IETF-FAX BOF - Montreal, 1996

                    J. Murai, D. Crocker
      (Notes from A. Perry; distortions by D. Crocker)

The purpose of the BOF was to explore IETF interest is
pursuing standards for sending facsimile over the Internet
and to consider the kinds of standards that are needed.



                        INTRODUCTION

Software faxing over Internet
     * email to G3 fax
     * print top G3 fax
     * fax modem

Hardware faxing over Internet
     * fax machine using TCP/IP

TPC.INT experiment
     * email to fax
     * specail addressing
     * charging for service

Differences in connections from Faxing
     * list deemed incomplete
     * action item:  list all services currently available
     in the fax area
     * working group will narrowin on sepcific services

Security question raised
     * deferred



       PRESENTATION ON INTERNET FAX MADE BY MATSUSHITA

     * device joins the spectrum of the Internet to fax
     world
     * these devices do exist



              BASIC QUESTIONS ABOUT IETF EFFORT

Basic scope of effort?
     For this class of devices to become stadardized and a
     useful service of the Internet

Is there a stardard way of represending an email address in
the fax community?
     Proposed a sub-address field

Will Interet Fax currently being using and discussed support
file transfered?
     Not really

Were is/will be the phone number stored in an email address;
RFC 822 header or MIME.
     There's serval ways that this can be done.



                     GENERAL DISCUSSION

Scanners that will make available to IP users.  There's
serveral ad hoc attempts to do basically the same thing.

ISPs are being asked by companies to do Internet Faxing.
These companies have small scope of the Internet and are
lacking a global view that a working group would have.

There's several problem with the current setup, like viewing
fax images, size of paper (A4, legal, standard) and such;
compound document structure.

Suggested  action plan:
     1) Survey what is currently and poised to being used
     2) Map out
     3) Sort through the design space and choose between

     KEY COMMENT: IF THIS WG IS AROUND FOR A YEAR, IT WILL
     BE USLESS.

     Need to set very strict, limited, near-term goals!

Has anyone heard about SFTP (simple fax transfer protocol)
     Answer: *not answered*

E-List (Majordomo) address:
        ietf-fax@imc.org
        ieft-fax-request.imc-org

There was a lot of talk at the HTTP WG about format and
format negotiation.  It was posed that there should be a WG
formed to do content negotiation over all protocols.

Action: TPC.INT find out all the history of.  Put link to
WWW page.