Subject: Multicast channels at the 52nd IETF

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 00:01:53 -0400

What is the chance that the number of multicast channels will increase
during the next IETF meeting?  I am hearing that international travel will
be problematic for the time being.

What are the barriers to increasing from the current two channels?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edward Lewis                                                NAI Labs
Phone: +1 443-259-2352                      Email: [email-masked]

You fly too often when ... the airport taxi is on speed-dial.

Opinions expressed are property of my evil twin, not my employer.

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 11:16:53 +0200

> What are the barriers to increasing from the current two channels?

Volunteers, equipment, time and money.

The main problem is evaluating the cost/benefit; I think we have had 
relatively few listeners on the multicast channels at the last few IETFs.
Reports from people who feel that they have gained real benefit from remote 
participation would be appreciated; happy customers means that we are more 
likely to invest more effort in the service.

                  Harald

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 12:45:46 +0100 (BST)

> likely to invest more effort in the service.

I think remote participation in live WG meets isn't a worthwhile goal,
given cost and difficulties of interactive networking (never mind
timezones); encouraging it when more than half the people in a WG
meeting have their faces buried in a laptop and are tapping away at
wireless access anyway is merely ironic.

If you really want to increase participation, start by turning off
wireless networking entirely and telling everyone who is actually
there to pay attention. Including the people showing slides; at least
with printed acetate technology you don't have people stopping to
answer their Instant Messages.

Better imo to simply record, digitise and upload all sessions so that
at least those who couldn't attend could find out what happened when
convenient and then influence events on the relevant mailing lists
afterwards.

(Isn't it reasonable to assume that at least one attendee to every
session owns a video camera?)

L.

would listen to audio recordings of IESG meetings and IETF
teleconferences. imagines they're pretty much like parts of Radio 4.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 08:01:32 -0400

At 00:01 23/10/01, Edward Lewis wrote:
>I am hearing that international travel will be problematic
>for the time being.

        It is not clear to me how your firm's international travel rules
impact the IETF meeting in Salt Lake City, since TIS Labs is in Maryland,
which is a domestic flight from Utah.  Perhaps you are a telecommuter
who works outside North America ?

        Generally speaking, international travel is fully functional
and working just fine.  At Washington/Dulles, for example,
international flights tend to clear FASTER than domestic flights
these days, because the staff are accustomed to handling international
flights with more care.

        Bottom line is that there might be economic reasons that
some firm chooses not to pay for its staff to travel, as at any time,
but there isn't a shortage of either flights or seats.  And safety
on US domestic air travel is a great deal higher now than it was
prior to early September, having flown myself since then.

Ran
[email-masked]

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 09:49:13 -0400

>answer their Instant Messages.

        While I disagree with the first sentence above, I agree that
on Tuesdays and Thursdays I think it actually be productive to dispense 
with the wireless LAN coverage in meeting rooms.  

        Many have been the meetings where folks who want to actively 
participate in that meeting are unable to get in or unable to sit down.
Not uncommonly this is because of folks who are clearly playing video games or otherwise doing sundry other laptop computing -- rather than
paying attention to the meeting they are sitting in.

        The challenge is that some folks clearly do use the wireless
LAN to download I-Ds to review precise text during the meeting 
discussing that particular I-D (in lieu of carrying paper around, 
I suppose), or for other good purposes.  Legislating either way
on this seems unconstructive.

        So maybe I'll settle for a general plea to folks attending 
IETF meetings.  If one isn't going to actively participate in a given
meeting, then please move out of that meeting room into the hallway 
or some other venue so that folks interested in that particular 
meeting have an unencumbered ability to participate.

Ran
[email-masked]

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:09:52 +0100 (BST)

On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, RJ Atkinson wrote:

> I suppose),

they can't prepare beforehand by downloading the entire draft tarball 
that is made available prior to travelling to the event? no doubt
they're online frantically trying to book a hotel room for the night,
too.

> meeting,

don't go.

L.

> then please move out of that meeting room into the hallway

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:18:15 -0400

>with the wireless LAN coverage in meeting rooms.  

It's useful for people to be able to grab documents while the
meeting is in progress, I've found.  That said, I think it's
perfectly reasonable in a crowded meeting to demand the seat of
someone who's playing games or checking their stock portfolio,
or otherwise choosing to screw around with their laptop rather than
participate in what's going on in the room.

Melinda

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 09:24:09 -0500

>participate in that meeting are unable to get in or unable to sit 

I'm sorry, but I really think this is a problem with the 
person/persons chairing the meeting. If you are the chair of a 
working group whose meeting room is too small, you've got some 
choices:

1. If this happened in the past, you need to ask for a bigger meeting 
room. However, I understand this is not always possible.

2. Before your WG meeting, ask on the mailing list (which all active 
participants should be reading anyway) for all people who are 
planning on attending the meeting and actively participating to send 
you a piece of e-mail. Count. When you get to the room at the 
meeting, count off that many seats in the front rows. Add 10 for 
useful IESG/IAB members. Add a bunch if you know your WG is going to 
have cross-area interest where some people will be attending who 
don't subscribe to the WG list. Cordon off the section with some 
paper signs which read "ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS ONLY". No, it won't stop 
everyone, but it will help things.

3. If people are blocking the door during the meeting, be a traffic 
cop. Go to the door and say, "If you are staying, move in to the 
opposite side of the room away from the door. Otherwise, leave." The 
area behind where the chair usually sits is a fine place to stick 
people. If it gets totally out of hand, you may have to conduct the 
meeting by standing in the door; people who are just loafing hate 
sitting right next to the chairperson anyway.

4. (Up on soapbox again) Do not allow lecture-style presentations in 
your WG meeting, or at the very least do not let anyone present 
introductory material which could be posted to the list. These kinds 
of things encourage people to come to the meeting to try to learn. 
That's not why we're having these meetings. There should be NO NEW 
INFORMATION presented at WG meetings. If at least an introduction to 
the topic has not been written up and posted to the list, discussion 
of that topic should not be allowed in the WG meeting. The content of 
a WG meeting should be without surprise.

Personally, I think this is a fine idea for BOFs too: You're posting 
an agenda before the meeting anyway; make sure any needed information 
is written up and posted before the meeting and make sure that the 
agenda has URLs for that information. Now, I understand that BOFs are 
in a somewhat different position and sometimes there's going to have 
to be presentation of new material in BOF meetings, but that needn't 
always be the case. WGs, of course, have no excuse.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102

---

From: "Kastenholz, Frank" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:46:21 -0400

>on this seems unconstructive.

People could just keep all the IDs on their laptops
at all times. I've been keeping an archive since
late '96, moving from machine to machine, as needed.
It is less than 1GB of storage and about 18,300 files.
It has (more or less) all versions of all IDs. If I
wanted to get the current, complete, ID-set it would,
of course, be a lot smaller...

Every couple of days I run the following WGET command:
        wget -k -nd -nH -r -np --glob=on -nc \
                ftp://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/*
which gets all new files from the ID directory.
(WGET is available from your local GNU repository
and includes instructions to make it work under Windows)

---

From: Francis Dupont <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 17:06:12 +0200

In your previous mail you wrote:

   >Including the people showing slides; at least
   
=> I believe you are right for this point (banish power point! :-)
bit not for others.

           Many have been the meetings where folks who want to actively 
   participate in that meeting are unable to get in or unable to sit down.
   Not uncommonly this is because of folks who are clearly playing
   video games or otherwise doing sundry other laptop computing -- rather
   than paying attention to the meeting they are sitting in.
   
=> very good argument Ran! (and many games don't need the network)

=> I agree: the weight of all likely interesting I-Ds is too large.
In my little old laptop, near the whole ordinary free room is filled
with IETF mailing list (discussion history), RFCs and drafts.
Another proof: the success of the special "all RFCs and I-Ds CD-ROM"
(cf http://www.normos.org).
 Another point: there are many communications between participants
in the same room. I believe we should encourage this because this is
better than to talk directly to a neighbor (noise reduction).

=> the critical resource seems to be power so if nice places (bars :-)
are well equiped I believe we'll get what you suggest.

Regards

[email-masked]

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:57:59 -0400

I wonder how many people are unable to use multicast because  
it's not available to them for one reason or another.

I find that I'm unable to use multicast due to our site's unhappy
choice to install some cisco equipment that doesn't support it
without using cisco proprietary protocols - which our admins
don't understand and are therefore reluctant to enable.

(IMHO boxes shouldn't pretend to be Ethernet unless they really act 
like Ethernet)

and there are many other barriers to multicast deployment - this
is just one of them.

in my experience, it's far easier to get IPv6 unicast access 
than IPv4 multicast.

Keith

---

From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:46:59 -0500

Why isn't the Internet and 3D technology used for the IETF meetings ?
The Next Generation IPv8 Internet has that. Why is the IPv4 Internet
stuck in the stone ages ?

All of the technology is in place and Address Space is FREE.

2047 IPv8 Blocks have been FREEly allocated to IN-ADDR.<TLD> managers.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt

On October 25, 2001 Microsoft will launch Windows XP which supports IPv8
Addressing. Companies like New.Net are making it possible for people to
register
IN-ADDR.<TLD> names. Companies like TuCows are helping to break down
the .COM monopoly with .INFO names.
http://www.IN-ADDR.INFO

The .BIZ Community is growing. It is time to build a new Internet based on
fair IP allocations. The Proof-of-Concept work on the IPv4 Internet can
continue,
but true pioneers need to move on. The technology is now in place to route
around
the I* organizations, "It Seeks Overall Control".
http://www.dot-biz.com/Registry/ProofConcept/index.html

Do you use a 2002:<IPv4>:0000 prefix ?
http://www.dot-arizona.com/IPv8/IPv4/
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12213.html

[email-masked]
http://www.unir.com
http://www.unir.com/images/architech.gif
http://www.unir.com/images/headers.gif
http://www.unir.com/images/address.gif
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/sdks/platform/tpipv6/start.asp
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12213.html
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12223.html

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 11:43:20 -0400

>   >answer their Instant Messages.

Francis got the quoting above wrong.  I didn't say the above. 
No doubt just a typo... 

Ran

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From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:54:42 +0100 (BST)

On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, Pete Resnick wrote:

> person/persons chairing the meeting.

who generally aren't paying attention, because they're staring at
their laptops. And they even get a table to put their laptops on!

L.

---

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 11:57:56 -0400

>who works outside North America ?

It isn't a concern of mine, it is for folks in my WG.

---

From: Paul Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 00:26:25 +0800 (WST)

> stuck in the stone ages ?
<snip>

How many times do we have to get the same rants Jim? I bet I'm not the
only lurker who's getting quite tired of it.

PD

-- 
Paul Day    Web: www.bur.st/~bonfire   PGP-key: www.bur.st/~bonfire/pk.txt

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 09:18:53 -0700 (PDT)

> don't understand and are therefore reluctant to enable.

I had much the same experience. Years ago we had routers that supported
multicast and I was actually able to participate in an IETF (Munich?)
using it. Then we got new equipment and one of the things we lost in the
upgrade was multicast support.

				Ned

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:47:00 -0700

Kastenholz, Frank wrote:

> at all times.

I've been to too many WGs that say "the latest version of the ID, 
tweaked last night, is at the following website..." A tarball of
the ID directory is somewhat less useful for those :-)

There is often also supporting material which is determined only at the 
meeting, such as references, slides, etc. - chasing these down at the 
meetings has proved useful in the past.

Although there are irony points for holding an off-line networking 
meeting :-))

Joe

---

From: john heasley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 10:56:47 -0700

so long as those folks arent interrupting the meeting (cell phones
ringing, talking about unrelated topics, ...), perhaps you all
should worry about what _you_ are doing.  is it too far fetched to
believe that some folks can answer mail and listen at the same time.
there are some who attend the meetings, but arent really allowed the
luxury of a week off from regular duties.

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 11:23:06 -0700

Going back to the original question about more multicast sessions:

The advantage of multicast vs. tape-and-archive is the real-time 
aspect for the viewer. However, this is rarely, rarely used. If it 
turns out that switching from multicast to tape-and-archive can get 
more camera operators in more rooms, that would be a win for more WGs.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 13:56:24 -0500

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Touch" <[email-masked]>
> Although there are irony points for holding an off-line networking 

It is humerous in 2001, to see people sitting in a meeting, all with
their lap-tops in front of them, and all saying, "let me check the net",
or, "let me send you that via the net". It is sad, when the meetings are
de-railed by people not on-line and not connected. Those people are
living in a time-warp. Some may only read e-mail once a month. They
are out-of-date before they arrive, and never catch up.

Face-to-face meetings of course are used to perform the subtle act
of "economic discrimination". Those with the money can attend and
those who can not afford to attend are excluded. The handicapped
are also excluded. Deaf people love it when people send them e-mails
saying, "Call me, let's discuss this....yet IRC, ICQ and other tools are
not considered...".

It is not surprising that the IETF does not use the Internet. The ICANN
leaders and the ICANN Board of Directors also do not use it. Their
focus is also on face-to-face meetings. In their case, it can be better
understood because lawyers run their show. Lawyers do not like to
use the Internet for meetings because people can hold them to what
they have said. They have been trained to deal in the face-to-face world
of the courtrooms, where they can say almost anything and their goal
is to convince a judge to rule in their favor. Many of their lawyer tricks
do not work on the Internet. The Internet distills the world into truth.

In my opinion, the sooner the world moves more to the Internet, the
sooner they will discover the truth about what is really going on. There
are many people who want to censor the truth. It is a shame the IETF
has apparently been infiltrated by those people. Fortunately, in a couple
of days, the world will be able to move on, deeper into cyberspace
where the air is more pure and where people respect the value of the truth.

Jim Fleming
http://www.DOT-BIZ.com
http://www.in-addr.info
3:219 INFO

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 14:57:35 -0400

At 02:23 PM 10/23/01, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
>The advantage of multicast vs. tape-and-archive is the real-time aspect 
>for the viewer. However, this is rarely, rarely used. If it turns out that 
>switching from multicast to tape-and-archive can get more camera operators 
>in more rooms, that would be a win for more WGs.

I have offered on more than one occasion at the Plenary, to pay a "remote 
attendance" fee. This would be used to:

  - fund camera setups in all rooms
  - fund Real or other non-multicast-dependent access
  - provide for email or IRC feedback channel(s) to each room

I have to wonder if the real time aspect appears never to be used because 
it's not usable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Senie                                        [email-masked]
Amaranth Networks Inc.                    http://www.amaranth.com

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 18:11:31 -0700 (PDT)

Please if this is a concern for folks in working groups ask your working
group chair to request that your working group take place in room where it
can be recorded and multicast. feedback like that will help the conference
schedulers, and the iesg, deploy resources, gauge interest and plan for
future meetings.

thanks
joelja

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Jaeggli				       [email-masked]
Academic User Services			     [email-masked]
     PGP Key Fingerprint: 1DE9 8FCA 51FB 4195 B42A 9C32 A30D 121E
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of
arms.  Karl Marx -- Introduction to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
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---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 18:44:43 -0400

Paul,

Join the ietf_censored list, which is a sublist of [email-masked], and
you'll get the flames pre-filtered out. As the list info says, not all
messages are passed.  Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele
D'Albenzio.  It's a wonderful public service.

To subscribe, click on:

mailto:[email-masked]?body=subscribe

Cheers,
Andy

------

At 10/24/2001 12:26 AM +0800, Paul Day wrote:
>-
>This message was passed through [email-masked], which
>is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
>Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.

---

From: Francis Dupont <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:34:33 +0200

=> this was a quote inside a quote (I apologize: I've made this a bit
confusing because the lack of time).

Thanks

---

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 08:35:05 -0400

> more camera operators in more rooms, that would be a win for more WGs.

This is a great idea! I think I've attended about fifteen IETF's now
and at each one I've been to many multicast sessions but I've never,
NEVER heard a live question from a multicast viewer. Now, perhaps
viewers have been posting questions to their repective mail lists
(I've never seen that, either). But, it seems to me that history
indicates the record is much more valuable than the live interaction.

--aaron

---

From: Colin Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 10:59:08 -0400

>indicates the record is much more valuable than the live interaction.

It's not common, but I have seen questions passed from remote participants
to the meeting floor by the Mbone session operators, and I have had people
email me questions to be asked whilst I've been chairing a session (which
brings us back to the utility of wireless access in meeting rooms...)

But, I agree that having a recording of the session is often more useful
than the live multicast.

Cheers,
Colin

---

From: Fred Douglis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 10:10:58 -0400

[email-masked] said:
> messages are passed.  Decisions on what to pass are made solely by
> Raffaele D'Albenzio.  It's a wonderful public service.

I agree, and I use this.  However, it tends to filter the messages from
particular people, but not the long threads generated by those people.

So I use ietf_censored to make the first cut, and an endlessly growing set of
procmail rules to filter the noisy threads....

Fred

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:17:31 -0400

> NEVER heard a live question from a multicast viewer.

I have, though not very often.  I've also heard multicast viewers 
try to ask questions and be ignored.

I have mixed feelings about multicast at IETF meetings.  

On one hand I find the microphone discipline that is necessary for multicast 
extremely disruptive to having an effective discussion - at least for small
to medium sized groups - say less than 100 people.  (I don't know of any way 
to have an effective discussion for a larger group anyway).  And my strong
impression is that the multicast setup that we've been using for many years
is a very expensive tool for serving a very small number of people.

On the other hand I think our meetings are getting more and more expensive 
(both in meeting fees and travel expenses) and we are thereby excluding 
more and more people who should be participating.

So I think we need to continue to work on remote participation, but we
need to try something different than what we've been using.  Unicast 
video transmission, and real-time comment submission using instant 
messaging or email, seem like worthwhile things to try.  Provided of course
that we use standard protocols and data formats with tools that are readily 
available on all platforms.

Keith