Operational Requirements Area

Director(s):


   o Susan Estrada:  Estradas@cerf.net
   o Phill Gross:  pgross@nri.reston.va.us
   o Bernhard Stockman:  boss@sunet.se


Area Summary reported by Susan Estrada/CERFnet
and Bernhard Stockman/NORDUnet

During this IETF five working groups met.  There were three BOF's on
operations related subjects.  The Operational Requirements Area
Directorate (ORAD) met together with FARNET which met in Santa Fe at the
beginning of the IETF week.

User Connectivity Problems (ucp)

The User Connectivity Working Group met twice this week, in the true
tradition of operators being overcommitted to these things, and actually
came up with some really good outputs.  They decided how to do a NOC
phone book, standardized network status reports and standardized total
ticket hand-off, which is the mechanized procedure.  There should be
some implementations happening in the next six months, which will
actually make our lives a lot simpler.

If you're interested in getting on the mailing list, send a request to
ucp-request@nic.near.net

Network Joint Management (njm)

Network Joint Management met once this week.  Following the FARNET theme
of ``Hardening the Mid-level Networks'', the Group discussed fifty
simple things one can do to help the Internet be hard.  The operators
were encouraged to subscribe to nwg@merit.edu, which is going to be the
open discussion list for what's going on in the networking community.

Network Status Reports (netstat)

Around thirty people attended this session.  Network status reports were
given from:


   o ESnet (Tony Hain)
   o NSI (Milo Medin)
   o MILNET (Katherine Huber)
   o BONE-92 (Bernhard Stockman)


Phill Gross has been organizing the network status report sessions for
some time.  However, at this meeting, Phill turned the organization of
this Group over to Gene Hastings.  The choice of Gene as the new Chair

                                   1





was an indication of the similar subjects covered by the Network Status
Report sessions and the Network Joint Management Working Group, also
chaired by Gene.  It is hoped that both njm and netstat will benefit
from this new close coordination.

Router Requirements Checklist (rreqlist).

The idea behind a router requirements checklist is to take that router
requirements document an turn into something that may be used as
guidance for purchasing router equipment.  The Group decided that this
was a useful thing to do.  A strawman checklist will be constructed
soon.  To subscribe to the mailing list send a request to rcl@cerf.net.
It's not clear that this work will be done within an IETF working group.
The idea is rather to bash this out, and just get it issued as an
informational RFC, without having to form a working group.

Quality of Service Measurements (opmeas)

This BOF only concerned quality of service measurements for wide area
networks.  Basically the idea here is that as regionals, or as networks,
there is no need to find measurement criteria available.  The base line
is to find the right questions to ask and that is a good way to start.
A working group will be formed and a mailing list set up for discussing
this subject.

Benchmarking and Methodology (bmwg).

The Benchmarking folks met this week.  They word-smithed the
benchmarking document.  They're going to have one more video meeting in
January, and a draft document will be available by the next IETF.

The Operations Requirments Area Directorate (ORAD).

The ORAD session was chaired by Susan Estrada, Phill Gross and Bernhard
Stockman.  Around fifty people attended.  The meeting was a joint
session between ORAD and FARNET people.

Presentation of the Intercontinental Engineering and Planning Group
(IEPG). Geoff Huston, co-Chair of IEPG, gave an overview of the current
IEPG work.  The IEPG meet in Santa Fe the week before IETF. Major topics
of interest for the IEPG group were:


   o Interactions between network regions.
   o Protocol infrastructure.
   o Multi-lingual applications.
   o Network minimal service levels.
   o Global traffic flows.
   o Information services.


There is the need to define operation tools to the vendors.  For example
there is a need to make the SNMP displays used today a little more
meaningful and a lot more helpful to use in the long run.  A working

                                   2





group will be initiated, probably at the next IETF, that will define
recommendations for the operational folks to give to vendors, to help
them design better interfaces.

Operational Statistics (opstat).

OPSTAT met during two session with around thirty participants chaired by
Bernhard Stockman.

The main topic was a simplified version of earlier documents describing
the gathering, storage and presentation of statistical data.  The major
time was spend on discussing the storage format and polling periods.
Prior to this there had been a discussion on 5-15 minutes polling
periods.  It was concluded that one single polling period could not be
recommended.  The polling period has to be dependent on the type of
polling being performed so the meeting defined a set of polling periods
for different situations.  The intention is to have the simplified
version ready for Internet Draft during December 1991.

BGP Deployment and Applications (bgpdepl).

A BOF on BGP usage with around thirty participants, chaired by Jessica
Yu.  The reason for this was to investigate the need and interest of
forming an IETF working group around this concept.  Topics that were
treated:


   o The need for an IETF working group to facilitate for
     inter-operability test and to act as a forum for knowledge
     transfer.

   o A review of today BGP implementation and usage.

   o Presentation by cisco on current implementations and future plans.

   o Discussion around the NSFnet T3 and T1 BGP implementations.

   o A review of midlevel networks currently using BGP.



                                   3