CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Steve Alexander/Lachman Technology Minutes of the TELNET Working Group (TELNET) Proposed Agenda o Charter o Authentication Option o Transfer of Control Proposal Summary The agenda was augmented with a presentation from John Klensin, one of the Area Directors for the Applications Area. John discussed the IESG's views on the environment option controversy. This shifted the primary focus of the meeting to the environment option. In Columbus, the group had proposed to re-issue RFC 1408 with the VAR and VALUE definitions corrected to match the BSD implementation. Additionally, a document was produced that explained heuristics that could be used to handle implementations that did not agree. Upon further reflection it was decided that since the heuristics were not 100% deterministic that it would be better to re-issue RFC 1408 using a different option value. In this way, two systems implementing the new option could determine that heuristics were not needed. Most working group members felt that in the long run this would be cleaner. There is a further advantage in that an earlier change requested by the IESG (USERVAR) means that systems using the current option values and the BSD definitions don't work with implementations deployed prior to the introduction of USERVAR. This issue will be re-discussed on the mailing list in order to reach the widest possible audience. The group briefly discussed the proposed revisions to the charter. The general consensus is that we don't want to remain as a clearing-house for TELNET documents. The charter will be revised to only cover the authentication work that is going on. The group reviewed a proposal for a ``TELNET Transfer of Control'' option. The group feels that there are some security issues with the document. Various people will forward their comments directly to the author. At this time the group does not wish to formally work on this specification. Finally, the group briefly discussed Dave Borman's new option that merged authentication and encryption. The initial feedback is 1 favorable, but the group is waiting to see the results of an initial implementation using Kerberos IV. Attendees Steve Alexander stevea@lachman.com Jim Barnes barnes@xylogics.com Julian Bates bates@xylogics.com David Borman dab@cray.com Peter Cameron cameron@xylint.co.uk Sun-Kwan Kimn sunkimn@hp.com John Klensin Klensin@infoods.unu.edu Kent Malave kent@bach.austin.ibm.com Marjo Mercado marjo@cup.hp.com Greg Minshall minshall@wc.novell.com Clifford Neuman bcn@isi.edu Sam Sjogren sjogren@tgv.com Theodore Ts'o tytso@mit.edu Gordon Young young@xylogics.com 2