Subject: [RAI] Interoperability Discussion in Vancouver

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:16:37 -0700

There have been a few proposals on how to have a discussion about SIP  
interoperability at the Vancouver IETF. There does seem to be  
sufficient energy and interest around this topic that I think it  
would be beneficial to get people in a room and talk about it.  None  
of the proposals where trying to form a WG so, at some level, the  
exact form of the meeting is not critical other than getting the  
right people in the same room and having a structured way to make  
progress. I spent a bunch of time trying to talk to folks and read  
the email threads to figure out what people wanted, and who could put  
this together a meeting in a way that would lead to improving  
interoperability. Since many people had stressed the importance of  
connecting with real implementers and running code, I believe the  
proposal from the SIP Forum has the best chances of encouraging the  
right people to come due to their track record with the SIPit Events.

I have included a draft copy of SIP Forums proposal below for people  
to read but please note this is a draft. The scheduling is still  
changing but right now the plan would be to have this during the  
lunch break on Dec 3. We would not want to run it at a time that  
conflicted with a RAI WG meeting. I'm sure the SIP Forum folks will  
get a final version out and I will work with them to make sure the  
scheduling does not have really bad conflicts.

Cullen, <with my RAI AD on>

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------------

The 1st SIP Forum Workshop on SIP Interoperability

Co-located with the 70th Internet Engineering Task Force Meeting  
(IETF 70)
http://www.ietf.org/meetings/70-IETF.html

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: 19 November 2007
Notification of presentation acceptance: 26 November 2007
Workshop date: 3 December 2007

AIMS AND SCOPE

SIP has been gaining traction as a preferred network signaling  
protocol for
real-time communications networks. There has been a considerable  
amount of
low-level protocol testing and interoperability, such as provided by  
the SIP
Interoperability Test event, or SIPit, which is in its seventh year.  
There
are many independent implementations of clients, servers, proxies,
back-to-back User Agents, registrars, and the like. In addition,  
there are
significant network deployments, many at scale.

While this is all good, deployment experience is showing that
interoperability is difficult to achieve. Products from a single  
vendor tend
to work well with each other. However, multi-vendor interoperability,
especially above the basic stack level, has historically been  
difficult to
achieve. In fact, the proof point of the success of vendors attending  
SIPit
indicates interoperability problems may not be due to the specification
itself.

This workshop serves as a forum to bring together researchers,  
engineers,
and service providers to exchange ideas, share experiences, and propose
approaches to address interoperability problems. Particular focus  
will be on
systemic or architectural problems, as opposed to simple implementation
errors.

If the workshop identifies concrete proposals to improve  
interoperability
that would require modifications to the underlying protocols, these
proposals will be forwarded to the appropriate groups in the IETF.

We encourage contributions describing interoperability and SIP. The  
topics
of interest include but are not limited to:

* Interoperability failures seen in the field or lab
* Deployment experiences
* Development experiences
* Open source projects and experiences
* Failures discovered in the field after successful lab testing
* Common failure modes
* Interoperability test methodologies
* Interoperability test experiences
* Architectural principals
* Proposals for achieving interoperability
* Proposals for improving development
* Proposals for soliciting additional real-world feedback from  
implementers
and service providers

POSITION PAPERS
Individuals must submit a position paper relevant to SIP  
interoperability to
participate in the workshop. Acceptable formats are IEEE Computer  
Society
Proceedings Manuscripts style (in PDF), ACM Transactions style (in PDF),
IETF Internet Draft style (in HTML or plain text), or presentation  
style (in
PDF). The papers should be no longer than 6 pages if in IEEE or ACM  
style or
10 pages of text in Internet Draft style. There is no minimum length
requirement.

Papers received by the submission deadline will be posted to the  
Workshop
web site, unless the author(s) request withholding publication. The
author(s) may retain copyright or assign it to the IETF or SIP Forum.

WORKSHOP FORMAT
There is only a limited time available at the venue for this first  
workshop.
The expectation is this will be a highly interactive workshop. In  
order to
frame the conversation, the workshop chair will open the discussion.  
At the
discretion of the Program Committee and dependent upon the quality and
number of position papers received, a limited number of position  
papers may
be presented. Note that all position papers will be published, unless  
the
author(s) request withholding publication.

WORKSHOP CHAIR:
Robert Sparks
Protocol Barbarian, Estacado Systems
[email-masked]

PROGRAM CHAIR:
Eric Burger
Deputy CTO, BEA Systems
[email-masked]

_______________________________________________
RAI mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rai

---

From: "Elwell, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:42:36 +0000

Cullen,

>From the SIP Forum draft proposal "Individuals must submit a position
paper relevant to SIP interoperability to
participate in the workshop."

This doesn't seem to be in line with normal IETF practices.

John 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cullen Jennings [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: 28 October 2007 01:17
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [RAI] Interoperability Discussion in Vancouver
> 
>