Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions are open meetings to evaluate interest in a certain topic which may lead to the creation of a new IETF working group. In the interest of attracting the largest group of interested parties, BOF sessions are formal agenda items at IETF meetings, and must be sponsored by one of the IETF Area Directors.

Many very interesting BOFs are scheduled for the 47^th IETF meeting in Adelaide, Australia. Information about each BOF has been posted to the IETF-Announce mailing list over the past few weeks; you can find a full meeting schedule on the IETF web site.

WEIRD reviewed the collection of BOF announcements and grouped them according to our hot topic areas of Content Representation, Internet Telephony, Network Management, Security, Wireless, and Other Hot Topics. Below you’ll find a brief description of each BOF by category, and the time and location of the BOF. The title of each BOF is a hypertext link to the meeting agenda, list of drafts and other information.

We’ve also included a list of Working Groups meeting for the first time at Adelaide.

NOTE 1: Change Is Growth. IETF Working Group and BOF agendas are subject to change – consult IETF web site and message boards at Adelaide for the most current information.

NOTE 2: The Tao of BOFs. If you plan on attending any of the BOFs, please be respectful of the chairs and of the IETF process by preparing yourself. The agenda for each BOF includes a list of internet drafts and other source material that you should read before the BOF. If the BOF appears to be pursuing a specific solution to a problem, and you are interested in a different solution to the same problem, consider organizing your own BOF rather than pulling one that’s already been scheduled off-track.

These BOFs are related to creating standard formats for representing and exchanging information at the application layer.

B2BXML – Business to Business XML Data Communication Strategies

Applications are beginning to proliferate using Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) to represent data for web-based information exchanges, such as in Business-to-Business (B2B) communications. This BOF discusses the problem space for B2B XML communications in order to determine opportunities for common solutions. Participants will examine existing B2B approaches to ensure that the problem space is well defined, with the goal of producing an IETF Working Group charter to formulate suitable requirements for this space and potentially develop solutions that support these requirements.

CHAIR: Michael Condry Michael.Condry@eng.sun.com.

MEETING: TUESDAY, March 28, 2000; 1545-1800 hours; Hall B

BLOCKS – An Application Protocol Framework and A Model Application

Historically, each Internet application protocol has defined its own set of rules for exchanging control and data information. This results in poor utilization of the internet community’s collective design experience. The BLOCKS BOF introduces a generic application protocol framework (called BXXP) for connection-oriented, asynchronous, request-response interactions over TCP. This particular subset of the problem supports a large class of Internet applications, whilst providing solutions to common design issues for those applications, including framing, segmentation, structuring, and multiplexing of messages, along with an authentication and privacy over the transport.

CHAIRS: Marshall Rose mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us; Carl Malamud carl@invisible.net.

MEETING: TUESDAY, March 28, 2000; 1300-1515 hours; Hall B

IMAPEXT – Internet Messaging Access Protocol Extension

The IMAP Extensions BOF has met at several previous IETF meetings to charter a Working Group that will revise and publish standards-track extensions to Internet Messaging Access Protocol Version 4 (IMAP4). Extensions are desired for new functions including: sorting, threading, and viewing of messages; access control lists; message-level annotations; list mechanism. This meeting of the BOF will provide a status update on current draft documents, and work with IESG / IAB representatives to resolve issues with the proposed Working Group charter.

CHAIR: Pete Resnick presnick@qualcomm.com.

MEETING: TUESDAY, March 28, 2000; 0900-1130 hours; Room 10

VPIM – Voice Profile for Internet Mail

E-mail systems and voice mail systems have similar features and can be combined into unified messaging systems. The VPIM BOF (which has met at several previous IETF meetings) seeks to develop internet drafts describing how to implement voice mail features using internet mail mechanisms such as MIME, LDAP, and IMAP, and how to represent voice messages using specific encoding methods. The VPIM BOF is connected with the VPIM work group at the Electronic Messaging Association (EMA), where voice mail vendors and several email vendors have been meeting for several years.

CHAIR: Glenn Parsons gparsons@nortelnetworks.com.

MEETING: MONDAY, March 27, 2000; 1300-1500 hours; Room 4&5

These BOFs are related to real-time transmission of packet voice over the internet.

FICKLE – Fast IP Connectivity and KeepaLiveE

To minimize service outages for internet applications such as packetized voice, network failures must be detected and corrected very quickly (order: 100 milliseconds). Current internet routing, signaling, and application protocols incorporate keep-alive mechanisms that detect failures relatively slowly (order: 10 seconds). This BOF will address the need for a general-purpose high-speed keepalive mechanism between peer devices at the IP layer. As part of the BOF an initial proposal for a general-purpose peer-to-peer neighbor adjacency protocol will be presented.

CHAIR: Hal Sandick hsandick@nortelnetworks.com.

MEETING: FRIDAY, March 31, 2000; 0900-1130 hours; Hall B

FOGLAMPS – Limitations of Multiple Addressing Realms

RFC 1918 describes best common practices for private allocation of IP addresses (for example, addresses in the reserved ranges 10.X.X.X or 192.168.X.X) within an enterprise. When connectivity is needed between an enterprise using private addresses, and the global Internet, a Native Address Translator (NAT) is often incorporated into the enterprise firewall to convert private to public addresses. A number of applications – particularly voice and multimedia applications using SIP, H.323, and RSIP - have experienced operational incompatibilities with NATs. The purpose of this BOF is to examine the current limits on NATs, and review some of the proposed mechanisms to deal with those limitations. Based on that review participants will decide whether a working group is necessary to (a) provide mechanisms and/or (b) review conflicting mechanisms.

CHAIR: Melinda Shore Melinda.Shore@nokia.com.

MEETING: WEDNESDAY, March 29, 2000; 1300-1500 hours; Hall B

SIP323 – SIP and H.323 Interworking

There are two competing standards in the industry for establishing and managing real-time interactive media communications over IP. One is the proposed IETF standard, Session Initiation Protocol (RFC 2543), and the other is the ITU recommendation, H.323. Although they use the same protocol (Real-Time Protocol, or RTP) for media streaming, they cannot establish calls between them. In this BOF, participants will discuss SIP and H.323 interworking issues, execution plans and the scope of the work.

CHAIRS: Joon Maeng joon_maeng@vtel.com; Dave Walker drwalker@ss8networks.com.

MEETING: MONDAY, March 27, 2000; 1300-1500 hours; Hall A

VOMPLS – Voice Over MPLS

Carrying voice over IP networks potentially enables service providers to use a single internet-based infrastructure for all services. Efficient operation of Voice over IP (VoIP) requires implementation of quality-of-service (QoS) protocols in the infrastructure. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is one of the IETF QoS protocols being adopted rapidly in service provider markets. The Voice over MPLS BOF will define a framework for operation of voice services over MPLS and identify any needed related standardization work.

CHAIRS: Antti Kankkunen anttik@integralaccess.com; Gerald R. Ash gash@att.com.

MEETING: THURSDAY, March 30, 2000; 1530-1730 hours; Hall B

These BOFs are related to administration and metrics of internet infrastructure.

RPERFMAN – Remote PERFormance MANagement

Work in several IETF working groups (ippm, bmwg, rmonmib, and disman) addresses issues relevant to remote performance management. The purpose of this BOF is threefold. First, it will help in assessing the need for additional work in areas not already covered by current work items. Secondly, it will aid in determining whether there is sufficient interest (and resources) for additional work. Finally, it will give interested parties an opportunity to voice their views on what would be an appropriate home for this work, whether under the existing charter of an existing WG, as an extension to some WG's charter, or as a separate working group.

CHAIR: Randy Presuhn randy_presuhn@bmc.com.

MEETING: THURSDAY, March 30, 2000; 1530-1730 hours; Location TBA (Hall A?)

TMNSNMP – TMN-SNMP

Network management is becoming more complex with the strong convergence movement that is blending IP networks and traditional telephone networks. The internet and telecommunications communities use differing management concepts and technology standards. IP networks use Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) almost exclusively, while traditional telephone networks are primarily focused on Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) and associated protocols. The aim of this BOF is to help acquaint the IETF community with TMN concepts and technologies and to explore how the capabilities provided by both sets of concepts and technologies can be accommodated converged networks.

CHAIRS: Bert Wijnen bwijnen@lucent.com; Randy Bush randy@psg.com.

MEETING: MONDAY, March 27, 2000; 0930-1130 hours; Hall B

These BOFs are related broadly to data confidentiality, authentication, protection from denial of service attacks, and other internet security topics.

ITRACE – ICMP Traceback

Recently several prominent commercial web sites have been subjected to denial of service attacks. Such an attack floods the web server with phony requests for information, leaving little time for the server to respond to legitimate user requests. The purpose of the BoF is to look at a specific statistical mechanism for tracing the origin of a denial of service attacks without creating overhead on legitimate requests.

CHAIR: Steve Bellovin smb@research.att.com.

MEETING: THURSDAY, March 30, 2000; 1530-1730 hours; Hall E

SYSLOG – Security Issues in Network Event Logging

Syslog is a de facto standard for logging system events. However, the protocol component of this event logging system has not been formerly documented. While the protocol has been very useful and scaleable, it has some known but undocumented security problems. The goal of this working group is to document and address the security and integrity problems of the existing Syslog mechanism. In order to accomplish this task we will document the existing protocol. The working group will also explore and develop a standard to address the security problems.

CHAIR: Chris M. Lonvick clonvick@cisco.com.

MEETING: TUESDAY, March 28, 2000; 1545-1645 hours; Room 4&5

These BOFs are related to making wireless networks and the internet work well together.

IWW – IAB Wireless Workshop

Wireless technology are becoming increasingly important to the internet, but wireless operators have not chosen to use IP4, TCP, full HTTP/HTML, and other applications for a variety of reasons. The IAB, on Feb 29-March 2, held an invitational workshop to discuss this, determine what the legitimate issues are, and make recommendations to the wireless operators, IRTF, and IETF on the architectural road map for the next few years. The intent of this BOF is to present a preliminary report on the results, and discuss that report.

CHAIRS: Brian Carpenter brian@icair.org; Fred Baker fred@cisco.com; Bob Hinden hinden@iprg.nokia.com.

MEETING: THURSDAY, March 30, 2000; 0900-1130 hours; Hall A

Not fitting any specific "hot topic" category, these BOFs nonetheless will cover very interesting internet issues.

IPO – IP over Optical

Switched multi-channel (WDM and DWDM) optical networks using OXCs (Optical Cross-connects) present many new opportunities for supporting faster and more flexible provisioning of IP services. Large-scale deployment requires development of common techniques for operating internet protocols over the new optical media, including potential modifications to existing IP and MPLS routing and connection signaling protocols. The IPO BOF will discuss creation of an IP over Optical WG. The proposed working group would not duplicate work already being done elsewhere, but might generate requirements or other input to be considered in other WGs in addition to its own work items.

CHAIRS: Andy Malis amalis@lucent.com; Jim Luciani james_luciani@mindspring.com.

MEETING: MONDAY, March 27, 2000; 1530-1730 hours; Hall B

IPS – IP Storage

While file storage protocols like NFS and AFS have long operated over IP-based networks, block storage protocols such as SCSI and ATA have yet to make the leap from non-IP based interconnects to IP-based networks. With the emergence of gigabit and 10-gigabit IP networks, transporting block storage over IP networks is increasingly attractive. The IP Storage BOF will discuss formation of a working group to address multiple storage-related issues including SCSI over TCP, storage device configuration, management, and discovery, light-weight protocols, security, QoS, and IPv6 and NAT interoperability.

CHAIRS: Mark Bradley markb@btc.adaptec.com; David Lee Dave_Lee@3com.com.

MEETING: WEDNESDAY, March 29, 2000; 1530-1730 hours; Hall A

In addition to the many BOFs at Adelaide, several Working Groups will meet there for the first time. This is the ultimate goal of the BOF process. Working Groups meeting for the first time at Adelaide include:

DNSEXT - DNS Extensions

IDN - Internationalized Domain Names

IPSP - IP Security Policy

IPSRA – IP Security Remote Access

SNMPCONF - Configuration Management with SNMP

WEIRD is the Web Elucidation of Internet Related Developments working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. WEIRD provides information through its web site to raise engineering community and end-user awareness of IETF activities. We hope you’ll find this information helpful during the 47^th IETF meeting. Write us to let us know how it helped and what we can do better!

For more information on WEIRD, or to volunteer to write an article for WEIRD, see our IETF home page.

The WEIRD working group will be meeting in Adelaide on THURSDAY, March 30, 2000; 0900-1130 hours; Room 8&9.