Quality Information Services BOF (QUIS) Reported by Mitra/Pandora Systems Discussion Because this is the second meeting of the QUIS BOF, the group must decide whether to become a working group or shut down. Erik Huizer outlined the proper procedure to start a new working group and work began on the charter. It must be decided whether the group should identify the problems in the whole range of quality issues or focus on more specific problems. Mitra feels that the focus should be on issues other than just technical, including administrative and operations, but not on the quality of the information itself, which is outside the purview of an IETF commitee. One problem is that many links are failing 10% and growing. A technical issue is that technical solutions to link failure are needed; an administrative issue is that procedures for proper update and maintenance of pointers is needed. Another problem is lossy gateways. The archive contains a long list of issues. Erik suggested that the charter be built by selecting problems, and writing around it. The group compiled the following list of technical issues that need to be addressed: o Links that do not work o Replication o Incorrectly configured systems o Lossy gateways o Loss of context information (ABANDONED) April asked why the group was not focusing on operational issues instead of technical issues. Erik stated that the IETF can produce papers on operational issues, so they can be addressed if the group decides that they need to be. The group was left with some open questions: o Will single machine checking work? o Can we get enough people to buy in? o What is the quality of metainformation? Tim Berners-Lee stressed the need to analyze the failure modes and fix the most important where they are fixable. It was decided that the focus should be on links that do not work---including links that return no data, wrong data, slow data, or incomplete data. The name will be taken off-line and the goal and titles will be edited. Quality of Information Links and Transfer (QUILT) was suggested. Proposed Working Group Charter Cliff Lynch has volunteered to write the charter, with the help of Erik Huizer. Mitra and April Marine will chair the group. Analysis will be done by Mitra, Michael Mealling, Alex Hoffman and Chris Weider. The group's goal is to develop technical specifications and administrative recommendations to alleviate the problems of link failure. Milestones: o Produce Informational RFC(s) for information system administrators and providers o Produce Informational RFC(s) for developers of information systems and support tools o Make architectural and protocol recommendations Information: o gopher://gopher.path.net:8001/11/.ietf/Quality o ftp://ftp.path.net/pub/ietf/Quality o http://www.path.net:8090/.ietf/Quality o listserv@sunsite.unc.edu subscribe quality The group needs to liaison with the RARE ISUS group, because they deal with similar issues.