InfoMagic Standards 1994 January/InfoMagic Standards - January 1994.iso/inet/iesg/91_08_15

Text File | 1993-02-04 | 14KB | 348 lines

                     IETF STEERING GROUP (IESG)

                  REPORT FROM THE TELECONFERENCE

                       AUGUST 15TH, 1991


         Reported by:
         Greg Vaudreuil, IESG Secretary

This report contains

        - Meeting Agenda
        - Meeting Attendees
        - Meeting Notes

Please contact IESG Secretary Greg Vaudreuil
([e-mail]) for more details on any particular topic.


^L

A.  Meeting Attendees

    Almquist, Philip / Consultant
    Borman, David / CRAY
    Callon, Ross / DEC
    Chiappa, Noel / Consultant
    Crocker, Dave / DEC
    Crocker, Steve / TIS
    Coya, Steve / CNRI
    Davin, Chuck / MIT
    Gross, Philip / ANS
    Hobby, Russ / UC-DAVIS
    Hinden, Robert / BBN
    Vaudreuil, Greg / CNRI

Regrets

    Estrada, Susan / CERFnet
    Reynolds, Joyce / ISI
    Stockman, Bernard / SUNET/NORDUnet

B. Agenda

1) Administrivia
 - Bash the Agenda
 - Approval of Minutes
   - July 25th
   - July 30-Aug 2nd
   - August 8th

2) Review of Action Items

3) Protocol Actions
     - MIB 2
     - Concise MIB
     - Network Time Protocol
     - Multi-protocol interconnect over Frame Relay
     - Inverse ARP
4) RFC Editor Actions
   - Message Send Protocol 2
   - SNMP over OSI

5) Technical Management Issues
   - TCP Large Windows extensions
   - Many MIBs
   - Distinguished Names
   - Five Full-Day IETF Meetings

1. Administrivia

1.1 Approval of the Minutes

1.1.1 July 25th.  The Minutes of the July 25th Teleconference were
approved pending changes to be sent to Vaudreuil by Monday.

1.1.2 Plenary Meetings.  These minutes were approved by the IESG
pending changes to be send to Vaudreuil by Monday.  The Chairman later
asked that these be delayed pending his review and approval.

1.1.3 August 8th.  These minutes were not approved by the IESG.  They
will be read, corrected, and resubmitted for the next teleconference.

The IESG discussed the imminent release of the minutes beginning with
the plenary session meetings.  The preferred distribution mechanism was
chosen to be a sister directory to the ietf and internet-drafts, with
an announcement sent to the IETF mailing list of their availability.

ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Make a new distributed directory for the IESG
minutes. Insure that mail access is available at the NIC.DDN.MIL

2. Review of selected action items.

(89) Apr 25 [Russ Hobby]
         Resolve the conflict with the two version of the IMAP
         protocol.

There is slow progress being made.  One party is now willing to change
the name of the protocol and declare a split.  The other party is
talking in good faith to resolve this issue and may also agree to a
name change.

(170) Aug 08 [Phill Gross]
         Communicate the opinion of the IESG concerning the
         Interactions of BGP with IGP's to the authors of the BGP
         Usage document and integrate the useful Interaction
         information into the document.

Phill Gross has been in contact with Yackov Rekhter and is
awaiting comments on the latest version of the document.  The IAB is
continuing to send mixed signals on the BGP usage document.  After
significant discussion, the IESG determined that it has done all it
can to address the IAB's concerns on this document.

Specific objections were raised about the lack of a routing
architecture document for BGP. While the IESG agrees that there is a
pressing need for an unified routing architecture, it feels that this
document is not required for specific routing protocols, and imposing
this requirement on the BGP protocol designers would unduly delay the
well deserved advancement of the BGP protocol.

The IESG agreed to send the current set document to the IAB as soon as
all the authors are polled.  If at that point the IAB still has
objections, these should be send to the IESG and IETF in the form of
an explicit rejection notice.

ACTION: Gross -- Send a note the IAB soliciting final comments on the
BGP documents.  Explain that the IESG is satisfied with the current
BGP documents expects to make a public recommendation in the near
future.


(168) Aug 08 [Phill Gross]
         Write a statement to the IAB expressing the need felt by the
         IESG for a public response to the public IESG recommendations
         to the IAB.

This action is still pending.  The IESG discussed and reiterated the
need for these formal exchanges and notification of standards actions.

3. Protocol Actions

3.1 Management Information Base II

The IESG approved the recommendation elevating MIB II to full Standard
status.  MIB II is widely implemented in network devices and
management stations.

3.2 Concise MIB Definitions

The IESG approved the recommendation elevating the Concise MIB
definitions to Draft Standard.  This new compact machine readable
syntax is used in all recent MIBs written, including MIB II.

3.3 Network Time Protocol Version 3

The IESG approved the recommendation for the Network Time Protocol
Version 3 for Proposed Standard.  While there was sentiment within the
IESG for skipping the proposed standard state for this particular
protocol, wowever it was feared that figuring out the rational for an
exception in the understood practice may take far longer than the 6
months the protocol would otherwise remain in the Proposed Standard
state.

3.4 Multi-protocol Interconnect over Frame Relay

The IESG discussed this document, and found it to be a good
specification.  One policy concern was raised, and should be
communicated with the author.  Historically the IAB has standardized
IP on top of networking technologies and has avoided standardizing
protocols for running other protocols over these networking
technologies.  An exception has been made for the point to point
protocol where no other standard multi-protocol point to point
protocol was available.  In this case the IAB will assign protocol
numbers and will likely standardize the specification of third party
protocols over PPP.  In the case of Frame Relay, it is not clear who
"owns" the specification.  Normally the IAB would standardize only IP
over Frame Relay.  In addition to specifying IP over Frame Relay, this
document also specifies the general case of Foo over Frame Relay.
Given the uncertain ownership of the frame relay specification, and
the need for multi-vendor interoperation, the IESG has no problem with
this specification.  It is recommended that the title be changed to
reflect the more traditional standardization emphasis of IP over Foo,
such as "IP and other protocols over Frame Relay".

ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Talk to author of the Multi-protocol Interconnect
document about the name of this document; report results to IESG.

3.5 Inverse ARP

The IESG discuss this document.  While the protocol accomplishes that
specific task it was written to, it is not clear from the document why
a new protocol was needed.  Other address resolution mechanisms exist.
The IESG has been convinced that the Inverse ARP protocol is in fact
a good way to proceed with the specific requirement posed by Frame
Relay networks.

The IESG recommends to the author that a section documenting the
design criterion and rational for this new protocol be written to
capture the reasoning behind this novel extension of the architecture.

ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Talk to the author of the Inverse ARP protocol
about the need for a section documenting the design criterion and
rational for the Inverse ARP protocol.

ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Encourage the writing of a rational section for
the Inverse ARP document.

MAYBE-POSITION: A rational should be captured in Internet Drafts.
Need to avoid a making this a major burden.  It helps capture for
future readers who may not know the word of mouth history.

4. RFC Editor Actions

4.1 Message Send Protocol

The RFC editor sent the IESG an experimental protocol, the Message
Send Protocol for review and comment on August 13th.  The IESG found
the document interesting but members did not have time to review this
before todays meeting.  This protocol may impact the SMTP extensions
work with regard to the SEND command.

ACTION: Hobby -- Review the Message Send Protocol for the RFC Editor
before August 27th.

4.2 Finger

The RFC Editor has received a new version of the Finger protocol.
This revision corrects inconsistencies between the protocol and common
implementations.  Hobby reviewed the protocol and found the protocol
to be consistent with current practice, and recommends republication
at the current Draft Standard State.

The RFC Editor forwarded to the IESG a message from an implementor
of the protocol who has identified several other minor points that
could use clarification.

ACTION: Hobby -- Look at the list of enhancements for the Finger
protocol and determine if these should be corrected in this re-release.

4.3 SNMP over OSI

Marshall Rose has submitted a new version of the SNMP over OSI
experimental protocol specification.  The intent is in part to provide
a template for future authors to use in writing SNMP over Foo protocol
documents.  The question was raised about whether these SNMP over FOO
are in fact experimental or Standards Track specifications.  The
Network Management Directorate clearly believes that SNMP should be
run only over UDP, and has enunciated that position in Internet Draft
<draft-ietf-snmp-commservices-00.txt>.  The question remains as
community support for using SNMP over proprietary network technology
grows.

Due to lack of time, the IESG was unable to discuss this in greater
depth.

ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Schedule time in a future teleconference to
discuss the wisdom of running SNMP only over UDP.

5. Technical Management Issues

5.1 Multitude of MIBs

There is a half a dozen MIB's that have been reported out of the
working group and are now being reviewed by the Network Management
Directorate.  The IESG Secretary has been tracking these as IESG
protocol actions.  This newly improved MIB tracking has made clear an
element of confusion. MIBs generally receive their Network Management
Directorate review after the relevant WG has reached closure on the
MIB. Confusion arises when WGs chartered outside the NM area submit
MIBs directly to the IESG without first submitting them for NM review.
This confusion leads to an increasing number of situations in which
the directorate is asked to conduct hasty reviews in order that the
perceived timetable of IESG business not be unduly delayed, rather
than conducting these reviews as part of the normal, 4-month cycle of
NM directorate business.

The NM AD expressed the view that, for tracking purposes, the NM
review should be regarded as a distinct step between WG closure on a
MIB and its submission to the IESG. In this way, time invested for the
NM review would be accounted as part of routine progression of the
document, and the quality of the review itself would not suffer from
the time pressures of being a part of the IESG consideration of the
document, which often has very different requirements.

4.2 TCP Large Windows

Dave Borman gave a review of the TCP Extensions for Large Windows
protocol situation. The current status is a bit unclear at this time.
It appears that Braden, acting as the executive director of the IAB
rejected the protocol for proposed standard for the IAB and has
reassigned control for further evolution of the protocol to the End to
End research group of the IRTF.  This situation is not normal.

Borman discussed the specific technical problems with the extensions,
and discovered that both the CRAY implementation and the LBL
implementation of this protocol interpret the documents differently.
Borman feels that the protocol needs a bit more engineering, but is
essentially functional as demonstrated by the error free
interoperation between the two independent implementations. A question
was raised about the proposed standard status.  There was the notion
that a proposed standard needs a credible specification, but does not
need to be perfect.  Changes are expected as experience with
implementation and testing is gained prior to draft standard.

Several things are unclear.  Braden is one of the authors of the
documents, as is Van Jacobsen.  It is unknown whether Jacobsen in fact
desires to delay the standardization of these protocol extensions.  If
both authors wish to withdraw the specification from consideration,
the IESG agreed that is should not push the specification forward.
There are now two other proposals for extending the TCP sequence
space, one of which is under discussion in the End to End Research
group.  A new proposal from UCL has been circulated privately.  If
there are in fact competing proposals, there may be need to resurrect
the TCP Large Windows working group.

ACTION: Borman -- Get a copy of the UCL TCP proposal and distribute it
to the IESG.

4.3 Distinguished Names

A preliminary discussion of the need for a Distinguished Name Service
in the Internet demonstrated immediately the need for a lengthy
technical discussion of this issue. There is great need for such a
service, and several platforms from which it may be built.  A separate
teleconference was planned, to be led by Steve Crocker and Russ Hobby.

ACTION: Hobby, S. Crocker -- Organize an agenda for the Distinguished Name
Teleconference. Work with Vaudreuil to schedule an appropriate time.


4.4 Full Five Day IETF meetings.

The IESG received many comments during the last plenary session in
Atlanta Georgia about the need to reduce the number of simultaneous
working group sessions, and the need for more time to meet.  In
response to this need, and with the sense of the open plenary, the
IESG agreed to adjust the schedule of the next meeting to include an
additional working group session and extend the schedule to run to
3:30.

Action: Coya -- Work with the IETF Chairman to plan a revised IETF
plenary agenda to include one additional working session.