Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/ietf/nntp/nntp-minutes-91jul.txt

Text File | 1993-02-17 | 8.3 KB | 209 lines

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_


Reported by Eliot Lear/Intelligenetics

NNTP Minutes

There were three meetings of the Network News Transport Protocol Working
Group.

There was also an area meeting which included the NNTP, LIST, 822-EXT,
and SMTP Chairs, along with the Area Director.  This is to say, Eliot
Lear, David Lippke, Greg Vaudreuil, and Russ Hobby.

The following items were explored at the various meetings:


  1. Differences Between Mail and News.
     We should consider moving towards a common user interface between
     mail and news.  Similar message formats have made this possible in
     the past.  With the advent of a new message format for mail, news
     will need to adopt some similar standard pretty quickly (ARE YOU
     READING THIS, NEWS READER PEOPLE?????).  There was discussion of
     moving to unite the news and mail formats.  While conceptually it
     sounds like a good thing, the details need to be kinked out, and
     the question needs to be discussed to death.

     Russ asked what a document be put out that describes the current
     news architecture.  Erik Fair has volunteered to write that
     document.  That document should almost certainly include a safe way
     to gateway news and mail.  Conceivably another document will issue
     from the area recommending a course of action.

  2. News Reader Capabilities.
     First, it was the consensus of the group that this topic is really
     part of the Charter of the NNTP group; we're just considering
     splitting new functionality into a separate protocol.

     The current version of the draft contains very little enhancements
     in the area of news reader capabilities.  This is because the Chair
     does not have any real concrete language in front of him from what
     this group wants.  The consensus, therefore, was to push on with
     the transport document,and explore further the reader issues, and
     in particular how this relates to Item 1.

     If we do produce an NNRP document, we must be careful that by its
     nature it would steer development away from useful areas (Ittai
     Hershman's paraphrased comments).  In this vein, if we do produce a
     document, we should consider it an experimental effort rather than
     a standards track effort.

     Along the lines of a news reader protocol, Stan Barber brought
     along a one page shopping list of items he would like to see in a

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   reader protocol.  We discussed how to define a search command so
   that it would be generally useful.  Arguments for and against a
   specific syntax and mechanism were heard.

3. Authentication
   Theodore Tso is now the official ``stuckee'' for the SAAG in the
   NNTP Working Group.  Issues of Common Authentication Technology
   (CAT) were discussed, particularly at the Thursday meeting.  Text
   needs to be written into the document to take advantage of CAT. We
   are facing a problem with CAT because NNTP is one of the first
   protocols to use it.  Currently CAT can only be used to access
   Kerberos and DEC SPX. Jeff Schiller suggested that a simple
   challenge/response method would be acceptable if someone did the
   footwork.  Clear text, however, seemed to be right out, to the
   point where it was thought that the SAAG might hold things up.
   Jeff also discussed the evils of negotiating security methods.

   It turns out that some of the logic that was applied to mail
   standards can be applied to news.  If we do, in fact, move the
   transport document to proposed standard, the impetus for
   authentication in the transport is greatly diminished.

4. Transporting Binary and Mixed Message Format.
   It turns out that simply adopting the mail standards as news
   standards may be a bit painful.  With the introduction of binary,
   there needs to be a new canonical form.  This in itself would be a
   minor irritation; however, the new mail format allows for mixed
   binary and text.  This means that it could be necessary to switch
   between binary and text canonical forms in a single message.  This
   makes transport a nightmare, and is a good argument for encoding.
   On the other hand, possibly the new binary canonical form might be
   able to handle the problems.  Interested parties are URGED to read
   the draft mail documents and the archive of messages leading to
   their production.

5. CCITT
   Harri Salminen circulated a draft document that is CCITT's version
   of netnews.  The document may be retrieved from nic.nordu.net, via
   anonymous FTP. Your comments are, of course, solicited.

6. Problems with the Current Document
   Several people have sent notes pointing out formatting problems,
   grammatical errors, and certain inconsistencies (like SIMPLE
   authentication descriptions).  Please mail all such complaints
   directly to the Chair, and not to the list.

   It was the consensus of the group that the IMAGE and BINARY options
   be combined into a FORMAT option.  Eliot Lear will write some text
   in to this effect.  It was also agreed that the COMPRESSION and
   DATE commands would be removed, and that the NEWNEWS command be
   extended to deal with DATE's purpose (which is to say that NEWNEWS
   will both accept and deliver a cookie instead of a date).  Text to


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    be written and argued.

    State diagrams need to be completed.

    Default behavior needs to be defined and mandated.

    We discussed eliminating the OPTION command.  The problem with
    eliminating the OPTION command is that it gets hard to batch verbs,
    and we concluded that batching such things was a good idea.

 7. Making the IETF lists available to the IETF via netnews.
    This issue was brought up both in the Working Group and in the area
    meeting.  Some action is expected in this area Real Soon Now (tm).
    Social issues were discussed in the Wednesday meeting regarding the
    perceived stigma from which news suffers.

 8. News MIB
    Russ Hobby stated that he would not require a News MIB from us.
    However, several people have indicated some interest in managing
    news objects, particularly Jim Thompson (not present at Atlanta).
    Jim should proceed to take comments and write up a document.  One
    should be careful to study which functions are ubiquitous
    throughout the Internet, and which are implementation specific.

 9. Timetable
    August 31, 1991 - We would like to see the NNTP document become an
    Internet Draft.  All this does is expose the document to the
    Internet community.  It can be changed from within the Working
    Group after that point.

    November, 1991 - Get architecture document out as an informational
    RFC.

    December, 1991 - After considering comments and making appropriate
    changes, let the NNTP document proceed to proposed standard.

    It is hoped that some code will be ready by December.

10. Multicasting Netnews
    Brief mention was made on a research effort under way to explore
    the possible use of multicast packets as a way for distribution of
    news.  Interested parties should contact the Chair directly.

11. Next Meeting
    No next meeting date has been set as of yet.  Depending on how we
    proceed with a news message format, we may meet at Interop
    (October).

12. General Information
    If you wish to be added to the ietf-nntp mailing list, you should
    send mail to [e-mail].

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     Drafts and message archives can be gotten from turbo.bio.net via
     anonymous FTP in the ietf-nntp directory.  The format of draft
     document filenames is documentname.format-type.


Attendees

Stan Barber
Robert Enger             [e-mail]
Erik Fair                [e-mail]
Ned Freed                [e-mail]
Olafur Gudmundsson       [e-mail]
Ittai Hershman           [e-mail]
Russ Hobby               [e-mail]
Neil Katin               [e-mail]
Eliot Lear               [e-mail]
David Lippke             [e-mail]
Joseph Malcom            [e-mail]
Chris Myers              [e-mail]
Michael Patton           [e-mail]
Mel Pleasant             [e-mail]
Jan Michael Rynning      [e-mail]
Harri Salminen           [e-mail]
Theodore Tso
Gregory Vaudreuil        [e-mail]



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