (~$30K for site charging by 15 concurrent user, and
3 designers).
AOB
There is a new Frontpage beta client for the Mac that can be downloaded from
Microsoft.
Les Cottrell
SLAC
WWW-Tech Mtg
2/12/97