Applications Area Director(s): o Russ Hobby: rdhobby@ucdavis.edu o Erik Huizer: huizer@surfnet.nl Area Summary reported by Russ Hobby/UC Davis At the end of the Columbus meeting it was announced by the IAB that Brewster Kahle from Wais, Inc. will replace Russ Hobby as a co-Director of the Applications Area. Applications Area Directorate (APPLES) The Applications Area Directorate met for the first time at the Columbus IETF. The Directorate will help the Area Directors on architectural matters and reviews. Members of the Directorate are appointed by the Area Directors. Nominations can be made by the Application Area working group Chairs. The Directorate can be reached at and currently consists of the following individuals: o Ned Freed o John Klensin o Steve Kille o Christian Huitema o Russ Hobby The first task of the directorate is to produce a document on an email architecture. This document will be used as a basis for discussion on this topic in the Applications Area. After the document has evolved to a state of maximum consensus, working groups will be created to focus on specific issues indicated by the Architecture Document. The directorate also discussed the general problem of character sets and noted that they will be a recurring problem in many applications. The directorate will develop an initial plan for dealing with character sets in applications and start a working group to address this problem in detail. The directorate noted the increasing difficulty for working groups to make forward progress. This appears to be due to the increasing size and interest in the IETF and the Internet in general. More people, more discussions, more time. In the future, the Applications Area desires an initial draft document be written by interested parties before a working group is formed. While the final result of the working group may look nothing like the initial document, the initial document will provide focus for discussion. There are four working groups jointly chartered under the User Services 1 Area and Applications Area. They are: o Integrated Directory Services (IDS) o Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR) o Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) o Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS) For a report on these Working Groups see the User Services Area Report. There were two BOFs held that reside under the Network Management Area, but are strongly related to the Applications Area. They are: o Mail and Directory Management (MADMAN) o IFIP Electronic Mail Management (EMAILMGT) For a report on these BOFs see the Network Management Area Report. Conference Control BOF (CONFCTRL) Now that video, audio and shared applications are starting to flow over the network, there is a need for the setup and management of conference sessions. This BOF focused on various aspects of controlling distributed network conferences. Several people related their current work and plans were made for coordinating work through an IETF working group. Interactive Mail Access Protocol BOF (IMAP) The BOF discussed efforts to update and standardize IMAP. Mark Crispin has a new draft of IMAP that will be submitted as an Internet-Draft. A sample working group charter was reviewed. Internet Message Extensions Working Group (822EXT) The RFC822 Message Extensions Working Group met for two sessions to review and approve the revised MIME protocol for Draft Standard. With several clarifications and with the removal of several optional features, agreed to previously on the ietf-822 mailing list, MIME was so approved. The Working Group has completed its Charter as currently written and is ready to conclude. There is significant MIME related work which still needs to be addressed and for which new working groups should be formed. Among the work are MIME extensions such as the definition of a content-integrity-check and content-disposition body headers to add general functionality to MIME. There are expected to be a large number of new content-types defined, most of which should be developed in specific single-topic working groups. 2 MHS-DS Working Group (MHSDS) The MHS-DS Working Group focused on its Long Bud pilot project at this IETF meeting. Since the last meeting, some basic infrastructure has been established for supporting X.400 routing via the Internet X.500 directory service. By the next IETF, the Group plans to expand this infrastructure and generate some tools such that we can demonstrate that the pilot project is functional and that the directory is actually being used by some MTAs to support message routing. To achieve this goal, specific action items were assigned to Working Group members. Specifically, two important documents will be written and circulated, and specific individuals will begin implementing important software tools. The documents will clearly define the purpose of the pilot project, outline its short and long-term goals, specify its relationship to the existing Internet X.400 community, and indicate how to participate in the pilot. The tools will facilitate the integration of the pilot with the existing Internet X.400 infrastructure. In addition to working on issues relating to the Long Bud pilot project, we assigned action items for progressing three Internet-Drafts as RFCs. In addition, one or two minor technical issues were resolved which will be reflected in the next revision of the Internet-Drafts. MIME-MHS Interworking Working Group (MIMEMHS) There are three draft RFCs in progress: 1. Mapping between X.400 and RFC822 Message Bodies. 2. Equivalences between 1988 X.400 and RFC822 Message Bodies. 3. HARPOON (Rules for downgrading messages from X.400/88 to X.400/84 when MIME content-types are present). The first two have been stable for some time with no outstanding issues. The third (HARPOON) had some open issues and, until now, had never been discussed at an IETF meeting. During the meeting, the HARPOON proposal was presented, the issues were resolved, and it was agreed that all three documents would be forwarded to the IESG for approval as Proposed Standards. Minimal OSI Upper-Layers Working Group (THINOSI) The THINOSI Working Group met for the first time as a working group. Nearly all the time was spent reviewing the first draft of the ``bytestream cookbook''. Various changes were agreed upon, generally applying a principle of keeping things simple (and thin) for this first case, but ensuring interworking with ``full'' OSI implementations would be feasible. It will be highly desirable to achieve alignment with the ``minimal OSI'' profile being developed in OIW and EWOS. Identifying the range of applications to be supported is central to achieving this 3 alignment - this should include at least DAP and X.400 P& if at all possible. Office Document Architecture Working Group (ODA) Over 1992 an international profile FOD26 was being approved. An industrial consortium was preparing an ODA toolkit which becomes available 2Q 1993. Pending the availability of this toolkit and the new profile, there has been little availability of new ODA implementations, though this will change during the third quarter of 1993. The Working Group had previously expressed interest only in piloting with real products. In view of their non-availability at present, there was little interest in the Group. It is recommended that the Working Group conclude. If there is further interest when products become available it can be revived, though this is unlikely to happen before November 1993. OSI Directory Services Working Group (OSIDS) o The Charter was discussed and several work items were defined. o There is strong consensus on the need for continuation of this Group. o Volunteers for editing papers are hard to find. o Schema management issue is still not resolved. This remains a major worry. o A new approach to presenting Quality of data in the Directory was discussed. It will be put on paper and aligned with earlier ideas of the Group. o Representation of registration, IP-addressing and Network Information was discussed. A series of Internet-Drafts will be produced on this issue. o Representation of documents and related information in the Directory was discussed based on four draft inputs. TELNET Working Group (TELNET) The Working Group continued work on the Environment Option, Authentication and Encryption. HP's Telnet MPX proposal for session multiplexing was discussed. Most people were impressed with the results but felt that, in general, session multiplexing did not belong in the Telnet layer. Perhaps this should be addressed as a TCP extension. In the meantime, the Working Group suggested that HP submit the protocol to be an Experimental RFC. There was enthusiastic discussion by a group of people who want to work on improving TN3270 to better match the current SNA environment. The TELNET Working Group felt that the TN3270 work would be outside the 4 scope of their Group and work should be done as a separate working group. X.400 Operations Working Group (X400OPS) o Finalized Documents: - Requirements for participation in the GO-MHS Community for Informational RFC. - Routing coordination for X.400 services as Experimental Standard. - Evaluation of ADMDs as Informational RFC. - Assertion of the ADMD=IMX for Proposed Standard. - X.400 use of extended character sets for Proposed Standard. o Work Left To Do: - Automatic email distribution of tables. - X.400 - RFC822 mapping authorities. 5