CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by April Marine/NASA NAIC Minutes of the Quality Information Services Working Group (QUIS) The QUIS Working Group met on 5 December at the 31st IETF. Thanks to Marsha Perrott for her notes from which these minutes were derived. Agenda o Review charter and milestones. o Update on related work being done by TERENA in Europe. o Update on collection of data analyzing link failures. o Decision concerning next steps and assigning action items. Actions items are listed at the end of these minutes. Review Charter and Milestones As this was a new group, we reviewed the charter and milestones as well as the description of the group so that everyone would be familiar with what we are planning to do. In particular, it was noted that we were only addressing link failures and recommendations for how to deal with them, and we have an Internet-Draft due by March. Update on TERENA Work Jill Foster presented an update on the TERENA Task Force that is working on similar questions. They feel very strongly that one must consider the total picture of an information system, which includes the people providing and using the information, the data itself, the hardware and software, the procedures used to publish the information on-line, and the costs of the whole system. This group is also new, so it has not yet had a chance to define more specific goals beyond defining its approach to the problem. Update on Collection of Data Analyzing Link Failures Mitra, Alex Hoppman, Chris Weider, and Michael Mealling said at the last BOF in Toronto that they would have some data from which we could start an analysis of link failures. Chris and Michael did not make this meeting (although Chris was cornered long enough for us to learn that he had not had a chance to make progress on this front). Alex's software to collect failure information is not yet quite ready. Mitra talked about the data he has collected, but he has not had a chance to analyze it formally. He noted that many of the failures seemed to be transient, such as ftp servers refusing connections when they were overloaded. Alex suggested contacting such site administrators to find out what percentage of the time their servers were maxed out and refusing all new connections. In general, there was an interesting discussion and much speculation. Decision Concerning Next Steps and Assigning Action Items Our first action item is to write an Internet Draft noting the information we discovered from taking a look at common link failures. It was agreed that since at this point we have no formal data, this would be tough to accomplish! Therefore, we agreed to set up a mailing list to which people could send their failures as they occurred, along with a short description of what they were doing at the time as context for the occurrence. This list will be quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov. This list is now operational. After people have contributed some errors, Nevil Brownlee consented to look at the data there and compile it into a draft that describes what people experienced. Mitra also suggested that we take the informal write ups of the previous BOF discussions and see if they can be incorporated into the document. So, members of the group will contribute failures. Alex and Mitra were also requested to write up at least a paragraph describing the information observations they have been able to make from their collections of failures, even if they have not had time to sort through their piles of data formally. Capturing their experience seems like a valuable contribution. The quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov mailing list is hypermail archived at: http://naic.nasa.gov/naic/archives/quality-errors/ To send to the list, use the quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov address. If you actually wish to join the list, send to listmanager@naic.nasa.gov, with subscribe quality-errors as the body of your message (do not include your name). The quality@naic.nasa.gov mailing list is hypermail archived at: http://naic.nasa.gov/naic/archives/quality/ Other quality information can be found at: gopher://gopher.path.net:8001/11/.ietf/Quality Actions o April to set up new mailing list, quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov. DONE o The group to contribute failures to the mailing list. o Nevil Brownlee to compile information sent to list into a draft. o Mitra and Alex (and any others who are willing) to write a paragraph with what they have observed about common failures.