Applications Area

Director(s):

   o Russ Hobby:  rdhobby@ucdavis.edu

Area Summary reported by Russ Hobby/UC Davis

A new goal in the Applications Area is to move toward working groups
being unified by guiding architectures.  Toward this goal the start of
two architectures have been defined.  The first is an architecture to
define workstation based teleconferencing.  The second is a joint effort
between the Applications Area and the User Services Area to create an
Internet Information Architecture to define a system of protocols to
allow support information organization, searching and retrieval.

Conference Control BOF (CONFCTRL)

An impromptu BOF on Conference Control (sometimes referred to as
connection or configuration management) was held.  Discussions were to
understand how such a group might contribute to the remote conferencing
architecture effort.  It was agreed that there is a need for a a session
layer control protocol to perform higher layer functions than the
protocol proposed in the AVT Working Group.  The beginnings of design
criteria for this protocol were identified by determining which
functions must be supported.  Discussion also focused on the range and
capabilities of various session types needing support, the list of
outside services to which the protocol will interface, and short-term
versus long-term functionality considerations.

NAPLPS Graphics and Character Sets as a MIME BOF (NAPMIME)

This BOF explored interest in the definition of a NAPLPS body part for
MIME. There was a demonstration of an NAPLPS system showing how
presentation graphics can be transmitted using low bandwidths.

Remote Conferencing BOF (REMCONF)

The Remote Conferencing BOF discussed an architecture for all aspects of
workstation based teleconferencing.  This includes things like video,
audio, shared windows, session setup and management.  A separate group
was spawned off to focus on session configuration and management.  This
group will become a working group to continue guidance on the
architecture.

Remote Mail Protocol BOF (REMMAIL)

The Remote Mail BOF discussed methods for end-user mail delivery and
problems with current protocols such as POP and IMAP. The Group reached
consensus on two areas of work for a possible working group.  First is
to standardize a protocol for central mail repository to work with

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diskless clients.  The second is the email support of laptops and other
disconnected machines.  Discussion of a working group Charter will be
done on the ietf-remmail@umich.edu mailing list.

SMTP Extensions Working Group (SMTPEXT)

The SMTP Extensions Working Group came to closure on a set of documents
that answers the concerns brought up from the Last Call of the previous
documents.  These new documents will soon be submitted by the Working
Group for approval to be a Proposed Standard.

Network Database Working Group (NETDATA)

The Network Database Working Group discussed the proposal from SQL
Access for doing OSI's RDA directly on a TCP/IP stack.  Security was the
main technical concern of the Group.  However, a more significant hurtle
may be the logistical and legal one of being able to put the ISO and
X/Open specification on line to create a complete description of the
overall protocol.

Network News Transport Protocol Working Group (NNTP)

The NNTP Working Group finished up work on the NNTP v2 document and went
on to discuss the requirements for a Network News Reader Protocol (NNRP)
that would serve between a news repository and a user agent.  Questions
came up about how NNRP will relate to mail protocols, how authentication
can be done, how to do search mechanisms, and whether NNRP should be an
extension of NNTP or be developed independently.

Telnet Working Group (TELNET)

The Telnet Working Group continued the work on authentication and
encryption for Telnet sessions.

Internet Information Architecture

The Internet Information Architecture is a start to define a system of
protocols to support of information organization, searching and
retrieval.  Four working groups have been created to address several
parts of the overall goal.  These working groups are:


   o Networked Information Retrieval Working Group (NIR): is cataloging
     the types of information and information services that currently
     exist.  This defines the starting point for work on the overall
     architecture.

   o Universal Resource Identifiers Working Group (URI): is looking at
     ways to have unique identifiers for information objects on the
     Internet.  This will allow a person to know that they have found a

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  particular object regardless of how the object is named locally.

o Integration of Internet Information Resources Working Group (IIIR):
  is looking at the various information search and retrieval
  protocols, such as Archie, Gopher, WAIS and others, and working
  toward a common protocol or set of protocols to standardize these
  functions.

o Whois and Network Information Lookup Service Working Group (WNILS):
  is looking at how to organize directory information that already
  exists in various WHOIS servers.



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