Subject: H.248 and Megaco Last Call

From: Tom Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 09:39:23 +0100

At some point today we will have text for H.248 which the ITU-T will
consider to be frozen.  I will make that text available, then we can go
through Last Call.  Our aim will be to find the bugs and document them.
My proposal is that the final RFC will be published unchanged from the
ITU text, but with a must-read appendix containing our Last Call
conclusions.

The indications are very strong that the head of the U.S. delegation
will veto the decision of H.248 on procedural grounds.  It will
therefore be held over for decision in June.  That is why it is so
important to keep the ITU text intact -- to let their process work
without further delays.  They will be able to publish our Last Call
appendix as an H.248 Implementor's Guide, which, despite the name, is
used in the ITU-T to document bugs rather than just to give
interpretations.

In the meantime, to make the status of our protocol clear to our
industry, I propose that we publish it as a Proposed Standard.

Let me review the process we've followed in the last week and a half.
Obviously I haven't fed back all the issues to the list as I had hoped
-- there just wasn't time.  We've worked through supper severl nights,
met all day and into the night last Sunday, and finally knocked the last
open issue dead at 3:35 am yesterday morning.

Here's how we proceeded.  First we went through the Telcordia and Cisco
issues, identifying which had been fixed by TD-33 (v14) and which by
TD-49 (v15).  The stuff which was still open had to be fixed.  Some
fixes were done at the time, some were held over for further discussion.

Next we went over the input documents themselves: TD-32 (the delta from
the Red Bank output to v14), and TD-49 (the delta from v14 to
v15/protocol-06).  Again problems were spotted and solutions devised.

Finally we closed all the remaining open issues, finishing, as I said
above, in the wee small hours of Tuesday morning.  The unfortunate John
Segers then wortked through the remainder of the night to add in all the
approved changes to produce a final document.

Yesterday afternoon that document was reviewed in a final editing pass
to catch anything John hadn't put in correctly.  Poor John was left
holding the back in the end -- Glen and I had to go elsewhere and he was
left to preside.  I hear they finished around 11:00 pm.  Today the
finished document goes for approval at Working Party level, and tomorrow
it goes up for decision, with the likely outcome as I indicated above.

I would like to list the H.248 marathoners here.  To a large extent,
they are the same people who sacrificed their sleep in Red Bank.  I hope
I don't miss anybody, but if I do, feel free to flame me.  Here is the
roll call of the red-eye brigade:
John Segers                           Ranga
Dendi                           Alf Heidemark
Glen Freundlich                     Selvam Rengasami
Larry Forni
Michael Brown                     Rich Rubin
Chip Sharp                           Christian Groves
Steve Magnell                       Stephen Terrill

Just a few statistics about the E-mail which has gotten us to that
point.  My personal archives go back to mid-1998, and that is where the
numbers come from.

Total messages on the list to date: 5490
Top ten correspondents:
  Brian Rosen (no surprise): 591
  Me                                   580
  Nancy Greene                  198
  Christian Huitema             187
  Matt Holdrege                  151
  Chip Sharp                       144
  John Segers                        91
  Michael Thomas                 83
  Henry Sinnreich                  81
  Paul Sijben                         80

My archives also contain over 1800 messages from editors and the design
team.  I don't have my own messages in there, but the counts for the top
five other people are as follows:
  Brian Rosen                       409
  Nancy Greene                    294
  Christian Huitema                 80
  Christian Groves                  70
  John Segers                         59

My thanks to everyone.  On to the Last Call!

Tom Taylor

---

From: Chip Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:48:04 -0500

>used in the ITU-T to document bugs rather than just to give

As a clarification after the fact, WP2 of SG16 decided on a consensus basis
that H.248 would be "re-determined" for decision (approval) in June.  The
US delegation did not veto decision of H.248.

While IETF does not place restrictions on what people can or can't comment
on, I request that people think very carefully about any substantive
changes to the document.  Of course, if there is a broken mechanism within
the scope of defined operation it should be fixed or if you find editorial
problems, then they should be fixed.   If there is a new feature that you
have to have, consider saving it for v2.

Of course, it is up to the working group to decide what to do.

Thanks,
Chip

...snip...
Support NetAid!  http://www.netaid.org
--------------------------------------------------
Chip Sharp                 Consulting Engineering
Cisco Systems              Telco Bio-region
Reality - Love it or Leave it.
--------------------------------------------------

---

From: John Segers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:55:15 +0100

Chip,

I've been catching up on unread mail, and encountered the after-the-fact
clarification that you sent out before the SG 16 plenary at which the
facts occurred (you could have told us earlier that your're a psychic!).

In fact, the US did take a position against approval of H.248 by SG 16.
Mr. Ferino specifically stated that this position was based on
procedural grounds, and went on to commend those involved for their hard
work during the Geneva meeting.  It was then decided to redetermine
H.248 instead.  This move allows for better synchronization of the ITU
and IETF processes.

Not having seen any objections to the draft agreement posted by Tom last
Friday, I presume that we can regard the redetermined text as a basis
for implementation work.

Cheers,

John

--
John Segers                                  email: [email-masked]
Lucent Technologies                                        Room HE 306
Dept. Forward Looking Work                      phone: +31 35 687 4724
P.O. Box 18, 1270 AA  Huizen                      fax: +31 35 687 5954

---

From: Chip Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 22:05:42 -0800

>H.248 instead.  This move allows for better synchronization of the ITU

I imagine this must have taken place in the opening plenary or during part
of the WP2 plenary when I was out of the room.   My apologies if I missed it.