From abel@bellcore.com Fri Aug 19 10:40:15 1994 X-Sender: abel@128.96.33.6 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 13:39:25 -0500 To: iab@ISI.EDU, postel@ISI.EDU, minutes@CNRI.Reston.VA.US From: abel@bellcore.com (Abel Weinrib) Subject: Minutes for July 27 Open IAB Meeting (FINAL) Content-Length: 6537 Status: RO X-Lines: 129 Here are the minutes for the open IAB meeting at the last IETF meeting. Jon: please put them in the IAB archives. Thanks. --Abel ============ MINUTES FOR JULY 27 1994 IAB OPEN MEETING AT TORONTO IETF The open meeting of the Internet Architecture Board at the Toronto IETF opened with a report on the status of the liaison with SC6 by Christian Huitema. The "Proposed Cooperative Agreement" is almost complete, with only one issue still to be resolved. Christian then mentioned the request from the ISOC board of trustees to the IAB to devise a "code of ethics" for the Internet community. Brian Carpenter presented a report on "External (Mis)Perceptions of IETF/IESG/IAB/ISOC." He has been polling people inside and outside the Internet community to learn what the image is of these organizations. In summary, he has heard from some people that the IETF standards process is too informal, from others that it is too formal, and from a few that it is ineffective. The internationalism of the ISOC and IETF is viewed as inadequate. Some people view IETF standards as non-authoritative and the IETF/IESG/IAB as self-perpetuating with closed vision. The activities of the IAB and IESG are poorly understood both inside and outside the IETF. ISOC has over-emphasized political correctness and Internet hype, but has overlooked outreach to IETF and staff engineers. Regarding the issue of the internationalism of the IETF, it was suggested that there be more IETF meetings outside of the United States. It was not clear that non-US locations would be as cost effective for attendees, but it might address the perception that the IETF is primarily a US-centric organization. An Internet draft will be published shortly that details the comments received and outlines some suggestions for improvements. Next, Steve Crocker gave an update on the POISED process. A question raised during discussion was whether there is anything that is outside the purview of the IETF. Also, the statement was made that much of the focus on openness and process is less important than the technology--the reason that TCP/IP has proven so popular is that the technology works. There was then a prolonged discussion about the fact that some working groups are not working and that some people are choosing to not bring technology to the IETF because of certain aspects of the IETF culture. Possible causes for these problems are that people can't be removed from working groups and members are not held accountable. One suggestion to fix this within the current structure is to have strong WG chairs and area directors. Some members of the IAB voiced the strong opinion that the IESG area directors should take stronger steps to manage the process. The area directors can and should take a strong role in managing working groups (e.g., by policing the charters and instructing working group chairs on their rights and responsibilities in running meetings). Another statement that triggered debate is that it's important to have a clear vision of what the goal is and to understand how the work within the IETF is working toward reaching the goal. It was felt that the IAB should clearly define the architecture so that the IESG, IETF and the working groups can engineer the solutions to fulfill the vision. Christian Huitema then presented a talk "Follow-on to the Security Workshop." He announced that the IAB, in its meeting on Sunday July 24, had developed a statement encouraging the IETF to develop security for the Internet: "The IAB calls on the IETF to develop standards that provide security (confidentiality, authentication and integrity) for communication over the Internet. The framework must make provision for multiple encryption algorithms, but should specify a single common (strong) method. Consideration of export controls is outside of the purview of the IETF." The talk evoked a plea from the audience: the workshop report looked good and provided a nice perspective on a few topics, but the report is no substitute for the IAB providing an end-to-end top-to-bottom architecture for Internet security. This raised the question whether the PSRG is documenting such an architecture. There is a document, currently 178 pages long, but a lot is still in outline form. It will (soon?) be released as an Internet draft, but first it needs experts from the areas to help fill in the protocol-specific parts. There was strong encouragement from some quarters for near term release of the document to the larger community for discussion and input. John Romkey announced plans for the next IAB workshop, to focus on "Information Infrastructure." There is a call for white papers, which appears below: IAB Information Infrastructure Workshop Call For White Papers The Internet Architecture Board is sponsoring an "Information Infrastructure" workshop Oct. 12-14, 1994 at an east coast site in the United States still to be determined. This workshop is intended to explore architectural issues involved in various information applications and systems currently being used on the Internet, including the World Wide Web, Gopher, Mosaic, archie and WAIS. The workshop will emphasize common architectural issues such as: naming caching type conversion security issues (privacy, authorization, authentication,...) replication resource location integration with directory services accounting encoding longevity Participation in IAB-sponsored workshops is by invitation. Traditionally, attendees are IAB members, IESG area directors concerned with the subjects, and selected experts from IETF working groups and IRTF research groups. In order to solicit new perspectives in this area, the IAB invites interested parties to submit a one to two page white paper analyzing a specific architectural problem with architectural suggestions for solutions. Please email white papers to ii-white-papers@ELF.Com by August 31. They can also be sent as hardcopy to John Romkey, ELF Communications, 1770 Massachusetts Ave. #331, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA. Note that the number of places is very limited - there is no guarantee that we can invite all those who submit. But in any case, your comments will be taken into account during the workshop! =============================== These minutes were prepared by Abel Weinrib, abel@bellcore.com. An online copy of these and other minutes are available in the directory ftp.isi.edu:pub/IAB.