Subject: Vendor Support for RTFM?

From: Ed Goldgehn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 17:21:08 -0500 (EST)

SwitchCo is developing Innoverse - a Billing and Customer Care 
(BACC) system based on the Dynamic Business Modeling philosophy
due for release 1Q-00. One of our targets is the IP/Packet Billing 
model and the RTFM architecture and documentation are of significant 
interest to this.

Personally, I came across this in late '97 when working with
Cabletron.  Since the Internet Draft was approved last September,
we are now focusing on implementing a module specifically for
integration with RTFM compliant devices.

Question is, what vendors are supporting RTFM in their routers
or other products other than Cabletron?  Also, does anyone know
of other billing systems that have fully adopted RTFM for
IP/Bandwidth Billing?

Oh, and what ever came of the sister RFC Light-Weight
Flow Admission Protocol (LFAP - RFC 2124)?

Thanks in advance.

=====================================================================
Ed Goldgehn, Vice President/CTO              E-Mail: [email-masked]
SwitchCo, Inc.                                 Voice:  (770) 514-6313
=====================================================================
For More Info on Innoverse:  http://www.innoverse.com

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From: Nevil Brownlee <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 12:36:15 +1200 (NZT)

> of other billing systems that have fully adopted RTFM for

That's hard to tell, none of them have actually announced support for 
the RFC 2720 MIB yet.  We need LOTS more customers to ask their 
equipment suppliers to implement it in their switches and routers!

As for other billing systems, IPmeter is totally based on the RTFM 
architecture (www.ipmeter.com), and Xacct (www.xacct.com) are a big 
'billing system' vendor who were certainly interested in being to read 
data from an RTFM meter.

> Flow Admission Protocol (LFAP - RFC 2124)?

I hadn't seen RFC 2124 before, I've just read it.  Seems to me it fits
within the AAA working group's authorization subgroup.  I'll pass on 
the reference to them.

Cheers, Nevil

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| Nevil Brownlee                     Director, Technology Development |
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From: Ed Goldgehn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 09:00:11 -0500 (EST)

Thanks for the quick reply.

> equipment suppliers to implement it in their switches and routers!

That's what I thought.  We're working with a group that is planning
on implementing standalone meters (outside the router) capable of
handling 100 MB Ethernet in a carrier-class model (appropriate redundancy).  
The challenge we see is the coordination of input from multiple meters to a 
single billing event reference based on network path, etc.  We see this
as a viable method of metering in a multi-vendor network configuration.

> 'billing system' vendor who were certainly interested in being to read 

I'm quite familiar with Xacct.  Our product is on the same level
but approaches the billing issues in a much more flexible 
and performance oriented manner.

On a tangent, is there similar work for ATM that you're aware of?
Unlike this model, I don't see how to accomplish truely passive 
monitoring outside of the switch since connectivity is not
multi-point. This infers the need for a "passive switch" that
distributes the traffic with absolute minimal latency while
monitoring and measuring traffic throughput.  Any thoughts?