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Minutes of TTC meeting12th September 2000 |
Minutes of the meeting held on the 12th September 2000 at the TERENA Secretariat offices, Amsterdam.
Karel Vietsch, Valentino Cavalli
Those present:
TTC members: Kees Neggers (chair), David Chadwick, Dimitrios Kalogeras, Olav Kvittem, Karel Vietsch (secretary)
TERENA staff: Kostas Anagnostakis, Valentino Cavalli, Yuri Demchenko
Apologies had been received from Peter Valkenburg, Brian Gilmore and John Dyer. No communication had been received from Stanislaw Starzak.
Kostas Anagnostakis was introduced; he had joined the TERENA staff since the last TTC meeting.
2. MINUTES AND ACTIONS FROM THE PREVIOUS TTC MEETING
The minutes of the previous meeting held on 12 September 2000 were officially
approved.
Action 000427-01. VC to ask Neisser to send his project proposal to the TF-CACHE list.
DONE.
Action 000427-02. OK and DK to ask the experts currently involved in TF-TANT to draw plans for testing/experimentation activities after October, and to organise discussions of those plans.
ONGOING, SEE AGENDA ITEM 5a.
Action 000427-03. KN and KV to discuss the organisational aspects of the testing/experimentation activities after October in the TAC, in the GA and with DANTE.
DONE.
Action 000427-04. KV to submit the proposal for an amendment to the SCIMITAR2 contract to the CEC.
DONE.
Action 000427-05. KV and BG to find candidate for TF-CSIRT leadership.
DONE.
Action 000427-06. YD to contact Dave Hartland re signing GNRT contract.
DONE.
Action 000427-07. PV and KV to continue contacts with IBM and get a decision on their involvement in the TERENA Portal concept.
ONGOING.
Action 000427-08. KN to contact Kluwer and discuss the Portal proposal with them.
OPEN. Kees will approach Kluwer once there is sufficient substance to the Portal plans.
Action 000427-09. VC to include item on possible Scalable Video Conferencing activity in agenda of Lisbon TF-STREAM BoF.
DONE.
Action 000427-10. KV to suggest DC and BG to the Telematics Institute as possible speakers at the Middleware Workshop in case not all currently invited speakers would be available.
DONE.
Action 000427-11. KV to announce the Cisco BoF in Lisbon, mentioning the possibility to receive support from Cisco.
DONE.
Action 000427-12. KV – after SURFnet will have completed their tests of the Litton codec – to announce to the TERENA membership the Litton codec loan scheme.
DONE.
Action 000427-13. DC and PV to arrange for someone from ICE-CAR to speak at LDAP BoF.
OVERTAKEN.
Karel reported that John Dyer was still on sick leave, but had now resumed working part-time from home. In view of the frequent vacancies, the TEC had decided to start recruiting for a fourth PDO, because this seems necessary to ensure that all positions in the technical staff are actually filled at any moment in time. TERENA was also recruiting for a part-time system/network manager, but thus far without success. It was planned that the secretariat would get a Gigabit Ethernet connection to SURFnet next year.
4. FEEDBACK FROM MEETINGS TAC, GA, TEC AND CCIRN.
Kees reported that the Technical Advisory Council had had a successful meeting in Lisbon in May. The attendance had been good, but the TTC had been underrepresented. The TAC had reformulated the Special Interest Areas of the Technical Programme as follows: Lower Layers (IPv6, MPLS, VPNs etc.); QoS (incl. DiffServ); Videoconferencing and Streaming; Content Delivery, Indexing and Searching; Middleware. Mobility had been mentioned as an area that should be taken up as a SIA within the next two years.
Peter Valkenburg had announced that he will be leaving SURFnet from 1 November 2000 and he will also not be able to continue as a TTC member after that date. That creates a second vacancy in the TTC. There is an urgent need to identify candidates to ensure good coverage of the SIAs. New candidates should preferably cover videoconferencing, streaming, indexing and searching. It was decided to ask Peter Valkenburg for his advice. Valentino mentioned four people who would be suitable TTC members to cover the area of videoconferencing.
For the time being, the following division of SIAs over TTC members was agreed: Olav for Lower Layers and QoS, Dimitrios for Videoconferencing and Streaming, Stanislaw for Content Delivery, Indexing and Searching, and David for Middleware.
The annual CCIRN meeting had taken place in Yokohama on 22 July. The CCIRN Working Group on Digital Video had arranged a showcase at the INET2000 conference. The CCIRN had decided to dissolve the CCIRN WG on MBone. It had been suggested to organise a CCIRN BoF on QoS at the Internet2 Fall Meeting in Atlanta in October/November, but this idea had not been received enthusiastically by the European QoS experts. It seemed better to continue the discussion electronically first and organise a BoF (probably adjacent to an IETF meeting) only if some concrete proposals for collaborative activities would be on the table. Karel would forward the official minutes of this CCIRN meeting to the TTC members once he had received them from Grant Miller.
The discussion on the formulation of new plans for testing/experimentation activities after the end of TF-TANT in October 2000 had not been progressing well. Olav, Dimitrios, Valentino and Kostas had been encouraging TF-TANT members to come forward with such proposals. But because the TF-TANT chairman had not been helpful, no real discussion on future activities had taken place in the TF-TANT meeting in Dublin in July. Valentino and Kostas were now approaching the leading figures in TF-TANT individually, asking them to present their ideas for future activities at the final TF-TANT meeting, early October in Vienna.
A first draft for the Terms of Reference of a new task force to succeed TF-TANT had been produced by Valentino and Kostas, and this text was discussed. The preferred name for the task force is TF-NGN (Next Generation Networking). It was decided to concentrate first of all on the persons who might play a leading role in the various subgroups of TF-NGN. Some of the names mentioned were Cees de Laat (AAA), Ladislav Lhotka (MPLS), Tiziana Ferrari (DiffServ), Tim Chown and Wilfried Wöber (IPv6), Daniel Karrenberg (Network Monitoring), Victor Reijs (Optical Networking) and Robert Stoy (Multicast).
Kees pointed out that it is very important to make it clear that TERENA will provide support to the subgroups. Pilots, e.g. on national research networks, should be part of the remit of TF-NGN, but the Geant Pilot Steering Groups should remain outside TF-NGN. However it will be useful if those Geant groups will meet back-to-back to the TF-NGN subgroups.
It was pointed out that some people are hesitant to express their ideas about future activities, because they are afraid to be denied access to TEN-155 and Geant for their tests. Kees explained in some detail that not DANTE but the management of the NRENs has the decision making power in these cases. It is important to clarify this to the TF-TANT members concerned and take away their fears.
Kostas reported on the current status of TEQUILA. TERENA will host a 4-day TEQUILA meeting in the TERENA offices on 19-22 September 2000.
5c. Minor Project "User-level Network Performance Monitoring Program"
This project has been completed. The final report is being printed.
6. STREAMING AND VIDEOCONFERENCING
Valentino reported that there is much interest in borrowing TERENA’s Litton codecs. The equipment had been used and/or tested thus far by SURFnet, UNI·C, HEAnet, UNINETT and NORDUnet.
Valentino reported on the progress of the activities of TF-STREAM. The next meeting will be held in Tel-Aviv on 27-28 November 2000, and will be combined with a number of visits to companies in Israel. This will probably be the last task force meeting before the end of TF-STREAM’s current mandate at the end of the year. The results achieved by TF-STREAM and a possible continuation can be discussed there and in the next TTC meeting.
7a. Decision to dissolve TF-CACHE
The work on caching has always been strongly motivated by congestion problems and lack of bandwidth, but that now seems to be less of a problem in important parts of Europe. There is also a strong development in industry, which now provides ready solutions instead of the networking world having to develop solutions themselves. In addition, the responsibility for caching and storage is shifting from the users and the networks to the content providers. Consequently TF-CACHE concluded in its meeting in Lisbon in May that it had achieved what it had set out to do and that the task force can be dissolved. The mailing list will be kept open, and it is also planned to organise a BoF on caching at future annual conferences of TERENA.
The TTC decided to officially dissolve TF-CACHE.
The Fifth International Web Caching and Content Delivery Workshop adjacent to the TERENA Networking Conference 2000 in Lisbon had been a success. Valentino reported that WCW6 would be held in Boston in the spring of 2001; the dates were not yet known. Valentino has been invited to sit on a Steering Committee that will look after the continuity of the WCWs.
There are a number of national activities going on or in preparation in various countries in Europe to build a national academic portal. TERENA will organise a 1-day workshop bringing together the people working on these initiatives, to stimulate interest, expertise and ideas. The TERENA Portal concept could be built upon these national initiatives.
TF-CHIC
After the completion of its original task, TF-CHIC had been helpful in formulating plans for an indexing service that could be an important element of the TERENA Portal. Lately however TF-CHIC had been dormant.
The TTC decided to officially dissolve TF-CHIC.
This project has been completed. The final report is being printed. David commented that this had been a good project that has made some improvements and the resulting software works well. Successful projects like this need more publicity.
The BoF on LDAP deployment in the TERENA offices in May has led to a second meeting, which will take place in Utrecht on 20 September. This will also be the kick-off meeting for a proposed task force on LDAP Service Deployment.
David mentioned the openLDAP initiative, which develops open-source code for LDAPv3. Perhaps TERENA could become a sponsor of openLDAP.
9c. Middleware workshop and follow-up
Yuri reported on the follow-up of the successful European Middleware Workshop, which was organised by TERENA and the Telematics Institute in June. TERENA has set up a Web site for information exchange on middleware activities in Europe and a mailing list. This autumn, Peter Valkenburg and Ken Klingenstein will organise a teleconference to discuss US-European co-ordination on directories/PKI and certificate exchange formats. Yuri is working together with Henk Eertink (Telematics Institute) on a research agenda as a product from the discussions in and after the workshop.
Authentication, PKI and issuing certificates are topics that are very much in the focus of attention. They came up in the TF-LSD discussions, in the meetings between CSIRTs and in the follow-up of the Middleware Workshop. Adjacent to the TERENA GA meeting in Paris in October, a mini-symposium will be organised where among others the certification service for higher education in the US will be presented, which has been set up by CREN.
Kees said that it seems sensible that NRENs in Europe take some responsibility for certificates.
David remarked that the CREN service is a bridge CA, while the EuroPKI that has resulted from the ICE-CAR project is itself the root of a hierarchy. A root sets the policy and thereby defines the entire trust model; a bridge CA does not do that. One question is whether you want a European bridge or a European root or e.g. three policies (weak, medium and strong) at a European level. David warned that it can easily cost up to 1 million euro to set up a PKI infrastructure in a commercial environment. Open-source PKI will come on the market and that may make things more affordable. David also warned for legal issues.
10a. Decision to establish TF-CSIRT
Two informal meetings in the past year were followed by a kick-off meeting for a new task force TF-CSIRT in Vienna in May. This meeting agreed on the Terms of Reference for the new task force. TF-CSIRT will have its first official meeting in Paris on 28-29 September. It is already making good progress in its activities.
The TTC decided officially to establish TF-CSIRT.
The Trusted Introducer service is one of the first results of TF-CSIRT. A contract has been signed between TERENA and M&I/Stelvio for the provision of this one-year pilot service. The pilot was launched on 1 September 2000.
10c. Incident Description and Exchange Format
Incident taxonomy is another activity of TF-CSIRT that is making good progress. Yuri reported that the TF-CSIRT subgroup organised a BoF at the FIRST conference in Chicago in June. This meeting was attended by some 30 persons, despite the late hour. The subgroup is now working on various documents. A public draft on requirements is ready. Work on a data model is in progress.
Yuri reported that Netskills (Newcastle) has produced a new version of the GNRT. The review panel, which consists of Miroslav Milinovic (CARNET), Pål Axelsson (Uppsala), Debra Hiom (Bristol) and Carry Böhmermann (SURFnet), will meet on 15 September 2000 to discuss this first draft.
11b. Minor Project "Decision Making by e-mail"
Yuri reported that the work by Jacob Palme is progressing. The first deliverable is available on the Web.
Karel reported that a contract amendment to extend SCIMITAR2 until the end of the year 2000 has been signed by the consortium and has been returned to the CEC for signature.
Kees mentioned that the end of SCIMITAR2 will have a financial impact on TERENA. The TERENA staff will have to get involved in more externally funded projects. Kees pointed to the call for proposals for the Cross Programme Action CPA6 on Next Generation Networks, which will be published soon.
12. DECISION ON PROPOSALS FOR NEW MINOR PROJECTS
12a. Proposal "Development of an Automated Management System for a Multi-Node, Distributed Caching Infrastructure"
This proposal had been presented in the TF-CACHE meeting in May, but had received little support. The proposal is too much limited to the particular caching infrastructure in the United Kingdom. Exactly the same proposal was also presented one year ago and was discussed by TF-CACHE as needing improvements, but no changes had been proposed.
The TTC decided not to retain this proposal.
12b. Proposal "A Software Tool for the Formal Analysis of Security Protocols"
The proposal was more about academic research than something that would fit in the TERENA Technical Programme. Once the research described will be completed, the follow-up might be an interesting activity for TERENA.
The TTC decided not to retain this proposal.
12c. Proposal "Development of a SNMP Agent for Traffic Monitoring based on NTOP"
The proposal is to develop a remote-monitoring tool based on RMON2 specifications and the NTOP software developed by the University of Pisa. One problem is that RMON2 does not apply to a switched environment. It should also be made clear that there will be no charge to the TERENA community to use the results of this project. A necessary condition for TERENA to fund this project will be that there are some NRENs who show an interest beforehand to use the tool resulting from the project. (Olav mentioned that he for one was interested.) Some intermediate milestones need to be defined and the overall budget needs to be clarified and the other funding sources identified.
Subject to positive answers to all these questions, the TTC decided to retain this proposal for TERENA funding.
The proposal is of greater relevance to libraries than to the TERENA community. The proposed idea is interesting but it might represent just a marginal contribution to the Portal concept.
The TTC decided not to retain this proposal.
13. BRAINSTORMING ON NEW TOPICS FOR THE TECHNICAL PROGRAMME
David underlined the importance of mobility as an area. Dimitrios announced that he would prepare a list of work items on optical networking.
The next TTC meeting will be on Tuesday 5 December 2000.
15. ANY OTHER BUSINESS AND CLOSE
Action 000427-02. VC, KA, OK and DK to ask the experts currently involved in TF-TANT to draw up plans for testing/experimentation activities after the end of TF-TANT in October, and to organise discussions of those plans.
Action 000427-07. PV and KV to continue contacts with IBM and get a decision on their involvement in the TERENA Portal concept.
Action 000427-08. KN to contact Kluwer and discuss the Portal concept with them.
Action 000912-01. KV to ask PV for his advice on possible new TTC members.
Action 000912-02. KV to forward the official minutes of the CCIRN meeting to the TTC members.
Action 000912-03. KA to require clarification from Luca Deri on the issues raised by the TTC on his project proposal, and to enquire with NRENs whether they would be interested to use the tool resulted from this proposed project.
