Subject: RE: WG Review: Internet Wideband Audio Codec (codec)

From: "Bernard Aboba" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 13:22:59 -0800

Roni Even said:

"I do not think that the IETF should accept any work because people want to
do it, if this is the case a group of people can come and ask to start
working on any idea they have that has some relation to the Internet. IETF
should accept work that is in scope for of the IETF  and for which there is
enough knowledge to evaluate the work by the participants."

I would like to suggest two principles that appear to have guided decisions
of this kind in the past: 

1.      The "scope" of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)  is work
relating to Internet Engineering.  

2.      Standards work is best carried out within the organization that
potential active participants prefer to work in.   

These principles suggest that if proposed work relates to Internet
Engineering and a group of people are both interested in doing work in the
IETF and have demonstrated competence, then that work can be chartered
within the IETF.  

Witness the chartering of the TRILL and CAPWAP WGs.  In these cases,
participants expressed a preference to do the work within the IETF, and
demonstrated the competence to take it on.  Those WGs were chartered within
IETF.   Similar decisions were made with respect to WGs that subsequently
landed in the Sub-IP Area. 

There have also been situations where work was clearly related to Internet
Engineering, but it was also clear that participants preferred to do that
work elsewhere.  In that case, the IETF transferred the work to another SDO
(see RFC 4663).

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 21:03:09 -0500

It seems to me that a group should be chartered with two sets of aims

First to define a process for registering Internet audio CODECs for
use on the Internet. This is slightly more complex than simply
allocating an IANA code point as there are potentially parameters
involved and these need to be exposed to the higher level protocol.

When a code point is registered we need to have a document that
defines the parameters, bit packing, packet segmentation and other
issues, the set of applications for which it applies and the
proprietary encumbrances that are known to affect it.

Second, to register a set of base CODECs that have already established
some form of support base. This is likely to mean rather more than
simply providing a reference to an existing document that describes
how to do everything but should not extend to performing 'research'
into compression techniques.

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From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 19:58:46 -0800 (PST)

> into compression techniques.

What you have described is exactly what AVT WG has done for the past
decade plus.  No need for a new WG to do that.  (AVT does other
things, too.)

In the past, particularly when I was co-chair of AVT, there was
significant pressure from IETF leadership against IETF (and AVT in
particular) standarizing codecs out of concern that to do so would
step on ITU toes.  We made a carefully considered exception for iLBC
because it had goals similar to those now being proposed.  If the
concern has now dissipated, that's fine with me.

                                                        -- Steve

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From: Jean-Marc Valin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 12:20:04 -0500

> concern has now dissipated, that's fine with me.

Please note that there have been several liaisons between the ITU and the IETF
about that and, should a working group be formed, a collaboration between
between the two SDOs would be considered. One option that was discussed during
the last BoF (http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/09nov/minutes/codec.txt) was to
form a joint team similar to the JVT, where an MPEG WG worked with ITU SG16 on
H.264. In any case, the idea is not to replicate what the ITU is currently
doing.

    Jean-Marc