Chairman's Message
The SIGCOMM '93 Symposium
Now that the paper submission deadline has passed, the program committee for the SIGCOMM '93 Sympo-
sium is hard at work reviewing more than 120 submissions to select approximately 25 papers for the confer-
ence program. This year's conference promises to maintain the very high standard that has made the annual
SIGCOMM Symposium the premier technical conference in the field of data communication and network-
ing.
The 1993 SIGCOMM Symposium will take place at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco during
the week of September 13-17. Tutorials will be offered on the first two days of the week; the conference
program will begin on Wednesday. The advance program will appear shortly after you receive this issue of
CCR. I hope to see many of you there!
CCR Guest Columns
The past winners of the annual SIGCOMM Award have generously agreed to contribute a series of brief
commentaries on the data communication and networking topics that they consider to be currently the most
interesting and important. These guest columns will begin with the next issue of CCR (July 1993).
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
I've just returned from the Third Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, which was held in Burl-
ingame, CA on March 9-12 under the joint sponsorship of SIGCOMM and two other ACM SIGs (on Com-
puters and Society (CAS) and Security, Audit, and Control (SAC)). It was one of the most interesting and
challenging conferences I've ever attended, and I encourage CCR readers to take a look at the conference
proceedings, which are available now from ACM. Portions of the conference (all of which was recorded)
will be broadcast by National Public Radio. Next year's CFP will be held in Chicago during the week of
March 22, 1994; for more information, send a note to the general chairman, Professor George Trubow, at
7gtrubow@jmls.edu.
Internet Talk Radio at SIGCOMM '93
Some of you will have seen the front-page article in the New York Times on Thursday, March 4, describing
a new enterprise called "Internet Talk Radio" ("Turning the Desktop PC into a Talk Radio Medium").
Internet Talk Radio will create professionally produced radio programs that show up on the Internet as audio
files, which can then be distributed and played by groups or individuals using a variety of techniques (in-
cluding multicasting and anonymous-FTP). A typical 30 minute program will occupy about 15 megabytes
of disk space. Plans are in the works for Internet Talk Radio to record portions of the SIGCOMM '93 Sym-
posium, including the SIGCOMM Award winner's keynote address. For more information about Internet
Talk Radio, send a note to info@radio.com.
Electronic Publishing
SIGGRAPH plans to publish a "non-print" special issue of its newsletter Computer Graphics in May 1993,
which will be available by electronic mail or anonymous-FTP from Internet host siggraph.org. The contents
of the issue will be available in several formats, including ASCII text, RTF (Microsoft's Rich Text Format),
and PostScript, with accompanying graphics in TIFF and possibly other formats (the graphics may be con-
verted to ASCII for electronic mail access). The expected publication date is May 1, after which
anonymous-FTP to siggraph.org should find the files /publications/May_93_online/README and /publica-
tions/May_93_online/contents; alternatively, an electronic mail message sent to archive-
server@siggraph.org with the subject "send May_93_online index" will return instructions on how to obtain
the files through e-mail. Since SIGCOMM is also interested in electronic publication, I would appreciate
feedback from members on the success of this experiment; send comments to sigcomm@bbn.com.
SIG Business Meetings at CSC '93
The annual SIG business meetings held during ACM's Computer Science Conference in Indianapolis in
February produced two results that are particularly significant for SIGCOMM. A Presidential Commission
established after last year's meetings made two recommendations that were accepted by the SIG Chairs and
the SIG Board. The first will change the way in which SIGs are charged for the services and support pro-
vided by ACM headquarters; the new "allocation" scheme will benefit SIGCOMM, which will be subject to
a much lower assessment in the future than it has paid for the past few years (see the Secretary/Treasurer's
report in this issue of CCR). The second will create several new types of "Special Interest Group" with char-
acteristics and viability criteria that are different from those of traditional SIGs (such as SIGCOMM). One of
the new SIG types is a "conference" SIG, for which the associated conference is the only criterion of viabil-
ity (the SIG is not required or expected to have members, dues, or a newsletter). The creation of new SIG
types is expected to provide much greater flexibility in organizing activities within ACM, all of which previ-
ously had to fit the same standard "SIG" mold.
Proposed New SIG on Multimedia
The organizers of the new Multimedia '93 conference (which will be held in conjunction with the
SIGGRAPH conference in Anaheim, CA, during the week of August 2-6) have been working with a "multi-
media steering committee" consisting of representatives from the six sponsoring SIGs (CHI, COMM,
GRAPH, IR, LINK, and OIS) to determine whether or not to create a new SIG for multimedia. Following
discussions at CSC '93 last month, it looks as though a new "conference SIG" (see the report of the SIG
business meetings at CSC '93, above) called SIGMULTI will be formed to oversee an annual Multimedia
conference and to serve as the focal point within ACM for researchers and others interested in the multidis-
ciplinary field of multimedia. Questions about the Multimedia conference should be sent to con-
trib.multimedia93@siggraph.org; about the proposed SIGMULTI, to the steering committee at
mmsc@fox.cs.vt.edu.
Standards Status
This issue of CCR contains the semi-annual "Status of OSI (and related) Standards" listing. Beginning with
the next issue of CCR (July), we will alternate the current "Status" list with summary reports of other
standards-development activities, including those of the Internet and the IEEE. Suggestions for information
that would be useful to include in these reports should be sent to sigcomm@bbn.com.
ACM Network Services Information
"ACM-NS Info Flash" is an electronic bulletin announcing information services available from ACM Net-
work Services. New issues of Info Flash will be released as services become available. All issues will be
available electronically from acm.org via the standard ACM-NS tools: anonymous ftp, Gopher and Mail-
serv.
To subscribe to ACM-NS Info Flash, send email to info_flashrequest@acm.org with SUBSCRIBE
INFO_FLASH as the text of the message (the subject field will be ignored). News items to be announced in
Info Flash or comments about Info Flash may be mailed to info_flash@acm.org.
Transactions on Networking
The first issue of the new bi-monthly IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking was published on schedule in
February; the table of contents appears elsewhere in this issue of CCR. A one-year subscription (6 issues) to
ToN is available to individuals for only $22. To start a subscription, or to get more information about the
Transactions, send an electronic mail message to "acmhelp@acmvm" (Bitnet) or "acmhelp%acmvm.bitnet =
@cunyvm.cuny.edu" (Internet), or call the ACM Member Services department at +1 212 626 0500 (fax +1
212 944 1318).
Internet Society Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security
On February 11-12, 1993, the Privacy and Security Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force
hosted a workshop on Network and Distributed System Security in San Diego. The response to the work-
shop was outstanding; the organizers had expected about 50 people to participate, but ended up with more
than 160. The success of this workshop has led to a proposal for the Internet Society to sponsor an annual
Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security, the first of which will be held at the Catamaran
Hotel in San Diego on February 3-4, 1994. The Symposium will bring together people who are building
software and hardware to provide network or distributed system security services; it is intended for those
who are interested in the practical aspects of security, rather than theory. The deadline for the submission of
papers and panel/session proposals is August 16; they may be sent by electronic mail to the program chair-
men (Robert Shirey and Russ Housley) at 1994symposium@smiley.mitre.org. For more information, includ-
ing a copy of the official call for papers, contact the general chairman, Dan Nessett, at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (nessett@llnl.gov).
Lyman Chapin.
Secretary/Treasurer's Report
Financial Summary
SIGCOMM is in a healthy financial situation, especially compared to some of the other ACM Special Inter-
est Groups. We have a fund balance over $210,000 and have maintained a small net surplus even in these
"economic hard times". All SIGs have been asked by ACM ( since Fiscal Year 92 ) to produce budgets with
a net surplus and to finance any special projects out of the revenues generated in that year, without using
funds in the fund balance. I have written conservative budgets, with negative forecasts of revenue and high
forecasts of expense for special projects.
Membership Summary
Membership in ACM SIGCOMM has been dropping a small amount every month over the last year. We can
be encouraged that the loss is at a rate consistent with the other SIGs. However, that is not sufficient. The
executive committee is paying close attention to feedback from members. For example see the Survey Re-
sults described elsewhere in this issue. In fact two new programs announced in the Chairman's Message in
this issue are a direct result of your feedback in the Survey. Other ideas and suggestions are still in the dis-
cussion phase. Please send any additional feedback to sigcomm@bbn.com.
One very important source of new members is you: if you have a colleague or student down the hall who
would benefit from a SIGCOMM membership, please refer them to the membership form in the back of this
issue.
The following membership numbers are totals for the month of June, which is the end of ACM's fiscal year:
June 1991 5108 ( total = voting/assoc + student + non-ACM + subscribers )
June 1992 4916 ( FY92 actuals )
June 1993 4650 ( FY 93 projected, from January 93 actuals )
June 1994 4450 ( from the conservative FY94 budget )
Annual Allocation Charges from Headquarters
ACM Headquarters provides each SIG with a number of services, ranging from corporate services ( all
ACM subunits share the costs of the ACM corporation ) to SIG specific services ( publications assistance,
financial assistance, plus the guidance of our SIGCOMM Program Director, Pat McCarren ).
In the last two years as Secretary/Treasurer I have seen the algorithm for allocation of Headquarters Support
change twice. Originally, charges to the SIGs were built into different services, and thus spread across many
different expense categories. Then, for FY92 and FY93 the SIGs were charged based on an allocation for-
mula of usage of ACM services: for example page counts, number of conferences supported, and amount of
time required from SIG Services were all included. This latest algorithm is unique in that SIGs are charged
only on revenues received.
The new algorithm was proposed by the Presidential Commission on SIGs, chaired by John White, the pre-
vious ACM president. And it was approved by the SIG chairs on February 16, 1993 at the SIG Business
Meeting. Thus, for FY94 SIGCOMM will be charged an allocation expense calculated at 20% of our mem-
bership and publications revenue plus 9% of our conference revenue. To give you a sense of how these
strategies differ, our allocation expense with the new scheme saves SIGCOMM $22,962.
Financial Comparison ( in $ thousand )
(draft)
FY92 Actuals FY93 Projected FY94 Budget
(conservative)
REVENUE
Dues $100.2 $98.0 $92.4
Subscribers 14.5 12.0 11.1
Extra Pubs 9.3 13.0 17.9
Interest 12.1 15.0 12.8
Conference Net 13.3 31.0 0.0
EXPENSES
Publications 80.0 81.0 72.9
ACM Allocation 45.6 51.1 38.4
Travel/admin 11.0 8.0 11.0
Special Projects 5.1 19.0 8.9
Miscellaneous 3.1 3.4 3.0
NET 4.6 6.5 0.0
Fund Balance as of 6/30 $216.4 $222.9 $222.9
Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan