Subject: RFD: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip

From: John Kristoff <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 04:29:11 -0500 (EST)

REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
              unmoderated group comp.dcom.voice-over-ip

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
Voice Over IP group in the comp.dcom.* hierarchy.  This is not a Call
for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time.  Procedural details
are below.

Newsgroups line:
comp.dcom.voice-over-ip	Voice Over IP technology.

RATIONALE: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip

Voice Over IP is a burgeoning technology which is bringing real-time,
interactive voice communications to end users via the underlying
protocol of the Internet, namely the Internet Protocol (IP).

Discussions in other mailing lists and newsgroups seem to warrant
the creation of a generic Voice Over IP newsgroup (see the ITMC
Voice Over IP mailing list archives and alt.dcom.telecom.ip).

The IETF, IMTC, and ETSI each run a mailing list in which the focus
is on developing technical standards.  This in depth focus is
primarily of interest only to developers and manufacturers.

While interest, trials and products in this field are racing ahead at
a phenomenal pace, a plethora of issues such as quality of service,
support, cost provisioning, capacity management, standards,
implementation and legacy system integration are areas that will
always need serious attention.

The comp.dcom.voice-over-ip group will be free from any limits or
narrow focus of a single organization's mailing list.  Further, the
comp.dcom.voice-over-ip newsgroup will allow the above aforementioned
issues to be discussed without the control of a governing body.

A recent search for the phrase "voice over ip" turned up over 6500
web pages at <www.altavista.com>.  Even the relatively new acronym
"voip" turned up 2400 documents from the dejanews archives dating
from January 1, 1998 to December 15, 1998.

In some of the comp.* newsgroups that occasionally discuss Voice
Over IP technology, there can easily be hundreds of messages a day.
A separate group dedicated to just this topic would be significantly
more manageable for those only interested in Voice Over IP technology.
See the comp.dcom.sys.cisco and comp.dcom.telecom.tech newsgroups for
an idea of the discussions taking placing.

In the interest of helping to bring together the researchers, network
managers, developers and others simply curious about the technology,
a new newsgroup with a Voice Over IP focus is proposed.

CHARTER: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip

The comp.dcom.voice-over-ip newsgroup is intended to foster the
communication among users, managers, developers and researchers of
Voice Over IP technology.  All layers of the network model from the
physical layer on up to the applications layer are applicable items
of discussion for this newsgroup.  Topics may include, but are not
limited to Voice Over IP issues such as the following:

o General questions about Voice Over IP
o Voice Over IP network architecture
o Deployment of Voice Over IP networks
o Managing Voice Over IP networks
o Standards and Specifications

The posting of binaries to comp.dcom.voice-over-ip is prohibited.

The posting of employment opportunities to comp.dcom.voice-over-ip
is prohibited.

Announcements of new products or services related to Voice Over IP
technology will be tolerated in comp.dcom.voice-over-ip.

comp.dcom.voice-over-ip will not be moderated.

END CHARTER.

PROCEDURE:

This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes.  In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroup
should be raised and resolved.  The discussion period will continue
for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this
proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For
Votes (CFV) will be posted by a neutral vote taker.  Please do not
attempt to vote until this happens.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.

This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal".  Please refer to these
documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any
questions about the process.

DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
  comp.dcom.sys.cisco,comp.dcom.telecom.tech,
  comp.protocols.tcp-ip
  alt.dcom.telecom.ip

and the following mailing lists:

  [email-masked] (International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium)
      subscribe via [email-masked]
  [email-masked] (European Telecommunications Standard Institute)
      subscribe via [email-masked]
  [email-masked] (Internet Engineering Task Force)
      subscribe via [email-masked]

and the following web page:

  http://homepage.interaccess.com/~jkristof/voip-rfd.txt

Proponent: John Kristoff <[email-masked]>
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