Subject: [XCON] If we build it, they will come?

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:40:17 -0500

XCON members,

Time for a "stupid newbie" question that I feel I need to ask.  After
the meeting in Vancouver last week, I found myself with a great amount
of questions about what exactly XCON is trying to do.  I read through
the charter[1] and "additional information"[2] and went through the
recent drafts [3][4] as well as other documents[5]. I read the
Conferencing Scenarios[6] and requirements for floor control protocols[7]. 

It's very obvious to me that an **incredible** amount of work has been
put into all these efforts over several years.  But what is NOT obvious
to me as a newcomer to the group is a very fundamental question:

 - WHY is all this work being done?  What is the problem statement?  Who
is going to use this work when it is done?

The closest I seem to be able to get is in the "Description of Working
Group" found on the charter page[1] where it says this:
------
The scope of this effort is intentionally more narrow than previous
attempts to standardize conferencing (e.g. centralized control), and is
intended to enable interoperability in a commercial environment which
already has a number of non-standard implementations using some of the
protocols.
------
>From this I find myself asking... so is the point to make it so that I
could have a conference on, for example, an Avaya conferencing bridge
and another conference on a Nortel conferencing bridge and have the two
conferencing sessions interoperate?  (I could see that being an issue
if, for instance, a company with an Avaya switch acquired a company with
a Nortel switch (or pick your vendors names)).  Is that the goal?  On
the other hand, the drafts seem to be defining an overall conferencing
system... which I don't understand who would ever build given that most
vendors currently have their own (proprietary) conferencing systems and
I don't understand why they would want to drop all that to move to a
standardized conferencing system.

What problem in the market *today* is this working group trying to solve?

Is there a draft out there that I missed that states use cases or
problem statements?  Are there either vendors or large customers who are
clamoring for this kind of functionality?   Do some vendors already have
partial implementations?

Please understand... I am not raising these questions to be critical. 
You all who have been participating for some time may have a common
understanding of the problem statement that was perhaps discussed back
in email somewhere (I did NOT plow through all the old list archives). 
Please consider this simply feedback from at least *this* particular
newcomer that it is not at all clear to me from existing documents/web
pages WHY I would want to participate in this working group.  (My
employer does provide  conferencing as part of our products/services, so
on one level, it would seem to me to make sense for me to be involved
with a "centralized conferencing" working group.)

Any pointers would be definitely appreciated.

Thank you,
Dan

[1] http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/xcon-charter.html
[2] http://www.softarmor.com/xcon/
[3] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-xcon-framework-10.txt
[4]
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-xcon-common-data-model-07.txt
[5] http://tools.ietf.org/wg/xcon/
[6] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4597
[7] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4376

-- 
Dan York, CISSP, Director of Emerging Communication Technology
Office of the CTO    Voxeo Corporation     [email-masked]
Phone: +1-407-455-5859  Skype: danyork  http://www.voxeo.com
Blogs: http://blogs.voxeo.com  http://www.disruptivetelephony.com

Bring your web applications to the phone.
Find out how at http://evolution.voxeo.com

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

---

From: "Brian Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:59:59 -0500

No, it's to allow me to build a SIP UA and you to build a conferencing
server and have them interoperate.

If you think about conferencing today, the assumption is that the endpoint
is an analog phone which might have DTMF.

The assumption for this work is that you have, say, a SIP UA with a very
fancy UI.

Your conference server has to work with my UI, which is to say that my UI
has to know how to get, say, a roster, so I can display names under the
video of each participant.  

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan York [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 1:40 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [XCON] If we build it, they will come?
> 
> XCON members,
>

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:42:14 -0600

Dan:

Brian answered your questions regarding where the protocols live in the 
network and gave a taste of what they are expected to do (in practice, 
the experience will be quite rich, similar to the web-based conference 
services, but with the ability to work on arbitrary devices).

There's a bit of philosophy that I want to touch on here, though.

> [T]he drafts seem to be defining an overall conferencing

Consider the instant messaging landscape in 1999. ICQ had blazed a 
narrow trail through a small community, and AOL Instant Messenger was 
the dominant player (carrying over 430 million messages a day). Yahoo 
was making good headway, and even Microsoft was throwing their hat into 
the fray with MSN Messenger.[*] All four major systems used proprietary, 
non-interoperable, unpublished protocols. AOL was engaged in a war with 
what they considered "rogue" clients, vigorously blocking any attempts 
at interoperability.

The entrenched players had little interest in a standard protocol. Only 
Microsoft -- the upstart -- was promoting the concept of a standard 
protocol.

In the intervening 8 years, XMPP and SIMPLE have gained significant 
market and mind share, and it's not hard to imagine eventual 
interoperability between every viable instant messaging system within 
the next decade or so.

It's the same curve followed by just about all popular communication 
technologies: proprietary versions emerge first, and prove that the 
market exists. Eventually, a standardized protocol for the technology is 
defined, and the market slowly migrates to the standard. (To see how 
this plays out in a longer timeframe, consider the slow but complete 
migration of email from isolated, proprietary islands to 
fully-interconnected standards-based servers over the past 25 years).

That's what XCON is doing for conferencing. I understand that it's hard 
seeing the curve from this end, and it's difficult to imagine what 
impact we might have over the next 5, 10, 20 years. But it all needs to 
start somewhere, and we think this is as good a start as we can come up 
with right now.

/a

[*] Yes, there were important predecessors in spirit, like zephyr, talk, 
and their ilk. I'm trying to stick with the UI modality represented by 
currently popular instant messaging systems.

---

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:55:55 -0500

Brian,

A belated "Thank you" for your reply.  This concise use case does  
help explain where the work of XCON fits into the larger picture.   
May I suggest that something along these lines be added to one of the  
various documents about XCON, such as the ones I linked to in my  
original post? (perhaps the charter page?)

That may: a) explain to other confused newcomers to the group; and b)  
potentially encourage more participation from others.

Thank you,
Dan

On Dec 14, 2007, at 10:59 AM, Brian Rosen wrote:

>> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-xcon-common-data- 
>> model-
>> 07.txt

---

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 14:24:37 -0500

Adam,

Thank you for your reply as well.

> Brian answered your questions regarding where the protocols live in  
> the network and gave a taste of what they are expected to do (in  
> practice, the experience will be quite rich, similar to the web- 
> based conference services, but with the ability to work on  
> arbitrary devices).

Yes, and as I just stated in my (belated) reply to Brian, I think it  
would be useful to include a concise statement along the lines of  
what Brian stated somewhere in some of pages *about* XCON to guide  
other people who might be as confused as I was.  (Although perhaps it  
was just a failure of understanding on my part and it's crystal clear  
to everyone else.)

> There's a bit of philosophy that I want to touch on here, though.

<snip>

> Consider the instant messaging landscape in 1999.
<snip>
> interoperability between every viable instant messaging system  
> within the next decade or so.

Perhaps.  As a standards-geek, I'd love to see it.  However, given  
the increasing rise of multi-protocol clients (ex. Pidgin/Gaim,  
Adium, Trillian, Miranda, etc.) I would argue that IM  
interoperability is actually becoming less important to many.  I'm on  
a Mac and using Adium am currently signed into 8 different IM  
accounts (3 Jabber/XMPP, 2 AOL, 2 Yahoo, 1 MSN/WLM).  On a personal  
level I no longer really care about interop because I've effectively  
moved control of my *overall* contact list from the various services  
down onto my client.  Yes, there are certainly larger issues with  
this in terms of overhead on my system, extra network connections,  
etc.  I also lose this functionality when I move to a different  
device such as my Blackberry. (And yes, I am also susceptible to  
Adium breaking when one of the services revs their protocol in way  
that kills support for external clients.)

I'm personally rather skeptical that the major consumer IM services  
will ultimately move to a standardized protocol (or even support  
interop) given that it is in their interests to keep people within  
those walled gardens and keep control of the directory, i.e. the  
contact/buddy list.  There's certainly some signs of holes in those  
walls with some services letting you add contacts from others, but I  
don't see it going too far.  Maybe I'm just jaded.

Anyway, I do get your point...

> It's the same curve followed by just about all popular  
> communication technologies: proprietary versions emerge first, and  
> prove that the market exists. Eventually, a standardized protocol  
> for the technology is defined, and the market slowly migrates to  
> the standard.

... that this pattern typically plays out with most popular  
communication technologies.

> (To see how this plays out in a longer timeframe, consider the slow  
> but complete migration of email from isolated, proprietary islands  
> to fully-interconnected standards-based servers over the past 25  
> years).

Yes, but also consider the somewhat fascinating (and disturbing)  
migration going on right now of some level of messaging *back* into  
"walled gardens" of closed, proprietary social networking services.   
An increasing number of people, especially on the younger side, are  
doing all of their electronic communication within the walls of  
Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites.  I wrote about  
this back in May at: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2007/05/ 
facebook_myspac.html and haven't really seen any change in that seven  
months later.  There's still a good number of folks moving in that  
direction.

I would note that Internet-based email is still certainly used, but  
primarily as a "lowest common denominator" method.  If I can't  
contact you on Facebook, MySpace or one of the IM services, I may try  
to find your email address somewhere and email you.  The social  
networking services provide a nice easy directory of users (as do the  
IM services) and they also provide a trust network in which you can  
set things so that only your "friends" can communicate with you (thus  
pretty much entirely removing the issue of spam) with Internet email  
providing the way by which you get friend requests.

Anyway, this is a digression from your main point, but I'd point out  
that migration to a "fully-interconnected standards-based" protocol  
does not necessarily mean that communication will *stay* with that  
protocol.

> That's what XCON is doing for conferencing. I understand that it's  
> hard seeing the curve from this end, and it's difficult to imagine  
> what impact we might have over the next 5, 10, 20 years. But it all  
> needs to start somewhere, and we think this is as good a start as  
> we can come up with right now.

Understood.  If, ultimately, there is a standard way for users of SIP  
User Agents to be able to interact with conferencing servers on a  
richer level than simply DTMF (or speech) that will indeed be a good  
thing.  As Brian did rightly point out, existing conference systems  
will work with any phone that can send DTMF tones.  It would be  
logical for them to be able to work with any SIP UA at a richer level.

Thank you for the reply and the philosophical points.

Regards,
Dan