Subject: ForCES minutes from the IETF61 in DC

From: Patrick Droz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:17:31 +0100

Minutes ForCES WG at the IETF61 in Washington DC, USA
-----------------------------------------------------

Agenda, IETF 61

Monday, November 8, 2004, 1300-1500
====================================

CHAIRS:   David Putzolu <[email-masked]>
           Patrick Droz <[email-masked]>

ADs:      Alex Zinin <[email-masked]>
           Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>

AGENDA:

    5 min - WG status & Agenda Bash - chairs

30 min - ForCES Protocol Draft Status & Changes
            Jamal Hadi Salim
            draft-forces-protocol-01.txt

10 min - ForCES LFB Path Discussion
            Robert Haas on behalf of Weiming Wang
            (no draft available)

20 min - Options for LFB-level multicast and related issues
            Robert Haas
            (no draft available)

15 min - IP TML Proposal
            Alex Audu
            draft-audu-forces-iptml-00.txt

20 min - TIPC Transport Mapping Layer Proposal
            Jon Maloy
            draft-maloy-tipc-01.txt

    5 min - ForCES IP TML Proposal
            Furquan Ansari
            draft-khosravi-tcptml-00.txt

15 min - ForCES Element Discovery Proposal
            Furquan Ansari
            draft-ansari-forces-discovery-01.txt

10 min - Flexinet EU ForCES Protocol Implementation Experience
            Robert Haas
            (no draft available)

Attendees: 50

Minutes:

The chairs began the meeting by reviewing the agenda and then going
over the status of the group. It was stated the the protocol was
expected to go through 1 or 2 more drafts before going to WG Last
Call.

Jamal gave a presentation on the protocol covering both the current
structure and the open issues. He asked for comments on the open
issues:

- possibly adding a CE protocol LFB but that is still an open question

- open issue on how path data is recorded.

- controversial issues:
     -what is a path:
       - a map to a targeted entity
       - or 32 identifier similar to SMI OID

     - issue of how to access multiple rows

     - open question of whether content based access possible

     - packing/transport of path referenced data.

Authors are looking for input on all the issues
Q.- are they all in tracker -
A.  believe so, will check
At the moment there are 8 open issues on the on the list:
http://www.mip4.org/issues/tracker/forces/
There was no further discussion on the protocol draft

...............................................................

Robert presents on behalf on Weiming the status of the Path LFB
path discussion.

Joel - Weiming is very concerned that subscripting include explicitly
what field being used as index. He has a valuable point but I am not
sure I got it.

By what is Weiming subscripting
        - regular subscript
        - content field

Joel believes every table should have a regular subscript. Weiming has
the opinion that we need to explicitly indicate what we are using for
selection.

Joel comment: assume we have specified what you are going subscript, but
where is the subscript to be found? or is there another sequence of
information that indicates where the subscript is found?

Joel wonder whether one must always have explicit indices that are index
based and content (field ) based. A path should always have attributes
and the fields. Joel thinks semantically putting it in the data is the
wrong place. We need a clear indication what the target of operation is.

Jamal wants closure of the discussion.
Robert is not sure he sees the difference.
David - need to resolve over the next few weeks probably best is to
setup a call with Weiming to discuss.

..................................................................

Robert presented options for LFB-level multicast and related issues.
The question is how does one set information into several LFBs.
There are three ways of doing multicast:

1) merged multicast: use PL-level multicast for LFB multicasting
2) split multicast that needs both PL level and LFB
      level (proposal from Joel, Steven)
3) xcast that only has unicast PL messages, list of LFB explicitly

      included in message proposal from Weiming

Q: can you multicast to all LFBs of a given class.
A: as is no, but if it is important we should find a way to support it.

..............................................................

Alex presents the TML draft. He starts with the TML functions and
design criteria such as simplicity, statelessness, security and trust
model.

Joel is surprised by what he found in the TML draft. He is looking for
how to really do it. Either select a protocol with a transport or use
TCP with explanation of how to transport.

A: Well it is an API

Joel: we need to find the transport

David: this needs to be added

Joel:  that is where they should start

David; so you are talking about a service access point

Jamal: I was going to write a draft on this

Joel: a service definition has to exist

jamal: do we expect to see two different vendors to provide a TML and
a PL

At this point the lengthy discussion of what this draft should be
was taken off line. But further questions came:

Joel: I am missing the semantics of the join message. Why do we need
         TML level join message. Critical piece are missing, what is
         carrying the message.

Alex: what transport do you want to map to

Joel: well what transport do you want to map to. You must pick what
         the transport is:

Jamal: this is a first cut.

Joel:  but this should have come first.

This discussion was again take off line.

Q; why only one way authentication
A: Feels that the CE should be trusted.
Q: there are several different models
Jamal: there are several different trust models
Q: what if there is a CE spoofer, could take over the network
A: but FE initiated so it should know who it is initiating to.

.................................................................

John Malloy presents TIPC.
It is a transport protocol connection less and connection oriented
Reliable and unreliable including multicast. Can be reliable in one
direction And unreliable in the other direction. The protocol does not
have any security Features. It is assumed to be operated in a trusted
environment. It does have congestion control. They have control and data
connections which have lower priority. The main purpose of the draft is
to promote TIPC as the TML for ForCES.

...............................................................

Furquan presented a TCP/IP based TML for ForCES. Control and data
connections are used. Security is provided through TLS. It also supports
prioritization and it protects against DoS attacks.

David: the draft needs more details explaining how it should be used.

...............................................................

In a second presentation Furquan presented a draft on ForCES Element
Discovery Proposal. Only very few people had read it so consideration as
a WG was deferred to the list. The content of the draft falls under
the current ForCES charter.

...............................................................

Finally Robert presented the FlexiNET project. FlexiNET is a EU project
that will make use of ForCES. The objective of FlexiNET is to accelerate
the introduction of next generation marketable services, and increase
the competitiveness in the telecom field by facilitating the broadening
of current business model for services provisioning and exploitation.

-- 
     Dr. Patrick Droz 			| [email-masked]
     IBM Zurich Research Laboratory 	| http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~dro
     Saumerstrasse 4 			| Tel. +41-1-724-85-25 CH-8803
     Rueschlikon/Switzerland 		| Fax. +41-1-724-85-78