CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by April Marine/NASA NAIC Minutes of the Network Information Services Infrastructure Working Group (NISI) Thanks, once again, to Marsha Perrott for providing her notes. These minutes follow the agenda items. Review of Where We Are The group agreed they were in Houston. Actually, for benefit of newbies, of which there were several, the group reviewed the Amsterdam meeting (since even several oldbies had trouble making that one!). The discussion primarily centered on how the group got into writing its current document. It was mentioned how in Amsterdam there was agreement to split the one diagram illustrating NIC relationships into three views: US-centric; AP-centric; Euro-centric. Review ``Regional'' NIC Diagrams Does the group agree on these? Discussion was defered. Plan Final Touches on Relationships Document The diagrams David Conrad from APNIC had shared were shown. Much discussion *again* on the problems with diagraming (even though the scope of what the group was trying to picture had been narrowed). It was agreed to punt the diagrams and just go with short descriptions on the types of NICs that exist. A registration hierarchy diagram will be included, and more a more complete discussion on the relationship and distinctions between registration services and information services within a NIC will take place. It is possible that a diagram for Europe will be included (but that remains to be seen). April will try to come up with this with input from the list. Debbie Hamilton, David Conrad, and Scott Paisley will help review. Discuss Need/Plan to Update RFC 1302/FYI 12 There was basic agreement that this document, ``Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure,'' should be updated. Specific volunteers were April, Debbie, and Dave Livingston. It is not clear that a date was put on this, but the Chair would like to be pretty far along by the March IETF in Seattle. Summarize Next Steps and Action Items o Finish NICs document by Seattle (April, Debbie, David Conrad) o Start update of RFC 1302 by Seattle (April, Debbie, Dave Livingston) NISI Scope/Liaison Discussion This was the fun part. Basically, it seems like for the last few sessions, NISI has been operating on more of a ``top down'' approach than a grassroots ``bottom up'' approach, and that is not the IETF way. So, the new attendees were asked what they had expected when they walked in, and what had not been talked about that they felt were issues for which they wanted a forum. This was all by way of scoping out what NISI, as a forum for NICs, was best suited for. One idea has been to fold NISI and start up another working group whenever the surge seems to warrant it. Here are some of the types of things people mentioned they were looking for: o Role models of ``good'' NICs including: - Guidelines for how to put things online - How to set services up in a unified way o Methods of collecting and disseminating information o A list of NIC addresses and contact information and ideas of what they had online o More action on the NIC Forum list o Guidelines for setting up registration services at a NIC o Methods of measuring quality of service (except evidently that term can't be used for some political reason :-) o Cooperating to maintain the information mesh Some of these ideas are being worked. The NIC Profiles (registry of NICs) idea came up again, so some discussion was had on how to best keep that up to date and make it more accessible. The InterNIC has had some ideas on how to collect and offer this information. Susan Calcari, Pat Smith, and Glenn Mansfield are talking about how to best offer this information, and, if done via X.500, how to get schema registered and recognized. Jill Foster described how the EuroGopher folks (who are now handling more than just gopher issues) are working to distributed information services within Europe (as a point re: the last bullet above). It was a good discussion, but no particular item blazed forth as the obvious thing for NISI. AOB Susan Calcari described the upcoming (now gone :-) NICFest. She mentioned that there are currently several forums for NIC-types, none of which gets everyone, so there is a need to make sure the forums somehow work together (a la Joyce and Jill keeping each other informed on similar IETF and RARE ISUS activities). Attendees Farhad Anklesaria fxa@boombox.micro.umn.edu Sepideh Boroumand sepi@aol.com Susan Calcari calcaris@internic.net Hallie Carlson hallie@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov John Chang jrc@uswest.com David Conrad davidc@iij.ad.jp Ann Cooper cooper@isi.edu Sallie Fellows sallie@ed.unh.edu Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk Judith Grass grass@cnri.reston.va.us Deborah Hamilton debbieh@internic.net Ellen Hoffman ellen@merit.edu Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov Brendan Kehoe brendan@zen.org Ben Levy seven@ftp.com Dave Livingston squirrel@vnet.net Gary Malkin gmalkin@xylogics.com Glenn Mansfield glenn@aic.co.jp April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov Scott Paisley paisley@central.bldrdoc.gov Marsha Perrott perrott@prep.net Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Patricia Smith psmith@merit.edu