Editor's Note: These minutes have not been edited. Hello there: Herewith the minutes for the RTFM session at Memphis. Please note that the WG considered its charter carefully and revised the Goals and Milestones - these are included in the minutes. The body of the charter is OK as it is, but the WG will consider it on the mailing list and will produce revised text before the Mubnich meeting. Cheers, Nevil +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Nevil Brownlee Director, Technology Development | | Phone: +64 9 373 7599 x8941 ITSS, The University of Auckland | | FAX: +64 9 373 7425 Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------C Minutes of the RTFM WG Sseeion at Memphis IETF, 1300 Tue 8 Apr 97 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Reported by Stephen Stibler and Greg Ruth 'NEW METER MIB' INTERNET DRAFT: Nevil Brownlee (The University of Auckland) is proposing a new version of the Meter MIB, to improve on RFC 2064 from implementation experience. He gave a presentation explaining the MIB changes proposed in the I-D, and others resulting from his implementation work. The changes are: - Textual Conventions have been added or extended for the different address types, i.e. MediumType, MediumAddress, PeerType, PeerAddress, AdjacentType and AdjacentAddress. - The RuleAttributeNumber textual convention has been extended to include MatchingStoD (a 'packet matching' attribute), and to allow the testing of computed attributes. - A few variables have been added to the Ruleset, Manager and Meter Reader Info Tables so as to provide better control and co-ordination for meters and meter readers. - A new table of 'flowPackage' objects has been added. This allows a meter reader to retrieve values for a list of attributes from a single flow. The values are returned in a BER-encoded sequence, which provides a simple, standard way to retrieve large amounts of flow data. - The 'Security Considerations' section has been extended to suggest several ways to protect the meter and its flow data. The WG agreed that a new version of the draft, with these changes and other editorial changes to the supporting sections, should be published. It will be put to a WG last call, then submitted to IESG for publication as a Proposed Standard RFC. PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS: Randy Bloomfield (Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, Boulder, Colorado (part of NTIA)) gave a short presentation on this topic. ITS has focussed on developing user-oriented performance measures which are technology-independent, perception-based and objectively evaluated. They have also developed a system to make these measurements by examining the audio/video signal. New measurement techniques like these are required to assess the effects of new impairments to digital audio, video and multimedia data streams, particularly where these streams are carried across a data network. For example: for video: error blocks, tiling, jerkiness, smearing for audio: non-stationary compression artifacts (burbling, wavering, quivering) It is important to note that quality often depends on the information complexity at the source. This work could provide input for RTFM in suggesting new attributes which are important in measuring transmission of this kind of data. Randy offered a demonstration of the ITS measurment system at a future IETF meeting. He can be contacted at randy@its.bldrdoc.gov. 'NEW ATTRBUTES FOR TRAFFIC FLOW MEASUREMENT' INTERNET DRAFT: Sig Handelman (IBM) presented the latest draft of the I-D. It considers work on performance in other WGs in the areas of connectivity, throughput, packet loss and delay metrics; these are also of interest to the BMWG/IPPM, RSVP and RMON2 WGs. In addition, MIB2 has many variable which are of interest in performance measurement. The new attributes have three forms: packet traces, aggregates and series. They should be useful for the analysis of performance, congestion and normal vs. abnormal network behavior. Stephen Stibler (IBM) described his implementation work in this area, showing histograms of forward- and backward- packet inter-arrival times collected for specified UDP flows. Buckets with specified upper bounds were used to group the data within the meter. Stephen has not yet attempted to extend the Meter MIB to include the new attributes. The WG spent some time discussing how the Traffic Measurement Architecture could be extended to allow specification of: - Ways of specifying data set parameters (buckets, histograms, rate-determining intervals, etc.) - Complex measures to calculate (e.g. packet loss from TCP analysis) - Rule actions required to collect 'new attribute' data from packets An area of particular interest is the need to make the architecture extensible so as to allow further new attributes to be added as the need arises. Implementation work on new attributes will also continue, with a view to determining an initial set of the new attributes. The WG agreed that these issues should be discussed on the mailing list so as to produce a more complete version of the I-D by August 97. THE RTFM WG CHARTER: The RTFM WG needs to review/revise its charter because - It has moved into a new IETF Area (Transport) - There is an increased emphasis on security within IETF The WG discussed its existing charter. It still appears to describe the WG's goals well, but needs to make a more definite statement about security. Only one of the original subgoals has not been worked on - developing better ways to specify the flows of interest; this will also be addresses. Discussion of goals and security on the mailing list was requested. Our current list of Goals and Milestones was updated to the following: April 97: Submit Meter MIB I-D to IESG for publication as Proposed Standard RFC August 97: Publish revised and expended I-D on 'New' Attributes Publish revised 'Architecture' I-D to cover new attributes March 97: Submit I-Ds on 'New' Attributes and Architecture as Standards Track RFCs This list of goals may change as the WG's understanding of the new attributes grows with implementation experience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------