Operational Requirements Area

Directors


   o Scott Bradner:  sob@harvard.edu
   o Mike O'Dell:  mo@uunet.uu.net


Area Summary reported by Scott Bradner/Harvard and Mike O'Dell/UUNET



Internet Accounting 2 BOF (ACCT2)

The BOF was well received, with strong support from those present for
the development of traffic flow measurement tools, and indeed for
traffic accounting in general.  The group decided to publish its
Internet-Drafts (`Accounting Architecture' and `Meter Services MIB') as
Experimental RFCs.  At least two vendors are starting on Accounting
Meter implementations, which will allow us to gather more implementation
experience.  Meanwhile, the group will continue its other work (e.g., on
traffic flow data file formats) on its mailing list.



Emergency Information Infrastructure BOF (EII)

This BOF was cancelled at the request of the originator.



Guidelines and Recommendations for Incident Processing BOF (GRIP)

The BOF met for two sessions on 6 December.  The agenda for the meetings
was:


   o GRIP Charter
   o Milestones
   o Vendor recommendations document
   o Response team recommendations document
   o Begin document outline, if time permits


A charter for the GRIP Working Group was proposed, discussed and
modified.  A revised charter was produced and agreed upon as was the
schedule of deliverables.  The charter will be submitted to the IESG for
action to officially create the working group.



Benchmarking Methodology Working Group (BMWG)

With about 25 people in attendance, the working group agreed to the
following activities after discussion:


   o Begin the process of forwarding the Internet-Draft on Network
     Interconnect Device Testing as an Informational RFC.

   o Start four additional areas of discussion and work concerning
     benchmarking methods:

      -  Focus on methods for measuring network latency, starting with
         the recent Internet-Draft as a basis.  This group will be led
         by Jim McQuaid.

      -  Focus on methods for testing call setup in a network.  This
         group will be led by Kevin Dubray.

      -  Focus on methods for testing congestion and congestion control
         in a network switch.  This group will be led by Merike Kaeo.

      -  Focus on testing of end-systems.  This group will be led by
         Rick Jones.



CIDR Deployment Working Group (CIDRD)

The working group met in two sessions:  one discussed CIDR deployment
issues and the other was a joint meeting with the Inter-Domain Routing
Working Group (IDR) to discuss the advancement of CIDR to Draft
Standard.

At the CIDRD-only session, four topics were discussed.  A CIDR
deployment status report was given and the chart showed that the routing
table number is growing though more ASs do aggregation and more
aggregates have been seen in the global routing table.  A CIDRD survey
summary was reported to the group which identified the issues why people
were not doing CIDR. The conclusion was that it is hard to rely on
people to do good things for the entire Internet and therefore the
approach needs to be changed.  That is, ASs or ISP/NSPs need to protect
themselves.  This led to the next presentation which advocated for
`local aggregation', i.e., ASs who receive aggregatable routes would do
proxy aggregation at its border router to prevent carrying unaggregated
routes in its AS. The fourth topic was how to make it ready for the use
of sub-Class A address.  If the NIC starts to hand off a piece of Class
A to a network entity, will the system work?  A test plan on live
network was developed and volunteers were identified to carry out the
test plan.

At the joint meeting with IDR, it was agreed that CIDR is ready to be
advanced to the Draft Standard.



Generic Internet Service Description Working Group (GISD)

This meeting was cancelled by the chair.



Network Status Reports Working Group (NETSTAT)

The working group heard reports on the status of a number of regional
and national networks.



Operational Statistics Working Group (OPSTAT)

The `Opstats File Format' draft (to replace RFC 1404) is now ready to
submit as an Informational RFC. The `Client-Server Architecture' draft
was discussed and modified and should be ready to submit in April '95.
The `Opstats SNMP Users' Guide' will be a cookbook of useful
information, intended for site managers (rather than network operators).
The group aims for a first draft of the Guide in March '95.