Subject: [Ieprep] Terms of reference draft

From: Ian Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 14:23:13 +0100

Unfortunately I didn't have time to get a first pass done on the terms of
reference draft before the ID cutoff date. But so that everyone can see
what's happening with it, I've put the current version at
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/I.Brown/draft-ietf-ieprep-reference-00.txt

Suggestions for other terms that should be included (along with definitions
if you like), as well as comments and improvements, are all welcome. I'll
then do a proper -00 ID submission after the Yokohama meeting.

Thanks,

Ian.
--
Abstract

   An Emergency Telecommunications Service gives authorised emergency
   personnel a higher probability of successful communication under
   high network load conditions. This document explains the different
   terms and acronyms used in defining and implementing this service,
   and is intended to be used as a common basis for negotiations when
   governments are contracting with telecommunications operators to
   provide the service.

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From: "Alistair Munro" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 10:14:36 +0100

Hi Ian,

A few comments:

1. "Terms of Reference" is confusing (to me) as a title and objective.
What about "Glossary of Terms for Emergency Telecommunications
Services"? 

2. (Abstract) I wouldn't use it as a "common basis for negotiations" -
"list of common terms and their meanings" possibly? It looks as if it
will be very useful as a sanity check of things you have to know to be
able to tender/procure - can we try to capture this objective somehow?
Replace "governments" with "emergency service providers".

3. (Definitions) - assorted niggles, in no particular order:

ISUP - The ISUP spec includes several protocols and ISUP is (in my book)
an application that sits on top of SCCP (which is also a sort of
transport protocol), to support services using ISDN. This will be useful
if you pick out what precisely is relevant to ETS, e.g as you do for GSM
with MLPP, or refer forwards to the specific use of the reference made
in NS/EP.

GSM - replace the first sentence by "The family of ETSI standards for
1st generation digital mobile telecommunications, used in many countries
around the world for public land mobile networks." ETSI has designed
several "wireless telephony" standards. The GSM gurus will be rsing out
of their graves even now...

DiffServ - delete "scalable". I'm not saying it can't be implemented in
a scalable way but the mechanism is fairly limited. 

PHB - the node applies the PHB to the class identified by the DSCP,
which may be defined for several flow aggregates. This may be pedantic
but see, e.g., the Annex to the EF RFC.

Traffic class - again, the DSCP defines the quality to be given to a
packet. The traffic class is a field that can contain a DSCP, i.e. just
a packet marking, which *may* relate to an aggregate.

SS7 - SS7 is a lot more than a standard for signalling and it is
impossible (IMO) to overstate its significance in telecommunications in
general - the definition understates its importance. It supports ISDN
(q.v.), MAP in GSM, IN functions via TCAP, maintenance of links between
switches, etc., etc. It is commonly operated over IP networks these
days. I'm not quite sure how to capture this - give me some time to
think about it.

In general: this is a useful contribution that I hope can be progressed
to WG draft quickly.

Regards,

Alistair

--
Dr. Alistair Munro,
Chief Systems Engineer, Degree2 Innovations Ltd.
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