Network Working Group                                           Yong Xie
Internet-Draft                                              Myung J. Lee
                                                        Tarek N. Saadawi
                                            The City College of New York
                                                         August 20, 1996


   Sink-Assisted Routing Protocol (SARP) For General IP Multicasting

                        <draft-yong-sarp-00.txt>

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
   documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
   and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.

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   ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).


Abstract

   This Internet-Draft proposes a routing protocol for  supporting
   real-time multicast service over the Internet. The work is
   motivated by the fact that the existing multicast routing protocols
   are designed under the assumption of symmetric paths, which is not
   necessarily true especially in the real-time applications.
   The essence of the proposed protocol is using the inter-subnet
   Routing Guide Message (RGM) flows generated by sink-subnets
   to form  multicast spanning trees.

   The underlying algorithms enable source and intermediate nodes
   to construct minimal end-to-end delay paths to sink-subnets
   based on the path and the session information conveyed by
   incident RGM-flows.







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1. Introduction

   The primary function of a multicast routing protocol is to select a
   subset of the Internet topology to form the group-specific spanning
   trees over which multicast datagrams are delivered from their
   sources to their sinks. Practically, a multipoint-to-multipoint tree
   is constructed by multiple point-to-multipoint subtrees. Multicast
   routers need to look up the actual source or the sinks of a
   particular datagram in order to make the forwarding decisions.

   There have been a number of multicast routing protocols and
   associated algorithms proposed by the Internet community. A
   typical example is the Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol
   (DVMRP) [4] which employs the Reverse Path Multicast (RPM) algorithm
   in the latest mrouted version 3.5 and some vender implementations. As
   well surveyed by [3], RPM is an enhancement to the Reverse Path
   Broadcast (RPB) and the Truncated Reverse Path Broadcasting (TRPB).

   RPM defines a way to form the source-rooted spanning trees. The
   distance back to the source of datagrams is the main factor in
   determining the forwarding paths. It assumes the symmetricity of
   paths which becomes a fundamental limitation of entire "reverse
   optimal path" routing algorithm family, including RPB, TRPB, and
   RPM. In fact, a shortest path does not necessarily guarantee
   a shortest reverse path because of the possibility that a
   full-duplex link could have substantially imbalanced loads on each
   direction. Furthermore, using fixed "metrics" (e.g., hop count) to
   compare alternative routes is inappropriate for the situations where
   routes need to be chosen based on real-time parameters
   (e.g., real-time delay)(see [2]). These two problems, symmetric path
   assumption and fixed metric, poses significant challenge for any IP
   multicast routing protocols should they support real-time applications.
   The proposed Sink-Assisted Routing Protocol (SARP) is an attempt to
   address aforementioned two issues. That is, SARP focuses on
   computing the minimal-delay path from sources to sinks using
   a real-time delay metric. In contrast,  DVMRP is derived from
   the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and concerned with computing
   the shortest path, in terms of fixed metrics, back to the source of a
   multicast datagram. In short, SARP is to form sink-rooted rather than
   source-rooted spanning trees using the inter-gateway primitive called
   the Routing Guide Message (RGM).

   In order to search for potential multicast source groups, it is
   assumed that the sink-subnet periodically generates and multicasts
   RGMs to every possible subnets within a limited scope of the
   Internet. A source-subnet starts multicasting datagrams out only
   after intercepting the corresponding RGM flow(s). The information
   conveyed by a RGM includes a list of the requested multicast groups
   on behalf of the entire sink-subnet, and the path status as well.




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   RGMs are to be forwarded using a typical Reverse Path Broadcast
   algorithm, except that the optimal path is determined based on the
   measure of Reverse-Relative-Delay (RRD). In other words, RGMs are
   routed along the paths whose reverse paths are optimal in term of
   real-time delay back to the sink-subnets.

   Currently, multicast service is considered connectionless, due to the
   genetic property of IP. Conventional higher layer handshake-type
   setup of point-to-point connection is often too expensive for most
   real-time and multicast applications. Also, flow control and error
   correction could be really complicated when maintaining a dynamic
   multicast session group. Nevertheless, there is an emerging demand
   for a quality assured IP multicast service, which requires certain
   degree of connectivity between sources and sinks.

   Towards that end, SARP is also intended to introduce the concept
   of "loose-IP-connectivity". That is, the logical connectivity between
   two IP end-points can be loosely defined by the continuity of
   end-to-end control-message-flow, while using the basic IP support.
   In SARP, multicast spanning tree is completely specified by the
   incidence relations between the RGM-flows and the source nodes.
   The sink-nodes send periodic RGMs as requests, wait for data arrival,
   and regard the data arrival as receiving the natural acknowledgement,
   while a source-node is aware of the existence of the sink-nodes and
   maintains transmission only if RGM-flows are engaged, giving a sense
   of data connection. We strongly believe that, as far as multicasting
   and routing are part of the IP functions, it is necessary to extend
   IP to provide an unacknowledged connection-oriented service.
   First, such service is beneficial to IP multicasting in which the
   point-to-point addressing is impossible and the data connection is
   more important than the logical connection. Second, it is capable of
   conjoining the routing and the resource reservation, which are
   naturally two inseparable issues.

   Throughout this draft, the term "IP-entity" is used generally to cover
   a single network or a subnet, in which all hosts share the same subnet
   IP address. It has at least one full-duplex link to its neighbor.
   The access point of an IP-entity to the link is called the port.
   The abstraction of the Internet can be considered as a planar graph
   with a set of IP-entities as the nodes, and pairs of the directed
   edges connecting adjacent nodes. Thus, we shall frequently call
   the IP entity as a node, for example, the source-node, the sink-node,
   and the intermediate-node.


2. Model of Operation

   Multicast routing within an entity is transparent to IP. That means,
   as long as a datagram remains on a subnet, it can reach any sink




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   application within the subnet using the technology that is specific
   to that subnetwork. For example, on the Ethernet, multicasting is
   handled by mapping a class-D address into  an Ethernet address. On
   connection-oriented networks, such as an ATM network, it can be
   done by using some signaling mechanism to establish the host-to-host
   or host-to-gateway Virtual Circuits (VCs).
   As with the task of IP multicast routing being primarily a matter of
   finding gateways among networks, the proposed protocol is concerned
   only with routing multicast datagrams across an internetwork,
   along the minimal-delay paths from source-subnets to sink-subnets.

   SARP depends on the participations of the sinks to establish the
   group-specific multicast spanning trees.  According the standardized
   host implementation for supporting IP multicasting [1], incoming
   multicast IP datagrams are received by upper-layer protocol modules
   using the same "Receive IP" operation as for normal unicast datagram,
   an application process need to explicitly ask its IP module to join
   the group through a service interface. In addition, SARP assumes
   that the process claim itself as the "sink" by opening the file
   descriptor in a read or read/write mode. The host IP module must be
   extended to inform the multicast session information to the subnet-
   router, so that the routing protocol module is able to summarize the
   demands of sub-hosts into the per subnet sink-group-table. As long as
   the table is not empty, RGMs are generated.


3. Algorithms for SARP

3.1. Measuring the Reverse-Relative-Delay of a Path

   Considering the real-time properties of most multicast applications,
   it is desirable that the distance between two nodes is quantified in
   term of the real-time delay. The absolute delay, however, is costly
   to measure since network clocks usually are not accurately
   synchronized enough for real-time interactive applications.
   Moreover, the current network synchronization protocols (e.g., [5])
   assume symmetric network paths and use the round-trip-delay as an
   approximation.  We call the delay measured by referencing
   asynchronous clocks the "relative-delay". It is the real-time delay
   measure with a clock-offset error in it.

   In a best-effort service packet-switching internetwork, "optimal" is
   quite a relative term. When a source/intermediate-node intercepts
   only one RGM-flow from a given sink-node, the route of the incoming RGM-
   flow is certainly the only and therefore the optimal route to forward
   datagrams. In case when multiple RGM-flows incident with a source-
   node are rooted at the same sink-node but via different routes, the
   decision of the optimal route back to the sink-node can be reached by
   simply comparing relative-delays of distinct paths. This is possible




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   because that incurred relative-delays result in the same amount of
   the clock-offset for any path between a pair of nodes.

   To measure the relative-delay of a path, each node in the Internet
   that participates in the routing protocol is assumed to send periodic
   delay-probe-packets to every possible adjacent node. Thus, the
   receiving node is able to compute the directional One-Hop-Relative-
   Delays (OHRDs) from (not to) its neighbors. It is required that each
   node maintains an OHRD cache which has entries for each neighbor. No
   further routine information exchange or propagation among routing
   entities is required by the protocol. This ensures the algorithm
   against from slow-convergence. RGM is designed to convey the "run-
   time" relative-delay information across the internetwork.

   Let d(i,i+1) represent the absolute-delay from node i to adjacent
   node i+1. The OHRD d'(i,i+1) can be measured by sending a probe
   IP datagram from i to i+1, whose departure time t(i) and arrival
   time t(i+1) are time-stamped according to the clocks at i and i+1,
   respectively. d'(i,i+1) actually consists of two components:

         d'(i,i+1) = d(i,i+1) + o(i,i+1)

   where o(i,i+1) denotes the clock-offset between i and i+1.

   Obviously, a single trial of the delay measurement would be
   insufficient to represent the statistics of the path. It is assumed
   that the OHRD database maintained by each node is updated with
   moving-averages of instantaneous measures. The measure interval and
   the averaging window size are critical to both sensibility and
   stability of the routing protocol. The basic criterion is that, OHRD
   database is expected to reflect link statistics, while minimal
   computation is most desirable. Further studies are required for
   determination of those parameters.  From now on, we shall refer
   d'(i,i+1) as the measure of the mean OHRD from node i to its neighbor
   i+1. It is recorded by node i+1, and available for reference at any
   time instant.

   When a RGM traverses along a multi-hop path from node j to node i,
   the relative delay of the reverse path, denoted as D'(i,j), can be
   calculated by adding the OHRD of every hop along the path. Among
   other information, each RGM-datagram carries a Reverse-Relative-Delay
   (RRD) parameter, which is the sum of the OHRDs added every time
   before the RGM crossing the hop. Thus, the receiving node is able to
   exam the reverse path by simply reading the value of the RRD field:

         D'(i,j) = d'(j-1,j) + d'(j-2,j-1) + ... + d'(i-1,i)
                 = d(j-1,j) + d(j-2,j-1)+ ...+ d(i-1,i) + o(i,j)

   where o(i,j) is the clock-offset between node i and node j. It is




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   equal to the sum of the clock-offset components of all OHRDs along
   the path. Let c(i) represent the value of node-i's clock at a given
   time instance, o(i,j) is always independent of the intermediate
   clocks, and the path as well:

         o(i,j) = c(i) - c(j)
                = c(i) - c(i+1) + c(i+1) - c(i+2) + ... + c(j-1) - c(j)
                = o(i,i+1) + o(i+1, i+2) + ... + o(j-1, j)

   As shown in the example topology below, two RGM-flows originating at
   node-A destinating at node-D via B and C. If D'(D,B,A) < D'(D,C,A),
   the port to B is considered by node-D as the optimal route to forward
   datagrams of certain multicast group to sink-node A, vice versa.


            B---------D    D'(D,B,A) = d'(B,A) + d'(D,B)
           /         /               = d(B,A) + o(B,A) + d(D,B) + o(D,B)
          /         /                = D(D,B,A) + o(D,A)
         A---------C       D'(D,C,A) = D(D,C,A) + o(D,A)



3.2. Forming the Sink-Rooted Spanning Trees

   As mentioned in the foregoing, RGMs are used to search for multicast
   source-node groups on behalf of multicast sink-node groups, and
   to convey the information about the end-to-end RRD measures. The IP
   header of a RGM datagram contains the sink-subnet-id as its Source
   Address, and a well-known multicast address in the Destination
   Address field particularly assigned to the routing protocol. The
   initial Time-To-Live (TTL) parameter is set to a number greater than
   1 and less than 255 to limit the sink-rooted tree to span within a
   given scope. RGMs also carry other information which will be
   discussed later.

   RGMs are to be forwarded using the typical Reverse Path Broadcasting
   (RPB) algorithm. It is assumed that each node that has more than one
   port maintains a session database, called the "RGM-flow table", to
   cache the information about every incidence RGM-flow. An entry is
   created for a sink-node in the cache upon receiving the first RGM
   from that node. Successive arrivals from the same sink-node will make
   the entry stay effective.

   For a node on the edge of the Internet, i.e., it has only one port
   connecting to the outside world, it only has to record the union of
   the multicast-group-lists of all incoming RGMs. The actual source
   addresses of RGMs are not interested because the node ought to send
   datagrams through the only port any way, if it is the source node of





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   the requested multicast group.

   In case that an intermediate/source node has direct connections with
   multiple adjacent nodes, it possibly intercepts multiple RGM-flows
   sourced by the same sink-node but via different routes. Nevertheless
   , only one RGM flow from a given sink-node is accepted and possibly
   forwarded to form the segment of the sink-rooted spanning tree. In
   the RGM-flow table, an incoming RGM-flow is represented by the
   (SinkNode, InPort) pair. RRD is recorded for the respective RGM-flow
   whenever a RGM arrives. Any other ports that are currently not being
   contacted by the same sink-node are considered having RRD value of
   infinite.

   Suppose that node-A has three neighboring nodes, it receives RGMs
   rooted at sink-subnet S (134.74.60.0) from port p0 and port p2,
   respectively. According to the RRD measurement, the route via p0 is
   the optimal reverse path back to node-S. The RGMs arriving at p0 are
   to be forwarded through ports p1 and p2 to the downstream neighbors
   (with respect to RGM-flows), whereas, those arriving at p1 are
   discarded. The RGM-flow table of node-A should look like as follows:


      SinkNode     InPort     RRD   FlowTTL
      --------------------------------------
      134.74.60.0    p0      12345     2
                     p1      inf       /
                     p2      23456     3


   As shown in the table, each (SinkNode, InPort) pair also has a Flow
   Time-To-Live (FlowTTL) counter to monitor the continuity of the RGM-
   flow. FlowTTLs will be decreased by one every unit time, and reset
   after receiving a successive RGM.  The RRD value of a sub-entry is
   set to infinite if no more RGM arriving at the port and the FlowTTL
   has expired. The entry for a given SinkNode is cleaned up only if all
   sub-entries have infinite RRD values. It is mandatory that the
   interval between any sink-node sending two consecutive RGMs along the
   same outgoing path must have a protocol-specific up-bound, in order
   to quantify the continuity of the RGM-flow. Since packet-loss and
   delay-jitter are expected in the Internet, the duration of FlowTTL is
   supposed to cover several such maximal RGM-intervals.

   In summary, a source/intermediate node records the RRD information
   for each incoming RGM-flow, and only forwards RGMs that arrive via
   the optimal reverse path (with smallest RRD for a given sink-node)
   to downstream neighbors through all ports except the incoming port.
   Any RGM-flow will be terminated by the receiving node if the TTLs of
   RGM-datagrams are exhausted, and/or the reverse path of RGMs is not
   considered as the optimal reverse path back to their origins.





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3.3. Forwarding Multicast Datagrams to Sink-Subnets

   Once the sink-rooted trees are formed, delivery of datagrams seems
   straight-forward. The Forwarding-Table of a source/intermediate node
   is derived from its RGM-flow-table. It contains entries for each
   multicast group that is interested by at least one active sink-node.
   Each multicast group in the table is mapped to a set of ports that
   represents the union of the optimal routes to every sink-node within
   the group. Thus, the basic forwarding rule is that, any node that has
   either local-generated or received datagrams will forward them to
   selected downstream neighbors according to the MulticastGroup-to-
   OutPorts map. However, multiple sink-rooted trees might conjoin each
   other so that the aggregated spanning graph contains circuits. In
   order to form the group-specific spanning tree, circuits must be
   broken.


   #----------------------------------------------------------------#
   |                                                                |
   |  +++++p0      +++++                  G-E      G E              |
   |  + G @--------@ E @-------           |        |  \             |
   |  ++@++      p1+++++p0     \          A-B-D    A-B-D            |
   |  p1|                       \           |        |              |
   |    |p1                      \ p0     F-C (A)  F-C (B)(C)(F)    |
   |  ++@++      p1+++++      p1++@++                               |
   |  + A @--------@ B @--------@ D +     G-E      G-E     G-E      |
   |  +++++p0      ++@++p0      +++++        \     |  \    |  \     |
   |               p2|                    A-B-D    A B-D   A-B D    |
   |                 |p0                    |        |       |      |
   |  +++++p0    p1++@++                  F-C (D)  F-C (E) F-C (G)  |
   |  + F @--------@ C +                                            |
   |  +++++        +++++                 the tree rooted at a given |
   |                                     sink-node                  |
   |                                                                |
   |                                     (*) represents sink node.  |
   #----------------------------------------------------------------#



   The above figure illustrates an example topology and a possible
   set of trees rooted at every potential sink-node in the graph.
   Suppose that (A,C,G) is a set of active sink-nodes of a given
   multicast group 239.10.10.1, accordingly, the forwarding-table of
   each node should contain information as follows:









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                MulticastGroup  OutPorts  SinkNodes
                -----------------------------------
      node-A:   239.10.10.1     p0        C
                                p1        G

      node-B:   239.10.10.1     p1        A,G
                                p2        C

      node-C:   239.10.10.1     p0        A,G

      node-D:   239.10.10.1     p1        A,C

      node-E:   239.10.10.1     p0        C
                                p1        A,G

      node-F:   239.10.10.1     p0        A,C,G

   The problem arises if node-E serves as one of the sources of the
   multicast group, while the branches of tree(A) and tree(C) intersect
   at source-node E from different directions. According to the basic
   forwarding rule, datagrams are to be multicasted out through both
   port p0 and port p1 of node-E. Upon receiving datagrams from its
   port p0, intermediate-node B is supposed to further forward them
   via port p1 and port p2, since both routes are optimal from B's
   view point to sink-nodes A/G and C, respectively. Similarly, node-A
   considers its OutPort p0 as the optimal route to sink-node C.
   Obviously, this is a case of "mutual confusion", in which both node-A
   and node-B will forward and receive duplicated datagrams to and from
   each other.

   The basic cause of such error is that, the sink-rooted routing
   algorithm works, so far, in a manner that is totally transparent to
   the source address of the multicast datagram. The protocol has defined
   the mechanisms to enable an intermediate-node to explicitly determine
   the downstream optimal route to a given sink-node. However, the node
   has no idea whether an upstream path is also optimal for the same
   sink-node. It is evident that the "mutual confusion" problem exists
   between a pair of sink/intermediate nodes on a circuit, only because
   they are receiving datagrams from a particular source/intermediate
   node that forks multiple data-flows by duplicating datagrams. In the
   previous example, only node A and node B are confused when receiving
   datagrams sourced by node E. Any node other than node-E will not
   cause the same problem.

   The simplest solution to the circuit-problem is that, any node that
   receives identical datagrams from different neighbors always forward
   the early copy of a datagram and discards the later one. In so doing,
   any intermediate-node that has multiple OutPorts for a given





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   multicast group has to check the source address and the sequence
   number of every incoming datagram. Furthermore, the node may send
   messages to suggest its neighbors not to forward datagrams from a
   particular source-node. The link that has such messages on both
   directions must be the one causing the trouble. The problem is that,
   in addition to the processing overhead and the potential "flip-flop"
   situation, link-waste is inevitable.

   Since any source/intermedia node knows exactly who are expecting the
   data and binds them to corresponding OutPorts, a deterministic
   solution is suggested: If a source/intermediate node "splits" the
   data-flow, i.e., forwards a single incoming data-flow to more than
   one OutPort, it is responsible for specifying the sink-information
   regarding the departure-port in each outgoing datagram. The
   information can be a list of sink-nodes either exclusive or inclusive
   of the OutPort. Also, a receiving intermediate-node will check and
   possibly re-specify the applicable sink information only if it is the
   next splitting point of the data-flow. The proposed forwarding-algorithm
   can be expressed as the following pseudo-code, in which inclusive
   sink-specification is assumed.

      while ( receiving datagram D(G) of group G from InPort(D) ) {
         if ( G has entry in forwarding-table && TTL(D) != 0 ) {
            outport[] = OutPorts(D) - InPort(D);
            dup = number of entries in outport[];
            if ( dup == 0 )
               discard D;
            else if ( dup == 1) {
               TTL(D) = TTL(D) -1;
               forward D through outport[0]; /* only active port */
            }
            else {
               for (i=0; i<dup; i++) {
                  if ( sinks(D) && sinks(output[i]) ) {
                     sinks(D) = sinks(output[i]);
                     TTL(D) = TTL(D) -1;
                     forward D through outport[i];
                  }
               }
            }
         } else
            discard D;
      }

   Where, sinks(D) is the inclusive sink-node list coming with datagram
   D, and sinks(output[i]) is the set of sink-nodes bound to a given
   OutPort of multicast group G. Discarding datagram is only for the
   purpose of resolving possible protocol error. In the steady state,





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   the algorithm guarantees that any node intercepts data-flows only
   from the optimal upstream paths. Therefore, delivery paths of
   multicast datagrams are guaranteed end-to-end optimal. An additional
   advantage is that any source/intermediate node is capable of
   rejecting a particular sink-node for the purpose of security or
   resource-reservation.


4. Discussion

   One of the limitations of SARP is the additional overhead for
   processing RGMs. With the basic algorithm of SARP, the size
   of system memory required by the protocol is proportional to the
   number of active sink-nodes. Any node are potentially saturated by
   RGM-flows, especially when routing is taking place in an internetwork
   with a regular mesh topology.

   The protocol is expected to be further improved in terms of the
   protocol efficiency and scalability with other supplementary means.
   Since the multicast spanning tree is completely specified by the
   incidence relations between RGM-flows and nodes, the optimalization
   can be achieved by reducing unnecessary or redundant forwarding of
   RGMs. An immediate justification to be made is using RPM algorithm
   instead of RPB algorithm to forward RGMs. Moreover, an intermediate-
   node that interconnects two disjoined sub-topology of the Internet,
   such as the node on the multicast backbone, can be used to merge
   RGM-flows from both directions to represent two groups of sink-nodes.

   The current focus of SARP is to find minimal-delay paths with respect
   to every sink-node, and the overall network load for a given multicast
   group is not necessarily optimized. We reconize that realization of
   minimal network load is equivalent to finding minimal RGM-flow
   pattern. This issue will also remain under further study.

Reference

   [1] Steve Deering, "Host Extensions for IP Multicasting," RFC1112,
       August 1989.

   [2] Hedrick, C., "Routing Information Protocol," RFC 1058, Rutgers
       University, June 1988.

   [3] C. Semeria, T. Maufer, "Introduce to IP Multicast Routing,"
       draft-rfced-info-semeria-00.txt, 3Comy Corporation, March 1996.

   [4] D. Waitzman, C. Partridge, and S. Deering, "Distance Vector
       Multicast Routing Protocol," RFC1057, November 1988.

   [5] D. Mills, "Internet Time Synchronization: The Network Time
       Protocol," IEEE Trans. on Commun., Vol.39, Oct. 1991.



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Author's Address

    Yong Xie
    Phone: 212-650-7261
    Email: xyong@ee-mail.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

    Myung J. Lee
    Phone: 212-650-7260
    Email: mjlee@ee-mail.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

    Tarek N. Saadawi
    Phone: 212-650-7263
    Email: eetns@ee-mail.engr.ccny.cuny.edu


    Department of Electrical Engineering
    City University of New York, City College
    New York, NY 10031



































Expires February 20, 1997                                   [Page 12]